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Outtasight Insight in Sight
Honda will be hawking its new 80-mile-per-gallon “Insight” in showrooms across the U.S. by the end of this year, the company announced yesterday. The two-seat coupe will be the world’s most fuel-efficient, gas-powered, mass-produced vehicle. The Insight, which will be priced below $20,000 in the U.S., has a three-cylinder gasoline engine assisted by an electric […]
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Back Scratch Fever
The Senate is packing the Interior Department spending bill with measures to benefit oil, gas, timber, mining, and ranching interests. Riders would let oil companies keep hundreds of millions of dollars in royalties owed to the public, miners dump thousands of tons of waste on federal lands, timber companies log more of Alaska’s forests, and […]
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Belgium Waffles on Nukes
A plan to gradually eliminate nuclear power in Belgium is threatening the nation’s fledgling government — an alliance between Liberal, Socialist, and Green parties — before it even takes office. Meanwhile, an internal battle is raging in Germany’s Green Party, with younger members who favor free markets and less regulation railing against older, more leftist […]
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Yucky Truckies
Government regulators are planning to clamp down on diesel trucks, buses, and other vehicles, which make up only 2.5 percent of vehicles on the road but account for 26 percent of nitrogen oxides and up to 70 percent of soot in urban air. Federal rules permit diesel vehicles to emit much more pollution than standard […]
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Stop Your Blubbering
Norway, which since 1986 has flouted an international ban on commercial whaling, has stockpiled about 500 tons of blubber from thousands of minke whales, which it hopes to someday sell to the Japanese. The Japanese consider the blubber to be a delicacy, but its sale abroad is outlawed by the Convention on International Trade in […]
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Hyperlinks Save Lynx
Last-minute gifts from technology millionaires and others throughout Washington state have helped raise enough money to spare a major wilderness area along the U.S.-Canadian border from logging. Donations of $3 million have come in during the last week, making a total of $13.1 million that enviros have raised to buy logging rights to 25,000 acres […]
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Wave Bye-Bye
If climate change continues unchecked, it could destroy the world’s great coral reefs within a century, according to a new report conducted by German and Australian marine scientists and released by Greenpeace. A rise in water temperature of just one or two degrees stresses coral and causes it to expel its life-giving microscopic zooxanthellae plants, […]
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Post-NATO Baby Care
Pancevo, Yugoslavia, a city 10 miles northeast of Belgrade, seems to have suffered the worst environmental damage from NATO’s bombing campaign. Doctors privately recommended that all women who were in town the night of April 18 — when bombs destroyed a refinery, fertilizer plant, and petrochemical complex, releasing a dense, toxic cloud — avoid pregnancy […]
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Pop, the Question
A U.N. conference on Friday agreed to a plan to curb world population growth, including controversial recommendations for sex education at all school levels, confidential contraceptive advice for teenagers, and safer abortions in countries where they are legal. The plan also asks governments to help curb the spread of the AIDS virus, which now infects […]
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Greens See Red
A leader of Germany’s Green Party warned German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder yesterday that the Greens may desert his coalition if it does not honor a pledge to phase out nuclear power. “This is perhaps the Greens’ main reason for being in the coalition,” said party co-leader Antje Radcke. The Greens rejected proposals to spread a […]
