Today's news

Recycling Machine Miraculously Transforms Auto Parts into Fuel
A new eco-friendly auto scrap recycling machine that turns car waste into fuel.

DEATH PENALTY: China Considers Cash for Clemency
BEIJING , Jun 17 (IPS) - Under pressure to reduce its huge number of annual executions as it prepares to host the 2008 Olympic games, China has been experimenting with commuting death penalties to life sentences in exchange for compensation. But the practice is proving contentious.

COTE D'IVOIRE: Forests Sacred No More
ABIDJAN, Jun 16 (IPS) - In Côte d'Ivoire, the importance of a forest can go far beyond its environmental significance, as critical as this may be. Certain wooded areas are viewed as sacred.

Generations Later, Toxic Legacy of Agent Orange Lives on in Vietnam
DANANG, Vietnam -- More than 30 years after the Vietnam War ended, the poisonous legacy of Agent Orange has emerged anew with a scientific study that has found extraordinarily high levels of health-threatening contamination at the former U.S. air base at Danang.

Pope Bendedict Argues Catholic Church 'Purified' Indigenous Peoples
During his recent trip to Latin America, Pope Benedict XVI offended millions when he arrogantly suggested that Catholicism had purified indigenous populations, and called the resurgence of indigenous religions a step backward.

My 30 Days of Consumer Celibacy
For a whole month, one writer practiced a kind of abstinence so she could better understand her own complicity in our throwaway culture. It wasn't easy.

Convention protects corals; not dogfish C
News@nature.com rounds up key decisions from this week's conference on international trade in endangered species.

Baby boom for endangered tigers C
The endangered Siberian tiger has been given a boost, with the birth in captivity of 84 cubs since March this year, Chinese state media report.

Restaurant Reservations Go Online C
But upstairs, in the restaurant’s office, a different scene is playing out. In a veritable mission-control setting, a reservationist answers eight phone lines while seated in front of two computers that log reservations and hold an archive of past and future electronic bookings. Town Hall, one of the busiest restaurants in this food-crazed city, seems the very model of old-fashioned dining. Patrons who arrive to claim their reserved seats are greeted by a hostess who consults a piece of paper with the day’s reservations and leads her guests to the appointed table.

China plants trees to hold back desertification(Co)
Seven years ago, with the desert creeping south at the rate of 3 km (2 miles) a year and the dust storms getting worse, the Chinese government decided to act and the solution was typical of a country where the Great Wall stands as the ultimate grand project. It began building a "Green Great Wall", a 700 km (435 mile) barrier of trees and enclosed grassland which will stretch across Inner Mongolia, Hebei and Shanxi provinces by 2010.


How to Build a Green City (Co)
Cars have no place in the city of the future, as this rendering of Dongtan, a planned city-with-a-megacity, shows. But waterways, pedestrian throroughfares, wind turbines, and natural beauty do. Shanghai is hoping to build the world's first truly sustainable city. For the next three years, much of the world’s attention will be directed toward China and its two biggest cities, Beijing, home to the 2008 Olympics, and Shanghai, site of a World Expo in 2010. For now though, these cities are often known for something else: pollution.

Moscow world's most costly city(Co)
Russia's capital Moscow has been named as the world's most expensive city for expatriate staff to live for the second year in a row. London climbed three places to second in Mercer Human Resource Consulting's 2007 Cost of Living study. Asian cities Seoul, Tokyo and Hong Kong completed the top five. Paraguay's capital Asuncion was the cheapest. The report measures the cost of 200 items such as housing, clothing and food in 143 cities on six continents.

Study may explain roots of empathy K
When people say "I feel your pain," they do not mean it literally, but certain people really do feel something that appears to be an extreme form of empathy, British researchers said on Sunday.