More than 1,000 elephant tusks seized in Hong Kong

More than 1,000 elephant tusks have been seized at a port in Hong Kong in south-east Asia.

The ivory was hidden beneath planks of wood in a large container from the African country of Togo.It's thought the tusks came from baby elephants. They are worth around £1.5 million on the illegal ivory market.

Officials in Hong Kong say the seizure, which weighs two tonnes, is their biggest since 2010.

"We profiled a container from Togo, Africa, for cargo examination. First, we found irregularities at an X-ray check. Then, we opened the container and discovered the tusks of different sizes," Wong Wai-hung, a From customs' commander, told reporters.

He added that the tusks were buried underneath planks of wood in the corner of the 20-foot container, which had been declared as carrying wood only.

More than 1,148 tusks were seized in the haul at Hong Kong's Kwai Chung terminal, worth around $2.3 million.

Ng Kwok-leung, customs' group head of ports control, said that the majority of the tusks seized in the operation were from baby elephants.

"It was a big haul, we should be happy. But when I looked at these tusks, we saw very small tusks of baby elephants. We were sad because they were killed for nothing," he said.

The international trade in elephant ivory, with rare exceptions, has been outlawed since 1989 after populations of the African giants dropped from millions in the mid-20th century to some 600,000 by the end of the 1980s.

Ivory is popular with Chinese collectors who see it as a valuable investment.

It is often intricately carved to depict anything from devotional Buddhist scenes to wildlife and bizarre fantasies, and is also turned into more mundane household objects such as chopsticks.

Conservation groups have accused the Chinese government of failing to enforce laws to control the illicit trade.

Hong Kong, a free port which runs one of the biggest container terminals in the world, often sees the seizure of products from banned trades.

But customs officials said on Friday said there was "no concrete information" to show that the financial hub had become a gateway for ivory smuggling, despite its proximity to China.

From :

• CBBC News http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/23388046
• Fox Newshttp://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/07/19/hk-seizes-baby-elephant-tusks-in-major-ivory-haul/

Puffin birds make comeback on Farne Islands

Good news for puffin birds - they're making a comeback on the Farne Islands in north-east England.

A count on the habitat off the Northumberland coast shows there's been an 8% increase since the last count in 2008.

There had been worries after thousands of them died in severe winter storms.

There are now just under 40,000 pairs of nesting puffins across the eight islands.

But that's still lower than the 55,674 birds found living on the islands in 2003.

A team of 11 rangers have spent two months sticking their hands inside thousands of burrows to count nesting puffins.

David Steel, head ranger on the Farne Islands, said: "It comes as a real relief following some difficult years for them - with the flooding of burrows last year and a very challenging winter."

From CBBC News

Sun guzzler: New solar family car pioneered in Holland

Students at the University of Eindhoven in the Netherlands say they have created the world's first solar-panelled family saloon.

Smog-eating pavements could absorb pollution

Scientists in the Netherlands say they have invented a pavement which they claim can absorb pollution.

They believe the technology could help to reduce the environmental impact of cars and lorries worldwide.

Researchers say that the pavement can reduce pollution by up to 19% in an average day.

Scientists in China, South Africa and the United States have said they're interested in this new technology.

The news was published online in June after researchers working for the Eindhoven University of Technology spent years studying smog-eating pavement used on a city block in Hengelo, Netherlands.

According to the paper titled "Full scale demonstration of air-purifying pavement,"the block with the special pavement reduced nitrogen oxide air pollution up to 45 percent in some ideal weather conditions, resulting in an average reduction of 19 percent over a day.

The "photocatalytic" pavement used in Hengelo had been sprayed with titanium oxide (TiO2), a chemical that can take air pollutants, such as nitrogen oxide, and convert them into less-dangerous chemicals, such as nitrates, the paper's authors report.

In a 2010 interview concerning the Hengelo experiment, professor Jos Brouwers of the Department of Architecture, Building and Planning at Eindhoven told CNN the pavement's real-life applications were exciting.

"[The concrete] could be a very feasible solution for inner city areas where they have a problem with air pollution," Brouwers said.

This could be good news for urban areas with high automobile traffic such as Los Angeles. (In a poll conducted by the Los Angeles Times close to 70 percent of respondents said they felt similar streets could be coming to Southern California.)

The research dovetails nicely with an American version of the pavement installed in bicycle and parking lanes in Chicago in April, according to the Agence France-Presse.

The AFP notes that titanium dioxide pavement is more expensive that average

cement, which is why it is only be used in a limited capacity at the moment. But Janet Attarian, project manager for the Chicago plan, explained that the cumulative effect of the city's innovations is the key takeaway.

From:

•  CBBC News 
•  Huff Post Greenhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/09/smog-eating-pavement-cut-pollution_n_3563472.html