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Amazon rainforest losing ability to regulate climate, scientist warns
Posted by Guardian: Jonathan Watts , on October 31st, 2014
Guardian: The Amazon rainforest has degraded to the point where it is losing its ability to benignly regulate weather systems, according to a stark new warning from one of Brazil’s leading scientists.
In a new report, Antonio Nobre, researcher in the government’s space institute, Earth System Science Centre, says the logging and burning of the world’s greatest forest might be connected to worsening droughts – such as the one currently plaguing São Paulo – and is likely to lead eventually to more extreme...
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Amazon vs the Amazon: internet retailer in domain name battle
Posted by Guardian: Jonathan Watts , on April 25th, 2013
Guardian: When you see the word "Amazon", what's the first thing that springs to mind – the world's biggest forest, the longest river or the largest internet retailer – and which do you consider most important?
These questions have risen to the fore in an arcane, but hugely important, debate about how to redraw the boundaries of the internet. Brazil and Peru have lodged objections to a bid made by the US e-commerce giant for a prime new piece of cyberspace: ".amazon".
The Seattle-based company has applied...
Japan: Fukushima radioactivity hit ‘7.5m times legal limit’
Posted by Guardian: Jonathan Watts , on April 5th, 2011
Guardian: The radioactivity of saltwater near the Fukushima nuclear power plant reached 7.5m times the legal limit last weekend but has since declined, its operator reported on Tuesday as Japan made a rare appeal for Russian help to cope with the contaminated waste.
The Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) insisted that iodine, caesium and other radionuclides were being diluted to safe levels in the Pacific, but the firm's inability to stem the leak has prompted concern among fishermen, seafood consumers...