May 16, 2003 Halifax, Nova Scotia - For years, marine biologists have warned that many ocean creatures are facing elimination in the largest extinction event since the dinosaurs were hit by a big asteroid. Now comes a major ten-year-long study reported in Nature this week that concludes only 10% of big ocean fish are left, compared to their populations 50 years ago. In the tropics, the guitar fish and grouper are nearly gone; off the coast of Newfoundland, the cod, haddock and halibut have never replenished; and in the open oceans the magnificent large predators - sharks, bluefin tuna, gilfish, swordfish, marlin - that have dominated for so long are down to their lowest numbers on record.
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May 14, 2003 Garching, Germany - The Hubble Space Telescope-European Coordinating Facility and European Southern Observatory in Garching, Germany, near Munich, announced in April 2003 that Hubble has discovered what might be the "ashes" from the first stars in this universe. The powerful telescope found significant iron in the light from primordial quasars only 900 million years old. The theory is that the iron is the residue, the ashes, of first generation stars that formed perhaps as early as 200 million years after the Big Bang and then died in supernova explosions that produced all the iron later recycled into the quasars. According to Wolfram Freudling who led the Hubble research, 200 million years for first star births is much earlier than previously thought.
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"[The SARS gene sequence shows] a unique coronavirus only distantly related to previously sequenced coronaviruses (in animals and humans). ...This virus may never before have circulated in the U. S. population."
- The New England Journal of Medicine, April 10, 2003
May 2, 2003 Hong Kong, China - Today, health officials in China reported another 176 new cases of the severe acute respiratory syndrome known as SARS, plus 11 more deaths. That boosts the world total to more than 6,000 cases and 402 deaths. That means the global average death rate for SARS is now about 7%. But in Toronto, Canada, which reports 147 cases and 20 deaths, the mortality rate is nearly 14%.
As new SARS cases continue to surge in the countryside around Beijing where thousands fled trying to escape the deadly virus in the nation's capitol, health authorities are afraid the death rate will climb higher in China as well.
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May 2, 2003 - The last week of April brought news from England about the first crop formations of 2003, all laid down amid the yellow flowers of early spring oilseed rape. One was in Privett, Hampshire, near Petersfield, discovered on Easter Sunday, April 20th. See: Earthfiles 04-26-03.
Another was at All Cannings near Alton Barnes in Wiltshire discovered on April 26th.
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April 29, 2003 Beijing, China - On this date, China announced nine new deaths from severe acute respiratory syndrome known as SARS and 202 new cases, bringing the country's death toll to 148 and case number to 3,303. Some medical authorities have expressed concern that given China's deliberate efforts to hide SARS patients and even deny their was a disease problem until only recently, the actual number of cases might be double or triple the current publicly reported number. The World Health Organization's advisory against nonessential travel to Beijing and China's Shanxi Province, Guangdong Province and Hong Kong remains in effect where SARS is still a serious epidemic. There, as the government tries to clean buses, public buildings, schools and hospitals, the economies have collapsed in the face of a disease that is keeping thousands of people home, either in quarantine or in fear of catching the dangerous illness.
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