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If you’ve felt jumpy since Fukushima, you’re not alone. Even the tiniest burp from a nuclear power plant gets people fearing the worst, so it was scary news indeed when the San Onofre plant in San Diego County announced at 6:30 PM (PST) on Tuesday night that one of it’s reactors might have begun leaking [...]
The sun will set early in Haiti tonight. By 5:23 PM, night will have come to the island nation, and while night comes to virtually every part of the world virtually everyday, throughout much of Haiti, the darkness will be much deeper. It’s been nearly two years since the January 12, 2010 earthquake that killed [...]
It’s a very good thing that neural tube defects are relatively rare in the U.S., because they are very cruel conditions for a newborn to suffer. The two most common types of such birth defects are spina bifida – in which the backbone and spinal canal do not close properly — and anencephaly, in which [...]
The emerald ash borer is on the most-wanted list in Ulster County, New York. This jewel-green beetle’s appetite for the inner bark of ash trees has proven deadly for forests and cityscapes, leaving ash trees by the millions ravaged. In this video, TIME meets Foresters Jeff Rider and Michael Cullen, who are working to discover [...]
Tritium is one of those elements that just sounds bad. There’s something about the name that simply feels radioactive even before you know what the stuff is. That’s one of the reasons people have been so spooked by a new investigation the Associated Press conducted of Nuclear Regulatory Commission records, revealing that tritium has leaked from [...]
Environmentalists can be a gloomy bunch, but they’re also realistic. In the past several years, most have given up on the idea of stopping climate change altogether; there’s just too much greenhouse gas already in the system for that. Instead, the refrain has essentially been: adapt or die. Even as we try to curb future [...]
There ought to be a special place in honesty jail for people who say presposterously wrong things publicly — and know full well they’re doing so. If such a place exists, it’s time to turn down Newt Gringrich’s bed and place a mint on his pillow, because he’s headed there for a long stay. Last [...]
The Midwest has every reason in the world to be sick of tornadoes by now. In April alone, there were a shocking 600 of them, and in the past two months more than 400 Americans have been killed by the storms. At least 116 more were added on May 22 in the massive twister that [...]
It’s not likely that a book called Harry Potter and the Mountaintop Removal Project would have much appeal to middle-schoolers. And have fun trying to get the pre-K crowd interested in Clifford the Big Red Strip-Mine Operator. The good news is you’re never likely to see such literary nasties. The bad news is that Scholastic, [...]
