The Corner Report

Back from vacation in the indescribably beautiful Alaska wilderness! May it remain wild in perpetuity!

By Chris Hedges

Editor’s note: Click here to view a slideshow of Chris Hedges, his son Thomas, Truthdig Publisher Zuade Kaufman and Truthdig readers trekking through the stunning White Mountains.

Earl Shaffer, adrift after serving in the South Pacific in World War II and struggling with the loss of his childhood friend Walter Winemiller during the assault on Iwo Jima, made his way to Mount Oglethorpe in Georgia in 1947. He headed north toward Mount Katahdin in Maine and for the next 124 days, averaging 16.5 miles a day, beat back the demons of war. His goal, he said, was to ‘‘walk the Army out of my system.’’ He was the first person to hike the full length of the Appalachian Trail.

The beauty and tranquility of the old-growth forests, the vistas that stretch for miles over unbroken treetops, the waterfalls and rivers, the severance from the noise and electronic hallucinations of modern existence, becomes, if you stay out long enough, a balm to wounds. It is in solitude, contemplation and a connection with nature that we transcend the frenzied and desperate existence imposed upon us by the distortions of a commodity culture.

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By Gale Courey Toensing Indian Country Today

This photo was taken on the Summer Soltice, June 20-21, 2010, off Oak Bluffs on the Aquinnah Wampanoag land on Nantucket Island. If the Cape Wind energy plant is allowed to be built in Nantucket Sound, a sacred site to the Wampanoag people, Aquinnah Chairwoman Cheryl Andrews-Maltais said she fears that her nation may be looking at a future similar to what’s going on in the Gulf Coast now. “Our entire regional economy will be devastated, our precious waters fouled and our entire way of life changed. But even worse for my People, our rights to our spiritual, traditional and cultural practices will have been trampled, and the archeological evidence of our Ancient Ancestors will be destroyed forever.' (Photo by Aquinnah Wampanoag member Jennifer Randolph)

MARTHA'S VINEYARD, Mass. – A renewable energy advocacy group from California and conservation groups from as far away as Texas have partnered with the Alliance to Save Nantucket Sound in a district court lawsuit against the federal agencies that approved the industrial Cape Wind energy factory in Nantucket Sound, an area sacred to the Wampanoag people.

The lawsuit filed June 25 by the Alliance and its partners names as defendants the newly appointed Michael Bromwich, director of the newly-named U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (until recently known as the Minerals Management Service), Ken Salazar, secretary of the Interior Department, and Rowan Gould, acting director of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The lawsuit charges that in their rush to approve the 25-square-mile wind energy plant, which would be the country’s first offshore wind power plant, the officials violated federal environmental and wildlife protection laws, failed to conduct the required scientific studies, and ignored mandated protective measures.

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Contact: Amy Cady at 860-672-6874
acady@biblio.org
or Diane Ingersoll at 860-672-6442
diane@ianingersoll.com

Delight Yours Senses Among the Private Gardens of Cornwall:
CORNWALL LIBRARY CELEBRATES WITH AN INTIMATE TOUR OF EIGHT OF THE TOWN’S “SECRET GARDENS”

On Saturday, June 19, from 10 am to 4 pm ,the Cornwall Library will sponsor a tour of eight very personal gardens whose diversity expresses the town’s idiosyncratic character. The tour will be followed by a cocktail party that also features a tempting selection of hors d’oeuvres by some of the town’s most talented home chefs.

Each of the gardens is distinctive and unique. They include, among others: a romantic garden of roses; a dramatic hilltop garden constructed out of huge boulders left by an ancient glacier; two gardens reshaped by the 1989 tornado, and a Tuscan garden on the Housatonic that is one of the most celebrated in the entire state.

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The US president has blamed the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico on "a breakdown of responsibility" at energy giant BP as he unveiled a commission to investigate the disaster.

Barack Obama, in his weekly radio and internet address on Saturday, also said offshore oil drilling could only go forward if there were assurances that such an accident would not happen again.

"First and foremost, what led to this disaster was a breakdown of responsibility on the part of BP and perhaps others, including Transocean and Halliburton," Obama said in his toughest remarks yet on companies linked to the spill.

"And we will continue to hold the relevant companies accountable not only for being forthcoming and transparent about the facts surrounding the leak, but for shutting it down, repairing the damage it does, and repaying Americans who've suffered a financial loss," he said.

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By Stephen Lendman

22 May, 2010
Countercurrents

From the start, Obama administration and BP officials lied and deceived the public about the Gulf spill's severity, BP CEO Tony Hayward saying (on May 18) its environmental effect will be "very modest," when, in fact, it's already catastrophic, spreading, causing long-term or permanent ecological destruction over a vast area, will likely persist for months, and, according to some experts perhaps years if nothing tried to stop it works.

Initially, BP reported a 1,000 barrels per day leak, then 5,000 after the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) estimate, while independent analysis of company supplied video and satellite imagery suggest somewhere between 50 - 100,000 barrels, the consensus settling on 70,000 or an Exxon Valdez equivalent every 3.5 days - by far, America's greatest ever environmental disaster, worsening daily.

On May 19, McClatchy Newspapers Marisa Taylor and Renee Schoof headlined, "BP Withholds Oil Spill Facts - and Government Lets It," saying:

It "hasn't publicly divulged the results of tests on the extent of workers' exposure to evaporating oil or from the burning of crude....even though researchers say that data is crucial in determining whether the conditions are safe."

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For Immediate Release, May 14, 2010
Contact: Kieran Suckling, (520) 275-5960

WASHINGTON, D.C.— In a Rose Garden speech responding to breaking stories in the New York Times and Washington Post, President Obama today attempted to shield embattled Interior Secretary Ken Salazar against a growing tide of criticism that under his watch, the Department of Interior and Minerals Management Service (MMS) approved hundreds of dangerous offshore drilling platforms in the Gulf of Mexico — none with the environmental reviews legally required by the National Environmental Policy Act, Endangered Species Act, and Marine Mammal Protection Act. Among those exempted from environmental review under Salazar was the disastrous BP drill that exploded on April 20, 2010, killing 11 people, and that is now spewing millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

“I think the president will come to regret this speech as his ‘Heckuva job, Brownie’ moment,” said Kierán Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity. “Today’s speech can be summed up as, ‘Heckuva job, Kennie.’

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New York Times

A brown pelican flew Thursday past protective booms surrounding the Breton National Wildlife Reserve in the Gulf of Mexico.

By IAN URBINA

WASHINGTON — The federal Minerals Management Service gave permission to BP and dozens of other oil companies to drill in the Gulf of Mexico without first getting required permits from another agency that assesses threats to endangered species — and despite strong warnings from that agency about the impact the drilling was likely to have on the gulf.

Those approvals, federal records show, include one for the well drilled by the Deepwater Horizon rig, which exploded on April 20, killing 11 workers and resulting in thousands of barrels of oil spilling into the gulf each day.

The Minerals Management Service, or M.M.S., also routinely overruled its staff biologists and engineers who raised concerns about the safety and the environmental impact of certain drilling proposals in the gulf and in Alaska, according to a half-dozen current and former agency scientists.

Those scientists said they were also regularly pressured by agency officials to change the findings of their internal studies if they predicted that an accident was likely to occur or if wildlife might be harmed.

Under the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the Minerals Management Service is required to get permits to allow drilling where it might harm endangered species or marine mammals.

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The Jordan River is the main source of the Sea of Galilee [GETTY]

By Orly Halpern

Normally on bus tours the guide will make numerous pit stops for the sightseers. But as we drove from Jerusalem out of the Judea Mountains and into the open space of the Jordan Valley, our Jordan River tour guide asked the participants to use the bathroom at the gas station where we first stopped, because we would be avoiding all other toilet facilities until we reached the Sea of Galilee.

"All the sewage of the communities along the Jordan River goes right into it and we want to avoid adding ours," Gidon Bromberg said with a wry smile.

Bromberg is the Israeli co-director of Friends of Earth Middle East (FoEME), an Israeli-Palestinian-Jordanian environmental NGO that is making surprising headway into the most critical environmental crisis facing Israel, Palestine and Jordan: water.

FoEME organised the tour to teach journalists about what is killing the renowned Jordan River and to share the results of two groundbreaking studies it released that identify for the first time how to save the river - both in terms of how much water is needed and where the water would come from.

The studies reveal that with cooperation between Israel, Jordan and Palestine, the river can be saved - and FoEME itself offers an example of such cooperation.

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May 7, 2010
Contact: Kierán Suckling, (520) 275-5960

Salazar’s “Moratorium” on New Drilling Permits Allows Continuation of the Same Flawed Environmental Exemption Process that Allowed the BP Catastrophe

TUCSON, Ariz.— Even as the BP drilling explosion which killed eleven people continues to gush hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil per day into the Gulf of Mexico, the U.S. Department of Interior’s Minerals Management Service (MMS) has continued to exempt dangerous new drilling operations from environmental review. Twenty-seven new offshore drilling projects have been approved since April 20, 2010; twenty-six under the same environmental review exemption used to approve the disastrous BP drilling that is fouling the Gulf and its wildlife.

“The MMS has learned absolutely nothing from this national catastrophe,” said Kierán Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, “It is still illegally exempting dangerous offshore drilling projects in the Gulf of Mexico from all environmental review. It is outrageous and unacceptable.”

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In Rush to Expand Offshore Oil Drilling, Interior Secretary Salazar Abandoned Pledge to Reform Industry-dominated Mineral Management Service

TUCSON, Ariz.— Ken Salazar’s first pledge as secretary of the interior was to reform the scandal plagued Mineral Management Service (MMS), which had been found by the U.S. inspector general to have traded sex, drugs, and financial favors with oil-company executives. In a January 29, 2009 press release on the scandal, Salazar stated:

“President Obama's and my goal is to restore the public's trust, to enact meaningful reform…to uphold the law, and to ensure that all of us -- career public servants and political appointees -- do our jobs with the highest level of integrity."

Yet just three months later, Secretary Salazar allowed the MMS to approve — with no environmental review — the BP drilling operation that exploded on April 20, 2010, killing 11 workers and pouring millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. The disaster will soon be, if it is not already, the worst oil spill in American history.

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The director James Cameron backs efforts to halt the building of a dam in Brazil. (André Vieira for The New York Times)

By Alexi Barrionuevo

VOLTA GRANDE DO XINGU, Brazil — They came from the far reaches of the Amazon, traveling in small boats and canoes for up to three days to discuss their fate. James Cameron, the Hollywood titan, stood before them with orange warrior streaks painted on his face, comparing the threats on their lands to a snake eating its prey.

The Arara tribe, who live along the Xingu River in Brazil, are among the indigenous peoples who oppose a proposed dam.

The Belo Monte dam could dry up part of the Xingu River.

“The snake kills by squeezing very slowly,” Mr. Cameron said to more than 70 indigenous people, some holding spears and bows and arrows, under a tree here along the Xingu River. “This is how the civilized world slowly, slowly pushes into the forest and takes away the world that used to be,” he added.

As if to underscore the point, seconds later a poisonous green snake fell out of a tree, just feet from where Mr. Cameron’s wife sat on a log. Screams rang out. Villagers scattered. The snake was killed. Then indigenous leaders set off on a dance of appreciation, ending at the boat that took Mr. Cameron away. All the while, Mr. Cameron danced haltingly, shaking a spear, a chief’s feathery yellow and white headdress atop his head.

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By JOHN M. BRODER

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is proposing to open vast expanses of water along the Atlantic coastline, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the north coast of Alaska to oil and natural gas drilling, much of it for the first time, officials said Tuesday.

The proposal — a compromise that will please oil companies and domestic drilling advocates but anger some residents of affected states and many environmental organizations — would end a longstanding moratorium on oil exploration along the East Coast from the northern tip of Delaware to the central coast of Florida, covering 167 million acres of ocean.

Under the plan, the coastline from New Jersey northward would remain closed to all oil and gas activity. So would the Pacific Coast, from Mexico to the Canadian border.

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San Carlos Apache Tribe, Southwest nations and environmental groups partner against mine project

By Gale Courey Toensing

SAN CARLOS, Ariz. – Land swap legislation that would pave the way for a controversial copper mining operation on land that is sacred to the Apaches is inching forward in the Senate.

The massive underground mining project is fiercely opposed by the San Carlos Apache Tribe and other southwestern nations, the Sierra Club and local environmental groups, who fear the mine will devastate the water and land on Oak Flats – part of the Apaches’ ancestral territory now held in trust as public land by the federal government.

Full story and slide show at Indian Country Today

The countries round the Baltic have just begun to realise the extent of the pollution [GALLO/GETTY]

By Stephen Cole in Helsinki, Finland

The organisers of the Baltic Sea Action Summit in Helsinki say they are trying to save the most polluted body of water in the world.

Over the last century, the nine countries which border the Baltic Sea - a stretch of semi-enclosed body of water in Northern Europe - have poured tons of toxins, dioxins and various pollutants into the sea and watched as an environmental catastrophe unfolded.

"When I was a boy I could see the seabed far below me, the water was clean and there were fish," said Pertti Salolainen, the chairman of the Finnish foreign affairs committee and founder of World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Finland.

"Now I can hardly see half a metre in front," he said.

Pertti has to pull the algae away to go swimming – the same algae which are suffocating the sea. The algae, phptosynthetic organisms that inhabit most marine habitats, bloom in the summer and in the winter drop to the bottom of the sea where they consume precious oxygen and kill other marine life.

It is not just algae lurking down there – the seabed hides some of Europe's darkest secrets.

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“We indigenous people say we are not poor, we are impoverished because our access to our land and territories and resources have been curtailed very drastically by states and also corporations, and therefore we’ve become poor. We should not be materially poor, but we are also saying that we are very rich in culture and also in knowledge in terms of how to address the issues of natural resources management.” -- Ms. Vicki Tauli-Corpuz, chairperson of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.

By Gale Courey Toensing
Indian country today

NEW YORK – The world’s 370 million indigenous peoples suffer disproportionately high rates of poverty, health problems, crime, unemployment, human rights abuses, and their cultural, and in some cases, physical survival are threatened with extinction, according to the first ever United Nations report on the issues.

“State of the World’s Indigenous Peoples” stresses that land rights, self-determination, and the principles of free, prior and informed consent are necessary for the survival of the world’s indigenous peoples both in developed and developing countries.

The report includes a number of alarming statistics:

=> Read more!

Photo by Getty Images

By Nick Clark in

Less than 70km from the Gulf of Mexico, huge industrial plants flank the banks of the Mississippi, making use of its water. Combine this with the run-off from farmers’ fields and you get perilous cocktail.

The Mississippi River helped build the United States, it made possible the giant agricultural expansion of the 19th century. It is still a crucial artery of industry.

Only from above do you get an impression of the scale of man’s impact. Less than 70 kilometres from the Gulf of Mexico, huge plants flank the banks - there are vast chemical, gas and steel works, all making use of Mississippi water.

The river also drains 40% of the USA and the run-off from farmers’ fields has taken it toll. Pesticides, herbicides and general agricultural run-off flows in to the Mississippi.

This perilous cocktail ends up in the Gulf of Mexico and has created a Dead Zone, nearly 10,000 square kilometres of water, where NOTHING lives.

=> Read more!

End of vacation...

Residue of allergy, cholesterol, other meds were in fish near 5 major cities

Fish caught near wastewater treatment plants serving five major U.S. cities had residues of pharmaceuticals in them, including medicines used to treat high cholesterol, allergies, high blood pressure, bipolar disorder and depression, researchers reported Wednesday.

Findings from this first nationwide study of human drugs in fish tissue have prompted the Environmental Protection Agency to significantly expand similar ongoing research to more than 150 different locations.

"The average person hopefully will see this type of a study and see the importance of us thinking about water that we use every day, where does it come from, where does it go to? We need to understand this is a limited resource and we need to learn a lot more about our impacts on it," said study co-author Bryan Brooks, a Baylor University researcher and professor who has published more than a dozen studies related to pharmaceuticals in the environment.

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By Linn Cohen-Cole

HR 875: SHORT TITLE.-This Act may be cited as the "Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009"
Full text version pdf of HR 875:
http:// frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?
dbname=111_cong_bills&docid=f:h875ih.txt.pdf ]

-Wisdom says stop a bill that is broad as everything yet more vague even than it is broad.

-Wisdom says stop a bill that comes with massive penalties but allows no judicial review.

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This undated handout picture released on December 15 by WWF Greater Mekong Programme shows a Gumprechts …

BANGKOK – Scientists have discovered more than 1,000 species in Southeast Asia's Greater Mekong region in the past decade, including a spider as big as a dinner plate, the World Wildlife Fund said Monday.

A rat thought to have become extinct 11 million years ago and a cyanide-laced, shocking pink millipede were among creatures found in what the group called a "biological treasure trove".

The species were all found in the rainforests and wetlands along the Mekong River, which flows through Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam and the southern Chinese province of Yunnan.

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Bush Ignores Law Protecting Grand Canyon as Uranium Mining Claims Soar

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration allowed Phoenix-based Neutron Energy to stake 20 new mining claims south of the Grand Canyon on August 7, in violation of an emergency Congressional resolution passed seven weeks earlier that declared off limits to mining activity approximately 1 million acres adjacent to Grand Canyon National Park.

A new Environmental Working Group (EWG) analysis of records generated by the Interior department’s Bureau of Land Management unearthed evidence of Neutron Energy’s claims, filed in defiance of a Congressional resolution aimed at protecting the Canyon and the Colorado River that flows through it from a surge of uranium mining activity sparked by uranium prices escalating in anticipation of new nuclear power plant construction.

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By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR

Window Rock, Arizona.

The Navajo environmentalist Leroy Jackson had been missing for eight days when an anonymous tip led New Mexico state police to a white van, its windows concealed by towels and blankets, parked at a rest stop atop the Brazos Cliffs south of Chama, New Mexico. The doors were locked; a putrid odor emanated from inside.

Patrolman Ted Ulibari broke the driver’s door window and looked inside. In the back seat, under a thick wool blanket, he found the sprawled body of Leroy Jackson. He had been dead for days.

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By Mira Kamdar

While everyone has been abuzz about Georgia, the Beijing Olympics and Sarah Palin, perhaps the most important development in the world has been unfolding with almost no attention.

India and the United States, along with deep-pocketed corporations, have been steadily pushing along a lucrative and dangerous new nuclear pact, the US-India Civil Nuclear Agreement. Both governments have been working at a fever pitch to get the pact approved by the 45-country Nuclear Suppliers Group, which governs the world’s trade in nuclear materials, and before Congress for a final vote before it adjourns this month.

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By Jeremy Jaquot

You didn't just think the Bush administration was going to leave quietly, did you? In a major scoop, the AP has uncovered the draft of a set of new regulations engineered by the Interior Department (and not subject to Congressional approval) that would allow federal agencies to decide for themselves whether infrastructure projects, like dams and highways, would harm endangered species. They would, in effect, greatly reduce the impact of the independent reviews government scientists have been carrying out over the last 35 years.

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New theories about what's wiping out huge populations of the tiny winged mammal point to pesticides and climate change.

By Kirsten Weir

As dusk settles over the forest, the mosquitoes start swarming in force. Scott Darling, a biologist with the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department, unfurls a net across a wide path. Not five minutes later, the first bat of the night lands in the net with a sudden thwoomp. The tiny winged creature bares its pointy teeth and begins to chirp, the angry staccato squeaks ringing out like Morse code.

Darling uses the dull point of a pencil to gently pry the net away from the entangled bat. Later, he will examine the bat for signs of disease, weigh it (7 grams, slightly more than a pair of pennies), tag it and set it free. Then he'll discard his latex gloves, slather hand sanitizer on his skin and disinfect his equipment, even dousing the pencil he used to free the bat from the net. This last bit -- the latex gloves, the disinfectant -- is still a new practice, a cautionary protocol courtesy of white-nose syndrome (WNS), a mysterious new illness causing bats in the Northeast to waste away as they hibernate.

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By Susan Montoya Bryan

FORT STANTON CAVE, N.M. - Hundreds of feet beneath Earth's surface, a few seasoned cave explorers venture where no human has set foot. Their headlamps illuminate mud-covered walls, gypsum crystals and mineral deposits.

The real attraction, though, is under their shoes.

A massive formation that resembles a white river spans the cave's floor. A closer examination reveals that the odd formation is an intricate crust of tiny calcite crystals.

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http://www.pchrgaza.org

Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) Continue Systematic Attacks against Palestinian Civilians and Property by in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) 19 – 25 June 2008:

* 3 Palestinians killed by IOF in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
* 2 of the victims were extra-judicially executed by IOF in Nablus.
* 18 Palestinians, including 5 children and 2 old men, were wounded by the IOF gunfire; 12 of them were wounded in Ne’lin village near Ramallah.
* IOF conducted 36 incursions into Palestinian communities in the West Bank.
* IOF demolished 2 uninhabited houses and partially demolished 3 inhabited houses, in Qalqilya.
* IOF arrested 48 Palestinian civilians, including 14 children, in the West Bank. IOF have continued to impose a total siege on the OPT and have isolated the Gaza Strip from the outside world.
* IOF have continued settlement activities in the West Bank and Israeli settlers have continued to attacks Palestinian civilians and property.
* IOF have continued settlement activities in the West Bank and Israeli settlers have continued to attacks Palestinian civilians and property.
* An elderly Palestinian man was run down by an Israeli settler.
* Israeli settlers burned large areas of agricultural land in Bourin village, south of Nablus.
* Five Palestinian shepherds were injured by Israeli settlers in 2 separate attacks in Yatta village, south of Hebron.

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Lawns represent a terrible waste of cultivable land and resources, plus, as a ‘status symbol’ they really are outmoded in today’s world where environmentally friendly concepts attain far more kudos than an expensive patch of emerald green grass, writes Zahrah Nasir

By Zahrah Nasir

This week I am going straight for the jugular… no holds barred and no offence meant but it is time for a good old dose of honest truth.

The subject under the microscope is something I loathe more and more as time goes by and if people will accept the reality of the world we live in, rampant inflation, food costs going sky high, water in increasingly short supply, then they must also accept that it is way past time to outlaw those lush green lawns which a certain segment of the gardening population are so exorbitantly proud of.

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Canaan (Connecticut) May 17, 2008

PANAMA - Conservation groups from Panama, Costa Rica, and the United States met on Tuesday with a delegation from UNESCO’s World Heritage Centre and World Conservation Union, or IUCN, in Panama to discuss threats to La Amistad International Park. La Amistad is a World Heritage site shared by Panama and Costa Rica that protects the largest, most diverse virgin rainforest remaining in Central America. It is one of the last refuges for such endangered species as the jaguar, ocelot, Central American tapir, resplendent quetzal, and harpy eagle. According to IUCN, the floral diversity of La Amistad is “perhaps unequaled in any other reserve of equivalent size in the world.”

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By Linn Cohen-Cole

Dear Hillary,

This is my second letter to you. I am writing again because I feel badly for you that you seem not understand what is wrong.

You are going into Ohio soon. The issue is that you don't travel alone.

Your and Bill's history with Monsanto is going with you.

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Environmental Groups will Return to Court to Enforce Deadline

WASHINGTON – In response to the Bush administration’s announcement that it will not meet Wednesday’s deadline to issue a final Endangered Species Act (ESA) listing determination for the polar bear due to global warming, environmental groups announced their intent to go back to court to enforce the deadline.

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GOVERNOR RELL, AG BLUMENTHAL INTERVENE IN CASE AGAINST EPA TO FIGHT GLOBAL WARMING

Gov. M. Jodi Rell and Attorney General Richard Blumenthal today joined a lawsuit against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to uphold state rights to regulate greenhouse gas pollution from automobiles.

Connecticut is one of 15 states joining the lawsuit, which was brought by California. The federal Clean Air Act grants California authority – exclusively among all states – to enact its own air pollution standards for cars. The Clean Air Act also allows the other states to adopt California’s standards, but only after the EPA grants a waiver exempting California from the weaker federal regulation.

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SPOTTED OWL~Strix occidentalis

New Site Design Launches Today

TUCSON, Ariz.— The Center for Biological Diversity is celebrating the 100,000th free download from its endangered species ringtone Web site, www.rareearthtones.org. In keeping with its rising popularity, the site has received a complete makeover.

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SUIT FILED TO PROTECT 13 SPECIES IN FOUR STATES
Julie MacDonald, Other Bureaucrats, Slashed 4.2 Million Acres From Proposals by Agency Scientists

WASHINGTON _ The Center for Biological Diversity and other groups filed lawsuits today challenging the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s refusal to properly designate and protect “critical habitat” areas for 13 endangered species in Oregon, California, New Mexico and North Carolina. The suits are part of broader effort by the Center to challenge political corruption harming 55 endangered species and over 8.5 million acres of wildlife habitat. It filed simultaneous lawsuits challenging six other decisions in November.

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Coal-fired power stations are among the biggest contributors to global warming

Australia is the worst polluter in the world per capita, according to a new international study.

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By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR and JOSHUA FRANK

The ecological effects of war, like its horrific toll on human life, are exponential. When the Bush Administration and their Congressional allies sent our troops in to Iraq to topple Saddam's regime, they not only ordered these men and women to commit crimes against humanity, they also commanded them to perpetrate crimes against nature.

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By Jeff Barnard

A watchdog group has asked a federal judge in Montana to send the Bush administration's top forest official to jail for contempt of court, arguing that the U.S. Forest Service has missed the deadline for a complete environmental analysis of dropping fire retardant on wildfires.

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The McClure Strait in the Canadian Arctic has been fully open since early August [ESA]

The Northwest Passage, the previously impassable shortcut between Europe and Asia in the Canadian Arctic, has now opened due to the shrinking of Arctic sea ice.

=> Read more!

The water level of the Dead Sea is dropping by an average of 1 metre per year [AP]

By Omar Khalifa

The World Bank has finished a series of public hearings on a project that would see a canal linking the Red Sea to the depleted and polluted Dead Sea, which lies between the West Bank and Israel to the west, and Jordan to the east.

But the Bank has been accused of presenting the canal as the "only option on the table" by environmental groups and geologists, who say the plan could in fact damage three local ecosystems, including the Dead Sea itself.

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Xiang Xiang died 10 months after being
released into the wild [Reuters]

He was trained to live in the wild, but it seems he could not fit in.

Xiang Xiang, the world's first lab-bred panda, lasted less than a year living the wild life.

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By Michael Goot

NEWINGTON — Not sure whether global warming is real or contrived?

Voters still undecided on the issue should perhaps give the matter some thought before attending their town meeting. In addition to voting on new fire trucks and schools, 180 towns across the state are asking residents to take a stand on the issue of global warming.

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By Andrew C. Revkin

Internal memorandums circulated in the Alaskan division of the Federal Fish and Wildlife Service appear to require government biologists or other employees traveling in countries around the Arctic not to discuss climate change, polar bears or sea ice if they are not designated to do so.

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By Angela Charlton

The Eiffel Tower's 20,000 flashing light bulbs will go dark for five minutes on Thursday evening, hours before scientists and officials publish a long-awaited report about global warming.

=> Read more!