Nowadays there are a lot of global problems all over the world that’s why it’s difficult to choose the most important priorities to be solved first. I think these priorities can be arranged in such order:

The priority “Peace all over the world “ takes the first place in my list because it’s impossible to live, work, study, act without peace. Everything loses its meaning and importance without peace on the Earth. It’s terrible to realize the danger of the breaking of a nuclear war because it means the end of the civilization.

We all are anxious for Kosovo conflict because NATO’s bombing campaign continues in Yugoslavia.

1968 Ethnic Albanians hold first demonstration for Kosovo’s independence.

1974 Yugoslav constitution gives Kosovo autonomy.

1981 Ethnic Albanians march in the street. They demand that Kosovo be made a

republic. Dozens are injured.

1989 Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic takes away Kosovo’s autonomy. More than 20

men are killed in protests.

1990. Yugoslavia sends troops to impose order in Kosovo. Serbia dissolves

1991 Separatists proclaim Kosovo a republic.

1996 The Separatists Kosovo Liberation Army claims responsibility for bombing

police.

1998 Militant ethnic Albanians kill two Serb police officers. Serb forces launch

crackdown against Albanian separatists.

Kosovo is a province of Serbia, the main republic in Yugoslavia. Ethnic Albanians account for 90 percent of Kosovo’s 2 million people. Most ethnic Albanians want to break away from Serbia. Members of the Kosovo Liberation Army want independence for Kosovo. Over the past year, about 2.000 people have died in fighting between Serb forces and the Kosovo Liberation Army. Now it’s very difficult to count up the number of killed people. Ethnic Albanian refugees continued to stream out of Kosovo. At least 400.000 have fled the province since NATO began bombing March 24. Some were driven out by Serb forces.

Albania, Macedonia and Montenegro struggled to cope with the refugees. NATO sent troops to help in the refugee relief effort. Germany, the U.S., Turkey, Norway, Greece and Canada would accept refugees.

Can you imagine the destroyed country and the smell of burnt bridges, buildings, houses?

Yugoslavia’s president Slobodan Milosevic is blamed by all progressive people because of NATO’s bombing Campaign.

It has been destroyed government and dwelling buildings, including an army headquarters, fuel tanks, weapons sites, bridges, armed vehicles etc. Who will restore the destroyed economy of the country? How can be cured the damaged nature? Who can give back the lives of killed innocent people? Who will be really punished for the sorrow, grief of peaceful people?

I’m afraid of this war very much. I would like people to live in peace all over the world. I feel sorry for great sufferings of innocent people in Yugoslavia. I believe all children in Ukraine would like this war to stop!

If people lived in a world of understanding, trust, honestly, cooperation then there would be no reason for wars.

I put the priority “ Environmental pollution ” on the second place because it is one of the most important problems of the world. Air, water, landscape have been polluted for the last 100 years, for the twentieth century more than for the 19 centuries of human’s existence before. And nowadays it’s our duty, our responsibility to preserve our planet for future generations.

On the third place I would like to put the priority “ Health ”. We know the proverb “ Good health is above wealth ”. There are a lot of dangerous diseases because of pollution, which still cannot be cured. Deadly diseases such as heart disease, cancer, AIDS take a lot of lives every day. Each year cancer kills more than 500.000 Americans. That number is far higher than the death from AIDS and guns. Every day 1.500 people die from cancer almost the same number of people died with the Titanic. We can say, “ A Titanic goes down every day ”. And it’s terrible to realize it and to be impossible to stop it.

“ Corruption in government ” is the next priority, the fourth. Corruption harms people in many countries. If it weren’t corruption in government, it would work truthfully and develop, enrich its country. If the country were rich, people would live richer, would overcome poverty, unemployment, crime.

Last year the study of corruption was done by an independent group based in Berlin, Germany called Transparency International. According to its study on corruption worldwide Denmark is viewed as the least corrupt nation in the world. Cameroon is seen as the most corrupt. The U.S. tried with Austria as the 17th least-corrupt country. Russia takes the tenth place in the list of the most corrupt Nations. The charts below give the nations viewed as most and least corrupt. The entire list can be seen on the Internet at TI’s home page. The address is: www.transparency.de

10 Most - Corrupt Nations

Cameroon

Paraguay

Honduras

Tanzania

Nigeria

Indonesia

Colombia

Venezuela

Ecuador

Russia

All these priorities are very closely tied together. Solving one of the priorities we start solving of the next one. I would like to discuss in detail the priority of the environment because of its pollution. Pollution is a serious problem. Nowadays people understand how important it is to solve the environmental problems that endanger people’s lives.

This tragedy occurred in Donora, Pennsylvania, in October 1948. Fog trapped acid fumes over a mill town. Three days later, town residents were dying.

Before the smog cleared, it killed 17 people. They were the first people in the U.S. who died from air pollution. The tragedy became a national symbol. It was cited as proof that pollution can kill. Last year in 1998 people in Donora conducted a memorial service to honour the smog victims.

Most big cities pour their waste into seas and rivers. For a long time people did not realize the danger. The first alarm came from Japan. Some sixty people died because they had eaten polluted fish. Since 1967 it has not been possible to eat the fish from many Swedish lakes.

Nowadays pollution is the main cause of the degradation of the Black Sea. The pollution mainly has non-seaside origins. River flows are the main sources of pollution. Atmospheric precipitation and pollution. At the same time, the Danube River gathers its waters from the territories of Western, Central and Southern Europe.

The Danube River is the main polluter because its waters carry to the Black Sea wastes from almost all European countries. Russia, Belarus and Ukraine discharge their wastes into the Black Sea using their drains and mainly the Dnipro River.

The Danube alone adds 60.000 tons of phosphates and 340.000 tons of nitrates annually. As a result, the ideal condition for growth of single - cell algae has been created. Mass reproduction of these organisms causes degradation of water plants and a drastic decrease of the oxygen concentration in the water. Total biological losses at the North - Western shelf of the Black Sea during the last 20 years is estimated to be 60 million tons including a loss of 5 million tons of fish.

Sulphuretted hydrogen covers the depths of the Black Sea and kills all living organisms. If this gas was let out on the surface it would cover the entire global with a layer of 8 meters thickness and would kill all living things.

Over the last decades, the gas inevitably comes nearer to the sea surface at the rate of 1 - 2 meters per year.

Fish resources of the Black Sea have been drastically reduced. Flat fish, red mullet and white sturgeon have disappeared. Population of dolphins has decreased 10 times. Plankton, the thickness of surface layer of which is 20 - 30 centimeters, is being eaten by a ctenophore (or comb jellyfish).

Mnemiopsis leidyi, which was brought here on the bottoms of ships. This parasitic organism has destroyed the plankton at an area of a hundred thousands hectares. No plankton - no fish.

The Asov Sea has a lot of problems to be solved. The main limiting factor for normal run of biological processes in the Azov Sea ecosystem is accumulation of pollution in bottom sediments and hydrobionts. Field studies conducted in 1990 at the territory of the near-Kuban’ coast fixed mass deaths of valuable fish

611 dolphins, millions of searoach, pike perch and bullhead.

Mercury, copper, chromium, lead, zinc, cobalt, cadmium and nickel have been found in the tissues and organs of these fish. Concentration of chromium in muscles exceeded the fixed level 6 times.

There is no ocean or sea, which is not used as a dump. The Pacific Ocean, especially, has suffered from nuclear pollution because the French Government tests nuclear weapons there. Many seas are used for dumping industrial and nuclear waste. Britain alone dumps 250.000 tons of industrial waste straight into the North Sea. This poisons and kills fish and sea animals. “Nuclear - poisoned” fish can be eaten by people.

There is not enough oxygen in water because of its pollution that’s why fish and reptiles can’t live in many poisoned rivers and lakes. In such places all the birds leave their habitats and many plants die. If people drink this water they can be died too. It happens so because factories and plants release poisonous, harmful substances into the rivers, lakes, seas and oceans.

Nuclear power stations can go wrong and cause nuclear pollution. Nuclear pollution cannot be seen but its effects can be terrible. This happened in Windscale in Britain, in Three Mile Island and in Chernobyl.

Chernobyl’s fourth reactor exploded in 1986, sending a radioactive cloud over the Europe, which contaminated large areas of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia in the world’s worst civil nuclear disaster. Ukraine wants to close down Chernobyl by 2000 because of its danger.

When we speak about air pollution, it’s a small world because chemicals from factories in Asia can drift westward. Sometimes they travel all the way to the U.S.

Researchers tested air in Washington State. They found pollutants 10 times in March 1997 and April 1997. The researchers traced the path of air masses that carried the pollutants. They found the air masses came from Asia. The pollutants took six days to travel from Asia to North America. Dan Jaffe, a professor at the University of Washington, Bothell noted: “ The U.S. makes pollution too. Everybody’s pollution goes somewhere else.”

In the U.S. in the desert near Carlsbad, New Mexico, lies the nation’s first nuclear dump. In March 1999 the first shipment of nuclear waste arrived by tractor-trailer. The truck had picked up the waste at a weapons lab in Los Alamos, New Mexico.

Protesters met the truck along the way. They yelled “ Poison! Poison!” Some held up signs that read,“ Stop Nuke Trucks ”. Men tried to block the highway with their cars.

The dump was first proposed in 1974. Lawsuits, studies and protests delayed its opening. The dump will be used for weapons - related lowlevel plutonium waste. This waste will be buried in salt beds a half mile underground.

Some people fear the waste could be disturbed by tornadoes or earthquakes.

Another problem is that the drums carrode. They must be put into new containers. Critics of the dump say radioactivity could rise to the surface.

Nuclear pollution is the global problem of the twentieth century. Many scientists speak about serious changes in the climate because of the pollution of the atmosphere. Climate has a very important influence on plants, animals and humans.

But recently climate has changed a lot in our country, especially in its European part. Some scientists think the world is becoming hotter. If we compare winter and summer temperatures at the beginning of our century and at its end we’ll see that climate has really changed. Winters have become warmer. Sometimes there is little snow in January, and there were winters when it rained (not snowed!) on the New Year’s Eve. Most researchers say the warming is caused by the burning of fossil fuels. Fossil fuels include gas and coal after burning; the fuels give off “greenhouse gases” that trap heat in the air.

Many researchers say global warming is the worst environmental problem our planet faces.

During the last 100 years people have produced a lot of carbon dioxide. This gas in the atmosphere works like glass in a greenhouse. Trees take this gas from the air and produce oxygen. But in the last few years, people have cut down and burnt big areas of rainforest. This means there are fewer trees, and, of course, more carbon dioxide.

More and more often people are told not to be in direct sunlight, because ultraviolet radiation from the sun can cause skin cancer.

Normally the ozone layer in the atmosphere protects us from such radiation, but if there are holes in the ozone layer ultraviolet radiation can get to the earth. Many scientists think that these holes are the result of air pollution.

To make air clean again we need good filters at nuclear power stations, at factories and plants and also in cars and buses.

Clean air, water, soil are necessary for our health. If people want to survive they must solve these problems quickly. Man is beginning to understand that this environment is not just his own town or country, but the whole earth. That’s why people all over the world think and speak so much about ecology.

How can we clean up pollution in the soil? Some researches suggest planting poplar trees.

The tree grows up to 15 feet per year. It absorbs 25 gallons of water a day.

The purity of air, water and soil largely depends on the preservation of forests. The world had over nine million square km of forests. But they are disappearing fast. Every day we use paper and cardboard, both made from wood. We use different kinds of wood in furniture and in other ways. Every year over 100.000 sq. km of forests are cleared for different uses, and a lot of forests are so badly damaged that they will hardly be able to recover. If people go on like this all forests on the earth can be destroyed. This includes rainforests in South America, Africa and Asia. The huge forests help to control the world’s weather and to produce much of the oxygen in the air.

Dear friends! I would like to apply to everybody of you. Is it only factories, big ships and cars that pollute? No! It is you and me as well. If you drop litter, you pollute.

I propose you.

1.Ask your government 1.Don’t waste water, gas, energy.

to make laws to protect natural, resources.

air, water and soil. 2.Don’t put poisons into the

2.Develop International water, air and soil.

corporation to solve 3.Don’t dump or pour industrial

ecological problems waste into rivers, lakes, seas and

together. oceans.

3.Save water, gas, energy 4.Don’t turn the planet into a pile

and other natural resources of rubbish.

4.Keep your towns, cities

and countryside clean.

Dear friends! I would like to go to the Congress in Hawaii very much to share this useful, important and interesting information with children from all countries of the world!