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Monday, May 20, 2013
Sunday, May 19, 2013
Shifts in global water systems -- markers of a new geological epoch: The Anthropocene
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Public release date: 19-May-2013[ | E-mail |
Share ] Contact: Terry Collins
tc@tca.tc
416-538-8712
Contact: Alma van der Veen
49-228-731846
aveen@uni-bonn.de
Global Water System Project
Experts in Bonn to detail how science can help people mitigate or adapt to major global human-induced water system changes
A suite of disquieting global phenomena have given rise to the "Anthropocene," a term coined for a new geologic epoch characterized by humanity's growing dominance of the Earth's environment and a planetary transformation as profound as the last epoch-defining event -- the retreat of the glaciers 11,500 years ago.
And in Bonn, Germany May 21-24, world experts will experts will focus on how to mitigate key factors contributing to extreme damage to the global water system being caused while adapting to the new reality.
"The list of human activities and their impact on the water systems of Planet Earth is long and important," Anik Bhaduri, Executive Officer of the Global Water System Project (GWSP).
"We have altered the Earth's climatology and chemistry, its snow cover, permafrost, sea and glacial ice extent and ocean volumeall fundamental elements of the hydrological cycle. We have accelerated major processes like erosion, applied massive quantities of nitrogen that leaks from soil to ground and surface waters and, sometimes, literally siphoned all water from rivers, emptying them for human uses before they reach the ocean. We have diverted vast amounts of freshwater to harness fossil energy, dammed major waterways, and destroyed aquatic ecosystems."
"The idea of the Anthropocene underscores the point that human activities and their impacts have global significance for the future of all living species -- ours included. Humans are changing the character of the world water system in significant ways with inadequate knowledge of the system and the consequences of changes being imposed. From a research position, human-water interactions must be viewed as a continuum and a coupled system, requiring interdisciplinary inquiry like that which has characterized the GWSP since its inception."
Among many examples of humanity's oversized imprint on the world, cited in a paper by James Syvitski, Chair of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme and three fellow experts (in full: http://bit.ly/Yx4COp), and in a new "Water in the Anthropocene" video to debut in Bonn May 21 (available at gwsp.org and http://www.anthropocene.info):
- Humanity uses an area the size of South America to grow its crops and an area the size of Africa for raising livestock
- Due to groundwater and hydrocarbon pumping in low lying coastal areas, two-thirds of major river deltas are sinking, some of them at a rate four times faster on average than global sea level is rising
- More rock and sediment is now moved by human activities such as shoreline in-filling, damming and mining than by the natural erosive forces of ice, wind and water combined
- Many river floods today have links to human activities, including the Indus flood of 2010 (which killed 2,000 people), and the Bangkok flood of 2011 (815 deaths)
- On average, humanity has built one large dam every day for the last 130 years. Tens of thousands of large dams now distort natural river flows to which ecosystems and aquatic life adapted over millennia
- Drainage of wetlands destroys their capacity to ease floodsa free service of nature expensive to replace
- Evaporation from poorly-managed irrigation renders many of the world's rivers dry -- no water, no life. And so, little by little, tens of thousands of species edge closer to extinction every day.
Needed: Better water system monitoring and governance
The water community stresses that concern now extends far beyond 'classic' drinking water and sanitation issues and includes water quality and quantity for ecosystems at all scales.
Says GWSP co-chair Claudia Pahl-Wostl: "The fact is, as world water problems worsen, we lack adequate efforts to monitor the availability, condition and use of water -- a situation presenting extreme long term cost and danger."
"Human water security is often achieved in the short term at the expense of the environment with harmful long-term implications. The problems are largely caused by governance failure and a lack of systemic thinking in both developed and developing countries. Economic development without concomitant institutional development will lead to greater water insecurity in the long-term. Global leadership is required to deal with the water challenges of the 21st century."
"Humanity changes the way water moves around the globe like never before, causing dramatic harm," says Bonn conference keynote speaker Joe Alcamo, Chief Scientist of the UN Environment Programme and former co-chair of the GWSP. "By diverting freshwater for agricultural, industrial and municipal use, for example, our coastal wetlands receive less and less, and often polluted, freshwater. The results include decreased inland and coastal biodiversity, increased coastal salinity and temperature, and contaminated agricultural soils and agricultural runoff."
Adds Charles Vrsmarty, co-Chair and a founding member of the GWSP, which receives input from more hundreds of international scientists: "By throwing concrete, pipes, pumps, and chemicals at our water problems, to the tune of a half-trillion dollars a year, we've produced a technological curtain separating clean water flowing from our pipes and the highly-stressed natural waters that sit in the background. We treat symptoms of environmental abuse rather than underlying causes. Thus, problems continue to mount in the background, yet the public is largely unaware of this reality or its growing costs."
Aims of the Bonn meeting
Featuring 60 special topic sessions, "Water in the Anthropocene" is a capstone event for the GWSP, which is developing "Future Water," the water-related component of the emerging new multi-dimensional international collaborative environmental research framework, Future Earth.
A goal of the meeting is to synthesize major global water research achievements in the last decade and help assembling the scientific foundations to articulate a common vision of Earth's water future.
It will recommended priorities for decision makers in the areas of earth system science and water resources governance and management.
And it will constitute a scientific prelude to October's Budapest Water Summit, a major objective of which is to elevate the importance of water issues within the UN General Assembly negotiations on the Sustainable Development Goals -- a set of globally-agreed future objectives to succeed the UN Millennium Development Goals in 2015.
Observers expect adoption of "water security" as a Sustainable Development Goal
Water expert Janos Bogardi, Senior Advisor to GWSP, says the absence of defined global water quantity and quality standards for personal use, agriculture and healthy ecosystems are critical gaps as the world community develops its next set of shared medium-term objectives.
"These definitions constitute a cardinal challenge today for scientists and politicians alike. It is important to reach consensus in order to make progress on the increasingly important notion of 'water security'," says Dr. Bogardi, stressing that changing terminology will not in itself solve problems. "Replacing the word 'sustainability' with 'security' is not a panacea."
With respect to quantity, less than 20 liters daily for sanitary needs and drinking is deemed "water misery" while 40 to 80 liters is considered "comfortable." (Current US per capita average daily consumption is over 300 liters; daily usage in urban Germany is about 120 liters per capita and in urban Hungary, where water is relatively expensive, the figure is 80 liters.)
Missing also are authoritative scientific determinations of how much water can be drawn without crossing a "tipping point" threshold into ecosystem collapse. While there is no general rule, GWSP scientists say withdrawals of 30% to 40% of a renewable freshwater resource constitutes "extreme" water stress, but underline scope to continue satisfying needs if water is returned and recycled in good quality. Mining fossil groundwater resources is by definition non-sustainable.
The GWSP is developing water quality guidelines for people, agriculture and ecosystems in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals.
"The urgency of formulating the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals and a tracking system for their success means that quite soon the SDG negotiators must offer-up water targets," says Dr. Vrsmarty. "Whether they focus predominantly on continuing the Millennium Development Goals (narrowly on drinking water and sanitation for human health) or formulate a more comprehensive agenda that simultaneously optimizes water security for humans as well as for nature remains an open question. The water sciences community stands ready to take on this challenge. Are the the decision makers?"
Definitions of water security
In 2007, World Bank expert David Grey and Claudia Sadoff of IUCN, defined water security as "The availability of an acceptable quantity and quality of water for health, livelihoods, ecosystems and production, coupled with an acceptable level of water-related risks to people, environments and economies."
Their use of the term "acceptable" acknowledges that water security has relative, negotiable meanings.
In March, another formulation was set out by UN-Water, the United Nations' inter-agency coordination mechanism for all water-related issues.
It defined water security as: "The capacity of a population to safeguard sustainable access to adequate quantities of and acceptable quality water for sustaining livelihoods, human well-being, and socio-economic development, for ensuring protection against water-borne pollution and water-related disasters, and for preserving ecosystems in a climate of peace and political stability." (see http://bit.ly/1864vMG)
###
About the Global Water System Project (gwsp.org)
The Global Water System Project seeks to answer the fundamental, multi-faceted question: How are humans changing the global water cycle, the associated biogeochemical cycles, and the biological components of the global water system and what are the social feedbacks arising from these changes?
GWSP Core Themes:
1. What are the magnitudes of anthropogenic and environmental changes in the global water system and what are the key mechanisms by which they are induced?
2. What are the main linkages and feedbacks within the earth system arising from changes in the global water system? How resilient and adaptable is the global water system to change, and what are sustainable water management strategies?
GWSP gratefully acknowledges support of its activities provided by the four Global Environmental Change programmes of the International Council for Science -- DIVERSITAS, International Human Dimension Programme on Global Environmental Change (IHDP), International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP), World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) and the Earth System Science Partnership (ESSP) -- and by national and international research funding agencies. The GWSP International Project Office received decade-long support from the Ministry of Education and Research of the Federal Republic of Germany (BMBF).
[ | E-mail | Share ] ?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Public release date: 19-May-2013[ | E-mail |
Share ] Contact: Terry Collins
tc@tca.tc
416-538-8712
Contact: Alma van der Veen
49-228-731846
aveen@uni-bonn.de
Global Water System Project
Experts in Bonn to detail how science can help people mitigate or adapt to major global human-induced water system changes
A suite of disquieting global phenomena have given rise to the "Anthropocene," a term coined for a new geologic epoch characterized by humanity's growing dominance of the Earth's environment and a planetary transformation as profound as the last epoch-defining event -- the retreat of the glaciers 11,500 years ago.
And in Bonn, Germany May 21-24, world experts will experts will focus on how to mitigate key factors contributing to extreme damage to the global water system being caused while adapting to the new reality.
"The list of human activities and their impact on the water systems of Planet Earth is long and important," Anik Bhaduri, Executive Officer of the Global Water System Project (GWSP).
"We have altered the Earth's climatology and chemistry, its snow cover, permafrost, sea and glacial ice extent and ocean volumeall fundamental elements of the hydrological cycle. We have accelerated major processes like erosion, applied massive quantities of nitrogen that leaks from soil to ground and surface waters and, sometimes, literally siphoned all water from rivers, emptying them for human uses before they reach the ocean. We have diverted vast amounts of freshwater to harness fossil energy, dammed major waterways, and destroyed aquatic ecosystems."
"The idea of the Anthropocene underscores the point that human activities and their impacts have global significance for the future of all living species -- ours included. Humans are changing the character of the world water system in significant ways with inadequate knowledge of the system and the consequences of changes being imposed. From a research position, human-water interactions must be viewed as a continuum and a coupled system, requiring interdisciplinary inquiry like that which has characterized the GWSP since its inception."
Among many examples of humanity's oversized imprint on the world, cited in a paper by James Syvitski, Chair of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme and three fellow experts (in full: http://bit.ly/Yx4COp), and in a new "Water in the Anthropocene" video to debut in Bonn May 21 (available at gwsp.org and http://www.anthropocene.info):
- Humanity uses an area the size of South America to grow its crops and an area the size of Africa for raising livestock
- Due to groundwater and hydrocarbon pumping in low lying coastal areas, two-thirds of major river deltas are sinking, some of them at a rate four times faster on average than global sea level is rising
- More rock and sediment is now moved by human activities such as shoreline in-filling, damming and mining than by the natural erosive forces of ice, wind and water combined
- Many river floods today have links to human activities, including the Indus flood of 2010 (which killed 2,000 people), and the Bangkok flood of 2011 (815 deaths)
- On average, humanity has built one large dam every day for the last 130 years. Tens of thousands of large dams now distort natural river flows to which ecosystems and aquatic life adapted over millennia
- Drainage of wetlands destroys their capacity to ease floodsa free service of nature expensive to replace
- Evaporation from poorly-managed irrigation renders many of the world's rivers dry -- no water, no life. And so, little by little, tens of thousands of species edge closer to extinction every day.
Needed: Better water system monitoring and governance
The water community stresses that concern now extends far beyond 'classic' drinking water and sanitation issues and includes water quality and quantity for ecosystems at all scales.
Says GWSP co-chair Claudia Pahl-Wostl: "The fact is, as world water problems worsen, we lack adequate efforts to monitor the availability, condition and use of water -- a situation presenting extreme long term cost and danger."
"Human water security is often achieved in the short term at the expense of the environment with harmful long-term implications. The problems are largely caused by governance failure and a lack of systemic thinking in both developed and developing countries. Economic development without concomitant institutional development will lead to greater water insecurity in the long-term. Global leadership is required to deal with the water challenges of the 21st century."
"Humanity changes the way water moves around the globe like never before, causing dramatic harm," says Bonn conference keynote speaker Joe Alcamo, Chief Scientist of the UN Environment Programme and former co-chair of the GWSP. "By diverting freshwater for agricultural, industrial and municipal use, for example, our coastal wetlands receive less and less, and often polluted, freshwater. The results include decreased inland and coastal biodiversity, increased coastal salinity and temperature, and contaminated agricultural soils and agricultural runoff."
Adds Charles Vrsmarty, co-Chair and a founding member of the GWSP, which receives input from more hundreds of international scientists: "By throwing concrete, pipes, pumps, and chemicals at our water problems, to the tune of a half-trillion dollars a year, we've produced a technological curtain separating clean water flowing from our pipes and the highly-stressed natural waters that sit in the background. We treat symptoms of environmental abuse rather than underlying causes. Thus, problems continue to mount in the background, yet the public is largely unaware of this reality or its growing costs."
Aims of the Bonn meeting
Featuring 60 special topic sessions, "Water in the Anthropocene" is a capstone event for the GWSP, which is developing "Future Water," the water-related component of the emerging new multi-dimensional international collaborative environmental research framework, Future Earth.
A goal of the meeting is to synthesize major global water research achievements in the last decade and help assembling the scientific foundations to articulate a common vision of Earth's water future.
It will recommended priorities for decision makers in the areas of earth system science and water resources governance and management.
And it will constitute a scientific prelude to October's Budapest Water Summit, a major objective of which is to elevate the importance of water issues within the UN General Assembly negotiations on the Sustainable Development Goals -- a set of globally-agreed future objectives to succeed the UN Millennium Development Goals in 2015.
Observers expect adoption of "water security" as a Sustainable Development Goal
Water expert Janos Bogardi, Senior Advisor to GWSP, says the absence of defined global water quantity and quality standards for personal use, agriculture and healthy ecosystems are critical gaps as the world community develops its next set of shared medium-term objectives.
"These definitions constitute a cardinal challenge today for scientists and politicians alike. It is important to reach consensus in order to make progress on the increasingly important notion of 'water security'," says Dr. Bogardi, stressing that changing terminology will not in itself solve problems. "Replacing the word 'sustainability' with 'security' is not a panacea."
With respect to quantity, less than 20 liters daily for sanitary needs and drinking is deemed "water misery" while 40 to 80 liters is considered "comfortable." (Current US per capita average daily consumption is over 300 liters; daily usage in urban Germany is about 120 liters per capita and in urban Hungary, where water is relatively expensive, the figure is 80 liters.)
Missing also are authoritative scientific determinations of how much water can be drawn without crossing a "tipping point" threshold into ecosystem collapse. While there is no general rule, GWSP scientists say withdrawals of 30% to 40% of a renewable freshwater resource constitutes "extreme" water stress, but underline scope to continue satisfying needs if water is returned and recycled in good quality. Mining fossil groundwater resources is by definition non-sustainable.
The GWSP is developing water quality guidelines for people, agriculture and ecosystems in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals.
"The urgency of formulating the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals and a tracking system for their success means that quite soon the SDG negotiators must offer-up water targets," says Dr. Vrsmarty. "Whether they focus predominantly on continuing the Millennium Development Goals (narrowly on drinking water and sanitation for human health) or formulate a more comprehensive agenda that simultaneously optimizes water security for humans as well as for nature remains an open question. The water sciences community stands ready to take on this challenge. Are the the decision makers?"
Definitions of water security
In 2007, World Bank expert David Grey and Claudia Sadoff of IUCN, defined water security as "The availability of an acceptable quantity and quality of water for health, livelihoods, ecosystems and production, coupled with an acceptable level of water-related risks to people, environments and economies."
Their use of the term "acceptable" acknowledges that water security has relative, negotiable meanings.
In March, another formulation was set out by UN-Water, the United Nations' inter-agency coordination mechanism for all water-related issues.
It defined water security as: "The capacity of a population to safeguard sustainable access to adequate quantities of and acceptable quality water for sustaining livelihoods, human well-being, and socio-economic development, for ensuring protection against water-borne pollution and water-related disasters, and for preserving ecosystems in a climate of peace and political stability." (see http://bit.ly/1864vMG)
###
About the Global Water System Project (gwsp.org)
The Global Water System Project seeks to answer the fundamental, multi-faceted question: How are humans changing the global water cycle, the associated biogeochemical cycles, and the biological components of the global water system and what are the social feedbacks arising from these changes?
GWSP Core Themes:
1. What are the magnitudes of anthropogenic and environmental changes in the global water system and what are the key mechanisms by which they are induced?
2. What are the main linkages and feedbacks within the earth system arising from changes in the global water system? How resilient and adaptable is the global water system to change, and what are sustainable water management strategies?
GWSP gratefully acknowledges support of its activities provided by the four Global Environmental Change programmes of the International Council for Science -- DIVERSITAS, International Human Dimension Programme on Global Environmental Change (IHDP), International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP), World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) and the Earth System Science Partnership (ESSP) -- and by national and international research funding agencies. The GWSP International Project Office received decade-long support from the Ministry of Education and Research of the Federal Republic of Germany (BMBF).
[ | E-mail | Share ] ?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-05/gwsp-sig051413.php
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Bernanke upbeat on innovation outlook in commencement address
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke painted an upbeat picture on Saturday for the potential of innovation to lift living standards, delivering a sweeping look at the last 100 years that included memories of his 1963 South Carolina home.
Bernanke made no reference to monetary policy or the immediate outlook for the U.S. economy in prepared remarks to graduates of Bard College at Simon's Rock, Massachusetts.
But the die-hard baseball fan did manage to work in a reference to one of the sport's greats.
"Is it true, then, as baseball player Yogi Berra said, that the future ain't what it used to be?," the chairman said, noting the existence of serious skepticism that leaps in computers and other information technology would yield the same dramatic boost to growth and living standards as previous episodes of industrial revolution.
"Nobody really knows; as Berra also astutely observed, it's tough to make predictions, especially about the future. But there are some good arguments on the other side of this debate."
Bernanke delivers testimony on the U.S. economy on Wednesday before the congressional Joint Economic Committee.
His words will be parsed for any hint that he favors tapering Fed bond purchases, currently running at an $85 billion monthly pace. But recent U.S. economic data has been mixed, and economists polled by Reuters continue to expect the bond buying to continue until later this year, if not into early 2014.
Bernanke did not tip his hand during his comments to graduates, but he did offer some rare insights into his childhood home in Dillon, South Carolina to illustrate how life has not changed all that much in the last 50 years.
"We had a dishwasher, a washing machine, and a dryer. My family owned a comfortable car with air conditioning and a radio, and the experience of commercial flight was much like today but without the long security lines," he recalled.
There was no internet, but there was a color television "although, I must acknowledge, the colors were garish and there were many fewer channels to choose from."
After pointing out that the so-called IT revolution had not been as transformative as all that, Bernanke then went on to outline several areas where technology may only have scratched the surface in exploiting the potential for change.
He argued that IT and biotechnology have tremendous scope to improve healthcare - which absorbs a considerable amount of U.S. household income and where costs are projected to rise - as well as the potential for the development of cleaner energy.
"As trade and globalization increase the size of the potential market for new products, the possible economic rewards for being first with an innovative product or process are growing rapidly," he said. "In short, both humanity's capacity to innovate and the incentives to innovate are greater today than at any other time in history."
(Reporting by Alister Bull; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/bernanke-commencement-address-upbeat-innovation-outlook-150327263.html
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Sonic the Hedgehog arrives on Android, headed exclusively to Nintendo on the console side
USSR and the USA. Batman and Joker. Christoph Waltz and... well, everyone. It's pretty tough to look at the world's best-known rivalries and exclude one of history's finest -- that being, of course, Sonic and Mario. The gritty battle between Nintendo and Sega gave fans on both sides plenty to converse about over the years, and one might say that the video game industry as a whole benefited from the back-and-forth. Now that Sega is a shell of its former self, though, the company's most iconic character is turning to its archrival in search of shelter. On the console side, Nintendo will be the exclusive home for Sonic games going forward, with the Wii U and 3DS set to become the homes for the next three titles -- details of which should be revealed "in the coming weeks."
Meanwhile, Android users will be pleased to know that Sonic the Hedgehog was released today in the Google Play store. It's available for $2.99, while iOS users are also being granted a free update to coincide.
Filed under: Gaming, Mobile, Nintendo
Via: Joystiq
Source: Nintendo, Google Play
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Denmark's folksy ballad wins Eurovision
By Mia Shanley
MALMO, Sweden (Reuters) - Denmark's Emmelie de Forest won Eurovision on Saturday before an international TV audience of around 125 million, securing the coveted crown of euro-pop with a folksy ballad backed by flutes and drums.
The barefoot 20-year-old stole the show as predicted by bookmakers with "Only Teardrops" in a final that saw 26 countries battle it out in the southern Swedish city of Malmo for the top prize in glitzy European pop music.
"I could feel the fans and all the energy in the arena. ... It's a once in a lifetime experience. I'm just the happiest girl in the world," de Forest said after the event. She said she was proud to win in Sweden as her late father was Swedish and a Eurovision fan.
Denmark, which has won the contest twice before - most recently in 2000 with the Olsen Brothers' "Fly on the Wings of Love" - was clearly in the lead even after just half of the votes were cast.
The show's host, Swedish comedian Petra Mede, went ahead and announced the country's win before the final votes were read out, with the red and white Danish flag flashing on her gown in a classic over-the-top Eurovision moment.
Azerbaijan took second place in the competition with "Hold Me", followed by third place for Ukraine with "Gravity".
"How many times can we win and lose? How many times can we break the rules between us? Only teardrops?" the Danish performer sang, beaming ear-to-ear as she repeated her winning song to the audience against a fiery backdrop.
Denmark's victory means the contest will move just across the bridge between Sweden and Denmark next year, keeping the contest in the Nordics for a second year running after Loreen won last year's contest in Azerbaijan with her dance track "Euphoria".
"It's nice to give the prize to someone else. I have had such a fantastic year," Loreen told Reuters.
Singers from Russia to Romania competed as Eurovision returned to the homeland of ABBA, the Swedish band it propelled to global superstardom.
There was no shortage of ABBA nostalgia Saturday night.
Former ABBA members Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus composed the opening act together with Swedish DJ Avicii, and the Swedish singer Sarah Dawn Finer belted out the ABBA classic "The Winner Takes It All" before votes were revealed.
Though Sweden opted to tighten the budget for this year's show after Azerbaijan spent lavishly last year, pop fans around the world still got their usual three-hour dose of heavy-duty kitsch.
Famed as much for the costumes and characters on stage as its - sometimes - catchy tunes, Eurovision's line-up included a 2.4 meter (7 foot 10 inch) tall Ukrainian who carried singer Zlata Ognevich, and a lesbian kiss in Finland's "Marry Me", which drew media controversy.
SPIRIT OF UNITY
Eurovision was started in the 1950s to help foster a spirit of unity after World War Two.
In an attempt to ensure that musical quality takes precedence over geographically motivated bloc voting from television viewers, professional judges now account for 50 percent of a performer's score.
The other half comes from the number of telephone and SMS votes each contestant receives, with fans unable to vote for their own country's entry.
Eurovision fans crowded into downtown Malmo's squares and parks on an unusually hot sunny day ahead of the contest, with music blaring and boats cruising the canals.
"It's the festival feel, the fun, the unity - everyone's out to have a bit of fun," said Eurovision fan David Sherrit, who flew in from Britain for the show. "The music is quite awful, but we really come here because it's great fun and you can have a laugh at yourself and each other."
In its nearly six-decade history, Eurovision has been a launching pad for the likes of Celine Dion, Julio Iglesias and Olivia Newton-John. ABBA won the contest with "Waterloo" in 1974.
(Additional reporting by Ilze Filks; Editing by Kevin Liffey and Jackie Frank)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/abba-air-26-countries-fight-eurovision-glory-192014797.html
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