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Please Don't Feed the Sharks

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission gave preliminary approval yesterday to a ban on shark-feeding dives. The ban would cover “interactive” shark tours that use cut-up fish bait to lure sharks so that tourists can swim with them. Final approval of the ban could come as soon as November. The commissioners stressed that they […]

The Military Is Hazardous to Your Health

The Pentagon isn’t cleaning up thousands of former military sites as quickly as it claims, according to a report released yesterday by the U.S. General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress. In its own review of the $200 million-a-year cleanup program, the Pentagon said that work at more than of half of the thousands […]

Cheesed Off

A growing number of children are giving the thumbs down to meat, but public schools haven’t been quick to provide alternative options at lunch, according to vegetarian advocates. Recent surveys indicate that about 2 percent of children under age 18 consider themselves veggies, about the same percentage as adults. Marcia Smith, president of the American […]

When It Rains, It Poors

Poor people in the U.K. are among those worst affected by environmental problems in the country, according to a recent study published in Britain. The researchers conducted a series of focus groups in four different areas — a poor neighborhood in Glasgow, another in London, a former mining village in North Wales, and a rural […]

The Green Planet

The Northern Hemisphere is greener now than it was 20 years ago, possibly because the Earth’s temperatures are rising, according to a NASA-funded study. The scientists found that the growing season has lengthened and vegetation density has increased above 40 degrees north latitude. In North America, the growing season is now as much as 12 […]

Fish-ious Cycle

Traces of antibiotics, estrogen, and antidepressants have been found in Canada’s water system, according to Canadian health officials. They promised yesterday to develop regulations requiring drug manufacturers to assess how their products would affect the environment. So far, the substances have been found in sewage effluent; the officials said drinking water would be tested shortly. […]

Clean Up Your Vroom

The German army is developing “green” weaponry meant to reduce the pollution coming from guns and military rockets. In place of missiles and space rockets whose emissions contribute to acid rain and ozone-layer depletion, German scientists hope to produce explosives and missile fuels that emit nothing more than a puff of hot air. Thomas Klapotke, […]

Not Plover Lovers

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on Friday released a long-awaited environmental impact statement for managing the Missouri River, listing six possible options but refusing to back the only one that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says would save the pallid sturgeon, least tern, and piping plover. The Corps during the Clinton administration publicly […]

Drilling Ain't Job One

Opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling would result in only 46,300 jobs, far fewer than the hundreds of thousands of jobs cited by some unions, according to a study released by environmental groups. The study, by Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, found numerous faults in an outdated 1990 […]

Sri-k of Horror

Sri Lanka’s proposed ban on genetically engineered foods has been delayed again, this time indefinitely. The ban would require 21 categories of food imports to be completely free of biotech products. Citing a need to study the health risks of genetically engineered foods, Sri Lanka had planned for the ban to go into effect in […]