Fire Fighters Battle Wildfire In Greece
Firefighters
and volunteers are battling more than seventy
wildfires across Greece over the last twenty-four
hours which officials say is the worst blazes on the
mainland since 2007.
Officials said
the fires broke out late Friday and developed
overnight, fed by gale-force winds that kept
shifting directions.
Fire crews -
backed by helicopters and water-bombers - are trying
to prevent the flames from spreading to a northern
suburb of the Greek capital, Athens.
A state of
emergency has been declared in the area, but no
casualties have been reported.
The fires have
reached the towns of Grammatiko and Varnavas, near
Marathon. A number of homes have been destroyed and
thousands of hectares of forests and farmlands
burnt.
In 2007,
wildfires on the mainland killed seventy people and
incinerated six percent of Greece's tree cover.
BBC/Qasim/
Austeen
China Probes
Government Officials Over Children Poisoning
The Chinese
government is probing the complicity of two
government officials after more than one thousand
three hundred children fell sick with lead
poisoning, .
The local
government says the pair from the
environmental agency in Wugang city, Hunan province,
are suspected of dereliction of duty.
Last week, two
executives of the Wugang Manganese Smeltering Plant
were held over the poisonings and the plant shut.
Another smelter
in Shaanxi province was closed days earlier after
six hundred children there developed lead poisoning.
Emissions from
the smelting plants are thought to be behind the
poisonings in both cases.
Lead poisoning
can cause a range of health problems, from learning
disabilities to seizures. Children under six are
most at risk.
BBC/Qasim/
Austeen