“Based on how you eat pizza, Donald, I want to see your long-form birth certificate. I don’t think you were really born in New York.” — JON STEWART, concluding an on-air rant in which the late-night comedian lambasts Trump for taking former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin for New York pizza at Famiglia, an Albanian-owned pizza [...]
The International Atomic Energy Agency has released a preliminary report of its review of Japan’s handling of its nuclear crisis, concluding that regulators and Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) underestimated the risk a severe tsunami posed to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. (via Ecocentric)
Sure, Japanese vending machines got a bad wrap for selling schoolgirls’ underwear, but let’s let bygones be bygones. This week, AFP reports there’s a new reason to cheer the ubiquitous sentinels of Japanese street corners: Soon, thousands of vending machines in Japan will be equipped to charge electric vehicles.
“In China’s thousands of years of civilization, the conflict between humankind and nature has never been as serious as it is today.” — ZHOU SHENGXIAN, China’s environment minister, in a statement published on his agency’s web site, stating that China’s growth will be hindered if its environmental problems are not brought under control (via New [...]
Chinese government scientists have released research that millions of acres of Chinese agricultural land and over 12 million tons of Chinese grain are contaminated by toxic metal pollution, according to this week’s edition of the China Economic Weekly, a state-run magazine. (via Ecocentric)
As authorities scrambled to pick up the pieces after a second major earthquake hit the southern New Zealand town of Christchurch on Tuesday, government workers further south had just finished handling an altogether different kind of natural disaster. (via Ecocentric)
The annual kerfuffle between Japanese whaling ships and the anti-whaling activists who chase them around Antarctic waters every winter is once again getting its seasonal share of ink and airtime. But this year the familiar scenes from the southerly tug-of-war might have a new victor. (via Ecocentric)
You’re never too big to say you’re sorry. A judge in Ecuador handed down a landmark ruling against oil giant Chevron this week, ordering the company to pay some $9 billion to the Amazon Defense Coalition for oil pollution damages in a remote rainforest on the South American country’s northeast border. (via Ecocentric)
China is a nation of superlatives, and its role in weather manipulation is no exception. (via Ecocentric)
As the U.S. greeting card industry enjoys another successful day of getting folks to celebrate or stress out about their relationship status, it appears that the other 364 days of the year, fewer and fewer Americans are sold on the institution of marriage.
