Coffee and Provocation

Hot Coffee, Mississippi

Dogs Protecting Elephants
Sniffer dogs are being used to thwart elephant ivory smuggling at the Nairobi airport.

Without a WarningGerman discount supermarket Lidl is recalling its own brand tinned herring fillets in the UK because they do not warn shoppers that they may contain fish.

Another Fraud, This Time About Food
The folks at the Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic are angry that fake expiration dates on food results in billions of pounds of good food being tossed out. The same is true for many prescription medicines, such as antibiotics in pill form, which have been shown to be good for a decade or more past their expiration date. With food, as with drugs, expiration dates are entirely unregulated, which means food and drugs manufacturers can print whatever they want on a container in order to encourage you to throw good product in the trash so that you will buy more.  Watch the Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic's new film:  Not Really Expired.

The Mice Feel Like Crap
Mice who'd received fecal transplants from depressed humans exhibited signs of "depressive-like behavior," indicating that depression may be influenced, or even caused, by the trillions of microbes in our guts.

Not Dead Yet 
Chicago's Field Museum reports that it found 1,820 species -- including 19 previously unknown species -- in just 17 days in a previously biologically-unexplored section of the Peruvian Amazon. Like every other part of the Amazon, the area in question is threatened by illegal mining and logging.

Except for the Kestrel
Raptor populations have been on the rise since DDT was banned in the 1970s — except for the American Kestrel which has lost nest cavities to other birds and grasshopper food sources to pesticides.