Washington, 21 October 2014 (Reuters) – Opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan has hit an all-time high despite years of counter-narcotics efforts that have cost the US $7.6bn (£4.7bn), according to a US government watchdog. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime [pdf] reported that Afghan farmers grew an “unprecedented” 209,000 hectares (523,000 acres) of opium […]
By David Fogarty20 October 2014 (mongabay.com) – Global miner BHP Billiton and Indonesian partner PT Adaro are developing what could become the single largest mine in Indonesia in terms of land area, with BHP owning 75 percent. The IndoMet mine complex in Central and East Kalimantan provinces on Borneo comprises seven coal concessions, which cover […]
10 October 2014 (NASA) – The cameras on the International Space Station captured this video of Super Typhoon Vongfong on 9 October 2014. Super Typhoon Vongfong Seen From ISS Technorati Tags: hurricane,Japan,Asia,global warming,climate change,NASA
9 October 2014 (NBC News) – NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman tweeted an image of Super Typhoon Vongfong in the western Pacific Ocean from the International Space Station on Thursday commenting, “I’ve seen many from here, but none like this.” The most powerful storm of 2014 continues to swirl towards Japan with maximum winds of 165 […]
By Rena Silverman19 September 2014 (NPR) – They’re silvery and stunning — and their beauty bears a message. “Genesis” is a new exhibit of more than 200 black-and-white images from the noted Brazilian photographer Sebastiao Salgado. He wants to show us what the world and its peoples look like now, how climate change has already […]
By Felicity Nelson 20 September 2014 (Science Alert) – For over a decade, experts worldwide have assumed that population growth would level off by 2050, reaching approximately 9 billion. Now, new projections have turned that analysis on its head. The population analysis, published in Science this week, was conducted by demographer Patrick Gerland from the […]
By Johnny Langenheim 15 September 2014 (theguardian.com) – The tuna fishermen use a crane to lift the clutch of frozen sharks onto a flat bed truck backed up on the edge of the wharf at Benoa harbour in Bali, Indonesia. The sharks’ heads and dorsal fins are missing, but the crane operator obligingly tells me […]
3 September 2014 (CDC) – This year the United States is experiencing a record number of measles cases. From January 1 to August 29, there have been 592 confirmed measles cases reported to CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD). This is the highest number of cases since measles elimination was documented in […]
By Tanya Dimitrova 24 August 2014 (mongabay.com) – Scientists have discovered a new snail species on a limestone hill near a cement quarry in Malaysia, which as far as they know lives nowhere else in the world. The animal’s shell is only one tenth of an inch in size. “Narrow endemic species are a common […]
By Katia Moskvitch31 July 2014 (Nature) – A mystery crater spotted in the frozen Yamal peninsula in Siberia earlier this month was probably caused by methane released as permafrost thawed, researchers in Russia say. Air near the bottom of the crater contained unusually high concentrations of methane — up to 9.6% — in tests conducted […]
