Environment

• Sunday, April 24th 2011 - 01:05 UTC

  Antarctica ozone hole linked to Australia’s recent series of droughts

  

  The Antarctic ozone hole is about one-third to blame for Australia's recent series of droughts, scientists say. Writing in in the journal Science, they conclude that the hole has shifted wind and rainfall patterns right across the Southern Hemisphere, even the tropics.

• Friday, April 22nd 2011 - 04:59 UTC

  Humpback whales return to Chilean waters; Punta Arenas planning watch-posts

  

  Humpback whales, once hunted nearly to extinction, started returning to Chilean seas in the 1990s. By 2003 so many had appeared that Chile created a protected coastal area, Francisco Coloane with marine park in it to assure the whales would have the nutrients they need to thrive.

• Thursday, April 21st 2011 - 21:33 UTC

  Turbulence from speeding motor boats kills zooplankton, reveals study

  

  Turbulence generated by speeding motor boats kills significant numbers of zooplankton, a study has revealed for the first time. Experiments on copepods, tiny crustaceans that live and float in water, show that a third die in waters frequented by propeller-driven boats. That is significantly more than in bodies of water not used by boats.

• Wednesday, April 20th 2011 - 01:07 UTC

  Google invests in the world’s largest wind farm in the state of Oregon

  

  Google Inc. said announced this week that together with two Japanese partners they will pay General Electric Co. about 500 million US dollars for a majority equity stake in the world's largest wind farm, under construction in Oregon.

• Monday, April 18th 2011 - 09:57 UTC

  Pacific male humpback whales change their mating songs over a two year period

  

  Male humpback whales have their own version of the hit parade, researchers say. Within regional populations of the whales, males all sing the same mating song. But the pattern of the song changes over time, with new versions spreading across the ocean and nearly always from west to east, according to the study published online this month in the journal Current Biology.

• Monday, April 18th 2011 - 06:38 UTC

  Arctic coastline crumbling due to effects of climate change, says German study

  

  Arctic coastlines are crumbling away and retreating at the rate of two metres or more a year due to the effects of climate change, it has been claimed. In some locations, up to 30 metres of the shore has been vanishing every year.

• Wednesday, April 13th 2011 - 00:30 UTC

  Paraguay admits that the dengue epidemic is the most severe in a decade

  

  Paraguay’s Minister of Public Health Esperanza Martinez acknowledged on Tuesday that the current mosquito transmitted dengue epidemic is far more severe than that of 2007, considered the worst in recent times, and claimed she has had limited support from city councils

• Tuesday, April 12th 2011 - 23:17 UTC

  Decline of bee population becomes a threat for Chile’s fruit industry

  

  The Chilean fruit industry is being threatened by the rapid decline of the country’s bee population, a product by the country’s ongoing drought.
  Water shortages across central Chile are withering the flower buds, depriving bees of their sustenance, the nectar.

• Tuesday, April 12th 2011 - 21:04 UTC

  Majority of EU citizens want their fish from sustainable sources

  

  An overwhelming majority of EU citizens want the fish they buy to come from sources that are sustainable and not over-fished, according to an independent poll commissioned by World Wildlife Fund, WWF, and carried out in 14 EU countries.

• Tuesday, April 12th 2011 - 20:48 UTC

  EU makes effective tough new fisheries control system from “net to plate”

  

  A new system of fishery control with continent-wide, common rules and penalties is now fully operational, the European Commission said on Tuesday.