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A New Monty Python Parrot-y

Monty Python comedian John Cleese, featured in the famous “dead parrot” comedy sketch, has joined an effort to push for stronger parrot protections. A new study by the World Wildlife Fund and the World Parrot Trust has found that 27 percent of the world’s 330 parrot species are in serious danger from habitat loss and […]

Does This Mean Kids Are Pests?

Men who are exposed to pesticides on the job may have increased difficulty fathering children, according to a new study published in the Lancet medical journal. Researchers studied 650 couples, including 20 couples in which the male partner had been regularly exposed to pesticides. The exposed men were significantly less successful than the others in […]

Chinese Water Torture

Only 23 percent of recent tap water samples from China’s main cities met national health standards, according to figures from the Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine. The percentage would be even lower if water from towns and villages in the countryside had been sampled, the academy said. Scarcity of water is also a serious issue […]

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 […]

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. […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]