Word: papered
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...Says Chris Gunness, spokesman for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA): "Because the Israelis are not allowing in any reconstruction material, that $4.5 billion is just a paper figure." With more than 80% of Gazans now surviving on humanitarian handouts from UNRWA, Gunness adds, "Palestinians are becoming more desperate and more extreme." (See pictures of Israeli soldiers sweeping into Gaza...
...already prompted close scrutiny from several western governments, including the United States. Diplomats had not been allowed into his trial on Wednesday. On Tuesday U.S. State Department spokesman Philip J. Crowley said, "As far as we can tell, this man's crime was simply signing a piece of paper that aspires to a more open and participatory form of government. That is not a crime." China's Foreign Ministry on Thursday called all criticism of Liu's trial "gross interference in China's internal affairs." (See how Beijing clamped down after the release of Charter...
Writing in a paper published Wednesday in Nature, scientists describe what they call the velocity of climate change, or more specifically, the speed of Earth's shifting climatic zones. As global temperature rises over the next century, the scientists argue, Earth's habitable climatic zones will start moving too, generally away from the Equator and toward the poles. That means many species of plants and animals will also have to move in order to survive. Whether or not they do will depend on several factors, but two of the most important are how fast a species can adjust its habitat...
Until now, ecologists have mostly focused on these factors as they affect individual species, but the new paper takes a more global view. By combining temperature projections on a very fine scale with global topographic maps, researchers have predicted change not for specific species, but for the climatic zones they need to keep up with...
More than intuitive, this new index could also prove very useful, especially to conservationists who work to keep species from extinction. While the average velocity of climate change may be a bit less than a half-kilometer per year worldwide, according to the paper, it can be significantly faster or slower depending on the local topography. In deserts and other flat areas, such as the Amazon basin, climatic zones will move faster, while hilly or mountainous terrain will slow things up. "In the Northern Hemisphere, for example," explains lead author Scott Loarie, "north-facing slopes tend to be cooler...