FISHING REPRIEVE
The fishing fleets of Europe have been thrown a slender lifeline. Independent scientists recommended last month that cod, haddock and whiting fisheries be closed to allow depleted stocks to recover. Scientific experts advising the European Commission strongly backed the proposals in a meeting this week, but also suggested an alternative to a total ban that would allow limited catches to continue.
NEWTON BOOK THEFT
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A precious copy of Isaac Newton鈥檚 Principia Mathematica was stolen from Russia鈥檚 National Library in St Petersburg last week. Worldwide there are only around 200 first editions of the book, in which Newton explains his laws of motion and gravity. It could fetch more than 拢200,000 on the open market.
CITY SLICKERS
City types appear to have better sperm than their country cousins. When Shanna Swan of the University of Missouri in Columbia examined sperm from 512 fertile men, she found that those from New York, Minneapolis and Los Angeles produced twice as many on average as those from rural Missouri. The 鈥渃ountry鈥� sperm were less mobile as well. She speculates in a forthcoming paper for Environmental Health Perspectives that exposure to agrochemicals is a possible explanation.