Word: plantings
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...billion-dollar profits, by turns accused of holding the world economy hostage, precipitating a global food crisis and endangering the planet. Now imagine the public relations nightmare facing an oil company that uses technology responsible for powering Nazi Germany, that propped up apartheid for decades and that operates a plant with the dubious distinction of being the world's biggest single-point source of carbon dioxide. Only a die-hard optimist could talk up such a company, right? Meet Pat Davies, head of South African energy giant Sasol, and listen to him speak about its prospects. "We're coming into...
When Tata Motors unveiled designs last year to build the Nano - a cheap, two-wheel drive car for the people - it proudly declared its hopes for India's mass market. It's getting a dose of mass protest instead. Last week, Tata Motors shut down its plant in Singur, West Bengal, citing "obstruction, intimidation and confrontation" by protesters that had been demonstrating at the site for the past month...
Like so many protests in India, this is about land: Local farmers are upset that, under a 2005 policy to create a series of special economic zones, the state government acquired about 1,000 acres of land in Singur and sold it to Tata Motors for the plant. The farmers say they were not adequately compensated for their land and allege that in some cases, the sales were forced. They and their political supporters are demanding 400 acres back. The issue has been smoldering for almost two years, but the protests reached an intense pitch last month, until finally...
...society is now gearing up to launch another protection program for Arizona's signature cactus, the saguaro, whose beautiful white blossoms are the state flower. While the saguaro is not among Arizona's seven endangered cactus species, the shallow-rooted plant is often preyed upon by poachers, who can earn up to $60 a foot for a wild specimen, Wiedhopf says. The desert symbol grows slowly, about an inch a year - it can take six or seven decades for the saguaro cactus to grow an arm - and those 15-to-20-foot saguaros that dot the Sonoran desert...
...despite conservationists best efforts, poachers and drug smugglers have little regard for them - or for protection laws. Some hard-core collectors won't miss any opportunity to swipe a cactus. That's why visitors to Copenhagen's botanical gardens must view rare cactus plants behind glass walls and, as a curator at London's world famous Kew Gardens told Terry, "Every year, we put out a plant and every year someone steals...