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3-year-old Love Bug gets flatter roof to look 'sportier' Design spearheads major assault on U.S. market by VW Volkswagen has reinvented its cult Beetle for the third time in 73 years. The ergonomic new design, which will be offered initially to U.S. customers, gives the car a flatter roof, a less bulbous shape, narrowed windows and a sharp crease along the side. It is the first overhaul of the Bug since 1998, when Volkswagen came up with the New Beetle, a curvaceous front-wheel drive version of the classic car.

U.S. customs officials said on Wednesday they had found a beetle considered one of the world's most dangerous agricultural pests in a shipment of rice arriving at Los Angeles International Airport. Agricultural specialists with U.S. Customs and Border Protection found an adult khapra beetle, eight larvae and a shed skin in a shipment of Indian rice from Saudi Arabia ... Earlier this year, border protection officials in Detroit found a khapra beetle in a shipment of tile from China.

DENVER -- This should be the golden season across the West, when aspen paint hillsides in shades of fall.But a mysterious ailment -- or perhaps a combination of factors -- is killing hundreds of thousands of acres of the trees from Nevada, New Mexico and Arizona through Utah, Colorado, Wyoming and into Canada, according to the U.S. government and independent scientists. The aspen die-off comes on the heels of a pine-beetle invasion that has destroyed millions of acres of evergreens. Foresters expect to lose virtually every mature lodgepole pine in Colorado -- five million acres of them.

Computers Researchers Remote Control Flying Beetles Via Electrodes by Terrence O'Brien (RSS feed) — Sep 27th 2009 at 3:01PM The military and researchers across the country have been working on putting tiny bots in the air for quite some time. They've talked robotic spy-bats, dreamed up cyborg crickets, dragonflies, and all matter of other bug-sized bots. In fact, they've successfully implanted electrodes into the brains of crickets, moths, and beetles to exercise some control over their movements -- they even got a beetle to briefly take flight. But until now, the amount of control over motions has been very limited....

The Dutch Hill Campground at Steamboat Lake State Park once was densely packed with lodgepole pine. But blue marks on bark now dominate the landscape, identifying the beetle-killed trees awaiting removal. The mountain pine beetle epidemic sweeping Colorado forests has taken a heavy toll on Steamboat Lake and Pearl Lake state parks, whose campgrounds were closed in October after being deemed unsafe after trees starting falling much earlier than expected... The epidemic will have a drastic impact on camping availability in the summer. Crews will begin cutting down beetle-killed and beetle-infected trees in Steamboat Lake State Park later this month,...

An experimental fire planned for beetle-killed lodgepole pines in Rocky Mountain National Park should help determine when the trees are most flammable. Officials incessantly cite the increased risk of fire danger in beetle-killed forests as the prime reason to cut and thin dead lodgepole pines. But controlled burns also could prove a useful tool in treating blighted stands of pines, especially when it comes to regenerating new stands. The risk of a crown fire is thought to be greatest in stands comprised primarily of standing dead trees with red needles than among healthy, green trees. Sometime in the next few...

Dead lodgepole pines turned into products from pellet fuel to pens. millions of beetle- kill pines in the nearby hills and mountains could explode into a fire ... But locals also realize that using the wood for beetle-kill products is just a start - and not a silver bullet. "There's little stuff going on, but not near what we need," ... But, still, he's grateful. "Small steps lead to big trips," ... Dead and dying lodgepole acreage in Colorado has grown to 1.5 million since the first signs of the mountain pine beetle outbreak in 1996... homes, property and lives...

The remains of a burnt beetle found in a grain of wheat about 3,500 years old provided a group of researchers from Bar-Ilan University with a key to a question the Bible left without a definite answer: How did Joseph the Dreamer, who became the viceroy to the king of Egypt, succeed in preserving the grain during the seven lean years and prevent Egypt's population from starving? According to the description in the book of Genesis, during the seven years of plenty in Egypt, Joseph had all the wheat collected in silos. "And he gathered up all the food of...

Crews will cut trees on more than 200 acres around Vail this summer in their continuing efforts to battle the pine beetle epidemic. This summer’s work will continue to create a ribbon of “defensible space” around the town that seeks to prevent the spread of fire... “It’s to protect lives, homes and property from the effects of catastrophic wildfire,” ... The work is part of the Vail Valley Forest Health Project, a multi-year effort coordinated by the Forest Service that seeks to combat the pine beetle infestation from East Vail to Edwards. The mountain pine beetle epidemic has killed up...

TALLAHASSEE, Fla., Jan. 13 (UPI) -- A beetle imported from Asia is spreading around the southeast United States, leaving dead and dying redbay trees in its wake. The redbay ambrosia beetle is believed to have entered the country through Savannah, Ga., in 2002, probably in a wood pallet or packing case. It has spread into the Carolinas and south to Florida, where it was spotted for the first time last summer in Brevard County in central Florida, Florida Today reports.

Almost half of Colorado’s lodgepole forests are infested. Amid mountains covered by ailing, rust-colored pines, about 100 people pored over maps and discussed priorities Thursday in the battle to slow the spread of forest-killing beetles and clean up the destruction already wreaked. The Colorado Bark Beetle Cooperative is helping shape the U.S. Forest Service’s strategy for dealing with more than 1,000 square miles of trees infested by the bugs that burrow beneath a tree’s bark and sap its life. The result has been huge swaths and, in some cases, entire mountainsides of brown trees. The Forest Service, state agencies and...

An unstoppable wave could devastate 3 million acres of lodgepole pines. Mountain pine beetles are obliterating a forest that stretches from British Columbia to Mexico, and in the process are creating a hazard for fire, public safety and water supply. “What we’re looking at is an entire lodgepole pine forest dying right before our eyes,”... Severson described the problem to the Colorado Water Congress at its convention last week.... More than 22 million acres eventually will be destroyed in the American West. Meanwhile, the beetles are making their way across Canada toward the Atlantic Ocean as well. The lack of...

A frog with fluorescent purple markings and 12 kinds of dung beetles were among two dozen new species discovered in the remote plateaus of eastern Suriname, scientists said Monday. The expedition was sponsored by two mining companies hoping to excavate the area for bauxite, the raw material used to make aluminum, and it was unknown how the findings would affect their plans. Scientists discovered the species during a 2005 expedition led by the U.S.-based nonprofit Conservation International in rainforests and swamps about 80 miles southeast of Paramaribo, the capital of the South American country, organization spokesman Tom Cohen said.

(Portland, CT) DEP likely to reject proposal after deciding rare insect would be threatened.

A beetle thought to be extinct in the UK since the 1940s has been rediscovered in south Devon. The short-necked oil beetle was found by an amateur entomologist during a wildlife survey on National Trust (NT) land between Bolt Head and Bolt Tail. The beetles were last recorded at Chailey Common, Sussex in 1948. Up to 40 of the insects, which survive by hitching rides on miner bees as larvae and then eating the bees' eggs, were found at the Devon site. It's great that this oil beetle has survived against all the odds David Bullock, National Trust The beetle,...

The U.S. Forest Service has not developed national guidelines to assess the risks communities face from wildfires and is unable to ensure that the most important fire prevention projects are funded first, an independent government audit has found. And while the majority of catastrophic wildfires occur in the West, nearly 58 percent of the total acres treated in fiscal year 2004 were in the southeastern states, the report said. "The Forest Service cannot clearly identify the level of risk to communities from wildfire," it said. "It cannot demonstrate to stakeholders its accomplishments in reducing those risks with the funds provided."...

Logging trucks are again rumbling through town after a nearly 15-year hiatus. The Forest Service has reopened - or has plans to reopen - numerous drainages south of Eagle Ranch to logging... There are currently two active sales south of Eagle, with another in the works, said Cary Green, the White River National Forest's timber management assistant for the Eagle area. The 60-acre Beecher Gulch salvage timber sale, on Hardscrabble Mountain, sold in 2005, and about 500,000 board feet of timber is currently being harvested... A typical 2,000-square foot, single-family home requires about 27,000 board feet of framing lumber, paneling...

The fight to reduce fire hazards associated with beetle-killed lodgepole pines may have gained a little traction this week, as U.S. Department of Agriculture officials announced a $1 million funding boost for the Rocky Mountain region of the U.S. Forest Service, covering Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska and South Dakota. Republican Sen. Wayne Allard announced the funding Sept. 5, shortly after top administration officials flew over some of the hardest hit areas in Eagle, Summit and Grand counties to view the insect infestation first-hand. “I am pleased that the administration has responded to my repeated requests for additional funding,” said Allard,...

A mountain pine beetle infestation that has already killed off billions of trees in British Columbia is threatening to take over Alberta's jack pine, marking the start of a deadly cross-country trek. Each mountain pine beetle is the size of a grain of rice, but the voracious insects have already devoured an area of B.C.'s forest the size of Iceland. Another two million hectares in Alberta are now at risk, and the infestation could spread to Canada's boreal forest. "It likes all pine species and we've recently discovered this includes jack pine, which is a component of the boreal forest,"...

Millions of mountain pine beetles are swarming the Rocky Mountains...looking for new trees to destroy. The Colorado State Forest Service wants residents to help stop the spread of the devastating pest before the Pike and San Isabel national forests take on a brown cast like those in Summit and Grand counties. "It's currently at an epidemic level," ... Dead trees are a sign the forest is unhealthy; they also pose a fire risk. The U.S. Forest Service... Trees are succumbing by the millions. "If the beetle is successful in getting underneath the bark of the tree, mama mates and burrows...