Way up north, another kind of oil controversy

Not many people have heard of Fort Chipewyan, Alberta, nor the Athabaskan Tar Sands. Not these days, anyway, with the Deepwater Horizon disaster spewing oil into the Gulf of Mexico. But in Fort Chipewyan, the ongoing effects of bitumen oil extraction continue as the top news of the day.

Urban planning in the Brazilian rainforest

A vast experiment in urban planning is underway in Brazil’s urban jungle metropolis of Manaus. At the center of the urban expansion is the construction of a 2.2-mile bridge that is to connect the city to industrial cities and towns across the Rio Negro—the largest left tributary of the Amazon.

Wow this is one BIG beaver dam!

It’s hard to imagine that a dam that is twice the length of Hoover Dam and is visible by satellite imagery would go unnoticed for 35 years. But then again, there aren’t that many visitors to Canada’s remote “Beaver Belt.”