Daily News Channel
Deep in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan, by the light of a full moon, I am passed a glass of sugary tea — and the discussion of another civil war in the heart of Africa begins. My two hosts in the town of Dilling are commanders in a government-sponsored Arab paramilitary force that a decade ago carried out Darfur-style atrocities against their African neighbors in the surrounding mountains.
While Sputniks I and II still orbit overhead, scientists around the world are racing through mountains of data to discover how information on the movements of the Russians' artificial moons has altered standard theories of the earth and its atmosphere. Last week scientists at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge suggested a drastic revision of an accepted notion of the earth's upper atmosphere: at about 137 miles altitude, the atmosphere may be almost nine times as dense as scientists once believed.The Smithsonian scientists calculated the density of the upper atmosphere by studying the gradually shrinking orbit of Sputnik I
Parvaneh Soltani shifts her car into third gear near notorious Evin Prison and descends from the dusty foothills of the Alborz Mountains into smog-filled Tehran.
In a valley high in the Wakhan Mountains of Afghanistan, a hunter several weeks ago waded through snowdrifts to check his traps and found that he had snared one of the rarest creatures alive: a snow leopard. If a naturalist had seen the leopard, he or she would have focused on its snowy fur with black, half-moon markings and its white goatee
When the first tremors began in the parched, rock-ribbed mountains of western Sicily last week, most of the 3,000 people of Salaparuta took refuge on the slopes just below their hilltop town.
C.I.A. Steps Up Drone Attacks Within Pakistan The C.I.A. has drastically increased its bombing campaign in the mountains of Pakistan in recent weeks, American officials said. The strikes are part of an effort by military and intelligence operatives to try to cripple the Taliban in a stronghold being used to plan attacks against American troops […]
Months before flood season begins in western Washington, government officials have already declared a state of emergency and, even as they worry about the viability of a pivotal dam, have encouraged residents to buy flood insurance immediately. When the Howard Hanson Dam was first built on the Green River in western Washington in 1962, the concrete behemoth was hailed as the new protector of the valley below.
A frog that eats birds and a gecko with leopard stripes are among the 163 new species discovered last year in the Greater Mekong region of southeast Asia, according to a report by the World Wildlife Fund. The discovery of 100 new plants, 28 fish, 18 reptiles, 14 amphibians, two mammals and one bird species highlights the extent of the biodiversity in the region, said Barney Long, head of the WWF’s Asian Species Conservation program
Scientists have discovered a new species of giant rat in a remote rainforest in Papua New Guinea.
When the chips are down, the world may one day owe a debt of gratitude to a group of potato farmers high up in the mountains of Peru.