National Geographic: Changes in the towering wall of vertical clouds surrounding the storm's eye helped diminish Hurricane Earl's intensity as it roared toward North Carolina's Outer Banks (map) Thursday morning, meteorologists say. Earl was a very intense storm with winds exceeding 140 miles (225 kilometers) an hour as it moved northward along the U.S. East Coast. But as of Friday morning, Earl had diminished to a Category 1 hurricane with peak winds of about 85 miles (137 kilometers) an ...

AP: A weakening Hurricane Earl swiped past North Carolina on Friday on its way to New England, where officials urged residents to stay vigilant even as the area threatened by storm's full force was shrinking. The storm blew sustained winds of 85 mph, a Category 1 storm, and was 350 miles south-southwest of Nantucket as of 11 a.m., according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami. The storm was expected to pass about 50 to 75 miles southeast of Nantucket on Friday ...

Guardian

Business Green: The US government has announced almost $9m (£5.8m) of fresh funding to support research into second-generation cellulosic biofuels that do not affect food supplies. The research grants, to be administered by the Departments of Agriculture and Energy, will help to increase US independence from foreign oil, officials said. The two departments will award $8.9m in grants to teams researching how to generate energy from lignocellulosic material. Researchers claim lignocellulosic ...

Press Association: The UK's greenhouse gas emissions have risen in the past two decades rather than declined, because of the carbon "embedded" in imported goods, the government's chief environment scientist has said. Speaking in a documentary to be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 next week, Professor Bob Watson said there was a need to be more open about the rises in emissions generated by-products made in places such as China but destined for the UK market. Under the current system of counting ...

Guardian: In recent years the electronics industry has gained notoriety for creating an endless stream of disposable products that make their way at life's end to developing countries, where poor people without safety gear cut and burn out valuable materials, spilling contaminants into their water, air, and lungs. Solar modules contain some of the same potentially dangerous materials as electronics, including silicon tetrachloride, cadmium, selenium, and sulfur hexafluoride, a potent greenhouse ...

Vancouver Sun: British Columbians may know that green power is good power, but homeowners are shying away from alternative sources such as solar panels because of high installation costs and the inexpensive option of hydro electricity. The head of a Victoria alternative energy company says that at current energy prices, it makes little sense for homeowners served by the BC Hydro grid to convert to solar power for their home electricity. "You're looking at between 60 and 80 years for a return ...

UPI: Rising carbon dioxide in the atmosphere may threaten climate change and be bad news for humans but poison ivy likes it, U.S. researchers say. A report in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives last year said the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has grown by 22 percent since 1960, not so good for humans but great for poison ivy and other vines, The Washington Post reported Tuesday. In a study in Durham, N.C., a researcher simulated the carbon dioxide content in the air 50 ...

Independent: Europe's rarest seabird, the Zino's Petrel, found only in Madeira, has suffered potentially devastating losses from a forest fire which struck the birds' breeding area on the Atlantic island. The fire on Madeira's central mountain massif killed 25 chicks -- 65 per cent of this year's young birds -- with only 13 fledglings found alive in their underground burrows. These remaining few will have to contend with the effects of severe soil erosion which the fire has caused. Three adult ...

Business Green: Has your company developed a genuinely innovative solution to an environmental challenge? Then WWF wants to hear from you. The global environmental group will next week launch a major new initiative, dubbed Green Game-Changers, which is designed to identify and promote the best sustainable business case studies from around the world. The crowd-sourcing exercise will invite firms to submit examples of green products, business models and government policies that have demonstrably ...

BBC: "Night night, sleep tight, don't let the bed-bugs bite"¦" It's long been a favourite rhyme to send children off to sleep. But with experts warning of a worldwide bedbug pandemic, will any of us be able to sleep once we've turned out the light?, asks Tom de Castella. Vampire fiction may be all the rage. But the true bloodsuckers after twilight are not charismatic updates of Dracula but tiny insects living in our mattresses, headboards and pillows. Yes, bed-bugs are back with a ...

BBC: The UK government's chief environment scientist has called for more openness in admitting Britain's apparent cuts in greenhouse gases are an illusion. Robert Watson says that if emissions "embedded" in imported goods are counted, UK emissions are up, not down. He says the same syndrome is true for other rich nations which off-shored manufacturing industry. That means developing countries - particularly China - are blamed for goods they buy for export to the ...

BBC: Ultrafine measurements of atmospheric gases could help track down persistent sources of CFCs thought to be slowing the recovery of the ozone layer. The use of the refrigerants and aerosol propellants was restricted by a global treaty in 1987, but they have stayed in the air longer than many expected. A UK-German team has now shown how it is possible to chemically "fingerprint" CFCs to potentially trace their origin. The group's work is published in the journal ...

Reuters: A fuel tanker loaded with 9 million liters (2.4 million gallons) of diesel fuel has run aground in Canada's Far North but none of the fuel has spilled, the Canadian Coast Guard said on Thursday. The 117 meter (384 foot) vessel, called the Nanny, got hung up on a sand bar southwest of the community of Gjoa Haven in the territory of Nunavut on Wednesday, said Larry Trigatti, superintendent of environmental response in the Canadian Coast Guard's central and Arctic region. "There's ...

AFP: Millions of Africans may lose a key source of livelihoods as a fifth of freshwater African species are threatened with extinction, the updated Red List of endangered species showed Thursday. Scientists conducting a survey on 5,167 African freshwater species found that some 21 percent of species of fish, molluscs, crabs, dragonflies and aquatic plants were at risk of becoming extinct, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) said in a statement. As fish is ...

AP: Four Greenpeace activists who clung to an oil rig off western Greenland using rock-climbing gear have been arrested after an Arctic storm forced them to abandon their protest. The four men -- from the US, Finland, Poland and Germany -- faced preliminary charges of violating a 1,650ft security perimeter around the Stena Don rig and trespassing by climbing on to the installation. The activists had been suspended under the rig since Tuesday to protest over British oil exporter ...

Christian Science Monitor: A fire on an offshore oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico has been extinguished, and officials say oil does not appear to be leaking from the facility. The US Coast Guard is at the platform roughly 80 miles south of Vermillion Bay in Louisiana, and will continue to monitor the facility for signs of a leak, a Coast Guard official said on Thursday. The announcement was welcome news along the beleaguered Gulf coast "" a region that is still working to overcome the effects of the ...

Reuters: Hurricane Earl began to strafe North Carolina's barrier islands with dangerous surf and winds on Thursday as it spun parallel to the U.S. East Coast on a northward trek toward New England and Canada. Earl was downgraded to a Category 2 storm on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale of intensity and had top sustained winds of 110 mph after weakening on Thursday from its Category 4 peak, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said. Additional weakening was expected but Earl was still a ...

National Geographic: Hurricane Earl--now a Category 3 hurricane with winds of up to 115 miles (185 kilometers) an hour--is expected to nearly miss North Carolina's Outer Banks (map) early Friday morning. But the storm could be the first of several intense hurricanes to menace the U.S. East Coast as the 2010 Atlantic hurricane season heats up, according to Jeff Masters, meteorological director for the Weather Underground website. Hurricane Earl's path is expected to pass about a hundred miles (160 ...

Mongabay: 21 percent of African freshwater plant and animal species are threatened with extinction, according to a five year assessment of 5,167 freshwater species by 200 scientists. The IUCN study cites pollution, invasive species, increased water diversion for agriculture, and dams as the chief threats to aquatic biodiversity. "Freshwaters provide a home for a disproportionate level of the world's biodiversity. Although they cover just one per cent of the planet's surface, freshwater ...