A state of emergency has been declared in Guatemala, where days of heavy rain have caused widespread flooding and landslides.

At least 20 people have been killed, including at least 10 who died when a bus was engulfed by a mudslide.

President Alvaro Colom said the rains had undone all the reconstruction work completed since Tropical Storm Agatha, which killed 165 people in May.

He has asked congress to approve emergency funds for rebuilding.

Days of heavy rains have saturated Guatemala's mountainous terrain, causing hillsides to collapse suddenly and without warning.

WASHINGTON -- Twenty years after northern spotted owls were protected under the Endangered Species Act, their numbers continue to decline, and scientists aren't certain whether the birds will survive even though logging was banned on much of the old-growth forest in the Pacific Northwest where they live in order to save them.

The owl remains an iconic symbol in a region where once loggers in steel-spiked, high-topped caulk boots felled 200-year-old or even older trees and loaded them on trucks that compression-braked down twisty mountain roads to mills redolent with the smell of fresh sawdust and smoke from burning timber scraps.

Regionwide, the owl populations are dropping 2.9 percent a year. In Washington state, they're declining at 6 to 7 percent a year.

Deforestation Rate Continues to Plunge in Brazil by Antonio Regalado on 2 September 2010, 1:03 PM | Permanent Link | 0 Comments Email Print | More Previous Article Next Article

The Brazilian government says that a preliminary survey by a low-resolution satellite shows that deforestation in the Amazon declined by 47.5% over the past 12 months. The figure is the largest decline since measurements began in 1988 and, if confirmed by data from a second set of satellites due out later this year, would amount to nearly a 90% drop in lost forest area since a 2004 peak.

"I think the results are pretty strong for a big additional decrease in deforestation," says Greg Asner, a satellite expert with the Carnegie Institution for Science at Stanford University. "I am really pleased to see it. I do not doubt that the trend is real."

The Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (INPE), Brazil's remote-sensing agency, said fires burned 2296 sq km between August 2009 and August 2010. That compares with 4375 sq km for the preceding 12-month period. Clearing was concentrated in the agricultural states of Pará and Mato Grosso. Asner, who uses satellites to monitor tropical forests globally, says Brazil is the only tropical country where deforestation rates are decreasing consistently. Deforestation refers to land cleared by fires for pastures or farms. The satellites do not monitor another activity, illegal logging, that also can degrade forest regions.

Researchers have demonstrated tiny solar cells just billionths of a metre across that can repair themselves, extending their useful lifetime.

The cells make use of proteins from the machinery of plants, turning sunlight into electric charges that can do work.

The cells simply assemble themselves from a mixture of the proteins, minute tubes of carbon and other materials.

The self-repairing mechanism, reported in Nature Chemistry, could lead to much longer-lasting solar cells.

After months of heated discussions  about the future of Germany's nuclear power plants, the coalition government has agreed to extend their operating lives by up to 14 years.

Environment Minister Norbert Röttgen and Economics Minister Rainer Brüderle announced the compromise late on Sunday evening after a nearly 12-hour meeting at the Chancellery in Berlin.

The agreement, which still needs to be approved by the German parliament, the Bundestag, will make significant changes to a law pushed through by Merkel's predecessor, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, which mandated that Germany phase out nuclear power by 2021. It will form the cornerstone of a broader energy strategy that Merkel is set to reveal later this month and ends months of divisions in the coalition government over the issue of extending plant lives.

Under the new two-tier solution, the government plans to divide Germany's 17 nuclear plants into two groups, depending on their year of construction. The operating lives of older nuclear plants will be extended by eight years, while newer plants will receive an extension of 14 years. The new plan means that Germany will be using electricity generated from nuclear power for the next three decades.