Situation Nornal
UK-- The futuristic world of the Terminator movies - where large, implacable combat machines wage war on humans - is coming a little bit closer. CyberLife, the company that created the on-line computerized life forms known as "norns" (once created, they socialize and breed on their own, learning and evolving as they go) has joined forces with the British Ministry of Defense. The MOD placed virtual norn "pilots" inside computerized virtual fighter jets. According to Newsweek, the tiny Terminators quickly learned how to "evade attackers, shoot down enemy aircraft and complete reconnaissance missions." CyberLife's Anil Malhorta told Newsweek, "We're building them their own miniature plane to pilot in the real world. They'll be taking off in about six months."

Deserts in Italy?
ITALY -- La Stampa warns that "within just a few decades, 27 percent of [Italy] could become scorched earth" as global warming sends a band of aridity northward. Italy's Committee for the Fight Against the Desert claims that the desertification affecting the southern regions of Sicily, Sardinia, Apulia, Basilicata and Calabria is now causing a loss of fertility in the historically productive growing regions of the north.

Bulk Mail Gobbles Forests
US -- University of Washington forester Scot Zens notes that the amount of harvestable timber in US forests has been in decline for the last ten years. Meanwhile, the growth of new trees has nearly stopped in some forests due to pollution and acid rain. Nonetheless, the US Postal Service reports that it shipped 4.6 million tons of bulk business mail to customers last year - more than a thousand pieces of junk business mail for every woman, man and child in the US. This bulk mail onslaught consumes an estimated 100 million trees each year.

Soggy Stratospheres
US -- Research satellites have found a new source of global warming - a growing band of water vapor 40 to 60 kilometers above the Earth. The Journal of Geophysical Research reports that increasing concentrations of methane are reaching the area between the upper stratosphere and lower mesosphere where the gas is converted into water vapor. Simultaneously, climate warming over the tropics has forced more water into the lower regions of the stratosphere. Because water vapor can trap heat, a soggier stratosphere can accelerate global warming.

Bio-Lab Spuds Beastly to Beetles
SCOTLAND -- Bio-engineered potatoes designed to fight off aphid attacks have shown a shocking side-effect. Ladybugs, nature's aphid-predators, are dying after feasting on aphids that have dined on the poisoned spuds. According to Scottish researchers, ladybugs that feed on the affected aphids are less fertile and live only half as long as normal. The Canadian magazine Alternatives Journal notes that the findings confirm fears that "non-target species can be harmed by genetically altered crops."

Primates on Prozac
UK -- Britain's zookeepers have come under fire for doping their stir-crazy animals with tranquilizers. The Colchester Zoo confessed to putting an orang-utan on Prozac and an Asiatic black bear on Valium. "It's a sad situation where captive animals… have to be given drugs to enable them to cope with their existence," declared Captive Animals' Protection Society Director Diane Westwood. Some zoo officials admitted that their animals derived "no benefit at all" from the drugs. What did seem to work, however, was enlarging the animals' quarters and improving their diets.

Cavity-free and Fluoride-free
JAPAN -- A new fluoride-free toothpaste has taken Japan by storm. Some 40 million tubes of Apagard-M were sold last year and Sangei, the company that makes it, has seen sales grow more than 100 percent. Apagard-M uses hydroxyapatite (calcium phosphate) instead of fluoride compounds to recalcify and strengthen the teeth. Unlike fluoride, which can stain and mottle dental enamel, hydroxyapatite adds a new layer of calcium and can whiten teeth. A 120-gram tube of Sangei's medicinal toothpaste sells for $21. Look Japan reports Sangei hopes to win approval to sell Apagard-M in the US within the next few years.

Smog from the Middle Kingdom
CHINA -- Putting China's population into gas-burning cars will put the world on the road to ruin, warns the journal Geophysical Research Letters. If 400 million of China's swelling population take to the road over the next 50 years, computer simulations show the resulting plume of tailpipe exhaust will "bathe the entire western Pacific in ozone." The pall of pollution could even spread to North America. If China joins the auto age, planet-warming emissions of carbon dioxide are expected to rise by 30 percent. Unfortunately, the White House is promoting US auto sales and the automobilization of the Third World.

An Ocean of Rubble
JAPAN -- After a two-year study of sea-borne flotsam and jetsam, Professor Haruo Ogi of Hokkaido University's fisheries department reports that an average square-kilometer of ocean contains 490,000 pieces of plastic debris, while some regions hold nearly 10 million bits of bobbing plastic per square-kilometer. Ogi fears the marine ecosystem is being slowly poisoned as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and other chemicals leach out of the plastic and into the ocean waters.

What's in that Can of Doggu Fudo?
JAPAN -- Half of Japan's 10.5 million dogs are sick and the authors of a book called Kainushi ga Shiranai Doggu Fudo no Nakami ("Pet Owners Don't Know What Is In Dog Food") think they know why: The ingredients in canned pet food are causing allergies, cancer and other canine illnesses. According to the Asahi Evening News Japan's pet food industry is completely unregulated and "there are no laws or restrictions on what can be put into pet food." Japan's pet food manufactures have assured the media that their cans of doggu fudo "comply with American standards." (For a description of those "American standards," see "Food Pets Die For" [Fall '97 EIJ].)

Germany's Leukemia Cover-Up
GERMANY -- Last November, Environment Minister Angela Merkel announced that a major leukemia study showed no increased health risk to children living near nuclear powerplants. But in December, scientists in Schleswig-Holstein consulted the same tables and discovered that children living within five kilometers of nuclear reactors were 2.87 times more likely to develop leukemia. The newspaper Die Tageszeitung found that the government's statistics had been literally "watered down" by averaging in a coastal reactor where 60 percent of the exposure radius fell over the Baltic Sea. In some cases, children under 15 years of age were actually five times more likely to suffer from leukemia if they lived within five kilometers of a reactor.