[Vision2020] Good News Day

[Chasuk]

http://www.radionetherlands.nl/features/media/081107-good-news-day-mc

November 7 is National Good News Day in the Netherlands...

Brazil sees carbon market saving Amazon
Growing concern over climate change, and the potential of the carbon
credit market, could give the Amazon forest a financial value rivaling
the lucrative activities that are eating it away, Brazilian officials
believe.

The Amazon - the biggest zone of tropical woodland on the planet - is
already home to the Juma reserve, an area of half a million hectares
that has become the first project in Brazil to achieve international
certification for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by averting
deforestation.

The government in Amazonas state want to replicate that model over 34
other reserves it manages, and it wants to use financing from the
carbon market to help preserve the forest and improve the lives of
people living within it.

We will be a big player in the carbon market,"

said Virgilio Viana, director of the Sustainable Amazonas Foundation
running the reserves.

Malaysia court frees blogger held under security act
A Malaysian court freed on Friday a blogger who was detained under the
country's draconian security laws and whose arrest in September
sparked condemnation from the opposition and rights groups,

Opposition supporter Raja Petra Kamaruddin, 58, was held under
Malaysia's Internal Security Act (ISA) that allows indefinite
detention without trial. He was suspected of being a threat to
security for insulting Islam in this mainly Muslim country of 27
million people.

The blogger was brought to a court in Shah Alam, just outside Kuala
Lumpur, where he was freed after a judge accepted his lawyer's plea
saying the detention was illegal.

Belgian journalist freed in east Congo
A Belgian journalist who was held captive for three days by Mai-Mai
militiamen in Congo is free, the German newspaper he works for said on
Friday. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung said on its website that
the journalist, Thomas Scheen, and two Congolese co-workers who were
seized in east Congo earlier this week were now under the care of
United Nations peacekeepers and doing well.

"We thank all those in Germany, Belgium and Congo who worked
intensively over the past days for the release of Thomas Scheen and
his co-workers, especially the German foreign ministry, Belgian
authorities and MONUC [the UN Congo Mission]",

the paper's publisher Berthold Kohler said in a statement.
Algeria violence death toll falls in October
The death toll from political violence in Algeria fell to 13 in
October from 31 in September and 125 in August, according to a Reuters
count based on newspaper reports.

Scientists say a rock can soak up carbon dioxide
A rock found mostly in Oman can be harnessed to soak up the main
greenhouse gas carbon dioxide at a rate that could help slow global
warming, scientists say. When carbon dioxide comes in contact with the
rock, peridotite, the gas is converted into solid minerals such as
calcite.

Geologist Peter Kelemen and geochemist Juerg Matter said the naturally
occurring process can be supercharged 1 million times to grow
underground minerals that can permanently store 2 billion or more of
the 30 billion tons of carbon dioxide emitted by human activity every
year.

Their study will appear in the 11 November edition of the Proceedings
of the Natural Academy of Sciences.

Tigers escape in Mexico - but don't attack
A family in western Mexico was in shock on Thursday after finding a
tiger, which had escaped from a circus, lying on their patio, police
said. The tiger terrified the town of Zitacuaro, in western Michoacan
state, as it wandered the streets for an hour and a half before
entering a house, a local police officer said. The tiger "went through
the house and lay down on the patio," the officer said. "The family
was terrified and they hid."

"But these tigers are peaceful, they don't attack," he added. A total
of three tigers escaped from their circus cages when the doors were
left open on Wednesday. A trainer recovered two of them quickly, using
chickens as bait, while the local pound picked up the third tiger
after its town excursion.