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Now the residents of Shanghai are facing a new limit over the size of their household – the one-dog policy.

Nobody will be allowed to own more than one pooch under the proposals which call for zero tolerance on unplanned pregnancies.

Faced with an unexpected litter, the owner will have three months to find homes for the animals or they will be packed off to adoption agencies.

The only alternative will be sterilisation, Shanghai authorities said.

The move is a response to rampant barking, unscooped waste, and the growing risk of dog attacks which officials say is affecting the city’s environment and sanitation.

In Beijing for instance owners are not allowed to keep dogs taller than 14 centimetres lest they attack or frighten non-canine loving residents. The rule is routinely flouted.

The move on dogs lags some time behind a similar rule for humans.

China’s one-child policy was officially brought in in 1978 to stop the population exploding out of control.

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Inside the UK Pavilion, the Kew Millennium Seed Bank’s role in seed conservation is highlighted – the Kew Millennium Seed Bank is home to the largest collection of wild plant seeds in the world. After the 2010 Shanghai Expo is finished, the wild seeds in the encased glass rods will be given to China.

Of the extraordinary design and engineering production that is the UK Pavilion Thomas Heatherwick says, “It has been a tremendous achievement of the team to deliver such a complex structure. I am excited that the Seed Cathedral is now complete and I look forward to the millions of visitors to the Expo enjoying the space.”

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When the fur is finally peeled off over the animals’ heads, their naked, bloody bodies are thrown onto a pile of those who have gone before them. Some are still alive, breathing in ragged gasps and blinking slowly. Some of the animals’ hearts are still beating five to 10 minutes after they are skinned. One investigator recorded a skinned raccoon dog on the heap of carcasses who had enough strength to lift his bloodied head and stare into the camera.

Before they are skinned alive, animals are pulled from their cages and thrown to the ground; workers bludgeon them with metal rods or slam them on hard surfaces, causing broken bones and convulsions but not always immediate death. Animals watch helplessly as workers make their way down the row.

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The bear, also known as Claude, lives in A-sa Zoo logical park in Hiroshima, and spends hours on his stick, twisting and twirling it.

He’s been obsessed with the sticks since he arrived at the Zoo six years ago after his mother was caught in a trap and killed in the forests of Hiroshima.

Although he had let go of the sticks in the past few years, he recently picked up the habit again.

The zoo has prepared 15 sticks for Claude to play with. It’s unknown whether the bear’s behaviour is dysfunctional, nevertheless Claude has attracted many visitors who want to see his kung-fu exercise.

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One of the entries that Geely is planning for its new Emgrand premium sub-brand is the GE limousine. Like many of Geely’s other new models, the GE has a very prominent grille but otherwise the rest of the design looks well proportioned and attractive. With a 214-inch body sitting on a 124-inch wheelbase, the GE is a big car. Like many other big Chinese cars, this is targeted at executives who prefer to be driven rather than get behind the wheel. The GE can be equipped with either a rear bench contoured for two passengers or a single large seat flanked by extra storage compartments.

Underneath the hood, the GE has the same plug-in hybrid powertrain featured in the GT coupe. That means it gets a 2.4-liter inline-four that churns out 160 horsepower and 165 foot-pounds of torque. The electric drive consists of a pair of 27.5 kilowatt, 132 foot-pound hub-motors for all-wheel-drive capability. The GE is targeted for 2015 introduction.

The Geely Emgrand GT is another example of the automaker’s apparent seriousness about being considered a top-flight player in the industry. This coupe features classic sports car proportions and, aside from the over-done grille, looks quite attractive. The GT emanates from Geely’s new top-level Emgrand sub-brand and scores some impressive specs. It is reportedly a plug-in hybrid with a 2.4-liter inline-four that churns out 160 horsepower and 165 foot-pounds on its own.

That output is supplemented by a pair of 27.5 kilowatt hub-motors that give the GT all-wheel-drive capability. Those motors each add 132 foot-pounds of torque. It’s not clear which axle is being driven by the engine and which gets the motors. The Emgrand GT is targeted for a 2014 introduction.

It’s not often that we need to look up the definition of a word in a press release – but we admit to not knowing what “eclosion” meant. Turns out, it’s  “The emergence of an adult insect from its pupal case, or the hatching of an insect larva from an egg. From the French eclosion, from eclore, to open.” So, world, meet China’s latest bug car, Geely IG.

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Air pollution index levels exceeded a measurement of 400 points at several stations, even though 100 or above is classified as “very high” and comes with the advice that people who are sensitive to pollution should reduce outdoor activities. Anything above 200 is considered “severe,” and can lead to coughing, phlegm and sore throats, the authorities warned. The previous record was 202, set in July 2008.

High air pollution levels are often cited by international companies as a major drawback of doing business in the city, and the extreme levels on Monday, though highly unusual, may hinder the city’s efforts to bolster its image as a desirable place to live.

The current high levels were partly caused by a sandstorm in northern China, which has been moving south, the Hong Kong environment department said. The sandstorm, the nation’s worst in more than a year, has affected 270 million people across 16 provinces and offers a sign of the worsening problem of desertification in the north, according to scientists and meteorologists. On Monday, Beijing was blanketed in a yellow haze of sand and grit.

The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences estimates that there are two dozen sandstorms a year, six times the number 50 years ago, according to China Daily, an official English-language newspaper. The sand has mostly blown in from the deserts of the province of Inner Mongolia and the country of Mongolia, on China’s northern border. China has about 1.6 million square kilometers of desert; about 80,000 square kilometers of grasslands became desert in the last few decades, China Daily reported, citing a deputy director of the Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences.

But environmental advocates said roadside pollution was also key to explaining the record levels.

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“Mankind’s closest living relatives–the world’s apes, monkeys, lemurs and other primates–are on the brink of extinction and in need of urgent conservation measures,” the conservationists said in a news statement about the release of the report Primates in Peril: The World’s 25 Most Endangered Primates, 2008-2010.

The latest assessment that one in two of the world’s primates is threatened with extinction reflects a sharp deterioration since National Geographic News reported in 2002 that one in every three of the world’s apes, monkeys, lemurs, and other primates was endangered with extinction. Read the 2002 story Extinction Risk for 1 in 3 Primates, Study Says.

The 2008-2010 report lists five primate species from Madagascar, six from continental Africa, 11 from Asia, and three from Central and South America, “all of which are the most in need of urgent conservation action.”

Compiled by 85 experts from across the world–from the Primate Specialist Group of IUCN’s Species Survival Commission (SSC) and the International Primatological Society (IPS), in collaboration with Conservation International (CI)–the report was made public today at an event at Bristol Zoo Gardens in the United Kingdom.

“From the Atlantic Forest of Brazil to the monsoon slopes of Madagascar, from the mountains of southwest China to the islands of Mentawai, these primates are caught between fading hope and hard oblivion,” says the IUCN’s Primate Specialist Group on its Web site. “And if through our failure of action they should cease to exist, we will have lost our nearest companions–and a part of ourselves–from what wilderness remains in the world.”

“Conservationists want to highlight the plight of species such as the golden headed langur (Trachypithecus p. poliocephalus), which is found only on the island of Cat Ba in the Gulf of Tonkin, northeastern Vietnam, where just 60 to 70 individuals remain,” the organizers of the event said in today’s news statement.

The list of the 25 most endangered primates was drawn up by primatologists working in the field who have first-hand knowledge of the causes of threats to primates, according to the report.

One of the editors of the report is Christoph Schwitzer, head of research at the Bristol Conservation and Science Foundation (BCSF), a sister organisation of Bristol Zoo Gardens.

Schwitzer, who is also an adviser on Madagascan primates for the IUCN/SSC Primate Specialist Group, contributed the chapter on the Endangered Sclater’s lemur (also called the blue-eyed black lemur).

“This report makes for very alarming reading and it underlines the extent of the danger facing many of the world’s primates. We hope it will be effective in drawing attention to the plight of each of the 25 species included. Support and action to help save these species is vital if we are to avoid losing these wonderful animals forever,” Schwitzer said.

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1/2-year-old Tai Shan of Washington and 3-year-old Mei Lan of Atlanta will fly to new homes in Sichuan, China.

“Tai Shan and Mei Lan not only represent the crystalization of American and Chinese cooperation to preserve pandas but also the friendship of the Chinese and American people,” said Xie Feng, deputy chief of mission at the Chinese embassy in Washington in a farewell speech to the two pandas.

Tai Shan was born in Washington four-and-a-half years ago, to parents loaned to the United States by Beijing, and Mei Lan came into the world, the size of a stick of butter, at the Atlanta zoo three years ago.

But under agreements with the Chinese government, both were supposed to head to China when they turned two to join the panda breeding program.

Zookeepers fed Tai Shan apple and pear slices by hand through bars in his shipping crate before he left for Dulles International Airport early Thursday in a caravan escorted by U.S. Park Police. He munched calmly and looked out through clear plastic windows.

Pandas have a long, symbolic history in Washington. The first panda couple, Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing, arrived in 1972 as a gift to the American people from China after President Richard Nixon’s historic visit.

The pair lived more than 20 years at the zoo and produced five cubs — but none survived.

In Atlanta, as Mei Lan was loaded onto the Panda Express the curator of mammals Rebecca Snyder called the female panda’s departure “a bittersweet moment for the Zoo Atlanta family and for fans around the world.”

Giant pandas are an endangered species, with only 1,600 of the black and white bears living in the wild.

Tai Shan and Mei Lan will go to separate refuges after their arrival in Sichuan province, which is home to 75 percent of the world’s giant panda population.

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“If you were to leave it out in the open overnight, you could see small black particles, like from barbecue charcoal, in the morning,” Bogicevic said.

Having lived in this heavily industrialized Croatian town all his life, he no longer notices the foul smell caused by emissions of hydrogen sulphide from the nearby oil refinery.

Geographically, Sisak is less than 50 km (31 miles) away from the tidy capital Zagreb, but environmentally it is a world away and even further when compared to Croatia’s sparkling Adriatic coast or the pristine wilderness of its mountains.

Sisak looks like a barren planet, filled with putrid dust and plumes of smoke.

It has had a long and turbulent history but is now mostly notorious in Croatia for its foul air.

“It is kind of okay during the week, but Saturdays and Sundays … it is impossible, unbearable,” said Arid Medvedovic, a retired refinery worker.

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ON BOARD L’ASTROLABE, Southern Ocean – As Captain Benoit Hebert steers the icebreaker l’Astrolabe on Monday through a stormy Southern Ocean heading for Antarctica his thoughts will soon turn to the dangers of icebergs.

Large icebergs have recently been spotted floating hundreds of kilometers (miles) north of Antarctica — a sign of the accelerating melt of East Antarctica due to climate change.

Hebert has been sailing the icy seas around Antarctica and the Arctic for more than 15 years and has seen first hand the effects of global warming.

“Climate change is a lot more visible in the north in the Arctic rather than in the Antarctic. The Arctic is made up of pack ice which is melting,” he said.

Total summer ice cover in the Arctic Ocean was only about half the level it was in 1950, according to the International Panel on Climate Change.

- – - -

TUV AIMAK, Mongolia – Otgonsuren Perenlei, 27, and her husband moved back to the steppe from Mongolia’s capital city, Ulan Bator, a few years ago, attracted by cleaner air and a more eco-friendly nomadic lifestyle.

Solar panels pitched atop tents allow families to charge their phones, power energy-saving light bulbs and even watch a couple of hours of television in the evening. The panels are complemented by dried animal dung, courtesy of the cattle that are integral to nomads’ livelihood, to provide heat in winter.

Still, she says, climate change is making it more difficult for nomads like her to make a living.

“The global warming issue has made grazing very difficult these days. The grass hardly grows,” she told Reuters Television. “When I was a child I do not remember having to use fodder to feed the calves. Then, we had enough grass. Now, there is just not enough grass and there is less rain.”

Those who head to the city face air pollution levels reaching almost 10 times allowed rates during winter, according to Mongolia’s Air Quality Agency. The mountains surrounding the city trap the pollution, making it hard for everyone to breathe.

“There is thick smoke every evening. We burn coal too so it’s smoky outside. You can’t see your surroundings clearly,” she says nonchalantly.

- – - -

CHICAGO – Authorities scooped up poisoned fish floating to the surface of a Chicago-area waterway on Thursday in an operation designed to keep invasive Asian carp out of the Great Lakes and prevent an ecological disaster.

So far, none of the prolific two species of Asian carp, the Bighead carp and the Silver carp, have turned up in the huge fish kill that began overnight.

Some 200,000 pounds (90 metric tons) of dead fish are expected to be collected, weighed, inventoried, and dumped in a landfill. Most scooped up so far have been native carp and shad.

Silver carp and the Asian Bighead, which can grow to 5 feet, have come to dominate sections of the Mississippi and its tributaries.

Authorities fear that if the carp swim up to the Great Lakes, the largest fresh-water resource in the world, they could create an “ecological disaster” by consuming the bottom of the food chain and ruining the lakes’ $7 billion fishery.

Since 1990s floods allowed the carp to escape into rivers from research facilities and commercial fish ponds in the South, where they were introduced to clear weeds and other detritus, the carp have multiplied and become a “nuisance species,” according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

- – - -

HONG KONG – One need look no further than the river that runs through Shangba to understand the extent of the heavy metals pollution that experts say has turned the hamlets in this region of southern China into cancer villages.

The river’s flow ranges from murky white to a bright shade of orange and the waters are so viscous that they barely ripple in the breeze. In Shangba, the river brings death, not sustenance.

“All the fish died, even chickens and ducks that drank from the river died. If you put your leg in the water, you’ll get rashes and a terrible itch,” said He Shuncai, a 34-year-old rice farmer who has lived in Shangba all his life.

“Last year alone, six people in our village died from cancer and they were in their 30s and 40s.”

The river’s waters are contaminated by cadmium, lead, indium and zinc and other metals.

Every year, an estimated 460,000 people die prematurely in China due to exposure to air and water pollution, according to a 2007 World Bank study.

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