Friday June 27, 2008

No ice at the North Pole

Steve Connor
Independent

Polar scientists reveal dramatic new evidence of climate change

It seems unthinkable, but for the first time in human history, ice is on course to disappear entirely from the North Pole this year.

The disappearance of the Arctic sea ice, making it possible to reach the Pole sailing in a boat through open water, would be one of the most dramatic – and worrying – examples of the impact of global warming on the planet. Scientists say the ice at 90 degrees north may well have melted away by the summer.
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Friday June 13, 2008

Supreme Court condemns Guantanamo

Robert Verkaik
Independent

America's highest court has delivered a catastrophic blow to George Bush's policy of locking up terror suspects without charge in Guantanamo Bay.

The US Supreme Court dismissed the legal basis upon which the Bush administration has interned nearly 300 inmates at the American naval base in Cuba and granted the prisoners the right to challenge their detention on the US mainland.

Lawyers for the inmates, including the British resident Binyam Mohamed, are now expected to file fresh claims for release in the US federal courts.
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Monday June 09, 2008

Oil shortage a myth, says industry insider

Steve Connor
Independent

There is more than twice as much oil in the ground as major producers say, according to a former industry adviser who claims there is widespread misunderstanding of the way proven reserves are calculated.

Although it is widely assumed that the world has reached a point where oil production has peaked and proven reserves have sunk to roughly half of original amounts, this idea is based on flawed thinking, said Richard Pike, a former oil industry man who is now chief executive of the Royal Society of Chemistry.
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Friday June 06, 2008

The cheesy secret behind successful decision making

Jeremy Laurance
Independent

It may look like an ordinary cheese sandwich – but it could contain the vital ingredient that helps you successfully negotiate that pay rise.

Scientists have found that people with high levels of the brain chemical serotonin are more likely to succeed in delicate negotiations affecting their own interests. Serotonin is manufactured in the body from the amino acid, tryptophan, which is present in several foods – and cheese is a particularly good source.

Eating a cheese sandwich before entering the boss's office could therefore give your brain that vital edge.
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Friday June 06, 2008

Artificial Sweeteners Confound the Brain; May Lead to Diet Disaster

Lisa Conti
Scientific American

Substances like Splenda trigger reward activity but do not satiate a sugar craving

Splenda is not satisfying—at least according to the brain. A new study found that even when the palate cannot distinguish between the artificial sweetener and sugar, our brain knows the difference.

At the University of California, San Diego, 12 women underwent functional MRI while sipping water sweetened with either real sugar (sucrose) or Splenda (sucralose). Sweeteners, real or artificial, bind to and stimulate receptors on the taste buds, which then signal the brain via the cranial nerve. Although both sugar and Splenda initiate the same taste and pleasure pathways in the brain—and the subjects could not tell the solutions apart—the sugar activated pleasure-related brain regions more extensively than the Splenda did.
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Friday June 06, 2008

Malaria: a miracle in the making offers hope to millions worldwide

Steve Connor
Independent

The lives of more than a million children who die each year from malaria could be saved by a new technique for making a drug based on an ancient Chinese herbal remedy first used more than 2,000 years ago.

Scientists said yesterday that the drug will be the first product of a new approach to making pharmaceuticals using "synthetic biology", where genetically engineered microbes with implanted artificial chromosomes, or gene "cassettes", are grown in giant fermenting vats.
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Friday June 06, 2008

How to Be a Climate Hero

Audrey Schulman
Orion

Something truly horrible is happening to the planet's climate

One afternoon last summer, I was on a commuter train when I heard someone yelling behind me. I didn’t pay attention because I was breaking up a fight between my kids. But the third time the person yelled, I turned around.

It was a boy, about six years old. He was standing on his seat screaming, “My mom’s having a seizure!” The only part of his mom I could see were her legs, sticking out into the aisle, convulsing. And arrayed around the train car were forty other people, mouths open. Not one of them doing a thing.

Humans tend to freeze like this—the Bystander Effect, it’s called. It was first demonstrated in a famous psychology experiment by John Darley and Bibb Latané in which the subject was asked to fill out some forms.
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Friday June 06, 2008

Facebook Suicide

Micah M. White
Adbusters

The more Facebook infringes upon people’s privacy, the more people need to kill their connection with the social-networking site.

You’ll never find me on Facebook. You may scoff at my refusal – I used to do the same, rolling my eyes whenever my elders claimed resistance to the latest internet phenomenon – but Facebook is a scary, commercial dead-zone that’s killing our real-world relationships.

Like most Americans in their mid-twenties, I am a child of the computer age. That I did not immediately jump on the Facebook wagon is not due to an innate dislike of technology or an irrational fear of the web, but merely because I graduated from college before Facebook became a university fad. I was, like an ever-decreasing number of people, happily oblivious to this social networking website. But then something troubling happened: my wedding photos appeared on Facebook.
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Friday June 06, 2008

How much do I hear for the cloned dog?

Jerome Taylor
Independent

Can't bear the thought of living without fido? If you have half a million pounds to spare, you may never have to...

Imagine a world where taxidermy is obsolete - a world where the final trip down to the vet doesn't have to be the final goodbye. Imagine a world where your pet can be brought back to life.

Next month an American company is offering those with big enough wallets just that. A decade after Dolly the Sheep became the world's first animal to be successfully cloned from a single cell, BioArts International, a Californian biotech company with a long history of forays into the pet cloning industry, is planning an online auction to clone five dogs.
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Friday June 06, 2008

Virgin warns illegal internet music downloaders

Juliette Garside
Telegraph

Teenagers building vast music collections by downloading songs illegally from the internet should beware. Their access to free music faces being cut off by irate parents.

From next week, Virgin Media, the UK's largest provider of home broadband, will send a warning to those customers whose accounts are being used to download or share music illegally.

In the first public deal between an internet service provider and the record industry, due to be announced today, Virgin Media has agreed to send out thousands of letters during a 10-week trial.
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Friday June 06, 2008

Male circumcision is a weapon in the sperm wars

Kurt Kleiner
NewScientist

Circumcision and other forms of male genital mutilation have always been a puzzle. The ritual mutilations can leave the man vulnerable to infection and even death. So why do some societies insist on such a risky ritual for their men?

There may be an evolutionary explanation, according to Christopher Wilson, of Cornell University in New York, US. It could function to reduce a young man's potential to father a child with an older man's wife, he says.
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Friday June 06, 2008

Welcome to our shrinking jungle

Economist

A political storm over environmental policy has coincided with a rise in deforestation

From the Amazon last month, Brazil's Indian agency released aerial pictures of painted men with bows and arrows who have had little or no contact with modern civilisation. To judge from their hostile stance, they want to keep things that way. But the Amazon is the responsibility of Carlos Minc, Brazil's hyperactive new environment minister.

In his first few days on the job he flew to Germany to talk about the Amazon, from there to the northern city of Belém to meet the governors of the states that contain the forest, and then on to Brasília where on June 3rd he explained to a crowd of journalists why the rate of deforestation is increasing again. “I haven't changed my shirt in three days,” he complained.
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Friday June 06, 2008

Secret plan to keep Iraq under US control

Patrick Cockburn
Independent

Bush wants 50 military bases, control of Iraqi airspace and legal immunity for all American soldiers and contractors

A secret deal being negotiated in Baghdad would perpetuate the American military occupation of Iraq indefinitely, regardless of the outcome of the US presidential election in November.

The terms of the impending deal, details of which have been leaked to The Independent, are likely to have an explosive political effect in Iraq. Iraqi officials fear that the accord, under which US troops would occupy permanent bases, conduct military operations, arrest Iraqis and enjoy immunity from Iraqi law, will destabilise Iraq's position in the Middle East and lay the basis for unending conflict in their country.
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Friday June 06, 2008

Why a Cultural Boycott of Israel is Needed

Remi Kanazi
Counterpunch

At what point does rhetoric stop and effective action begin? For Palestinians, decades of dialogue and supposed peace overtures have proved fruitless, only serving to protect the status quo: sixty years of continual dispossession, forty years of occupation, and a systematic repudiation of international and humanitarian law. The situation for Palestinians will not improve without constructive movement forward—which rejects collusion with the Israeli government by exercising boycott, divestment and sanctions (known as BDS).

During the 1980’s, BDS of South Africa included a cultural boycott whereby musicians and artists from around the world were prohibited from performing in the apartheid state.
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Friday June 06, 2008

Peel an orange, and other things Britons won't do

John Walsh
Independent

Britons are now too busy even to peel an orange.

Oranges are declining in popularity, according to Grocer magazine. They were introduced to our larders and kitchens from Asia 1,000 years ago, and their juice is our favourite morning heart-starter – but the actual spherical bomb of vitamin C, fibre, potassium and folate is less appetising with every passing year.
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Friday June 06, 2008

American auto dealer offers free handguns

Cade Metz
The Register

Obama sparks US economy

Max Motors is aware of America's crime problem. And it wants to be part of the solution. With this in mind, the Butler, Missouri auto dealership is offering a free handgun to anyone in the market for a new car or truck.
As reported by the BBC, Max Motors recently launched a "Guns and Gas" promotion. If you purchase any vehicle before May 31, you can choose between between two free gifts: a $250 gas card or a $250 handgun.
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Friday June 06, 2008

Titan jails to have overcrowding built into design, admits ministry

Alan Travis
The Guardian

The new generation of titan "superprisons" are being designed to be overcrowded from the start, the Justice Ministry admitted yesterday. Prison service officials are already looking for a minimum 50-acre brownfield site in the Greater London area to build the first titan jail. But when it opens in 2012 it will only have 2,100 places for its 2,500 inmates.

A consultation paper published by the justice secretary, Jack Straw, said yesterday the sites for the four- or five-storey titans should be suitable for an initial development providing at least 2,100 uncrowded places with the capacity to hold up to 2,500 prisoners "through planned overcrowding".
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Friday June 06, 2008

Only a 'grave threat' would trigger 42-day detention, say ministers

Ben Russell and Nigel Morris
Independent

New powers to hold terror suspects for up to 42 days without charge would be triggered only by a "grave and exceptional" threat akin to the 7 July bombings in London, ministers said yesterday as they moved to defuse a potentially devastating revolt by Labour MPs.

Publishing 46 amendments to the Counter-Terrorism Bill, ministers insisted the raft of concessions would ensure that the contentious powers were used only in the most extreme circumstances and would strengthen the right of MPs to veto the emergency measures.
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Friday June 06, 2008

Apple looks to sun to power iPhones

Mikael Ricknäs
IDG News

Apple has filed a patent for integrating solar cells into portable devices by placing them underneath the layers of a touch-sensitive display. Solar power could help make devices truly portable, freeing from the need for wires to connect them to a power supply.

When generating electricity from solar panels, the larger the panel the better - but as the patent "Solar cells on portable devices" warns, after allowing space for buttons, screens and a way to hold the device, only a small area is left on most devices for solar cells.
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Friday June 06, 2008

Studies link lead to adult crime, brain damage

Maggie Fox
Reuters

Exposure to lead in early childhood or in the womb can cause permanent brain damage that may even cause criminal behavior, researchers reported on Tuesday.

Two studies showed that people with high levels of lead in childhood grew up with blocks of missing brain cells -- and they also were far more likely to be arrested for crimes, especially violent crimes.

The effect is so strong that it may account for a large percentage of crimes in inner-city areas, where old houses are far more likely to have lead paint, said Kim Dietrich of the University of Cincinnati in Ohio, who led one of the studies in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Medicine.
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Wednesday June 04, 2008

Soros attacks 'craze-following' institutions for inflating oil prices

Stephen Foley
Independent

George Soros, the billionaire financier, has rounded on institutional investors who have been ploughing money into oil, saying they are following a "craze" that is inflating a commodities bubble and harming the global economy.

And he predicted that the rise of index funds that allow retail investors to bet on the oil price could lead to a crash that destabilises more than just the commodities markets.

Mr Soros was called to give evidence on Capitol Hill as US lawmakers investigated whether "speculators" were manipulating or otherwise influencing the price of oil, which has doubled and doubled again in the past five years.
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Tuesday June 03, 2008

A Charge to Keep

Britt Robson
Mother Jones

The search for the perfect battery is fraught with obstacles—namely the laws of physics.

In a drab, cramped room at the back of Lee Hart's basement, there is a faint and somewhat eerie hum. More than a hundred large, mostly rechargeable batteries from around the world rise along the walls and sprawl across the floor. A few are hooked to machines with quivering meter needles measuring the amount and durability of their charges; the data are being fed into a 1987 Zenith XT computer with dual floppy disks stationed on a table in the corner.

There are the traditional lead-acid batteries of the sort used in most cars. There's a stack of the nickel-metal-hydride batteries Hart salvaged from an EV1, the crushed vehicle that starred in the movie Who Killed the Electric Car? And there are the lighter, exponentially more expensive lithium-ion batteries.
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Tuesday June 03, 2008

What's Driving Skyrocketing Oil Prices?

Robert Weissman
Counterpunch

Last week came the news that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is investigating potential manipulation of the oil trading market.

That's a good thing, though the CFTC is not exactly the most aggressive regulator around. (Says Judy Dugan of Consumer Watchdog: "On its face, the investigation smacks of the fox investigating a hen shortage in the chicken coop.")

Market manipulation may be contributing to the recent oil price spike -- though even in the worst case, it is only part of the story. The most important factor is supply and demand: supply is having trouble keeping up with unabated demand growth.

Are Wall Street firms and hedge funds in fact manipulating the oil market? Perhaps. There are certainly enough conflicts of interest, and unregulation, to make such activity plausible. These aren't exactly guys with an honorable track record.
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Tuesday June 03, 2008

Europe agrees on exchange of criminal records

John Oates
The Register

Common market for crims

The European Commission has adopted proposals to make it easier for police to check criminal records in other European countries.

The European Criminal Records Information System will set out the technical specifications so that police can get easy-to-use records from forces in other countries.

Jacques Barrot, commissioner for Justice Freedom and Security, said: "Information about previous conviction[s] shall circulate between judges and prosecutors as well as police authorities. This is essential in order to provide adequate responses to crime but also to prevent new crimes from being committed."
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Tuesday June 03, 2008

Bumblebees set new insect record for high-altitude flying

Ian Johnston
Independent

Scientists reveal remarkable ability of mountain-dwelling bumblebees to fly in air so thin it would kill a human

The origin of the notion that bumblebees fly in defiance of the laws of aerodynamics is lost in scientific history. But new research suggests that, despite their apparent physical drawbacks, bumblebees are among the finest flyers of the insect world.

Bumblebees have been discovered on Mount Everest at more than 5,600 metres (18,000ft) above sea level.
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Tuesday June 03, 2008

Terror law turns thousands of council officials into spies

Alexi Mostrous
London Times

Thousands of middle managers in local councils are being authorised to spy on people suspected of petty offences using powers designed to prevent crime and terrorism.
Even junior council officials are being allowed to initiate surveillance operations in what privacy campaigners likened to Eastern bloc police tactics.

The Home Office is expected to be urged by the Commons Home Affairs select committee to issue guidelines to councils on the type of operations in which surveillance can be used.
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Tuesday June 03, 2008

U.A.E., Qatar May Drop Dollar Pegs Within Months, National Says

Shaji Mathew
Bloomberg

The United Arab Emirates and Qatar could abandon their currency pegs to the U.S. dollar in favor of a basket of currencies within months, and Saudi Arabia may follow the move late next year, The National said, citing a Merrill Lynch & Co. report.

In mentioning the issue of inflation among Gulf Cooperation Council countries, the U.S. Treasury may be signaling its approval for an easing of the states' ties to the dollar, the Merrill report said, according to the Abu Dhabi-based newspaper.
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Tuesday June 03, 2008

US paying allies to fight war in Iraq

Times of India

The tale of massive fraud and embezzlement of millions of dollars by the US military in its operations in Iraq continues. Testifying before the US Congress Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on 22 May, Mary Ugone, deputy inspector general of accounts in the Pentagon said that an audit of $8.2 billion spending related to the Iraq war showed that $7.8 billion had been improperly spent.

Over 180,000 payments, mostly since the war started in 2003, were made by the defense department to contractors for everything from bottled water to vehicles to transportation services.
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Tuesday June 03, 2008

Brown told detention is excessive and out of step

Alan Travis and Patrick Wintour
The Guardian

Europe's human rights commissioner is to write to Gordon Brown this week warning him that the proposal to detain terror suspects for up to 42 days without charge is an "excessive" measure that will put Britain "way out of line" with the rest of Europe and will prove counter-productive.

The intervention from Europe's human rights watchdog comes as the home secretary, Jacqui Smith, prepares to outline to Labour MPs tonight "concessions" designed to curb the scale of a backbench revolt a week on Wednesday, when the key vote is to be held.
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Tuesday June 03, 2008

Earth sunshade would not rewind the climate

New Scientist

Anyone clinging to the notion that we can wipe the slate clean of all our climate mistakes by deflecting the sun's rays with space mirrors is in for a disappointment.

Dan Lunt of the University of Bristol, UK, and colleagues carried out the most detailed climate-modelling study to date on the impact of a sunshade. They simulated Earth's climate under three scenarios: pre-industrial times; a future climate with atmospheric carbon dioxide at an extreme level of four times pre-industrial values; and a sunshaded geo-engineered climate with the same high CO2 levels but solar radiation reduced by 4 per cent - similar to Cambrian times, 500 million years ago.
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Tuesday June 03, 2008

Hostility to immigrants 'is holding UK back'

Nigel Morris
Independent

Widespread public hostility to immigration threatens to undermine efforts to attract the skilled foreign workers crucial to Britain's future prosperity, the Government is warned today.

An influential think-tank says skills shortages, an ageing population and increasing demand for highly qualified workers will leave UK companies more dependent than ever on hiring abroad.

The Work Foundation challenges ministers to make greater efforts to put the case for skilled migration to a population sceptical about its merits.
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Sunday June 01, 2008

Greener power to the people: the real energy alternative?

Geoffrey Lean
Independent

British householders can produce their own energy, but official policy has led to Britain lagging behind the rest of Europe.

Ministers could avoid building nuclear reactors by encouraging families to fit solar panels and other renewable energy equipment to their homes, a startling official report concludes.

The government-backed report, to be published tomorrow, says that, with changed policies, the number of British homes producing their own clean energy could multiply to one million – about one in every three – within 12 years.
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Sunday June 01, 2008

U.S. Might Just Choke the WHO

Aileen Kwa
Inter Press Service

As the 61st annual World Health Assembly gathers in Geneva this week, a major issue that the world's governments are struggling with is patents on medicines, and whether the option to digress from a strict patent system should be endorsed by the United Nations World Health Organisation (WHO).

The United States is the sole country obstructing the ability of the WHO to push for a more flexible intellectual property system, according to several sources. This issue is being negotiated at the WHO's Intergovernmental Working Group on Public Health, Innovation and Intellectual Property (IGWG).

According to the WHO's website, "developing countries remain largely excluded from the benefits of modern science." IGWG's mandate is "to prepare a global strategy and plan of action on essential health research to address conditions affecting developing countries disproportionately."
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Sunday June 01, 2008

Anti-fraud researcher faces fraud charges

Robert McMillan
IDG News Service

One of the researchers behind ScanAlert, the "Hacker Safe" certification company McAfee recently acquired, is facing fraud charges in Indiana.

Brett Oliphant, whose title had been vice president of security services before the Napa, California, company was acquired by McAfee in January, is facing 11 counts of securities fraud in transactions that allegedly brought in more than $1.215 million.
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Sunday June 01, 2008

111 Nations, But Not US, Adopt Cluster Bomb Treaty

Shawn Pogatchnik
The Associated Press

Chief negotiators of a landmark treaty banning cluster bombs predicted Friday that the United States will never again use the weapons, a critical component of American air and artillery power.

The treaty formally adopted Friday by 111 nations, including many of America's major NATO partners, would outlaw all current designs of cluster munitions and require destruction of stockpiles within eight years.
It also opens the possibility that European allies could order U.S. bases located in their countries to remove cluster bombs from their stocks.
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Sunday June 01, 2008

Three gardens pests to watch for

Green Living Online

They outnumber us 200 million to one and they are waiting to eat everything in sight. In the last few decades we’ve been trying to win the war against garden pests with pesticides. It’s time to change our strategy.

The toxic garden

There is a growing body of research that links the use of pesticides with higher rates of cancer and diseases like leukemia, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and Parkinson’s. Not only are pesticides harmful to children, pets and our wildlife, they also kills all the good bugs who make our garden healthier.
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Sunday June 01, 2008

No logo

Sue Hubbard
NewStatesman

Public art does not have to be grand and bombastic. It is sometimes more effective when it is modest and reflective.

What is the point and purpose of public art? Once, it was clear: you were a general or an admiral and if you won a big enough victory you got a bronze statue stuck on a plinth. Or, if it was a very big victory against those dastardly neighbours, the French, you would even get a 151-foot granite column in Trafalgar Square.

Nationalism was the point, or, in the case of Charles Sargeant Jagger's Royal Artillery Memorial at Hyde Park Corner or Great Western Railway War Memorial in Paddington railway station, a dignified commemoration of the dead was.
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Sunday June 01, 2008

Stiff upper lip best way to deal with shock

Richard Alleyne
Telegraph

Britain's traditional stiff upper lip may be a better strategy for dealing with shock than letting your feelings spill out, a new study claims.

The popular assumption is that talking about a terrifying experience, such as a terrorist attack or natural disaster, can be therapeutic and helpful.

But new evidence suggests "getting it off your chest" may not be the right thing to do.

Psychologists in the US used an online survey to test people's responses to the September 11 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.
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Sunday June 01, 2008

So al-Qa'ida's defeated, eh? Go tell it to the marines

Robert Fisk
Independent

So al-Qa'ida is "almost defeated", is it? Major gains against al-Qa'ida. Essentially defeated. "On balance, we are doing pretty well," the CIA's boss, Michael Hayden, tells The Washington Post. "Near strategic defeat of al-Qa'ida in Iraq. Near strategic defeat for al-Qa'ida in Saudi Arabia. Significant setbacks for al-Qa'ida globally – and here I'm going to use the word 'ideologically' – as a lot of the Islamic world pushes back on their form of Islam." Well, you could have fooled me.

Six thousand dead in Afghanistan, tens of thousands dead in Iraq, a suicide bombing a day in Mesopotamia, the highest level of suicides ever in the US military – the Arab press wisely ran this story head to head with Hayden's boasts – and permanent US bases in Iraq after 31 December. And we've won?
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Sunday June 01, 2008

Half of UK firms have sacked errant emailers

OUT-LAW

Nearly half of UK companies have fired workers in the past year because of abuses of email. Over half of UK firms regularly audit employees' email to make sure they are complying with company rules, a survey has found.

The survey also found that almost half of the UK's companies conducted investigations into email leaks of confidential or sensitive data in the past year. The figures show UK companies to be more suspicious of and more rigorous in checking employees' use of email than their counterparts in Germany and France.

Research carried out by Forrester on behalf of email security firm Proofpoint found that 44% of UK companies had fired employees in the past year because of violation of email policies, while 78% of them had disciplined workers for the same offence.
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Sunday June 01, 2008

Swansong to tube boozing ends in assaults and arrests

Matthew Weaver
Guardian

Police arrested 17 people overnight after protest drinking parties at London mayor Boris Johnson's alcohol ban on the London Underground network, descended into chaos.

Four train drivers and three other London Underground staff were assaulted, the tyres of a police vehicle were slashed and two officers assaulted and another injured.

Bob Crow, leader of the RMT rail union, said he had warned Johnson the decision to ban alcohol could lead to violence against staff.
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Sunday June 01, 2008

EU project scans air passengers for terrorist tendencies

James Sherwood
The Register

An EU aviation safety project is testing a camera-based passenger surveillance system intended to spot terrorists poised to rush the cockpit.

According to a report in the New Scientist, the European Union’s Security of Aircraft in the Future European Environment (SAFEE) project relies on video cameras being built into every passenger’s seat. Rumours of such aircraft anti-hijack systems have been flying around since the 11 September attcks.

Each camera tracks passengers’ facial expressions, with the footage then analysed by software to detect developing terrorist activity or potential air rage. Six wide-angle cameras are also positioned to monitor the plane’s aisles, presumably to catch anyone standing by the cockpit door with a suspiciously crusty bread roll.
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Sunday June 01, 2008

Meet the Teen Science Whiz with the Plastic Bag Breakthrough

Casey Miner
Mother Jones

It may surprise you to learn that Daniel Burd does not consider himself an environmentalist. The Canadian teenager has become bit of an environmental hero over the past few days, as word of his potentially revolutionary science fair project has spread. In case you missed it, Burd managed to isolate the naturally occurring microbes that degrade plastic bags in landfills, cutting degradation time from lifetimes to mere months.

Maybe anyone could have done it, but no one else has. And that, says Burd, is part of what inspired him to pursue the project, which he started researching at the end of 2006.
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Sunday June 01, 2008

An epidemic of extinctions: Decimation of life on earth

Emily Dugan
Independent

Species are dying out at a rate not seen since the demise of the dinosaurs, according to a report published today – and human behaviour is to blame.

The world's species are declining at a rate "unprecedented since the extinction of the dinosaurs", a census of the animal kingdom has revealed. The Living Planet Index out today shows the devastating impact of humanity as biodiversity has plummeted by almost a third in the 35 years to 2005.

The report, produced by WWF, the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and the Global Footprint Network, says land species have declined by 25 per cent, marine life by 28 per cent, and freshwater species by 29 per cent.
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