NEWS IN BRIEF; P/$ rate closes at P56.34 to $1.
The peso closed higher at P56.34 to the US dollar yesterday at the Philippine Dealing System of the Bankers Association of the Philippines from P56.37 the previous day. The weighted average rate depreciated to P56.392 from P56.339. Total volume amounted to $178 million. SMC didnt buy block...

Law to protect RP beaches must be enforced -- Atienza.
ILOILO CITY -- "I want to see people going to jail for violating environmental laws," said Environment and Natural Resources Secretary Lito Atienza as he emphasized that Batas Pambansa 265 must be fully enforced. The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) said that Batas Pambansa (BP)...

The price of pollution.
Byline: Diane Dietz The Register-Guard Taxpayers are on the hook for a $1.7 million cleanup at Champion mine in Lane County. The government plowed a half-million taxpayer dollars this summer into the Black Butte mine, also in Lane County, and it may spend more than...

Invasive aquatic animals and possible effects on native frogs and toads in Mediterranean Baja California (1).
Northwestern Baja California, Mexico, shares a unique mediterranean biota with adjacent California, USA, as a result of the climatic conditions that dominate the area. Many of the vertebrates in it are restricted to this ecosystem, including most amphibians (Linsdale 1932; Mellink 2002). This ecosystem faces severe conservation problems, mostly...

Gold exports to recover with high prices.
Gold is likely to recover as a major Philippine export fuelled by the precious metal's record-breaking prices that now threaten to breach the $ 1,000 mark an ounce. At present prices, mining, even through its most expensive method of underground extraction, has turned viable again. ...

Slip sliding away: National parks in the East provide ideal habitat for cerulean warblers, but land-use decisions outside the parks--and outside the country--pose a serious challenge.
AS night falls on thousands of classical musical lovers spread across the lawn of the Blossom Music Center--the summer home of the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra--a few concertgoers are fortunate enough to hear the call of the cerulean warbler in between movements. The popular amphitheater is nestled in the middle...

Politicized ecology: local responses to mining in Papua New Guinea.
The debates about mining and its negative environmental impact that dominate critiques of mining projects in the developing world (see Mineral Policy Institute and Oxfam CAA websites) assume that environmental awareness will be the basis for international political solidarity in campaigns to improve the performance of large mining companies....

Burden of Gilt.
The Mineral Policy Center was established in 1988 as a service bureau to educate and assist citizens' groups concerned with mineral threats to the environment and to lobby for reform amendments to federal mining law. Burden of Gilt is a thorough report on hardrock mining and the environmental damage...

Stop all Vizcaya mining activities, police ordered; Order exempts big copper-gold project of Aussie mining firm.
Byline: BINGO CADABONA BAYOMBONG, Nueva Vizcaya - Gov. Luisa LLoren-Cuaresma ordered yesterday the police to ensure the stoppage of all mining activities in the province, saying that the continued extraction of mineral ores endangers Nueva Vizcaya's critical watersheds and exposes small villages to mudslides and massive soil...

Kerry B. Collison, Indonesian Gold.
Kerry B. Collison, Indonesian Gold. Hartwell (Australia): Sid Harta, 2002, 613 pp. The central theme that runs through Kerry B. Collison's novel, Indonesian Gold, is that the natural environment of Kalimantan is now in peril, and consequently the whole social fabric of the indigenous Dayak communities is...