Latest Environment News
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Environmental Working Groups top sunscreens for 2013
The Environmental Working Group , a consumer organization, has released its annual report on sunscreens to come up with a list of recommendations for what people should slather on their skin this summer . The group analyzed hundreds of sunscreens currently on the market and gave them a score between 1 and 8, with "1" being considered a top pick. Read on to see examples of what the EWG ...
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Shell suffers embarrassing shareholder rebellion over executive pay
Peter Voser, chief executive of Shell, was awarded a 2.8m bonus after a year in which the company lost 1.05bn. Photograph: Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty ...
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Climate change will push up New Yorks heatwave deaths
Radley Horton of Columbia University in New York and colleagues have now calculated the net effect. They matched daily temperature data for Manhattan with death rates between 1982 and 1999 to estimate how sensitive the city's population is to temperatures, then used future temperature forecasts to estimate future death rates. In all their 16 models, temperature-related deaths increased ...
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Number of excellent quality UK beaches plummets
The proportion of UK beaches classed as "excellent" for the quality of their bathing water has fallen to its lowest level since 2000, new figures show. The number plummeted from 82.8% in 2011 to 58.2% in 2012, according ...
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Big-cat sightings is Britain suffering from mass hysteria
In 1995, government inspectors spent months on Bodmin moor in Cornwall looking for evidence of a 'beast' roaming wild there. They found nothing. Yet every year there are 2,000 similarly spurious big-cat sightings in Britain. What's going ...
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Oklahoma tornado followed by extreme weather warnings for four states
More than 50 million people across a swathe of the Great Plains states were braced for a second round of extreme weather on Tuesday, from hail storms ...
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Oklahoma Tornado Pictures 2-Mile Twister Destroys Town
tornado roared through the suburbs of Oklahoma City on Monday, destroying entire neighborhoods and leveling an elementary school, according to the Associated Press. ...
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Timing made Oklahoma tornado toll worse
The tornado that ripped through Moore, a suburb of Oklahoma City, on Monday was not a record-breaker in terms of its size, strength or duration. So why was it so ...
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In campaign to stem food waste UN agency spotlights traditional preservation methods
Print 21 May 2013 – Fermenting birds, naturally freeze-drying potatoes and squeezing meat on a saddle are some of the traditional methods used by cultures around the world to preserve food highlighted today by the United Nations environment agency, which is stressing the importance of reducing food waste. ';Reducing food waste and loss is an economic, ethical and environmental ...
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Sweet chestnut blight – the latest threat
ban imports of sweet chestnut saplings from foreign nurseries in an effort to stop the spread of a fungal blight that is already killing chestnuts across Europe and North America and now threatens the UK's estimated 44m specimens. An infection of the blight - known as Cryphonectria parasitica - is usually fatal to sweet chestnuts. It causes a characteristic bright brown cankered bark, in ...
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DR Congo waits on funding for Grand Inga
The dream of harnessing the mighty Congo River with the world's largest set of dams has moved closer, with the World Bank and other financial institutions expected to offer finance and ...
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How can tree stumps improve agricultural productivity
There's a received wisdom that tree stumps, shoots and bushes should be cleared from a field before planting crops. It seems logical, but the experience of farmers in southern Niger suggests otherwise. There, the practice of Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR) has been found to significantly improve soil quality and crop yields, along with additional resources and income from tree ...
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Record Burmese python caught in Florida
Florida .It's a new record for the longest Burmese python caught in the wild in Florida. The previous record was a 17ft 7in python caught in August in Everglades national park.According to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, the 18ft 8in snake was caught May 11 alongside a road in rural Miami-Dade County.Wildlife officials said Monday that a Miami man spotted about 3ft of ...
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Oklahoma Tornado Why So Destructive Unpredictable
A massive tornado that tore through the Oklahoma City suburb of Moore on Monday and killed scores of people was unusual not for its size or ferocity, but for the path it took, experts ...
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Captains Log Found a Baby Bird What Do I Do
Audubon Connecticut , for his perspective. Here's some advice for Sir Patrick and anyone else who encounters a bird, baby or adult, in need of help. Could a baby bird just take care of ...
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Nuclear power is safe and pigs can fly
That's the lesson Greenpeace Sweden sent to the nuclear industry once again today as we flew our paramotor glider over the unprotected Ringhals nuclear power plant in southwest Sweden, near Gothenburg. With simple gear and without hindrance, our Greenpeace activist dropped pig-shaped balloons from the glider onto the reactor roof as part of our ongoing "stress test" of nuclear ...
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Matt Ridley has joined the real climate debate
A climate monitoring station. 'No one places their faith in any single climate model, and no one has done so for 20 years.' Photograph: Cliff Leight/Getty ...
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Pests that bug us have their own ecological importance
I detest household bugs. Abhor them. There isn't a word strong enough to describe how I feel about bugs in my home. That hatred provokes guilt, because I fancy myself an environmentalist. As such, I'm supposed to feel a kinship with all creatures.We're connected in a circle of life, a colourful tapestry, a delicate web of interdependence. But I can't help it: my love of ...
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Danzer feels the bite as the FSC show its teeth
To the layperson the world of forest certification is often a technical one that does not seem to operate at what could be called a breakneck pace. However, the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) has this week reached a landmark decision that fits the old adage that 'good things come to those who ...
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Fallen trees damage homeowners cars
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) - A loud boom was loud enough to be heard in the shower if Harold Gallespie's south side home. When he came outside, he saw portions of his tree resting on his two cars. The trees that are 30 years old, if not older, snapped during ...
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Twitter hit-and-run boast shows dangers of road tax entitlement | Dawn Foster
It's safe to assume that most people in the event of hitting a cyclist while driving, who realised what they had done, would stop, call the police, and stay on the scene. Not so for one young woman, who appears to have hit a cyclist, carried on driving, and then most bizarrely taken to Twitter to boast of the ...
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Chelsea flower show at 100 A century of cuttings
Chelsea Flower Show clings on, almost ivy-like, to its past. Just as it is wedded to convention, so too is the language used by the press to describe the annual 'horticultural extravaganza'. Like the rest of Fleet Street, the Guardian and Observer have fallen into this trap - just carry out a simple archive search and you will unearth trusty descriptions of the event being a ...
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Rwanda Environment Projects Threatened By Financial Constraints
The Global Environment Facility (GEF), an international fund which among others sponsors projects in Rwanda, has warned that financial constraints might affect it programs. Based in Washington, GEF normally sponsors projects related to biodiversity, international water management systems, climate change, the ozone layer, land degradation, as well as persistent organic pollutants. During a ...
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Fukushima Nuclear Crisis Update for May 17th to May 20th 2013
TEPCO announced yet another leak on Friday, this time from a tank holding treated water near reactors number 5 and 6 at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. The 27 cubic meters of spilled water had already been absorbed into the ground, but officials said that radiation was below detectable levels. After a valve was closed, the leak stopped. But, the next ...
Central America Featured
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New construction in tourism industry – signs of recovery or misplaced optimism?
The whole of Central America has been affected by the global downturn. One of the industries effected most has been tourism, and while many construction and expansion projects were planned during the heady days of 2007 and early 2008, the region may now be facing a huge oversupply problem in terms of hotel accommodation, although there are signs of light on the horizon.
In 2006, the Tourism Ministers of various countries in the region came together at San Ramon for a conference and told Central American news providers that the tourism industry for the region as whole had grown by an average of 11%, which account for, on average, 5% of the region’s GDP for that year, in addition, there was astounding growth in the number of European tourists travelling to Central America, a 147% increase in fact. Read more
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