Blogging the End of the World™
By Brady Dennis, Washington Post Staff Writer The sea of new cars, 57,000 of them, stretches for acres along the Port of Baltimore. They are imports just in from foreign shores and exports waiting to ship out — Chryslers and Subarus, Fords and Hyundais, Mercedeses and Kias. But the customers who once bought them by […]
From Calculated Risk: This graph shows the job losses from the start of the employment recession, in percentage terms (as opposed to the number of jobs lost). For the current recession, employment peaked in December 2007, and this recession was a slow starter (in terms of job losses and declines in GDP). However job losses […]
From Calculated Risk: Here is a quick look at a few credit indicators: First, the British Bankers’ Association reported that the three-month dollar Libor rates were fixed at 1.166%. The LIBOR was at 1.30% a couple of weeks ago, and peaked at 4.81875% on Oct 10, 2008. This is near the January 14th low of […]
Mercury levels in the Pacific Ocean are rising, a new study suggests.1 The increase may mean that more methylmercury, a human neurotoxin formed when mercury is methylated by microbes, accumulates in marine fish such as tuna. The research comes as researchers and policymakers, who have tended to focus on atmospheric concentrations of the element, are […]
By MAX HASTINGS Cuckoos are almost part of our national DNA, yet a new book reveals Britain’s glorious songbirds are disappearing at an alarming rate This is the season of the year when the natural pageant of the British countryside begins to unfold in a fashion which has enchanted poets and pastoralists since the beginning […]
By DAVID STREITFELD MOUNT PLEASANT, S.C. — Boat owners are abandoning ship. They often sandpaper over the names and file off the registry numbers, doing their best to render the boats, and themselves, untraceable. Then they casually ditch the vessels in the middle of busy harbors, beach them at low tide on the banks of […]
by Jeremy Hance A new analysis shows that the heavily-deforested Amazonian region of Mato Grosso is particularly susceptible to ‘savannization’ due to repeated burning that has likely depleted the region’s soils of precious nutrients. According to the study, published in the Journal of Geophyscial Research, savannization, or the process of tropical ecosystems shifting to savannah, […]
By SUSAN SAULNY …City officials and housing advocates here and in cities as varied as Buffalo, Kansas City, Mo., and Jacksonville, Fla., say they are seeing an unsettling development: Banks are quietly declining to take possession of properties at the end of the foreclosure process, most often because the cost of the ordeal — from […]
By John King BALLWIN, Missouri (CNN) — For Stuart and Dianne Falk, it is a two-bus, 45-minute trip into downtown St. Louis to head to the gym and to volunteer at a theater group. And it is a lifeline that ends Friday. "To be saddled, to be imprisoned, that is what it is going to […]
Six bonobos, a species of chimpanzee, have died from a flu epidemic in a month at the Lola Ya Bonobo in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Ten more have contracted the flu. “There is no fever. Antibiotics don’t do anything. The bonobos have severe respiratory infections and then they can’t breath for 3 days […]
