Report: World's fish stocks in peril

Paris

Major world commercial fish stocks could collapse within decades as global warming compounds damage from pollution and overfishing, U.N. officials said Friday.

A U.N. Environment Program report details new research on how rising ocean-surface temperature and other climate changes are affecting the fishing industry. It says that more than 2.6 billion people get most of their protein from fish.

"You overlay all of this, and you are potentially putting a death nail in the coffin of the world fisheries," Achim Steiner, head of the program, said.

The research sheds new light on an undersea flushing mechanism that helps renew fish stocks in three-quarters of the world's primary commercial fishing grounds. The report says global warming is disrupting this circulation.

Merida, Venezuela

Plane crash kills all 46 on board

A Venezuelan passenger plane slammed into a steep mountainside in the Andes, killing all 46 people on board, officials said.

The twin-engine plane was shattered to bits upon impact amid scrub brush at an elevation of 13,500 feet.

The French-made ATR 42-300 crashed Thursday shortly after takeoff from the Andean city of Merida, a popular tourist destination wedged between soaring mountain peaks.

Beirut, Lebanon

Nuclear-watchdog gives Iran mixed review

The U.N.'s nuclear-watchdog agency says it had "serious concern" about Iran's potential to assemble a nuclear bomb because the country has not addressed questions about weapons designs, but it credited Iran for clarifying all other issues about its nuclear program history, according to a report released Friday.

The report by the Vienna, Austria-based International Atomic Energy Agency comes as the Security Council is considering new sanctions against Iran. Iran has continued to defy earlier resolutions demanding a halt to the process, which can be used to produce fuel for a nuclear power plant but also for making nuclear weapons if enriched to higher grades.

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Country emerges from debt crisis

Brazil's debt crisis is over and the country has emerged as a net foreign creditor for the first time, the Central Bank said.

The nation's foreign cash reserves in January exceeded the entire foreign debt of Brazil's government and individual companies combined by about $4 billion, the bank said in a report released Thursday.

Brazil, which defaulted on its debt in the 1980s and declared a moratorium on debt payments, is riding a boom in demand for key exports such as beef, iron ore and soy. International reserves nearly tripled from $64 billion in 2003 to $188.2 billion this week, the bank said.

Also

The freakish winter storms that coated much of central and southern China in snow and ice have left 129 people dead so far this year, a senior Chinese official said today. The storms, which started in early January, have continued to lash areas of China accustomed to milder weather, leaving communities without electricity and clogging railways and roadways.

Seattle Times news services