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LONDON — British fish are changing sex due to sewage in rivers that contains large amounts of female hormones, the U.K.'s Environment Agency said recently. In a report on the latest stage of 20 years of research, it said that in a survey of 1,500 fish at 50 locations, one-third of the males showed female characteristics. The agency which monitors environmental pollution said the sex changes were a result of the fish being exposed to treated sewage which still contained hormones produced naturally by women or as a result of them taking the contraceptive pill. "There is sufficient evidence of...

WASHINGTON — Like a desert bursting into flower after a rare rainstorm, seemingly barren stretches of the ocean bloom with plankton after hurricanes pass by. The bursts of life were measured by satellite studies following 13 hurricanes from 1998 to 2001. "I was pleasantly surprised," said Steven Babin of Johns Hopkins University, who led the research. Babin said sudden blooms of phytoplankton — tiny plants that float in the ocean — have been reported in areas of ocean upwelling where rising water brings nutrients to the surface. He said similar effects from hurricanes had not been widely studied. "Some parts...

PHILADELPHIA, June 23 - President Bush said on Wednesday for the first time that the United States should "learn from the experience" of countries like Uganda in fighting AIDS and embraced the use of condoms to prevent its spread, a sensitive issue among conservative groups that have fought the adoption of any strategy that does not focus on abstinence. Announcing some modest changes to government financing for antiretroviral drugs in front of a church-affiliated group here, Mr. Bush also argued for sexual abstinence. But in his comments, he appeared to be offering something to both sides in the debate: his...

LONDON — Farmers of the world must shift quickly to growing plants for industrial uses such as oils and plastics to replace petrochemicals as the climate warms and crude supplies run out, British scientists said Monday. "In the next 20 to 50 years we have to reverse our dependency on fossil fuels," said Alison Smith of Britain's John Innes plant research center. "We must breed for sustainability." At a news conference, she complained that in the past there had been a lack of coherent thinking, but that was now changing in the face of the looming crisis. Ian Crute, director...

LAS VEGAS — The drought gripping the West could be the biggest in 500 years, with effects in the Colorado River basin considerably worse than during the Dust Bowl years, scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey said Thursday. "That we can now say with confidence," said Robert Webb, lead author of the new fact sheet. "Now I'm completely convinced." The Colorado River has been in a drought for the entire decade, cutting an important source of water for millions of people across the West, including Southern California. Environmental groups said the report reinforces the need to figure out a better...

PRINCETON, NJ -- In a year filled with partisan bickering, it may come as some solace that Republicans and Democrats agree on at least one thing: the state of moral values in the country. Unfortunately, the consensus is not good. Roughly four in five Republicans and Democrats alike rate moral values in the United States as "only fair" or "poor." Just one in five in either group thinks morals are "excellent" or "good."

Ancient plumbing warns that all is not well with rising sea levels FEARS that global warming is causing sea levels to rise are one of the main concerns about climate change. But prior to the 19th century, when measurements began, little was known about trends in sea level. Now Dorit Sivan, of the University of Haifa in Israel, and his colleagues may have changed all that with their study of ancient plumbing. In a paper soon to be published in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters the team describe evidence from abandoned wells in the ancient Mediterranean town of...

AGE, Ariz. — At five years and counting, the drought that has parched much of the West is getting much harder to shrug off as a blip. Those who worry most about the future of the West — politicians, scientists, business leaders, city planners and environmentalists — are increasingly realizing that a world of eternally blue skies and meager mountain snowpacks may not be a passing phenomenon but rather the return of a harsh climatic norm. Continuing research into drought cycles over the last 800 years bears this out, strongly suggesting that the relatively wet weather across much of the...

WASHINGTON — Inefficient farming practices are helping to drive deforestation, pollution, ocean degradation, and species loss and constitute the most serious environmental threat in the world today, according to a new book. According to World Agriculture and the Environment, a global survey by Dr. Jason Clay, head of the Center for Conservation Innovation at World Wildlife Fund (WWF), agriculture contributes to serious environmental, social, and economic problems, particularly in developing countries. Clay offers detailed analysis of the issues and practices of some of the world's biggest crops, from coffee and orange juice to cocoa and tobacco. He concludes that agriculture...

GENEVA — Brazil's emphatic win over the United States in a key trade ruling over cotton will send shock waves through world trade talks and embolden those demanding all farm subsidies be slashed, analysts said on Tuesday. The Geneva-based World Trade Organization (WTO), in a confidential decision, told Washington to halt much of the lavish aid it gives the country's some 25,000 cotton farmers, ruling it illegal, sources close to the ruling said. The decision goes to the heart of the debate at troubled WTO negotiations to reform world farm trade, where angry poorer countries argue the massive subsidy schemes...

LUTON, England, April 24 — The call to jihad is rising in the streets of Europe, and is being answered, counterterrorism officials say. In this former industrial town north of London, a small group of young Britons whose parents emigrated from Pakistan after World War II have turned against their families' new home. They say they would like to see Prime Minister Tony Blair dead or deposed and an Islamic flag hanging outside No. 10 Downing Street. They swear allegiance to Osama bin Laden and his goal of toppling Western democracies to establish an Islamic superstate under Shariah law, like...

WASHINGTON — An asteroid may have wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago not simply by changing the world's climate and causing years of dark skies but also by causing too many of them to be born male, U.S. and British researchers said this week. If dinosaurs were like modern-day reptiles such as crocodiles, they change sex based on temperature, said David Miller of the University of Leeds in Britain and colleagues. And even a small skewing of populations toward males would have led to eventual extinction. Most experts agree that one or more asteroid impacts probably triggered a...

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Anyone who doubts the gravity of global warming should ask Alaska's Eskimo, Indian and Aleut elders about the dramatic changes to their land and the animals on which they depend. Native leaders say that salmon are increasingly susceptible to warm-water parasites and suffer from lesions and strange behavior. Salmon and moose meat have developed odd tastes and the marrow in moose bones is weirdly runny, they say. Arctic pack ice is disappearing, making food scarce for sea animals and causing difficulties for the Natives who hunt them. It is feared that polar bears, to name one species,...

OAK BROOK, Ill. (AP) -- Jim Cantalupo, chairman and CEO of McDonald's Corp., died early Monday at age 60, according to company officials. Jim McKenna, presiding director of the hamburger giant's board of directors, said Cantalupo died of a sudden and unexpected heart attack in Orlando, Fla., where McDonald's was holding its international owner and operator convention. "Our entire McDonald's system mourns this tragic loss, and our thoughts and prayers are with Jim's wife, Joann, and his family. Our deepest sympathies go out to them," McKenna said. "Jim was a brilliant man who brought tremendous leadership, energy and passion to...

WRITERS and artists have been imagining the Second Coming of Jesus for 2,000 years, but few have portrayed him wreaking more carnage on the unbelieving world than Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. In their new apocalyptic novel, "Glorious Appearing," based on Dr. LaHaye's interpretation of Biblical prophecies about the Second Coming, their Jesus appears from the clouds on a white horse with a "conviction like a flame of fire" in his eyes. With all the gruesome detail of a Hollywood horror movie, Jesus eviscerates the flesh of millions of unbelievers merely by speaking. "Men and women soldiers and horses...

When epidemiologist Shanna Swan began comparing fertility in urban versus rural men, she thought she knew what she would find. Just as corn, sorghum, and soybeans grow better in central Missouri's hills and hollers than in a polluted parking lot in urban New York, Los Angeles, or Minneapolis, so too would fertility be higher among men living in the clean, bucolic countryside. She turned out to be completely wrong. In 2002, when the study appeared in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Health Perspectives, Swan reported that men in rural Boone County, Missouri, had a 42 percent lower sperm count than their...

JEJU, South Korea — The United Nations opened a global environment summit Monday, warning about the growing number of dead zones in the world's oceans but painting a picture of a greener planet with an increase of vegetation in many regions. The three-day conference, hosted by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), will also consider how to tackle water shortages, increasingly frequent dust storms, and overfishing. But so-called dead zones — oxygen-starved stretches of ocean that are devoid of life — topped UNEP's list of emerging environmental challenges. The number of zones has doubled over the last decade, and they...

One accusation that ought not to stick THE Bush campaign has begun a 90-day media blitz to define John Kerry as a serial waffler, bet-hedger and panderer. They are having a whale of a time. On the Republican National Committee's website, you can play an interactive boxing match: Kerry v Kerry. Click a glove. Pow! He's for gay marriage (the site gives details of his position). Click again. Zap! He's against gay marriage (contradictory details). And so on for 30 rounds, each an example of Mr Kerry supposedly on both sides of every issue. The assault is having an effect,...

Each year less light reaches the surface of the Earth. No one is sure what's causing 'global dimming' - or what it means for the future. In fact most scientists have never heard of it. By David Adam In 1985, a geography researcher called Atsumu Ohmura at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology got the shock of his life. As part of his studies into climate and atmospheric radiation, Ohmura was checking levels of sunlight recorded around Europe when he made an astonishing discovery. It was too dark. Compared to similar measurements recorded by his predecessors in the 1960s, Ohmura's...

For decades, the United States was the world's only significant mass market, offering businesses more than enough consumers to buy up ever greater volumes of their merchandise and services. To gain access to these consumers, companies had to operate inside the country. They could do so profitably because they benefited from economies of scale, meaning that each item off an assembly line was less expensive to produce than the one before. The wealth generated, in profits and wages, has made the United States far and away the world's most powerful country for nearly a century. No one else had ever...