The Mekong's fatal floods

More than 160 people have died in northern Vietnam as a result of what is being called the worst flooding in a century.Two weeks of heavy rainfall swelled the Mekong River andits tributaries,causing mudslides and innudateing homes and rice paddies throughout Southeast Asia.At certain points of the Mekong-a 2700 mile about 4350km waterway that runs from China through Laos,Cambodia and southern Vietnam before reaching the South China Sea-water levels surged as far as 45 ft.about 14 m above the river's dry-season lows.Meanwhile,in Burma.Which is still covering from a cyclone that killed at least 84000 people in May,torrential rains have forced people to flee their homes-particularly residents of the Irrawaddy delta,one of the area hardest hit by the deadly spring storm.



Vermont Legalize it? College presidents from nearly 100 U.S. universities,including Duke,Tufts and Texas A&M,have signed a petition to lower the national drinking age,saying current laws encourage a culture of clandestine binge-drinking among students younger than 21.Known as the Amethyst Initiative,the coalition plans to run national ads calling for a debate among lawmakers.Members of Mothers Against Drunk Driving,however,say lowering the drinking age would only lead to more fatal car accidents.


Zimbabwe Real victims in a war of words Power-sharing talks between President Robert Mugabe and his politicak rival Morgan Tsvangirai are in danger of breaking down completely almost four weeks after they began,sources inside the negotiations say.Tsvangirai's party has agreed to convene parliament in an attempt to revive Zimbabwe's moribund government but won't allow Mugabe to appoint a Cabinet until an agreement is reached.Meanwhile,hundreds of thousands have fled the country to escape the economic crisis.More than 80% of the population is unemployed,45% is malnourished.The inflation rate topped 11.2 million percent in June-by far the highest in the world.



The ocean Living with Dead Zones According to a report published in the journal Science,the number of dead zones-area of the ocean with oxygen levels so low that marine life can barely survive- has doubled every 10 years since the 1960s as a result of a runoff polluted with nitrogen-rich crop fertilizer.There are now more than 400 such zones-from the Gulf of Mexico to the Black Sea see map above-which,the report's authors say,pose as great a threat to coastal ecosystems as overfishing and habitat loss.