EcocentricOil
On the mainpage, TIME’s political pro Mark Halperin judges how much the oil spill has damaged Obama’s presidency. Not as much as many of us believe—Halperin argues that dealing with unforeseen catastrophes has become the “new normal” of life on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and that after an initially sluggish response, Obama’s team has …
EcocentricOil
Representative Edward Markey, the pugnacious Boston Democrat who has emerged as one of the political stars of the oil spill, may have the final word on what caused the accident—philosophically, at least. On NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, Markey released internal BP documents that showed the company believed that as much as 100,000 …
EcocentricUncategorized
Today is the longest day of the year in the northern hemisphere (those looking to party, hurry to Sweden, they do the solstice right up there). In London (today’s weather forecast: sunny; today’s actual weather: gloomy) campaigners are using midsummer to draw attention to what they say is one of the low-hanging fruits in the fight …
EcocentricEnergy
China’s coal mining industry saw another disaster today when an mine explosion in the central province of Henan killed 46 miners on the spot. The mine, located in one of China’s biggest coal producing regions, was allegedly operating illegally, according to the government-run Xinhua news agency. Though the cause of the blast is still …
EcocentricHealth
A new study published Saturday in the British medical journal the Lancet found that tens of millions of people in Bangladesh have been exposed to poisonous levels of arsenic from contaminated groundwater. Bangladesh has struggled with arsenic in its water supply since a disastrous campaign in the 1970s to bring clean water to the county …
EcocentricOil
Pity the British—or at least the English. As if it’s not bad enough that their perpetually disappointing football side could only manage a 0-0 tie with 30th-ranked Algeria—prompting human bulldog Wayne Rooney to complain about being booed by his own fans, because that never happens in sport—certain parts of the British media have …
EcocentricOil
Throughout his Congressional testimony yesterday, BP CEO Tony Hayward had one consistent message: he did not know what was going on in the tumultuous weeks leading up to the Deepwater Horizon accident. He had no direct knowledge of the company’s much criticized decisions in drilling the well, and he had no comment on the causes of the …
EcocentricHealth
A cross post from TIME’s Wellness blog:
The H1N1 flu pandemic last year came out of nowhere. Well, not exactly—H1N1 first emerged in human beings in Mexico. But that wasn’t where most influenza experts were looking. The focus had been on southeast Asia, where the H5N1 avian flu had been infecting—and killing—human beings for
…
EcocentricOil
The oil spill can frustrate in many ways. The mix of regulatory failures and oil industry cost cutting that appeared to directly lead to the Deepwater Horizon accident—that’s pretty galling. The inability of BP and the government brain trust to successfully shut off the leak, more than a month and a half after it began—that’s …
EcocentricUncategorized
The Riksdag, Sweden’s parliament, voted on June 17 to overturn a three-decades old ban on new nuclear reactors in what many see as a test-case for the long-predicted “nuclear renaissance ” in Europe.
The legislation annuls a a referendum in 1980 in which Sweden’s population voted against renewing or replacing the country’s fleet of 12 …
