By Gianfranco Nitti
 
ROME — Severe flooding caused by heavy monsoon rains has affected an estimated 15.4 million people (including at least 7.5 million children) across Pakistan. The floods have damaged standing crops as well as stored grain and seeds for planting, and destroyed or damaged an estimated 900,000 homes.
A number of programmes and projects funded [...]

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By PAUL SCAGLIA

The recent earthquake that struck Italy is a vivid example of the deadly consequences corruption in a government can have on a population. With a long history of earthquakes in her past, the Italian state failed to protect its citizens by enforcing anti-earthquake regulations that were passed by the government following the 1980 Naples [...]

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Combined from dispatches
 
A powerful earthquake struck a huge swathe of central Italy as residents slept on Monday morning, killing some 295 people when houses, churches and other buildings collapsed.
The dead were mainly in L’Aquila, a 13th century mountain city about 100 km (60 miles) east of Rome that has a population of 68,000, and surrounding villages.
The Civil [...]

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The Sustainability Mirage Illusion and Reality in the Coming War on Climate Change. By John Foster. Earthscan. £19.99 paperback.

Reviewed by ANDREA MARKOS
 Brilliantly and ironically written, this book shades a bright light on most foggy areas around the concept of sustainability. Those fastidious obscure points do not fit properly in the reassuring technical solutions to [...]

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By Insider reporters 
 Some 1000 people were evacuated from the Montesacro district of Rome today amid fears that the river Tiber, swollen by two days of torrential rain, might burst its banks.

 The river was expected to continue rising until about 1 a.m. Saturday. “The worst danger is passed,” said the commanding officer of the Rome fire [...]

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By Insider newsdesk
 Floods hit a record level of 1.56 metres in Venice this week as bad weather lashed much of northern Italy, municipal officials in the Lagoon City said.
 Sirens wailed warning Venice’s residents of the “acqua alta” which surged through St. Mark’s Square amid a fierce scirocco wind gusting at some 50 mph, reaching a [...]

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