No easy ride
A judge blocked three students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from telling the DEFCON computer hackers鈥� meeting in Las Vegas last weekend about flaws in the electronic fare systems used by public transport in Boston, London, Beijing, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro. Copies of the students鈥� presentation slides have since appeared on numerous websites.
Flying on empty
Pilots are being forced to fly with uncomfortably low fuel levels because of cost-cutting by airlines, according to the Aviation Safety Reporting System database maintained by NASA. The system, which allows pilots to file concerns anonymously, has received numerous reports on the practice.
Vampire death riddle
Deaths of at least 38 members of the remote Warao tribe in Venezuela have been blamed on rabies, transmitted by bites from vampire bats. But although the symptoms broadly match those of rabies, the bats seldom bite humans and the victims have no reported bite marks, so some hitherto unidentified disease may be to blame.
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Killer bird flu in Africa
An unusually deadly strain of bird flu, never before seen in Africa, has been killing poultry in Nigeria, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization reported on Monday. The FAO says that although the source of the outbreak remains a mystery, the most likely reason for its spread is illegal transportation of poultry rather than contact with infected migrating wild birds.
Oil threat to Amazon
Swathes of virgin Amazonian rainforest totalling almost the area of Texas and rich in species are threatened by 180 proposed exploration projects for oil and gas, warns a survey in the online journal PLoS ONE (). The areas include pristine forest in Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and western Brazil.