Blogging the End of the World™
By Jim Michaels, USA TODAY Iraq has doubled its electricity capacity over prewar levels, making dramatic headway in a critical benchmark that had plagued U.S. leaders and frustrated Iraqis since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. Iraq’s supply of electricity is 7,900 megawatts, about double the levels before the war, according to the U.S. Embassy in […]
By Liz Szabo, USA TODAY21 April 2011 Children exposed to high pesticide levels in the womb have lower average IQs than other kids, according to three independent studies released today in Environmental Health Perspectives. The studies involved more than 400 children, followed from before birth through ages 6 to 9, from both urban and rural […]
By Matt Smith, CNN22 April 2011 Tokyo (CNN) — The worst may have passed in the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl, but cleaning up when it’s finally over is likely to take decades and cost Japan an untold fortune. A six- to nine-month horizon for winding down the crisis, laid out by plant owner Tokyo […]
April 22 (Asahi Shimbun) — The burden of paying trillions of yen in compensation to people from areas near the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant will likely be shared by taxpayers and other electricity companies as well as the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co. A draft government plan, obtained by The Asahi […]
ScienceDaily (Apr. 21, 2011) — Research released in anticipation of World Malaria Day finds that plants in East Africa with promising antimalarial qualities — ones that have treated malaria symptoms in the region’s communities for hundreds of years — are at risk of extinction. Scientists fear that these natural remedial qualities, and thus their potential […]
FUKUSHIMA, Japan, April 22 (Kyodo) – Fukushima Gov. Yuhei Sato said Friday he will never allow Tokyo Electric Power Co. to resume operations at its Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, crippled by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. ”A resumption of plant operations must be impossible,” Sato told Masataka Shimizu, president of Tokyo Electric, known […]
Geneva (AFP) April 20, 2011 – Swiss officials began moving trout from a river this week to save them from plunging water levels, amid one of the worst droughts to hit the country in 150 years. “2011 is off to a good start to finish as one of the most significant droughts since 1864,” the […]
Contact: Todd Datz, 617.432.8413, tdatz@hsph.harvard.edu18 April 2011 Boston, MA – Using 120 years of feathers from natural history museums in the United States, Harvard University researchers have been able to track increases in the neurotoxin methylmercury in the black-footed albatross (Phoebastria nigripes), an endangered seabird that forages extensively throughout the Pacific. The study shows that […]
By Jeremy Hance, www.mongabay.comApril 21, 2011 The last decade has not been a good one for the American pika (Ochotona princeps) according to a new study in Global Change Biology. Over the past ten years extinction rates have increased by nearly five times for pika populations in the Great Basin region of the US. Examining […]
Caption by Holli Riebeek22 April 2011 So far in 2011, more than 1.4 million acres have burned in Texas. Some 800 fires have occurred throughout the state, burning 401 structures and costing two firefighters their lives. Why is fire activity so extreme in Texas this year? This image, made with data collected by the Moderate […]
