Israel's defense minister has ordered the army to use massive force to impose a freeze on construction in Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
VOA: standard.2009.12.21
The likely impact includes forest conversion to agricultural land, a drop in biological diversity as a result of monocropping and the massiveuse of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, unsustainable levels of water abstraction and a greater risk of water-related conflicts with local communities and neighbouring States sharing the same transboundary river systems.
Nautilus would usemassive robotic machines, which are being built in Wallsend, near Newcastle-upon-Tyne, by a firm with long experience of marine engineering, Soil Machine Dynamics.