The Good News Roundup

Campuses compete to cut emissions
The Ecovillage student housing complex at Kentucky’s tiny Berea college (shown above) is a group of 32 new energy-efficient townhouses fitted with recycled carpeting and low-flush toilets, and surrounded with organic gardens maintained by the student residents. Berea is featured in the Washington Post as one small example in a sea change sweeping American campuses large and small – the switch to environmentally sustainable practices. Yale and Harvard are struggling to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions, while Tufts University is determined to dramatically exceed the Kyoto protocol’s requirements for greenhouse gas reductions. Will upcoming editions of the national college rankings include rankings by the ecological footprint?

Rwanda celebrates 30 gorilla births
Inaugerating a new tradition at Volcanoes National Park, Rwanda’s president convened villagers, conservation workers and tourists to choose names for 30 baby mountain gorillas in the park. “The names included Kunga (peacemaker); Izubar (sun); Isoni (shy); Ubufatanye (cooperation); Kubana (living together); Icyerekezo (vision); Inkurwa (loved); and Itsinzi (victory).” The local community held a warm celebration for the babies, with traditional dances and poetry readings. As Rwanda slowly recovers from the aftermath of civil war, eco-tourism represents a focus of hope for economic recovery.

Four-legged fire crackers
Chomping through dense, dry grass and brush throughout California, thousands of goats have been deployed this summer to reduce wildfire hazards after an unusually wet winter that fuelled dangerously high growth in the flammable groundcover. Herds of hundreds shepherded by dogs are used in rural areas, while in San Francisco, a small troupe supplied by Goats R Us is keeping city reservoirs tidy as it eats away flammable brush. The goats are part of a “broader effort to prevent a repeat”:http://www.nfpa.org/itemDetail.asp?categoryID=703&itemID=19667&URL=Publications/NFPA%20Journal®/March%20/%20April%202004/Features&cookie%5Ftest=1 of last year’s devastating wildfires.

Reforming the Range
Scientists and ranchers are pulling together to come up with sustainable year-round forage systems that benefit wildlife and contribute to carbon sequestration in the Great Plains, at a new 4,300 acre open range research station in Oklahoma. Researchers aim at “including the Southern Plains’ soils, plants, insects and animals in a comprehensive plan for linking and improving the region’s agriculture, ecology and culture.” On another front, Washington State University researchers are pursuing ways of reducing agricultural greenhouse gas emissions – through no-till seeding, manure composting to trap carbon, and ditching irrigation and fertilizing methods that release nitrous oxides. No-till farming further benefits farmers by reducing soil erosion and water loss, enabling a switch from fallow cropping to crop rotation, which could in turn benefit soil chemistry if farmers rotate through nitrogen-fixing crops that replenish nutrients used by their mainstays.

Free Trade Turn-around
A U.S. bill to enable duty-free imports of ready-made goods from six Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and Sri Lanka was approved by the leaders of business chambers and associations in the affected Asian-Pacific nations, at a LDC conference in Bangladesh. The treaty could reverse the regressive current practice of giving developed countries a heavily subsidised edge on the market. “With an export of $2.40 billion to the US market, Bangladeshi products are charged a $331 million tariff. By contrast, French exports are charged only $330 million for a $24.2 billion exports,” said Foreign Minister M. Morshed Khan.

Italy Wants to Arrest Rendition Agents
The CIA’s rendition policy (rendering suspects to Egypt, Uzbekistan, or other countries where torture is used in interrogations) has generated far too little outrage at home – but Italians aren’t putting up with the practice on their turf. Friday, and Italian judge “ordered the arrests of 13 CIA officers for secretly transporting a Muslim preacher from Italy to Egypt as part of U.S. anti-terrorism efforts – a rare public objection to the practice by a close American ally,” reports for the AP.

Common Virus Kills Cancer
A common and harmless virus (estimated to infect around 80% of the human population) has been shown to destroy cancer cells, offering a new potential wide-ranging cancer therapy. Women infected with adeno-associated virus type 2, or AAV-2, are less likely to develop cervical cancer from HPV. Lab tests have shown that AAV-2 also kills breast, prostate and squamous cell tumor cells (all are types of epithelial cells). “So many cancer therapies are as poisonous to healthy cells as they are to cancer cells. A therapy that is able to distinguish between healthy and cancer cells could be less difficult to endure for those with cancer,” said microbiology professor Craig Meyers of Penn State College of Medicine.

Posted by gavin_rose
Savanna Reid is an environmental student writing in Las Vegas, originally from Tulsa, Oklahoma.

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