The US economy shrank by an annualized 1% in the first three months of 2014, official estimates have shown. It is the worst economic performance since the first quarter of 2011 and a big fall on the 2.6% rise in economic output in the final quarter of last year.
Brazilian World Cup host city Manaus has declared a state of emergency as the waters of an Amazon River tributary swell, although officials say they do not expect it to flood.
Hundreds of thousands people have united across the world to voice concern over the spread of GMO foods and crops and to raise awareness over the biotech giant Monsanto’s growing grip on the global food supply chain.
Spain's Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Environment (MAGRAMA) publicly announced its satisfaction with the proposed Regulation of the European Parliament and the Council presented by the European Commission (EC) for the banning of driftnet fishing.
The great hype surrounding the advent of a shale gas bonanza in California may turn out to be just that: hype. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) – the statistical arm of the Department of Energy – has downgraded its estimate of the total amount of recoverable oil in the Monterey Shale by a whopping 96%. Its previous estimate pegged the recoverable resource in California’s shale formation at 13.7 billion barrels but it now only thinks that there are 600 million barrels available.
A new genetic study has revealed that populations of humpback whales in the oceans of the North Pacific, North Atlantic and Southern Hemisphere are much more distinct from each other than previously thought, and should be recognized as separate subspecies.
Bones that have littered the beaches of South Georgia for a hundred years since the animals were killed by whalers are now being used to establish what species of whale were being hunted, reports South Georgia’s April Newsletter.
An unusually heavy hailstorm in Brazil's largest city, Sao Paulo, has brought residents out onto to the streets to play with the ice it left behind. For many of them, it was the first time they had seen huge ice balls littering the streets of the subtropical city.
The Antarctic ice sheet has lost ice twice as quickly in the past three years as when it was last surveyed between 2005 and 2010, say scientists. Results from the CryoSat-2 satellite mission, published Monday in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, say the largest ice sheet on Earth is now losing 159 billion tons of ice each year.
Argentine state-controlled oil company YPF on Thursday defended the partnership deal it reached with one of the world's largest energy corporations, Chevron Corp., two days after a court ordered a probe into alleged irregularities associated with the pact.