Latest Articles

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 […]

Magic Carpet Riders

Despite a stern tongue lashing from the New York Times editorial page on Monday, the Senate version of the Interior appropriations bill continues to provide a comfy roosting spot for a handful of anti-environmental riders. Some of the offending items got sliced off when the Senate reinstated Rule 16, the sensible old regulation requiring that […]

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 […]

Urban Bright

The Department of Energy wants to put solar panels on vacant, contaminated urban industrial sites, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson will announce today. The project will get underway in Chicago, where a solar panel manufacturer has agreed to set up shop on a 17-acre former dump site, and the city and local electric utility have agreed […]