Free Republic

Sacramento, Calif. (AP) -- A state agency in charge of environmental regulation has flushed its six-year experiment with waterless urinals. According to California Environmental Protection Agency spokeswoman Lindsay VanLaningham, the agency has removed all 56 waterless urinals at its 25-story headquarters in downtown Sacramento. ... But VanLaningham says CalEPA has received hundreds of complaints over the years about foul odors and wet floors. Maintenance costs also grew high.

WASHINGTON - Scientists taking their first "sniffs of air" from planets outside our solar system are a bit baffled by what they didn't find: water. One of the more basic assumptions of astronomy is that the two distant, hot gaseous planets they examined must contain water in their atmospheres. The two suns the planets orbit closely have hydrogen and oxygen, the stable building blocks of water. These planets' atmospheres — examined for the first time using light spectra to determine the air's chemical composition — are supposed to be made up of the same thing, good old H2O. But when...

CANBERRA (Reuters) - Rising temperatures will leave millions more people hungry by 2080 and cause critical water shortages in China and Australia, as well as parts of Europe and the United States, according to a new global climate report. By the end of the century, climate change will bring water scarcity to between 1.1 and 3.2 billion people as temperatures rise by 2 to 3 Celsius (3.6 to 4.8 Fahrenheit), a leaked draft of an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report said. The report, due for release in April but detailed in The Age newspaper, said an additional 200...