Earth ChangesS


Better Earth

China kicks off drive to kick plastic bag habit

Alan Wheatley
News Daily
Sun, 01 Jun 2008 15:25 UTC
BEIJING - China on Sunday became the latest country to declare war on plastic bags in a drive to save energy and protect the environment.

Under new regulations, flimsy bags under 0.025 millimeters thick are banned and shopkeepers must charge for carrier bags. Those found breaking the law face fines and could have their goods confiscated.

Chinese Shopper
©REUTERS/Claro Cortes IV
A shopper puts groceries he bought in his own bag after stores in China stopped giving free plastic bags at a supermarket in Beijing June 1, 2008. China is trying to kick a 3 billion-a-day plastic bag habit. The world's most populous nation on Sunday will join a growing list of countries, from Ireland to Bangladesh, that are aiming to change shoppers' habits when a ban on the production of plastic bags under 0.025 millimetres thick comes into force.
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Question

Bat die-off in Northeast still mysterious

Alvin Powell
Harvard News Office
Thu, 29 May 2008 00:00 UTC
With white nose syndrome mortality at 90-95 percent, species is threatened.

There'll be fewer bats in backyards across the Northeast this summer after a mysterious ailment drove starving bats from their caves in the dead of winter in a futile, desperate search for insects in the region's frozen, bug-free landscape.
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Fish

Mysterious Fish Deaths in Georgia


WCTV.tv
Tue, 27 May 2008 00:06 UTC
The state is investigating a mysterious substance that apparently killed hundreds of fish in a private pond over Memorial Day weekend.
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Info

Report shows little land recovery from Katrina

Amy Wold
2theadvocate.com
Sat, 31 May 2008 18:06 UTC
In the year after hurricanes Katrina and Rita turned 217 square miles of Louisiana's coast into open water, researchers found little in the way of land recovery, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) reports.

Officials say the significant land loss is a continuing crisis that calls for serious restoration efforts.

Nineteen additional square miles of land were seen in satellite images in 2006, according to the recently released USGS report.
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Cloud Lightning

Tornado tears up homes, trees in Indianapolis, Indiana


Associated Press
Sat, 31 May 2008 17:58 UTC
INDIANAPOLIS - A tornado tore through the east side of Indianapolis, ripping roofs off several apartment buildings, snapping trees and leaving a trail of downed power lines and debris.
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Smiley

Balkans swelter in record-breaking heat


DPA/Earth Times
Wed, 28 May 2008 17:41 UTC
Belgrade - Eastern Europe sweltered in a pre-summer heat wave Wednesday that pushed temperatures to a 121-year high in Belgrade and halted a Hungarian train after the tracks bent. In Bulgaria, temperatures reached 35 degrees Celsius in the western part of the country, the highest in a century for the end of May, the Meteorological Institute in Sofia said.
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Alarm Clock

SOTT Focus: Connecting the dots of a crash: A cyclone, a quake, insanity plague, and a bloody handshake

SOTT Focus
SOTT.net
Sat, 31 May 2008 21:50 UTC


Image

The events of the year are unfolding rapidly, and May indicates a huge building up of pressure in the inner and outer worlds of humanity. Once again natural disasters moved to the forefront of the news reports, with Burma suffering a huge cyclone followed shortly afterward by the devastating earthquake in China.

Not only were there hundreds of thousands of lives lost in these tragedies, but all signs point to hurried moves being made by the Powers That Be to ensure a war with Iran that could spiral out of control into a global conflict that would make World War II look like a tea-party at the beach. Then we also have a crop of other interesting patterns appearing as the US economy further subsides, including a huge spike in oil prices, plus more incidents of Taser abuse and other signs of growing public hysteria. Behind the hysteria we see the shadow of the psychopath, with which the name of Josef Fritzl became synonymous for the whole world. While predators like Fritzl give a good example for the rest of us of the damage that a single psychopath can do on their own, less obvious is the extreme potential for destruction represented by the well-adapted types - many of whom currently occupy the halls of power and have well-formed, insidious networks with which to protect themselves from exposure.
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Info

Drug gang jungle fires threaten Guatemala ruins

Brendan Kolbay
News Daily
Fri, 30 May 2008 12:01 UTC
GUATEMALA CITY - Illegal settlers likely working for drug smugglers are starting fires to clear land in the Guatemalan jungle and threatening investigations into an ancient Mayan city with soaring pyramids and temples.

U.S. and Guatemalan archaeologists who trekked to the La Corona site in northern Guatemala to map dozens of huge Mayan ruins had to trade their scientific instruments for machetes and buckets of water last week to fight an encroaching blaze.
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Fish

Stinging Truths About Jellyfish Blooms In The Bering Sea


Science Daily
Sat, 31 May 2008 11:53 UTC
A new study helps explain a cyclic increase and decrease of jellyfish populations, which transformed parts of the Bering Sea--one of the U.S.'s most productive fisheries--into veritable jellytoriums during the 1990s.

sea nettle
©Kevin Raskoff
A sea nettle, the Bering Sea's most common jellyfish. Its tentacles may reach six meters (nearly 20 feet).
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X

Killer elephant "Osama" shot dead in Jharkhand


Reuters
Sat, 31 May 2008 10:30 UTC
An elephant named "Osama bin Laden" that has killed more than 11 people and injured dozens over the past few months was shot dead in Jharkhand, officials said on Saturday.

The wild male elephant, had been terrorising villagers in two states, destroying their crops and homes.
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