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Brazilian Army in the Line of Fire
Brazil this week launched a campaign to tackle illegal logging and fires in the Amazon rainforest. The Environment Agency (Ibama) and the army will cooperate to survey by helicopter the region where most deforestation takes place, an area more than twice the size of France. Ibama hopes the Brazilian Senate will approve the release of […]
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Population Bomb-ay
Within days, India will become the second nation with a population that exceeds 1 billion, according to U.N. demographers. India, with an annual population growth rate of 1.6 percent, adds more people to the world each year than any other country and is expected to overtake China as the most populous nation within 40 years. […]
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Insects Chewing into Monsanto's Profits?
Some insects may be able to develop resistance to genetically modified cotton plants more quickly than expected, rendering the plants obsolete sooner than developer Monsanto anticipated, according to research published in today’s issue of the journal Nature. If follow-up field studies yield similar results, the U.S. EPA would likely have to change its rules regarding […]
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Saving Salmon from Dam-nation
A bipartisan group of 107 House members has sent a letter to Pres. Clinton urging him to consider the removal of four dams on the lower Snake River in Washington state as a possible means for restoring salmon runs. The letter, from 12 Republicans and 95 Democrats, stresses that the protection of Pacific salmon is […]
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Nukes Still Driving Us Buggy
Thirty U.S. nuclear power plants still need to upgrade their computers to be immune from the Y2K computer bug, and six of the plants are not scheduled to finish their repairs until just weeks before year end, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said yesterday. The NRC said that none of the systems still in need of […]
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Expensive Willy
Norway’s whale hunters have faced vehement anti-whaling protests this year, but their biggest problem may be that Norwegians are eating less whale meat. The number of minke whales killed this year, 589, was 36 fewer than last year, the first drop since Norway defied the International Whaling Commission and resumed commercial hunting in 1993. Even […]
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How Do They Harm Thee? We Can't Count the Ways
A prominent U.S. panel of scientists has concluded that not enough is known about hormone-altering chemicals to calculate their risks to humans. In a report requested by Congress, a committee of the National Academy of Sciences yesterday acknowledged that pesticides and other chemicals that mimic estrogen and block male hormones seem to be feminizing some […]
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Strip Joint Visit
Israel’s new environment minister, Dalia Itzik, on Monday toured the blighted Gaza Strip with her Palestinian counterpart, Yousef Abu Safieh, marking the beginning of what they hope will be an era of cooperation in addressing the region’s environmental woes. Discussion between the two was polite, but each side pointed to problems the other had caused. […]
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A Match Made in Hell?
Dow Chemical is moving to buy Union Carbide in a huge $9.3 billion deal that would create a worldwide chemical industry giant, second in size only to DuPont. The deal still needs approval from the boards of both companies. Union Carbide is perhaps best known for the world’s worst recorded industrial accident, in which a […]
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Dead in the Water
The dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico has doubled in size since last year to 7,728 square miles, larger than it’s ever been before — and larger than New Jersey. The dead zone, a layer of water at the bottom of the Gulf so low in oxygen that it can’t support life, forms annually, […]
