MEXICO CITY - Latin American environmentalists and social activists closed ranks against the World Bank, which proposes developing biosafety research in the region, through the cultivation of genetically modified maize, potato, yucca and cotton.

"We are going to halt this plan, which is to begin in 2007. Civic, farmer and environmental groups -- we are united," Silva Ribeiro, Latin American spokesman for the Canada-based non-governmental Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration, told Tierramérica.

The activists charge that it is a project prepared by the World Bank with the support of the International Center for Tropical Agriculture, based in Colombia, and that it aims to finance itself through the Global Environment Facility (GEF).

Ribeiro said that developing transgenic maize, potato and yucca will expose native varieties of these crops to genetic contamination, as Latin America is the historic origin of these plants. Furthermore, he said, transgenics could hurt the peasant farmer economy.

SAO PAULO - Researchers at the University of Sao Paulo's Incubator of Technological Enterprise are developing a technology that promises to recover nearly 98 percent of the contaminating materials from used fluorescent lightbulbs.

Through a system of high vacuum and high temperatures, the scientists have been able to recover the mercury, copper, tungsten, aluminum and glass from the tubular bulbs.

The technique recovers the raw materials that can serve "in manufacturing glass tile floors, metal plates, and an infinity of other products," Gilvan Xavier Araújo, head of the research effort, explained to Tierramérica.

Brazil, with its population of about 185 million, consumes an average of 100 million fluorescent lightbulbs per year, of which 94 percent are thrown away without any type of treatment. One bulb can contain 5 to 30 milligrams of mercury, a heavy metal that is dangerous to human health and the environment.

TEGUCIGALPA - Last weekend the drastic rationing of potable water came to an end in the Honduran capital, after the main reservoirs supplying the city finally regained levels within the normal range.

Jorge Méndez, manager of the National Service of Aqueducts and Sewage Systems, told Tierramérica that as of July 3, "rationing of water in the city is suspended, because the reservoirs are at their maximum water levels, due to the copious rainfall in the country."

The water volume the reservoirs have taken in "allows us to predict that in 2007 rationing will be minimal. Now we have sufficient flows to store up a good reserve," said the official. In recent months water rationing extended as long as two consecutive days for some parts of Tegucigalpa.

The principal reservoirs supplying water to the capital are La Concepción, Los Laureles, El Picacho and Miraflores, which together provide for the needs of almost the entire urban population of one million.

RIO DE JANEIRO - Aboard a boat, some 150 clerics, scientists, government officials, indigenous leaders and journalists will travel July 13-20 the rivers of the Brazilian Amazon while they discuss environmental questions related to the region, and issues related to water and ethics.

It is the 6th International Symposium on Religion, Science and Environment, promoted by the Orthodox Church.

"It is very important that religions take up the ecology question, remembering that humanity cannot destroy nature, which is also created by God," Adilson Vieira, one of the organizers, told Tierramérica.

In attendance for the floating symposium will be the maximum leader of orthodox Christians, Bartolomé, nicknamed the "Green Patriarch", and who has never before visited South America.