Problem

photo courtesy of Harry Borden/Oxfam

www.independent.co.uk - August 5, 2012 - by Sarah Morrison

An unparalleled number of severe food shortages has added 43 million to the number of people going hungry worldwide this year. And millions of children are now at risk of acute malnutrition, charities are warning. One week ahead of David Cameron's "hunger summit", they say that unless action is taken urgently, many more could fall victim.

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Image: New Delhi train passengers sit stranded in a darkened train idled by the massive power outage that swept across India on Tuesday.

Marianne Lavelle, Jeff Smith and Rebecca Byerly - July 31st, 2012 - news.nationalgeographic.com

In one of the world's worst power blackouts ever, more than 600 million people across India lost electricity Tuesday, the second massive grid failure in as many days, raising questions whether the government's failure to modernize and bolster its energy delivery system had finally left the nation at the breaking point.

Rail service was halted, streets were clogged at intersections with darkened traffic lights, and people sweltered without air conditioning in temperatures above 90°F (32°C), as authorities worked to restore power and pinpoint the cause of the problem. The outage that began Monday lasted 15 hours, and only shortly after service was restored, at 1 p.m. Tuesday, a far larger system collapse swept across the nation's northern and eastern grids.

Image: The Ecology of Disease cover, by Olaf Hajek

Jim Robbins - July 14th, 2012 - nytimes.com

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.

If we fail to understand and take care of the natural world, it can cause a breakdown of these systems and come back to haunt us in ways we know little about.

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