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Outlook not good for air quality at Delhi-hosted games

Think the air quality at this summer’s 2008 Beijing Olympics is going to be bad? When New Delhi hosts the 2010 Commonwealth Games, it’ll probably be even worse.

The green take on Super-Duper Tuesday, sell-off of oil leases in polar-bear habitat sets record, and

Read the articles mentioned at the end of the podcast: Curb Uranium Enthusiasm Super Troopers Troop On Missing in Auction Shelling It Out The Fellowship of the Ping A Shock […]

Brown pelicans to be removed from endangered species list

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced it will remove brown pelicans from the endangered species list within a year. Brown pelicans have been listed as endangered since 1970, even […]

Hungry humpheads and sustainable fish in U.K. groceries

28 cases of ciguatera fish poisoning have been documented since November. Fish such as grouper, snapper, and amberjack eat toxic algae, and people who eat the contaminated fish can suffer from nausea and vomiting. In serious cases, neurological problems can last for months or years ...

... a federal judge rejected President Bush's exemption of the U.S. Navy to rules regulating sonar ...

... scientists at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography suggested that wind may be behind the sardine and anchovy booms and busts off the California coast over the last century ...

Friday music blogging: Once

Last night I finally got around to watching Once, the little Irish indie flick that got so much critical acclaim last year. It is, in fact, a remarkable film — […]

Aussies release gruesome footage of Japanese whale hunt

There’s a new twist in the twisty tale of Japan’s off-then-back-on-again whale hunt: the Australian government has released gut-wrenching footage of what it says is a mother and baby minke […]

A notorious illegal fishing ship meets its end

Here's one for the dustbin of history: This week, Australian authorities confirmed that one of the world's most infamous pirate fishing vessels was scrapped in a shipyard in India in December.

The Viarsa 1 was first spied illegally catching Patagonian toothfish (better known in restaurants as Chilean sea bass) in Australian waters in 2003. The resulting pursuit (scroll down for daily updates) by patrol vessels lasted 21 days and crossed 3900 nautical miles, inspiring Wall Street Journal reporter G. Bruce Knecht's acclaimed book, "Hooked: Pirates, Poaching and the Perfect Fish."

Many ships that participate in illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing in the Southern Ocean are owned by Spanish companies, including Viarsa 1, and fly under flags of convenience. The owner of Viarsa 1, Vidal Armadores S.A., still owns several pirate ships. Just last summer, a ship associated with the company, Magnus, was apprehended while using illegal fishing gear in South Africa. The ship was sailing under the name Ina Maka with a North Korean flag.

It may go without saying that Vidal Armadores S.A. has received support in the form of subsidies from the Spanish government.

There is at least one way to clamp down on IUU fishing: stop allowing ships to fly flags of convenience. In addition, ships that have been caught pirating should not be allowed to obtain special fishing permits. Currently, the European Union is considering such a measure.

Bush’s controversial mercury rule for power plants struck down by federal court

Bad news for the Bush administration: A federal appeals court on Friday struck down a U.S. EPA rule that would have let coal-fired power plants trade the right to emit […]

Exploratory uranium mine near Grand Canyon given go-ahead

The U.S. Forest Service has granted a permit to a British mining company to drill exploratory uranium mines just miles from Grand Canyon National Park in northern Arizona and just […]

Oregon coast coho salmon re-listed as threatened

Coho salmon off the Oregon coast have been re-listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. Yesterday’s move was compelled by a court-ordered deadline mandating that the NOAA Fisheries Service […]