E-16 A 25-square-mile ice shelf breaks off in the Canadian Arctic

Immense ice shelf breaks off in Canadian Arctic: researchers

MONTREAL (AFP) - An enormous ice shelf broke away from Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic last year, researchers said, warning it could be another symptom of global warming.

The 66-square-kilometer (25.5-square-mile) ice island tore away from Ellesmere, a huge strip of land in the Canadian Arctic close to Greenland.

The break occurred in August 2005 and was so violent that it caused tremors that were detected by Canadian seismographs 250 kilometers (155 miles) away, but at the time no one was able to pinpoint what had happened.

The Canadian Ice Service contacted geographer Luke Copland of the University of Ottawa, who reconstructed the chain of events by piecing together data from the seismic readings and satellite images provided by Canada and the United States.

"This loss is the biggest in 25 years, but it continues the loss that occurred within the last century," Copland told AFP, saying 90 percent of the the ice cover had been lost since the area was discovered in 1906.

E-15 India has killed 10 million girls in 20 past years - Renuka Chowdhury

India has killed 10 million girls in 20 years - Renuka Chowdhury
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Ten million girls have been killed by their parents in India in the past 20 years, either before they were born or immediately after, a government minister said on Thursday, describing it as a "national crisis". ... A UNICEF report released this week said 7,000 fewer girls are born in the country every day than the global average would suggest, largely because female foetuses are aborted after sex determination tests but also through murder of new borns.

"It's shocking figures and we are in a national crisis if you ask me," Minister for Women and Child Development Renuka Chowdhury told Reuters.

Girls are seen as liabilities by many Indians, especially because of the banned but rampant practice of dowry, where the bride's parents pay cash and goods to the groom's family.

Men are also seen as bread-winners while social prejudices deny women opportunities for education and jobs.

"Who has killed these girl children? Their own parents."

In some states, the minister said, newborn girls have been killed by pouring sand or tobacco juice into their nostrils.

"The minute the child is born and she opens her mouth to cry, they put sand into her mouth and her nostrils so she chokes and dies," Chowdhury said, referring to cases in the western desert state of Rajasthan.

"They bury infants into pots alive and bury the pots. They put tobacco into her mouth. They hang them upside down like a bunch of flowers to dry," she said.

E-14 Deadly winds cause havoc in Seattle, Vancouver

Deadly winds cause havoc in Seattle, Vancouver

SEATTLE/VANCOUVER (Reuters) - A storm packing heavy rains and winds gusting at more than 90 mph (145 km/h) slammed into an already-soggy Pacific Northwest, killing three people, officials said on Friday.

The high winds began hitting the Pacific Coast region of Canada and the United States late on Thursday, and had begun to slow as daybreak arrived on Friday, but not before gusts of up to 69 mph (111 km/h) were recorded by weather forecasters in Seattle and 59 mph (95 km/h) in Vancouver, British Columbia, early Friday morning.

Puget Sound Energy estimated about 700,000 customers, or about two-thirds of its customers had lost power. "The storm's ongoing damage rivals, and may even exceed, the notorious Inaugural Day storm of 1993," The Washington state utility said.

British Columbia Hydro said an estimated 250,000 customers were without power in Vancouver and on Vancouver Island, where crews were still struggling to repair damaged from storms that had hit earlier in the week.

E-13 Scientists grapple over sunspot cycle

Scientists grapple over sunspot cycle
SAN FRANCISCO - Scientists are deadlocked over the severity of the next sunspot cycle, which could produce powerful solar storms that can disrupt communication systems on Earth.
A panel of space weather forecasters has been sifting through about three dozen predictions from 15 nations that differ widely in how intense the next solar cycle will be. The group, run by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and funded by NASA, aims to make an official prediction in spring 2007.

While scientists have observed sunspots — dark, cool blemishes — on the sun's surface since the days of Galileo, they've been unable to accurately forecast the severity of the eruptions associated with the spots. Sunspots are best known for triggering solar flares.

E-12 NASA telescope sees black hole gulping remote star

NASA telescope sees black hole gulping remote star

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A giant black hole displaying horrifying table manners has been caught in the act of guzzling a star in a galaxy 4 billion light-years away, scientists using an orbiting NASA telescope said on Tuesday....For the past two years, scientists have monitored the dramatic events as the star, residing in a galaxy in the Bootes constellation, was ripped apart by the black hole.

Scientists used NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer, an orbiting telescope sensitive to two bands of ultraviolet wave lengths, to detect an ultraviolet flare coming from the center of a remote elliptical galaxy.

"This ultraviolet flare was from a star literally being ripped apart and swallowed by the black hole," Suvi Gezari of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and lead author of the paper describing the findings in Astrophysical Journal Letters, said in an interview.

E-11 Say Hello to the Goodbye Weapon

Say Hello to the Goodbye Weapon
The crowd is getting ugly. Soldiers roll up in a Hummer. Suddenly, the whole right half of your body is screaming in agony. You feel like you've been dipped in molten lava. You almost faint from shock and pain, but instead you stumble backwards -- and then start running. To your surprise, everyone else is running too. In a few seconds, the street is completely empty.

You've just been hit with a new nonlethal weapon that has been certified for use in Iraq -- even though critics argue there may be unforeseen effects.

According to documents obtained for Wired News under federal sunshine laws, the Air Force's Active Denial System, or ADS, has been certified safe after lengthy tests by military scientists in the lab and in war games.

The ADS shoots a beam of millimeters waves, which are longer in wavelength than x-rays but shorter than microwaves -- 94 GHz (= 3 mm wavelength) compared to 2.45 GHz (= 12 cm wavelength) in a standard microwave oven.

Documents acquired for Wired News using the Freedom of Information Act claim that most of the radiation (83 percent) is instantly absorbed by the top layer of the skin, heating it rapidly.

The beam produces what experimenters call the "Goodbye effect," or "prompt and highly motivated escape behavior." In human tests, most subjects reached their pain threshold within 3 seconds, and none of the subjects could endure more than 5 seconds.