RSS Feed
Archive for January 17th, 2014
Hundreds flee homes as heatwave fans Australia bushfire
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 17th, 2014
Reuters: Extreme heat and high winds fanned dozens of bushfires across Australia on Friday, prompting hundreds to flee their homes in some of the worst conditions seen since Black Saturday in 2009.
One person died in the Grampians bushland in the southeastern state of Victoria, about 300 km (186 miles) west of Melbourne, where bushfires are burning out of control amid temperatures which have hit above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees F), destroying or damaging houses.
Victoria was the hardest hit, with...
Posted in 
No Keystone answer yet, John Kerry tells John Baird
Posted by CBC: None Given on January 17th, 2014
CBC: U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry says he still doesn't have an answer on the proposed Keystone XL pipeline extension, and suggests it won't be coming any time soon.
Kerry, as well as Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird and Mexican Foreign Secretary Jose Antonio Meade, took questions from reporters Friday morning in Washington, with Kerry's opening remarks stressing the "unity" among the three countries.
Kerry says TransCanada's proposed Keystone XL pipeline application is making...
United Kingdom: Government admits flood spending drop
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 17th, 2014
Guardian: The government has been forced to backtrack on its claims about flood defence spending, admitting the figure has gone down rather than up.
The environment minister Dan Rogerson conceded on Thursday night that spending had fallen to £2.34bn in the current four years compared with £2.37bn previously. The environment secretary, Owen Paterson, had previously claimed the Tory-led coalition was spending "more on flood defences than any previous government".
The Environment Department had also said...
Vegetable growers can prosper in Australia’s sweltering heat
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 17th, 2014
Guardian: After 20 years of trying to keep a vegetable garden, I have given up.
The lettuce always gets bitter and eaten out by slugs, the coriander shoots to seed within weeks and the tomatoes spread and end up sitting on the ground, a big red target for insects and worms. Never, in my horrible history, have I delivered a fully-formed corn cob to the pot. And the melons? Well they never even make it to fertilisation.
I have failed Earth Mother 101. Were I to rely on my own brown-fingered resources,...
Scientists seek cause catastrophic fish kill in Nevada lake
Posted by Reuters: Laura Zuckerman on January 17th, 2014
Reuters: Biologists scrambled on Thursday to unravel the mystery behind a massive fish kill in a popular manmade lake in Nevada that draws thousands of anglers each winter for prized game fish such as trout.
More than 100,000 stocked fish such as bass and catfish are estimated to have perished in the lake in the northern city of Sparks in recent weeks in an unprecedented die-off that has destroyed the entire fishery, said Chris Healy, spokesman for the state Department of Wildlife.
Testing of water...