Free Republic

This is the moment workers connected the two sides of the world's longest sea bridge - seven years after building first began. The last steel box girder was installed for the crossing on Wednesday, which spans the estuary of the Pearl River connecting Hong Kong and China. The project, called Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge is 14 miles long and also includes an underwater tunnel. Construction of the Y-shaped bridge began in 2009 at a cost of 100 billion yuan ($15billion). And when the bridge opens to traffic, it will shorten the distance between Hong Kong, Zhuhau and Macao. It will officially...

Excerpts: "What we captured in 2001 was the loss of those mussels and implications for an entire ecosystem," said Brown University ecologist Andrew Altieri, who with biology professor Jon Witman wrote the study published in the March issue of Ecology. "That's instructive for what historic and future losses might be for the Chesapeake." Altieri calculated that the [mussel] reefs were processing the [Narragansett] bay's entire water volume once every 20 days, even though they covered less than 1 percent of the bay floor. Within days, a hypoxic episode triggered by warm weather, low wind and the usual nutrients contributed to...

WASHINGTON (AP) - A ragged fence and a canyon called Smugglers Gulch mark the westernmost stretch of the California-Mexico border, a favorite crossing point for illegal immigrants and drug runners. ...Now supporters may be getting closer to victory. A provision in an immigration bill expected to pass the House next week would give the homeland security secretary authority to move forward with the project regardless of any laws that stand in the way, and would bar courts from hearing lawsuits against it. "We need to get this thing done, and we need to do it for security reasons, and at...

'Lost river' could rewrite history books February 19 2002 at 08:33AM Madras India, - The discovery of an ancient city on the seabed off India's western coast has scientists salivating at the prospect of a fundamental rewrite in the chronology of ancient human society. Preliminary tests have suggested the site in the Gulf of Cambay off Gujarat state could date as far back as 7 500 BC, several thousand years older than what were previously known to be the first significant urban settlements. The discovery was made purely by chance last year as oceanographers from the National Institute of ...

Mixed Messages Seen in Puget Sound's Health OLYMPIA, Washington, April 23, 2002 (ENS) - A new report on the health of Washington's Puget Sound finds strong signs of improvement, but also signals of problems affecting the overall ecosystem. Today, the Puget Sound Water Quality Action Team issued its third biennial report on the health of the Sound, "Puget Sound's Health 2002." The report condenses data from several state and federal government organizations on 2,800 square miles of inland marine waters and 2,500 miles of Puget Sound shoreline. The report also looks at 200 species of fish, 26 kinds of...