"In the menagerie of Craig Venter’s imagination, tiny bugs will save the world. They will be custom bugs, designer bugs -- bugs that only Venter can create. He will mix them up in his private laboratory from bits and pieces of DNA, and then he will release them into the air and the water, into smokestacks and oil spills, hospitals and factories and your house. "
"Chagas disease, a tropical illness that is transmitted by biting insects, may pose a major unseen threat to poor populations in the Americas and Europe, according to a report published May 29 in the journal PLoS."
"LONDON -- Plants and shrubs have colonised parts of the Arctic tundra in recent decades growing into small trees, a scientific study found, adding the change may lead to an increase in global warming pressures if replicated on a wider scale."
"At 58, retired machinist Bruce Revers is tethered to his oxygen machines -- a wall unit when he’s at home, a portable tank when he’s out. The simple act of walking to the curb to pick up his newspaper is a grind."
Two scientists say BP's aggressive efforts to subpoena e-mails related to their estimate of the oil flow rate during the 2010 Deepwater Horizon Gulf oil spill invade their privacy and threaten the integrity of the scientific deliberative process.
"UNITED NATIONS -- A five-year report out [Thursday] from a U.N. refugee agency goes to great lengths to say climate change is likely to increase human displacement among nations. What is less clear in the report is what can be done about it."
"The White House [Thursday] night issued a veto threat to a pending House spending bill to fund the Department of Energy, the Army Corps of Engineers and other agencies, citing cuts to clean energy promotion and other DOE priorities and 'policy riders' that would reopen the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste depository, undo federal building efficiency requirements and block guidance on the Clean Water Act."
"A federal appeals court [Friday] asked the Department of Energy to explain why it should be able to continue to collect fees for its nuclear waste fund despite the fact that there is no operating national repository."
"LOS ANGELES -- Years of ferocious storms have threatened to gnaw away the western tip of a popular beachfront park two hours drive north of Los Angeles. Instead of building a 500-foot-long wooden defense next to the pier to tame the tide, the latest thinking is to flee."
"MANHATTAN, Kansas -- The site of a proposed facility to fight animal diseases, including those which could be spread by bioterrorists, is little more than a parking lot today because of safety and budget concerns."
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