[September 3, 2010]
Global Food Supply Problems Spark Fears
Russia announced a 12-month extension of its grain export ban on Thursday, raising fears about a return to the food shortages and riots of 2007-08 which spread through developing countries dependent on imports. The announcement by Vladimir Putin came as the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation called an emergency meeting to discuss the wheat shortage, and riots in Mozambique left seven dead. The unrest in Maputo, in which 280 people were also injured, followed the government's decision to raise bread prices by 30 per cent. Police opened fire on demonstrators after thousands turned out to protest against the price hikes, burning tyres and looting food warehouses. Although agricultural officials and traders insist that wheat and other crop supplies are more abundant than in 2007-08, officials fear the deadly Mozambique riots could be replicated. The 2007-08 food shortages, the most severe in 30 years, set off riots in countries from Bangladesh to Mexico, and helped to trigger the collapse of governments in Haiti and Madagascar. The Russian announcement extended an export ban first announced last month until late December 2011, sending wheat and other cereals prices to near a two-year high.
[August 9, 2010]
U.S. Electrical Blackouts are Skyrocketing
Experts on the nation's electricity system point to a frighteningly steep increase in non-disaster-related outages affecting at least 50,000 consumers. During the past two decades, such blackouts have increased 124 percent, that is up from 41 blackouts between 1991 and 1995, to 92 between 2001 and 2005, according to research at the University of Minnesota. In the most recently analyzed data available, utilities reported 36 such outages in 2006 alone. "It's hard to imagine how anyone could believe that -- in the United States -- we should learn to cope with blackouts," said University of Minnesota Professor Massoud Amin, a leading expert on the U.S. electricity grid.
[August 7, 2010]
Massive Ice Island Breaks Off Greenland
A piece of ice four times the size of Manhattan island has broken away from an ice shelf in Greenland, according to scientists in the U.S. The 260 square-kilometer (100 square miles) ice island separated from the Petermann Glacier in northern Greenland early on Thursday, researchers based at the University of Delaware said. The ice island, which is about half the height of the Empire State Building, is the biggest piece of ice to break away from the Arctic icecap since 1962 and amounts to a quarter of the Petermann 70-kilometer floating ice shelf, according to research leader Andreas Muenchow. Satellite data from NASA's MODIS-Aqua satellite revealed the initial rupture which was confirmed within hours by Trudy Wohlleben of the Canadian Ice Service, according to the University of Delaware website. Muenchow said the island could block the Nares Strait as it drifts south, or break into smaller islands and continue towards the open waters of the Atlantic. Environmentalists say ice melt is being caused by global warming with Arctic temperatures in the 1990s reaching their warmest level of any decade in at least 2,000 years, according to a study published in 2009.
[June 3, 2010]
Worst Oil Spill in US History
The BP well erupted after an explosion and fire on the leased Deepwater Horizon drilling rig on April 20 that killed 11 people. The rig sank two days later, leaving up to 19,000 barrels (798,000 gallons) of oil pouring into the Gulf daily, according to federal estimates. BP, rig owner Transocean and oilfield services contractor Halliburton have all pointed fingers at one another for the disaster.
Anti-BP sentiment has grown as oil has made its way to or near coastal areas, and the company has come under increasing fire from state governments and the Obama administration, which announced a criminal investigation into the spill and cut off joint news conferences with the company this week.
President Obama told CNN's Larry King on Thursday that he is "furious at this entire situation," because "somebody didn't think through the consequences of their actions." Obama, who is scheduled to visit Louisiana again Friday, said he has not seen enough of a rapid response from the company, the responsible party under federal law.
Tar balls have started washing ashore all along the Gulf Coast, visible signs of the environmental catastrophe. Oil hit barrier islands off Mississippi and Alabama this week, and was only six miles off the Florida Panhandle on Thursday morning, state emergency management officials have reported.
In Louisiana, where oily sludge has been fouling coastal marshes for two weeks, state officials said the White House has given its blessing to a plan to dredge up walls of sand offshore and BP agreed to fund the $360 million construction cost. But Gov. Bobby Jindal said Thursday that state officials "haven't gotten a dime from them."
"I'm calling on BP to step up [and] be the responsible party in fact, not just by label," Jindal said. He added, "We're done talking to attorneys."
[December 14, 2009]
NASA to Launch New IR Telescope
(CNN) -- NASA is hours away from blasting a new telescope into space to scan the cosmos for undiscovered objects, including asteroids and comets that might threaten Earth.
The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, spacecraft will employ an infrared camera to detect light- and heat-emitting objects that other orbiting telescopes, such as the Hubble, might miss.
WISE is scheduled to launch Monday morning aboard a Delta II rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The launch window extends from 9:09 to 9:23 a.m. ET and was postponed from Friday because of a problem with the motion of a booster steering engine.
If the launch goes as planned, the unmanned WISE will spend the next nine months in orbit, 326 miles above the Earth, mapping the universe in infrared light. Its lens eventually will cover the whole sky 1½ times, snapping a picture every 11 seconds.
"The last time we mapped the whole sky at these particular infrared wavelengths was 26 years ago," said Edward "Ned" Wright of UCLA, the principal investigator of the mission. He was referring to WISE's predecessor, the Infrared Astronomical Satellite, which launched in 1983 and discovered six comets.
"Infrared technology has come a long way since then," Wright said. "The old all-sky infrared pictures were like impressionist paintings -- now, we'll have images that look like actual photographs."
The solar-powered WISE will not be the first infrared telescope in space. Two others -- NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and the European Space Agency's Herschel Space Observatory -- also catalog images of the universe, although both focus on specific celestial objects instead of surveying the entire sky.
Mission leaders expect WISE to find hundreds of asteroids and comets with orbits that come close to crossing Earth's path. By measuring the objects' infrared light, the telescope also should help determine their size and composition -- data that may help astronomers learn how often Earth can expect to be struck by a hurtling asteroid.
"We can help protect our Earth by learning more about the diversity of potentially hazardous asteroids and comets," said Amy Mainzer, deputy project scientist for the $320 million mission at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
WISE also will be looking for dim stars called brown dwarfs and millions of far-away galaxies that are shrouded in dust and often can't be seen in visible light.
[November 18, 2009]
Sever Drought Causes Fire Threat to Australia
Authorities are asking residents in some some parts of south Australia to evacuate their homes as an impending heat wave prompted the nation to issue its first "catastrophic" brush fire warning. An intense heat wave -- with temperatures climbing to 104 F (40 C) -- is expected to hit the areas until the weekend. The region is already in the midst of a severe drought. Coupled with low humidity and strong winds, the soaring temperatures will make it ripe for fires to ignite. Any fire that breaks out will be uncontrollable, the fire service said. People in their path will likely die, it added.
[November 12, 2009]
Meteor Barely Misses Earth
On Friday November 6th at 2132 UT (16:32/ 4:32PM EST) asteroid 2009 VA barely missed Earth when it flew just 14,000 km above the planet’s surface. For comparison, Earth’s diameter is 12,756.1 km. That near miss was well inside the “Clarke Belt” of geosynchronous satellites.(35,786 km/22,236 mi) Friday’s (Nov 6) flyby of asteroid 2009 VA is the third closest on record. (That we know about.) If it had hit, the ~6-meter wide space rock would have disintegrated in the atmosphere as a spectacular fireball, causing no significant damage to the ground. But the fact that there was so little warning is troubling.
[October 26, 2009]
Meteorite Strikes Latvia
A meteorite-like object has created a crater after landing near a farm in northern Latvia, the nation's official news agency reported. The object fell Sunday in Mazsalaca, leaving a hole of about 65 feet (20 meters) wide and 32 feet (10 meters) deep, Latvian emergency officials told the LETA news agency. A fire was reported in the grassy area where it landed, but there were no known injuries, LETA said. Scientists and armed forces from the northern European nation will inspect the crater and conduct an investigation. No further information was immediately available.
[October 6, 2009]
Cosmic Ray Intensity Increasing According to NASA
A NASA probe found that cosmic ray intensities in 2009 had increased by almost 20 percent beyond anything seen in the past 50 years. Such cosmic rays arise from distant supernova explosions and consist mostly of protons and heavier subatomic particles -- just one cosmic ray could disable unlucky satellites or threaten astronauts in space.
more>>>
[September 25, 2009]
Suspected Terrorist Plot on Dallas Skyscraper
A terror suspect accused of plotting to bomb a Dallas skyscraper drew scrutiny because of his violent posts on an extremist chat site, court papers indicate. The suspect, a 19-year-old Jordanian, was arrested Thursday in a sting operation. Federal officials said Hosam Maher Husein Smadi, who entered the United States illegally and lived in Texas, tried to set off an explosive attached to a vehicle at the base of the 60-story Fountain Place office tower.
"The identification and apprehension of this defendant, who was acting alone, is a sobering reminder that there are people among us who want to do us grave harm," said James Jacks, the top federal prosecutor in Dallas.
[September 18, 2009]
Possible Terror Plot on NY Transportation HUB
There was planning and preparation for an attack, presumably in the New York area, where there would be a large number of people and where security screening is lax such as a large railroad or subway station, essentially where there is no airport-style screening, the sources said.
Authorities are taking the plot seriously, because, the sources said, they think it involves "real-deal terrorists" operating and planning an attack in America.
Because of that fear, an unprecedented level of resources is being devoted to the investigation, the sources said. That includes the placement of a hostage rescue team in New York for possible raids and the deployment of additional resources to the Denver area in Colorado, where another phase of the probe is taking place.
[September 6, 2009]
Global Fund to preserve more crops
Thanks to a new $116 million global fund established this summer, the Quechua Indians are being paid to maintain their diverse collection of rare potatoes and ensure that they will be available to help the world adapt to future climate change.
The Quechua are one of 11 communities around the world, chosen for the important collection of crops they farm, which together are part of a major new initiative to ensure that the world has the options it might need to cope with future food crises.
Other countries involved include Cuba, where they will be focusing on maize and beans, as well as oranges in Egypt and wheat in Tanzania.
The fund, a cornerstone of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA), aims to maintain a reservoir of essential species for all our major food crops.
[April 25, 2009]
Swine Flu Variant Now Deadly, Possible Pandemic
"This is an animal strain of the H1N1 virus and it has pandemic potential because it is infecting people," Dr. Margaret Chan said Saturday speaking to reporters by phone. Mexican officials closed all schools Friday in the capital city in an effort to combat the swine flu virus that has killed at least 68 people in Mexico. "This situation has been developing quickly," said acting Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Richard Besser. "This is something we are worried about." The human influenza vaccine's ability to protect against the new swine flu strain is unknown, and studies are ongoing, said Dr. Anne Schuchat, the CDC's interim deputy director for science and public health program. There is no danger of contracting the virus from eating pork products, she said.
[January 20, 2009]
China confirms 3rd bird flu death in 2009
China is reporting that a 3rd person has died from bird flu. This is the third death since January 1, 2009 and officials are concerned many more could follow.
more >>> Bird Flu
[January 20, 2009]
Large meteors crash in Saudi Arabia, Sweden, and Germany
News agencies have reported that several large objects, believed to be meteors have crashed in Saud ia Arabia, Sweden, and Germany within days of each other. This is a bizarre set of events as no space debris was expected for these areas.
more >>> Meteors
[November 17, 2008]
Tuberculosis is back
A new drug resistant strain of tuberculosis known as XDR-TB, which stands for extensively drug-resistant TB is causing new concerns worldwide.
more>>> tuberculosis
[February 2008]
Doomsday Seed Vault Opens in Norway
A vast underground seed vault located more than 400 feet inside a mountain and designed to withstand war and "natural disasters" opened this month and began accepting seeds from around the world.
more>>> Seed Vaults | 
