The low-lying islands of Kiribati, just a few feet above sea level, are on the front lines of climate change. Globally, sea levels have risen eight to 10 inches since 1880, but several studies show that trend accelerating. If carbon emissions continue unchecked, a recent survey of experts concluded, sea levels may rise about three feet by 2100.
Author: WHES
The case for spider conservation: They keep pests from devouring humans’ food supply
Wildly successful species of the Cenozoic era , which began about 65 million years ago — have trouble empathizing with polar bears, tropical frogs and dolphins as those animals sink toward extinction. A better way is to appeal to a human’s unstoppable desire to forward his own self-interest. This is how Norman Platnick talks about spider conservation.
Changed life of the poor: Better off but far behind
WASHINGTON — Is a family with a car in the driveway, a flat-screen television and a computer with an Internet connection poor? Americans — even many of the poorest — enjoy a level of material abundance unthinkable just a generation or two ago. That indisputable economic fact has become a subject of bitter political debate this year, half a century after President Lyndon B. Johnson declared a war on poverty.
Cash crops with dividends:Financiers buying up farmland and selling it in the form of securities to investors
His boots were caked with mud when Thomas S. T. Gimbel, a longtime hedge fund executive, slipped in a strawberry patch. It was the plumpness of a strawberry that had distracted him.
In Florida tomato fields, a penny buys progress
IMMOKALEE, Fla. — Not long ago, Angelina Velasquez trudged to a parking lot at 5 each morning so a crew leader’s bus could drop her at the tomato fields by 6. She often waited there, unpaid — while the dew dried — until 10 a.m., when the workers were told to clock in and start picking.
Drier than the Dust Bowl: waiting for relief in rural America. As wide swaths of rural America suffer through historic drought, they’re being left further behind.
Every few hours, Anita Pointon refreshes the Web site that tells when it’s coming, because the work begins as soon as they know. Her husband, Chuck, 62, will set out to walk the farm with a moisture probe to see which fields are the driest. One run of water covers only about 18 acres of their 500, so they have to choose carefully.
Root of the CAR conflict is a legacy of poverty, not religious warfare
NEW YORK — The UN Security Council has voted to send almost 12,000 peacekeeping troops to the Central African Republic (CAR) to stop a two-year-old conflict that the United Nations fears could become a genocide. The UN force would supplement French and African Union troops already on the ground.
At a huge free medical clinic in Southwest Virginia, misery that shouldn’t exist
A gravel parking lot deep in the green hills of Virginia coal country was packed to capacity by 4 a.m. Friday. More than 1,500 people with canes, wheelchairs, oxygen tanks, bleeding gums, black lungs and other ills had come to the Wise County Fairgrounds, camping in tents, sleeping in pickup truck beds or scrunched up in their cars, hoping to see a doctor.
Trauma related to extreme violence worsens malnutrition in Central African Republic
Data collected at a hospital clinic for malnourished children in the Central African Republic (CAR) suggests that many of the childrens’ parents present symptoms of post-traumatic stress directly linked to their exposure to extreme violence, according to the NGO Action Against Hunger (ACF).
Maryland governor, Obama aides spar over unaccompanied immigrant children
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