News Of the World: "Lost To the Sea"

"Swamped by global warming..Tuvalu is why we must back Earth Hour"

THIS picturesque paradise island is drowning, soon to be swallowed up entirely by the hungry, deep blue ocean surrounding it-and SUNK.

Doomed Tuvalu and its 12,600 residents are the FIRST real victims of global warming as sea level rises.

Like the last man standing on the sinking wooden deck of the Titanic, sailor John Iakopo defiantly salutes the distant horizon and jolts his back upright as the warm debris-strewn water of the Pacific sloshes around his knees.

Across his 1920s-style seaman's hat the word Tuvalu has faded in the relentless sun that scorches the tiny spit of land we stand on.

"Listen to me," Lakopo tells us. "The good ship Tuvalu is going down. Yes sir. Surer that the sun rising over the sea in the morning."

This forgotten land and its people are the tragic proof that the world must act now to prevent another breathtaking view like this from vanishing off the face of this earth.

This Saturday you can do your bit by backing our Earth Hour Campaign. Simply switch off your lights from 8:30pm to 9:30pm - and remember the coral island of Tuvalu in the Pacific.

The fourth smallest country in the world after Vatican City, Monaco and Nauru, and one of the least populated, Tuvalu sits stranded halfway between Hawaii and New Zealand.