Economist: IT IS what passes for a winter's day in upstate São Paulo. The sun is blazing from a blue sky feathered lightly with cirrus cloud. In a large, sloping field overlooking the city of Piracicaba, a mechanical harvester chomps through a stand of three-metre-high sugar cane, fat and juicy from months of sunshine. The harvester slices the cane into 20cm chunks and regurgitates them into a 30-tonne trailer moving alongside that will lug them a few kilometres to the Costa Pinto mill (pictured). ...

Financial Times: Wheat prices rose further on Friday in the wake of Russia's decision to extend its grain export ban by 12 months, raising fears about a return to the food shortages and riots of 2007-08. In Mozambique, where a 30 per cent rise in bread prices triggered riots on Wednesday and Thursday, the government said seven people had been killed and 288 wounded. Vladimir Putin's announcement on Thursday extended an export ban first introduced last month until late December 2011, sending ...

NPR: Reporting in the journal PLoS ONE, researchers write that organically grown strawberries contain more antioxidants and vitamin C than conventional berries. Ira Flatow and guests discuss the findings, and whether the differences would have any meaningful impact on Americans' health.

NPR: This is SCIENCE FRIDAY from NPR. I'm Ira Flatow. Up first this hour: Has the environmental movement lost its mojo? The election of President Obama two years ago was supposed to be a turning point, when Congress and the White House would finally act on climate change legislation. Here's the president speaking in 2008 to the Global Climate Summit, right after he was elected, saying that while a number of businesses were doing their part to fight global warming by investing in clean ...

Sacramento Bee: An oil company headed by billionaires David and Charles Koch has contributed $1 million to the campaign to suspend California's landmark climate change law. Flint Hills Resources does not have any oil interests in California but is a big opponent of climate change legislation around the country. On Thursday, the Kansas-based refining and chemicals manufacturer threw its weight behind Proposition 23, the ballot initiative that seeks to suspend California's greenhouse gas ...

IPS: A surprisingly small number of scientists have studied the impacts of the oil spill resulting from the 1979 blowout at the Ixtoc I oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. Wes Tunnell, who first studied the spill's effects in July and August of 1980 and has returned many times since, is one of the few exceptions. Days after speaking to IPS in June, he flew back to Veracruz to see what remnants, if any, are still present from the disaster - the largest accidental oil spill in history before the ...

Guardian: They are reddish-brown, smaller than an apple seed, have a taste for human blood and when they bite they itch like hell. And now the onward march of the common bedbug has extended into cyberspace. The search engine giant Google confirmed today that its 9th Avenue offices in Manhattan have been infested with the bugs. Parts of the headquarters, a futuristic space renowned for having a Lego room and scooters for staff to move around, have been found to be harbouring the parasites, ...

NYT: As I noted back in June, the Marine Stewardship Council has come under increasing fire for giving its stamp of approval to industrial fisheries that some scientists say are anything but environmentally sustainable. Now, a number of marine scientists have argued in the journal Nature that the council is not living up to its promises, and they are calling for it to change. The scientists -- Jennifer Jacquet and Daniel Pauly of the University of British Columbia fisheries center; ...

Economist: OVER the course of the next ten years a company called Geodynamics, based in Queensland, Australia, is planning to drill as many as 90 wells, each 4,500-5,000 metres deep, in the Cooper Basin, a desert region in South Australia with large energy reserves. But the company is not drilling for oil or gas. It is looking for an energy source that is far cleaner and more abundant than any fossil fuel: heat emanating from hot rocks deep beneath the Earth's surface, a promising emerging form of ...

Guardian: X

BBC: The re-introduction of wolves in a US National Park has not helped re-establish quaking aspens, as many researchers had hoped. Writing in the journal Ecology, a team of scientists found that wolves in Yellowstone Park were not deterring elk from eating young trees. It had been assumed that the presence of wolves would create a "landscape of fear" and no-go areas for elk. The team says more work must be done if the park's aspens are to be protected. Writing in the ...

AP: BP PLC said the blowout preventer that failed to stop oil from spewing into the Gulf of Mexico was removed from the company's well on Friday afternoon. The process of raising it to the surface was to be painstaking because engineers want to make sure not to damage or drop the contraption. The blowout preventer wasn't expected to reach the surface until Saturday, at which point government investigators will take possession of it. A BP spokesman said in an e-mail to The ...

Reuters: BP Plc removed a failed blowout preventer from atop its ruptured Gulf of Mexico oil well on Friday afternoon, a company spokesman said. "The Deepwater Horizon BOP stack was successfully detached" from the Macondo well shortly after 1 p.m. CDT (2 p.m. EDT), spokesman Daren Beaudo said. "There is no oil coming from it," he said of the well. One of several live feeds of the procedure from underwater robots showed a cloudy brown substance coming from the well. Beaudo said ...

Telegraph: This week has offered two dispiriting reminders of just how much damage is done when places become too popular for their own good. In Europe, a senior Vatican official has warned that the frescoes in the Sistine Chapel are being damaged by the breath and dandruff of the 20,000 tourists who tramp through every day. In Japan, the authorities might introduce a charge to climb Mount Fuji, to limit the ever-increasing numbers flocking to its supposedly sacred summit, leaving mountains of ...

AP: The company whose Gulf of Mexico oil platform erupted in flames this week cited the industry's "excellent safety record" when it opposed a proposed federal rule last year that would require offshore oil and gas operators to have safety systems aimed at reducing workers' mistakes. The government still hasn't put the safety rule in place despite Interior Secretary Ken Salazar's recommendation months ago that it be adopted. Mariner Energy Inc., and others in the industry, including BP, ...

Telegraph: He's the second most senior member of one of the highest-consuming families on the planet, and yet he is about to launch a campaign to persuade us to "lead more sustainable lives". It's no surprise that the Prince of Wales is already being berated for so-called "Let them eat Duchy Original cake" comments as he embarks on the most extraordinary two weeks of public advocacy of his 40 years of environmental campaigning. It starts on Monday with a five-day tour around the country, a ...

IPS: Campaigns featuring some of China's biggest celebrities, including basketball star Yao Ming and actor Jackie Chan, have persuaded some Chinese to think twice about eating shark fin soup. But changing attitudes about the centuries-old delicacy, a large contributor to decimated shark populations, continues to be a challenge. For many Chinese, the soup, which dates back the Ming Dynasty, is considered a matter of wealth and prestige, often featured at weddings and banquets. Some also ...

Business Green: The UK feed-in tariff is going from strength to strength, according to new government figures that suggest the number of eligible installations grew exponentially during August. Government data analysed by renewable energy installation specialist Ownergy reveals that almost 4,000 installations came online, representing nearly double the number of installations completed in July. In total the new installations will deliver 11.28MW of renewable energy capacity, again doubling the ...

AP: The agency that oversees offshore drilling will investigate the fire on an oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico. Thursday's fire came less than five months after the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig that killed 11 people and spurred the worst offshore oil spill in the nation's history. This time no one was killed and the Coast Guard said no crude was leaking. Michael Bromwich, director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, says his ...

Business Green: Australia's leading energy companies today added their voices to calls for the next government to introduce a carbon pricing mechanism as soon as possible, joining a coalition of civil society groups which yesterday issued a statement demanding the introduction of a new climatye change bill. Today's fresh call for action came in the form of an open letter from The Clean Energy Council, which represents most mainstream energy retailers in Australia, including AGL, TRUenergy and Origin, ...