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This started as a question to myself: "I wonder if there are sand dunes in northern climates?" Googling on "sand dunes" + Canada revealed another heretofore unknown (at least to me) geological location -- Athabasca Sand Dunes in Saskatchewan. I've heard of Athabasca before in association with tar sands, but this is a the first time I'd heard of a provincial Athabasca Sand Dunes Park. The Web site says that is only accessible by air. So I'm guessing not a lot of people have been there or visit there. Since this is very new to me and perhaps others, first...

Norwegian oil giant Statoil said Thursday it was exiting its oil sands projects in Canada, booking a loss, in a move hailed by environmental activists. The group said it had reached an agreement to sell its 100-percent stake in the Kai Kos Dehseh (KKD) oil sands projects in the province of Alberta, to the Athabasca Oil Corporation of Canada for CAD$832 million (5.4 billion kroner, $626 million, €597 million). Following the divestment, Statoil will not operate any oil sands projects, a business area the deepwater oil specialist had moved into to great dismay of analysts. Statoil will take a loss...

Scientists went to work digging for fossils at La Brea Tar Pits, digging the tooth of a 5-foot (1.5-meter) dire wolf and the toe of a sabertooth tiger from the sticky prehistoric asphalt near downtown Los Angeles. About 10,000 years before the arrival of mammoth traffic jams in the second-largest U.S. city, the two beasts likely got stuck in the goo while hunting a camel, horse or ground sloth, said John Harris, chief curator and head of vertebrate studies at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, which oversees the site. ''It's one of the, if not the, richest...

On March 17, Media Life Magazine published an article about the difficulties facing the Washington Post, which recently announced that it would have to eliminate some eighty positions over the next year, or nearly 10% of its editors and reporters. The key reason for the Post’s decline is a relentless drop in paying customers – daily subscriptions have fallen 17% in the last ten years, from 816,474 in 1995 to 678,779 in 2005. Media Life was careful not to suggest that the paper bears any responsibility for its own problems, describing the Post as "one of America’s most celebrated newspapers,...

Radio Abeokuta, a Web site dedicated to the promotion of the Yoruba language and culture in Nigeria, recently started carrying video news stories from Reuters Group PLC. It didn't conduct a word of negotiations with the British news giant. It simply filled out a form on the Reuters Web site. So did a news site in the Slovak Republic and an American political blog called Wizbang, among more than 120 others. This simple transaction, which has big implications for the media business, was made courtesy of a small Cambridge, Mass., start-up business called Brightcove Inc. With backing from Time Warner...

NEW YORK Advance Publications' Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J. and The Times of Trenton, N.J., are planning to offer buyout packages to newsroom and business-side employees. Star-Ledger Publisher George Arwady would not disclose details of the offers, or say how many employees would be eligible, but said the information would be presented to workers on Wednesday and would affect non-union employees. In addition, the two publications will combine printing operations and several business functions in an effort to cut costs, Arwady said. "Since the Star-Ledger and the Times perform the same kind of tasks with similar equipment, putting together certain operations...

DOW JONES NEWSWIRES December 13, 2005 4:42 p.m. As part of a reorganization announced Tuesday, Time Warner Inc.'s Time Inc. unit said it plans to lay off 105 employees, including several senior executives. The job cuts are effective Dec. 31, a Time spokeswoman said. Two members of Time's senior management team -- former CFO Richard Atkinson and advertising-sales chief Jack Haire -- are among those whose jobs will be cut, according to a memo sent to staff by Time Chairman and Chief Executive Ann Moore. Other senior executives leaving the company are Eileen Naughton and David Kieselstein of the parenting...

Sunken Fires Menace Land and Climate January 15, 2002 Fires are burning in thousands of underground coal seams from Pennsylvania to Mongolia, releasing toxic gases, adding millions of tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and baking the earth until vegetation shrivels and the land sinks. Scientists and government agencies are starting to use heat-sensing satellites to map the fires and try new ways to extinguish them. But in many instances -- particularly in Asia -- they are so widespread and stubborn that miners simply work around the flames. There is geological evidence that grassland and forest fires, lightning...