Tag: Wednesday Morning Science Supplement

A team of German firms is developing the “new Trabi” or Trabant NT, a revamped version of the famously unreliable and unattractive cars, and is aiming to unveil a prototype at the Frankfurt motor show in September.

And in contrast to the old model, whose noisy two-stroke engine sent a polluting cloud of burnt oil and petrol into the air as it chugged slowly through the streets behind the Iron Curtain, the new 21st century Trabi could hardly be greener.

Part of the coastline has been declared off-limits as local authorities acknowledge they are unable to get rid of the decomposing seaweed that has washed up on shores in more than 80 communities across Brittany.

Green groups accuse President Nicolas Sarkozy’s government of turning a blind eye to an “environmental cancer” caused by the algae and blame intensive farming for producing nitrates that feed the seaweed’s toxicity.

Rudd was speaking in the northeastern Australian city of Cairns at the opening of the Pacific Islands Forum summit of regional leaders, where climate change has emerged as a key issue.

Leaders from Australia, New Zealand and 13 Pacific Island nations will also tackle the impact of the global economic crisis and Fiji over two days of talks.

As one of the most popular sushi staples, bluefin tuna has become increasingly in demand in recent years and its stocks have plummetted over the last decade in both the Atlantic and Mediterranean.

Now, according to a draft proposal put forward by Monaco with CITES, the UN agency against illegal wildlife trade, stocks are so fragile that the species should be classified as being at threat of extinction.

Ancient superstition and modern commerce came together in what was likely to end up being the most watched eclipse in history, due to its path over Earth’s most densely inhabited areas.

A woman was killed in a stampede in the holy city of Varanasi where tens of thousands of devout Hindus had crowded the river Ganges at dawn.

German deputy environment minister Matthias Machnig said solar systems behind the 400-billion-euro (560-billion-dollar) project, launched in Germany on Monday, had “enormous potential.”

The Desertec Industrial Initiative (DII) is powered by 12 mostly German companies from the engineering, energy and finance sectors but has also won support from firms in Algeria and Spain and from officials in Egypt and Jordan.

The controversy over the sharing of the mighty rivers at the root of Iraq’s ancient name of Mesopotamia — meaning “between the rivers” in Greek — is almost as old as the country itself.

But for Baghdad, the current shortage demands an urgent response from Turkey.

Atlantis and its seven-member crew blasted off from Florida on Monday on an 11-day mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope.

It will be the U.S. space agency’s last chance to tinker with the telescope — which has vastly expanded scientists’ knowledge of the universe — before NASA ends the shuttle program in 2010.

A House Energy and Commerce panel hopes to fill in details later this week on a bill that aims to cut emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases 20 percent by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050 — using 2005 as a base year.

A White House official said the meeting between Obama and some Democratic members of the panel would review provisions being negotiated by lawmakers, as well as the timetable for moving the controversial legislation through the House.

US President Barack Obama, who champions aggressive action against global warming, invited negotiators from 17 other major economies including developing powers such as China and India to meet in Washington.

The talks came as the clock ticks to a December meeting in Copenhagen that is meant to approve a new global treaty to slow down the planet’s rising temperatures.

The idea, called carbon capture and sequestration, or CCS, is at the cutting edge of attempts to dramatically reduce CO2 spewed by industrial plants into the atmosphere.

The technology exists, but is little tested and a group of energy companies, academics and state officials hope to make New York one of the field’s trail blazers.

Waiting on shore at Shimonoseki harbour, Greenpeace anti-whaling campaigners shouted and held up a placard that read: “Southern Ocean Whaling: Cover-ups, Lies, 1.2 billion yen (12 million dollars) in taxes.”

Japan kills whales using a loophole in a 1986 international moratorium on commercial whaling that allows “lethal research” on the mammals, and makes no secret of the fact that the animals’ meat is then served as food.