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The flame is lit from the rays of the sun, representing 'purity', by a 'high priestess' who captures the morning sun's rays in a parabolic mirror.

The ceremony comes amid political and economic turmoil in the home of the Ancient Olympics, where a week-long leg of the relay will be held.

The flame flies to Britain on 18 May for a 70-day relay around the UK.

The lighting ceremony takes place in front of the ruins of the Temple of Hera from 11:30 local time (09:30BST).

The flame - an Olympic symbol meant to represent purity because it comes from the sun - is then placed in an urn and taken to the stadium where the ancient Olympic Games were staged.

There, it will light the London 2012 torch of Liverpool-born Greek world champion 10km swimmer Spyros Gianniotis, who will carry it on the first leg of the relay around Greece. He will pass it on to Alex Loukos, 19, the first British torchbearer, a boxer and, in 2005, one of a delegation of east London schoolchildren who travelled to Singapore as part of London's final bid for the Games.

The torch is due to travel 2,900kms (1,800 miles) through the country, carried by 500 torchbearers, on a route circling the country and traveling out to Crete.  read more »

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Extreme Weather USA: 2012 Kicks Off With Record Heat, Tornadoes & Drought
Yesterday, a dozen tornadoes ripped through Dallas, spurring panic in a highly populated, 6 million-strong metropolitan area. The footage captured by news helicopters was dramatic—semi trucks and trees were hurled into the air like newspapers tossed from a malevolent paperboy.

But the fleet of Texan tornadoes only marks the latest in a year that has already been packed with extreme weather—we've had record-hot winter months, unusually early tornadoes in the midwest, and states wracked with drought. Here's a closer look.

Tornadoes

There was nothing tremendously out of the ordinary about the tornadoes that hit Dallas, but climatologists were concerned about the spate of twisters that swept through Kentucky, Indiana, and three other states in early March. Those tornadoes killed 39 people and exacted untold property damage to homes and buildings across the region.

And tornado season doesn't usually begin until April, leading climate scientists to link the warmer weather to earlier (and potentially longer) seasons. Here's Joe Romm:  read more »

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Jan. 22, 2012 - Solar storm sparks dazzling northern lights
NASA observed a flare Sunday night at 11 p.m. EST Jan. 22, 2012, shows a solar flare erupting on the Sun's northeastern hemisphere, the strongest solar storm in more than six years, bombarding Earth with radiation with more to come. The biggest concern from the speedy eruption is the radiation, which arrived on Earth an hour later and will likely continue through Wednesday. It's mostly an issue for astronauts' health and satellite disruptions. It can cause communication problems for airplanes that go over the poles. Scientists have been expecting solar eruptions to become more intense as the sun enters a more active phase of its 11-year cycle, with an expected peak in 2013.  read more »

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This Google Earth Tour, narrated by Dan Laffoley, Marine Vice Chair of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)'s World Commission on Protected Areas, follows the migrations of whales above and below the surface and visits some of the key marine protected areas and sanctuaries for whales around the world. Join the blue whale in the US national marine sanctuaries off California and journey to the proposed Costa Rica Dome Marine Protected Area in the Eastern Tropical Pacific, one of the key areas being proposed as part of the "Homes for Whales" project of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society. Follow the humpbacks on migration, from their breeding grounds to the feeding areas in the North Atlantic around the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary, and visit one of the most recent protected areas, the Agoa Sanctuary in the French Caribbean. This animated Google Earth Tour was first presented as part of a keynote lecture by Dan Laffoley (IUCN) at the opening of the 2nd International Conference on Marine Mammal Protected Areas (ICMMPA) on 7 November 2011 in the Atrium, Fort-de-France, Martinique. It was prepared with the help of Jenifer Austin Foulkes (Google), Charlotte Vick (Sylvia Earle Alliance/Mission Blue) and Erich Hoyt (Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society/IUCN).

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*Update Nov. 6, 2011 - "Brazil's Senate passed a landmark reform of the country's land law on Dec. 6, 2011... could spark a new wave of deforestation in the Amazon region"

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These are among the most beautiful photographs ever taken - and the ugliest: aerial images show the damage caused by industrial pollution, but they also capture the striking vivid colours created by toxic waste. "Red mud" bauxite waste from aluminium production containing significant amounts of heavy metal contamination, in Darrow, Louisiana.  read more »

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Palestinian children stand to form Pablo Picasso's Dove of Peace as part of a project by British aerial artist John Quigley and the United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA), at the foot of the Mount of Temptation in the West Bank city of Jericho November 25, 2011. It took some 1000 children from United Nations schools to create the project produced as part of the "Peace on Earth" project, a global musical prayer for peace which will be broadcast globally from Bethlehem's Manger Square on Christmas day, a U.N. press release said.

Palestinian pupils at UN schools form group image as dove of peace
25 November 2011 - Hundreds of children from United Nations-run schools in the Jericho area of the occupied Palestinian territory today created a massive aerial image jointly with the renowned artist John Quigley to send out a peace message to the world.  read more »