living

Tree of Life
The Tree of Life in Bahrain is one of the world's loneliest trees. The mesquite tree sits at the highest point in the barren desert of Bahrain, hundreds of miles from another natural tree and is thought to have tap roots reaching hundreds of feet down to aquifers. The exact age of the tree is unknown though it's generally believed to be more than 400 years old.

Montezuma Cypress: The Tule Tree
The Tule Tree, or El Árbol del Tule, is a Montezuma cypress tree on the grounds of a church in Santa María del Tule in the Mexican state of Oaxaca. It measures more than 119 feet around but is only 116 feet high (To put that in perspective, the General Sherman is 275 feet high and 102 feet around). It's believed that the tree is about 2,000 years old. Local legend holds that the tree was planted 1,400 years ago by a priest of the Aztec storm god. According to National Geographic, it is the inspiration for an annual festival in Oaxaca celebrated on the second Monday of October.

Quaking aspen: Pando  read more »

Meghan McCain has come out against the controversial Arizona anti-illegal immigration law, despite her father's - Sen. John McCain - clear defense of it.

A demonstrator is taken into custody for blocking a street at a federal detention center in Broadview, Ill., to stop deportations from being carried out. Some protesters chanted “Illinois is not Arizona”.

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It's McCain vs. McCain. Meghan McCain criticizes Arizona's anti-illegal immigrant law, as dad Sen. John McCain defends it. As Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) makes the rounds on television, standing up for the Arizona immigration law that has sparked protests and outrage nationwide, his daughter calls it "a license to discriminate." "Let me say up-front that I do not support the bill that was signed by Governor Jan Brewer," Meghan McCain wrote in her Daily Beast blog on Wednesday. "I believe it gives the state police a license to discriminate, and also, in many ways, violates the civil rights of Arizona residents."

Sen. McCain, however, feels the law will not become corrupted, as his daughter fears. "I do not want any discriminatory behavior, and I've talked to a group of lawmen," the senior senator from Arizona said on CBS' "The Early Show" Tuesday. "They think they can implement this law without racial profiling."  read more »

Flood waters engulf the cars and offices of Village Collision and Automed Auto Sales on Aster Road in West Warwick, Rhode Island on April 1, 2010. The state received record rainfall earlier in the week causing flooding in many areas.

You’ll need your boat inside the mall, too.

The Rhode Island Mall in Warwick was flooded Wednesday by 2 to 3 feet of water. The mall's owner told the Providence Journal that the building, which houses about 70 stores, has never flooded in 40 years, and the retailers had very little time to protect the merchandise.

The Pawtuxet River spilled over its banks. A state of emergency was declared in Warwick, residents in Cranston are being evacuated, schools are canceled, and people were told not to flush their toilets.

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The Economist magazine calls CITES suppress- ion of debate on bluefin tuna dis- honorable: IT WAS a moment of some drama when delegates assembled in Doha came to vote on a ban in the trade in bluefin tuna on March 18th. The previous evening many represent- atives of the 175 member nations of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) had been at a reception at the Japanese embassy. Prominent on the menu was bluefin tuna sushi. On the agenda the next day at the CITES meeting was a proposal to list the bluefin tuna as sufficiently endangered that it would qualify for a complete ban in the trade of the species (The Economist supports such a ban).  read more »

Researchers believe the Arctic Ocean seabed is thawing in patches and releasing greenhouse gases. Methane, trapped in the permafrost, 25 times more powerful than carbon dioxide, is bubbling out of the frozen arctic faster than expected.

Researchers ignite a bubble of methane on Alaska’s Steward Peninsula.

Methane is leaking from the East Siberian Arctic Shelf into the atmosphere at an alarming rate. The amount leaking from this locale is comparable to all methane from rest of the world's oceans put together. Methane is a greenhouse gas more than 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

Left: Researcher ignites a pocket of methane. Right: methane bubbles trapped in lake ice in Siberia in early autumn.

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