RSS Feed
Archive for January, 2011
Testing the waters
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 29th, 2011
Time: Shark humor has its time and place, but not when I'm snorkeling somewhere called Shark Bay. At the Heron Island Research Station, a laboratory on the teardrop-shaped atoll 45 miles (72 km) off Australia's east coast, the suntanned, chirpy station manager gives a parting wave to the three students who are taking me out for my first look at the legendary corals of the Great Barrier Reef. "Just don't get eaten, will you?" she says. Ha-ha. Happily, there are no sharks in Shark Bay that morning; in fact,...
Posted in 
Six months after the Pakistan floods – audio slideshow
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 29th, 2011
Guardian: Pakistan floods Six months after the Pakistan floods - audio slideshow
The Pakistan floods affected 21 million people in the Indus valley region, and six months on, more than 1 million people are still homeless. Huge numbers of farmers have lost their livelihoods as much of the land is still under water or rendered useless for cultivation
M’sia keen to list Sabah’s Maliau Basin as heritage site
Posted by Straits Times: None Given on January 29th, 2011
Straits Times: MALAYSIA is very keen to list Sabah's Lost World, the Maliau Basin as a world heritage site.
Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak, in endorsing the state government's proposal, said that a World Heritage listing by Unesco would bring immediate world attention and interest in the 58,400-hectare untouched tropical rainforest, just slightly smaller than Singapore.
He said the heritage listing of Mount Kinabalu National Park, George Town, Gunung Mulu National Park and Malacca had seen a jump...
Iraq water shortages raising ethnic tensions
Posted by Agenece France -Presse: None Given on January 29th, 2011
Agenece France -Presse: A worsening water shortage in Iraq is raising tensions in the multi-ethnic Kirkuk province, where Arab farmers accuse the Kurdistan region of ruining them by closing the valves to a dam in winter.
"We are harmed by the Kurds, and the officials responsible for Baghdad and Kirkuk will not lift a finger," said Sheikh Khaled al-Mafraji, a leader of the Arab Political Council that groups mainly Sunni tribal leaders.
At the heart of the conflict is the Dukan dam, built in 1955 in Iraq's northern...
PM: Western critics of M’sian oil palm industry taking narrow view –
Posted by Star: MUGUNTAN VANAR on January 29th, 2011
Star: Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak said certain western critics of Malaysia's oil palm industry were taking a narrow-minded view of the issue.
The Prime Minister said that they failed or ignored to look at the benefits of the oil palm industry for the citizens who were dependent on it for their livelihoods.
''They (critics) looked for narrow angles, they fail to understand that we have a responsibility to our people who depend on oil palm beyond small holders and companies.
''They are pointing fingers...
PM: M’sia keen to list Sabah’s Maliau Basin as a world heritage site
Posted by Star: MUGUNTAN VANAR on January 29th, 2011
Star: Malaysia is very keen to list Sabah's Lost World, the Maliau Basin as a world heritage site.
Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak, in endorsing the state government's proposal, said that a World Heritage listing by UNESCO would bring immediate world attention and interest in the 58,400-hectare untouched tropical rainforest, just slightly smaller then Singapore.
Najib (second right) crossing the skybridge during his visit at the Maliau Basin Conservation Area in Tawau
He said the heritage...
Industry Boos Oscar Nod for ‘Gasland’
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 25th, 2011
New York Times: "Gasland," a film that turns a harshly critical eye on the perils of natural gas drilling, has earned an Academy Award nomination for best documentary.
The Oscar nod guarantees even wider exposure for the controversial film, which uses images of flames leaping from kitchen faucets and polluted streams to make an argument for the dangers of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, a drilling technique where water and chemicals are injected at high pressure deep underground to free up previously inaccessible...
The Future of Algae Fuels Is … When?
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 25th, 2011
New York Times: As I write in Tuesday`s Times, a new study from the Rand Corporation, the global policy think tank based in Santa Monica, Calif., and formed more than 60 years ago to advise the American government on military issues, suggests that Department of Defense is wasting its time exploring alternative fuels.
It raised particular questions about the near-term viability of algae-based fuels, which the study`s authors considered to be more or less laboratory-level stuff -- and certainly not likely to scale...
Jobs, education and water key to growth in Georgia: governor
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 25th, 2011
Reuters: Georgia must focus on creating jobs, investing in education and resolving a tussle with Florida and Alabama over how to divide water resources, the state's new Governor Nathan Deal said on Tuesday.
The three issues are interlocking parts of a single effort to ensure that the southeastern U.S. state, which has a population of around 10 million, rebounds from recession, Deal, a Republican, told a forum of business leaders.
"It doesn't serve us in the overall scheme of things to spend our money...
Rogue storm system caused Pakistan floods that left millions homeless
Posted by Science Centric: None Given on January 25th, 2011
Science Centric: Last summer's disastrous Pakistan floods that killed more than 2,000 people and left more than 20 million injured or homeless were caused by a rogue weather system that wandered hundreds of miles farther west than is normal for such systems, new research shows.
Storm systems that bring widespread, long-lasting rain over eastern India and Bangladesh form over the Bay of Bengal, at the east edge of India, said Robert Houze, a University of Washington atmospheric sciences professor. But Pakistan,...