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Frown and Bear It
Wild bear populations around the world are seriously threatened by poaching, pollution, and disappearing forests, according to a World Wildlife Fund report released yesterday. In Russia, home of the world’s largest brown bear population, poaching for hides and gallbladders has increased dramatically in the last decade, and poaching is rampant in China and southeast Asia. […]
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Seedy ROM
In a project likely to revolutionize the study of biology and have important impacts on international environmental policy, a group of nations this month began setting up a database where information about all named species will be recorded — in effect, a catalog of life on earth. The project — launched by the Organization for […]
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I Don't Want My MTBE
An expert panel convened by the EPA plans today to recommend a substantial reduction in the use of MTBE, an additive that makes gasoline burn more cleanly, because MTBE poses serious public health risks when it leaches into water supplies. The panel will recommend that Congress ease Clean Air Act language that mandates the widespread […]
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Gdansk You Very Much
Poland could get up to $213 million annually until 2007 from the European Union to clean up its environment, with the funds going primarily to combating air pollution and improving drinking water and sewage treatment. Poland wants to join the EU in 2003, but to meet the EU’s strict environmental standards, the nation will need […]
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What Have They Been Smoking?
Environmentalists are up in arms over a proposal by Florida drug enforcement officials to wipe out marijuana plants with a bioherbicide, a soil-borne fungus. The state Agriculture and Environmental Protection departments have given approval for tests of the fungus in a quarantine lab. Enviros worry that the plant-killing fungus could mutate and cause diseases in […]
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Everything But the Carbon Sink
A new study throws doubt on a 1998 analysis that determined the plants and soils of the U.S. and southern Canada were absorbing as much carbon dioxide as the two societies emitted. For the study, which was published in the July 23 issue of the journal Science, researchers from the Woods Hole Research Center in […]
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Power Lyin'?
A Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory researcher falsified data that had been considered crucial evidence of a link between electromagnetic fields from power lines and cancer in humans, according to a federal investigation. Robert P. Liburdy agreed to have scientific journals that published his studies in 1992 retract some of his data, but he denies any […]
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Corporate Welfare: As Sure as Death and Taxes
Big tax breaks for companies not known for their eco-friendliness have wormed their way into a tax bill that has passed the House and another tax bill that is under consideration in the Senate. Enviro and consumer groups are criticizing tax breaks for the timber industry, oil and gas companies, and nuclear power plants. A […]
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Silly Babbitt
Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt has buckled to the demands of ranchers and other land users along the upper Missouri River and declared that he will not put new restrictions on the area. He had sought to freeze new mining claims and other land uses along a stretch of the river and a surrounding 90,000-acre area […]
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Rising Solar
Japan will launch an $85 million project next month to help Russia deal with environmental problems and conserve energy, reports the Yomiuri Shimbun in Japan. Much of the money will pay for research into the generation of electricity by natural gas, while funds will also go toward researching ways to cut greenhouse gas emissions, promoting […]
