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| December 30, 2013 |
 Anxious wait for stranded Antarctic ship Sydney (AFP) Dec 29, 2013 - Passengers on a Russian research ship trapped in thick Antarctic ice faced an uncertain wait Sunday for one last icebreaking attempt with no guarantees of success. The MV Akademik Shokalskiy has been marooned by heavy ice since Tuesday about 100 nautical miles east of the French Antarctic base Dumont d'Urville, with two icebreaking ships so far failing in attempts to reach it. China's S ... more |  |
Final amnestied foreign Greenpeace activist leaves Russia Saint Petersburg (AFP) Dec 29, 2013 - The last of the 26 foreign Greenpeace activists who were detained after an Arctic protest left Russia on Sunday, the group announced, finally ending a saga that had caused global concern. Polish national Tomasz Dziemianczuk, 37, flew out from Saint Petersburg to Warsaw, Greenpeace said in a statement, following 25 other foreign activists who had all left by Saturday following a Kremlin amnes ... more |  |
5,000 polar bears expected to be born around New Year's Moscow (UPI) Dec 28, 2013 - The World Wildlife Fund for Nature says about 5,000 polar bears are expected to be born in the Arctic around New Year's. New Year's is the time of year when polar bears give birth in the Arctic, RIA Novosti reported. Every year on Dec. 29, the World Wildlife Fund for Nature celebrates a polar bear birthday to mark the period between December and January when polar bear cubs are b ... more |  |
 Genetic discovery points the way to much bigger yields in tomato, other flowering food plants Cold Spring Harbor, NY (SPX) Dec 28, 2013 - Every gardener knows the look of a ripe tomato. That bright red color, that warm earthy smell, and the sweet juicy flavor are hard to resist. But commercial tomato plants have a very different look from the backyard garden variety, which can grow endlessly under the right conditions to become tall and lanky. Tomatoes that will be canned for sauces and juice are harvested from plants that s ... more |  |
 500 local Chinese lawmakers resign in fraud scandal Hong Kong Dec 28, 2013 - More than 500 municipal lawmakers in one Chinese province have stood down following an electoral fraud scandal, as Beijing ramps up its sweeping anti-corruption crackdown, state media reported Saturday. The 512 municipal officials in China's central Hunan province resigned, were disqualified or dismissed after being caught taking bribes from 56 representatives of the provincial People's Cong ... more |  |
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 Debate erupts over plans to harvest burned timber in California San Francisco (UPI) Dec 27, 2013 - A proposal to salvage burned timber from a massive fire on 257,000 acres in California, including portions of Yosemite National Park, has ignited a debate. The U.S. Forest Service has submitted a plan to harvest dead trees on 29,648 acres of the Stanislaus National Forest, a move criticized by environmentalists who say salvage logging would disrupt the development of a complex post-fire ... more |  |
Extinction risk prompts ban on fishing for caviar-producing sturgeon Moscow (UPI) Dec 27, 2013 - Russia and other countries bordering the Caspian Sea say they've agreed to stop fishing black-caviar-producing sturgeon because the fish is close to extinction. Russia's Federal Fisheries Agency announced the ban, also agreed to by Kazakhstan, Iran, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan, will begin Jan. 1 for one year and may be extended for as long as five years, RIA Novosti reported Friday. ... more |  |
China eases one-child policy, abolishes labour camps Beijing (AFP) Dec 28, 2013 - China's top legislative committee formally approved a loosening of the country's hugely controversial one-child policy on Saturday and abolished "re-education through labour" camps, state media reported. The decisions were taken by the standing committee of the National People's Congress, China's rubber-stamp parliament, at the conclusion of a six-day meeting, according to Xinhua news agency ... more |  |
 Hundreds of corpses unburied after Philippine typhoon Tacloban, Philippines (AFP) Dec 28, 2013 - More than a thousand dead victims of Super Typhoon Haiyan lay unburied Saturday, seven weeks after the region was battered by the Philippines' deadliest storm, residents living alongside the stench said. About 1,400 corpses, in sealed black body bags swarming with flies, lay on a muddy open field in San Isidro, a farming village on the outskirts of the destroyed central city of Tacloban, an ... more |  |
Hong Kong in quest for youth as ageing population looms Hong Kong (AFP) Dec 29, 2013 - Schools replaced by care homes and a once-vibrant economy dulled by one of Asia's oldest populations: experts fear this is the Hong Kong of the not-too-distant future. One in three people in the city is expected to be 65 years old or above by 2041, threatening to curb economic growth in the major financial hub, the Hong Kong government has warned. "It is a huge concern for our populatio ... more |  |
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 What Does Compassion Sound Like? Rochester, NY (SPX) Dec 28, 2013 - "Good to see you. I'm sorry. It sounds like you've had a tough, tough, week." Spoken by a doctor to a cancer patient, that statement is an example of compassionate behavior observed by a University of Rochester Medical Center team in a new study published by the journal Health Expectations. Rochester researchers believe they are the first to systematically pinpoint and catalogue compassion ... more |  |
The fate of the eels Kiel, Germany (SPX) Dec 28, 2013 - Smoked, fried or boiled - the European eel (Anguilla anguilla) has always been a popular fish in Europe. Even though people have consumed it for millennia, the origin of the eel has long been shrouded in mystery. While the fish spend most of their lives in fresh and coastal waters, spawning and the birth of the larvae take place in the Sargasso Sea in the central Atlantic Ocean, about 4500 ... more |  |
 Lightning kills eight church goers in Malawi Blantyre, Malawi (AFP) Dec 28, 2013 - A lightning strike killed eight worshippers including a child at a church in Malawi's capital Lilongwe on Saturday, a health ministry official said. "The worshippers were having an extended session of Saturday prayers when lightning struck their church at around 4.30pm," Charles Mwansambo, chief of health services in the ministry of health, told AFP. He said the eight victims - included ... more |  |
Iran vows to restore glory of quake-hit Bam citadel Tehran (AFP) Dec 26, 2013 - A senior Iranian official said Thursday that the ancient citadel of Bam, destroyed by an earthquake a decade ago, will again be a major tourist attraction by 2016, media reported. "Over the next two or three years, Arg'e Bam will be rebuilt so it again becomes a major tourist attractions" Fars news agency quoted Mohammad Ali Najafi, head of Iran's heritage organisation as saying. Najafi ... more |  |
 British PM confronted by angry flood victim London (AFP) Dec 27, 2013 - Prime Minister David Cameron was on Friday confronted by an angry victim of the floods and storms that have blighted Christmas celebrations for thousands of people in Britain. Cameron was visiting the village of Yalding in Kent, southeast England, which has been badly flooded, when the unnamed woman told him in a heated on-camera exchange that she had been left stranded in her home without e ... more |  |
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Brazil vows better flood alert systems Brasilia (AFP) Dec 27, 2013 - President Dilma Rousseff on Friday vowed to improve warning systems after touring flood-hit areas of southeast Brazil where 40 people have died following torrential rains. After two weeks of heavy downpours which have triggered deadly landslides, the weather is beginning to improve across much of the region. "We are very concerned about these floods and landslides in two Brazilian states ... more |  |
Texting may be good for your health Ann Arbor MI (SPX) Dec 27, 2013 - New University of Michigan research says that a simple tool right in your back pocket may help decrease your risk for type 2 diabetes: Text messages on your phone. An overwhelming majority of surveyed people who enrolled in customized texting service txt4health piloted in Detroit and Cincinnati last year said the free mobile education program made them more aware of their diabetes risk and ... more |  |
 Modern caterpillars feed at higher temperatures in response to climate change Chapel Hill NC (SPX) Dec 27, 2013 - Caterpillars of two species of butterflies in Colorado and California have evolved to feed rapidly at higher and at a broader range of temperatures in the past 40 years, suggesting that they are evolving quickly to cope with a hotter, more variable climate. The work, led by Joel Kingsolver at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, represents a rare instance of how recent climate ... more |  |
Walking the Walk: What Sharks, Honeybees and Humans Have in Common Tucson AZ (SPX) Dec 27, 2013 - A mathematical pattern of movement called a Levy walk describes the foraging behavior of animals from sharks to honey bees, and now for the first time has been shown to describe human hunter-gatherer movement as well. The study, led by University of Arizona anthropologist David Raichlen, was published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The Levy walk pattern appea ... more |  |
'Be different or die' does not drive evolution Oxford UK (SPX) Dec 27, 2013 - A new study has found that species living together are not forced to evolve differently to avoid competing with each other, challenging a theory that has held since Darwin's Origin of Species. By focusing on ovenbirds, one of the most diverse bird families in the world, the Oxford University-led team conducted the most in-depth analysis yet of the processes causing species differences to e ... more |  |
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