"WASHINGTON — With the growing conviction that the Assad family’s 42-year grip on power in Syria is coming to an end, Obama administration officials worked on contingency plans Wednesday for a collapse of the Syrian government, focusing particularly on the chemical weapons that Syria is thought to possess and that President Bashar al-Assad could try to use on opposition forces and civilians."
"Norfolk police close case and confirm the hack came from 'sophisticated' outsiders – not a University of East Anglia leak."
"Japan will on Wednesday restart its second nuclear reactor after the Fukushima crisis closed the nation's atomic power plants, even as fresh concerns surfaced about the unit's positioning near a faultline."
"A chunk of ice twice the size of Manhattan has parted from Greenland’s Petermann glacier, a break researchers at the University of Delaware and Canadian Ice Service attributed to warmer ocean temperatures."
"There’s a term biologists and economists use these days -- ecosystem services -- which refers to the many ways nature supports the human endeavor. Forests filter the water we drink, for example, and birds and bees pollinate crops, both of which have substantial economic as well as biological value."
"Senior environment officials from the United States, Mexico and Canada meeting in New Orleans on Wednesday were briefed on environmental concerns facing homeland communities, including indoor air pollution in Alaska, protecting freshwater sources from sewage and other pollutants in Mexico, and the impact of climate change already on First Nation villages along the Arctic Circle."
"For salmon trying to make it upriver to spawn before a hot summer hits, slow and steady loses the evolutionary race. Salmon DNA records stretching back over 30 years show that nature has increasingly selected for fish that migrate from the ocean earlier in the year. It is among the first pieces of genetic evidence that climate change is driving the evolution of a species."
"The U.S. has long used more energy for air conditioning than all other nations combined. But as demand increases in the world’s warmer regions, global energy consumption for air conditioning is expected to continue to rise dramatically and could have a major impact on climate change."
"This week a major conference in Cairns, Australia, is focusing on threats to coral reefs. Across the globe, reefs have been savaged by rising sea temperatures, overfishing, pollution and ocean acidification – a phenomenon related to rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere that make it difficult for creatures to build their shells and skeletons."
"For 80-year-old grandmother Espirita Lima Bautista, breathing while cooking over her kitchen hearth is like inhaling the second-hand soot of 400 cigarettes."
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