Oil nay, nuclear yea鈥�
Big oil took a hit and nuclear got a boost from US president Barack Obama鈥檚 budget proposal. It calls for a $36 billion increase in loan guarantees for nuclear power plants and cuts $36.5 billion in subsidies to oil and natural gas companies over 10 years. If approved by Congress, the money could be used to finance six new nuclear power plants.
鈥ut not in Yucca
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The US is finally abandoning plans to store high-level nuclear waste in an underground repository in Yucca mountain in Nevada, having put the programme on hold last year after a decade of local opposition. The waste will now be stored above ground for the foreseeable future.
A whole lotta vaccine
An 鈥渦nprecedented鈥� donation of $10 billion towards vaccine research and delivery could dramatically reduce child mortality, says the World 91色情片 Organization. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation pledged to donate the sum over the next decade, to protect children in poor countries against big killers such as diarrhoea and pneumonia.
Finch bucks evolution
Things are looking up for the rarest of Darwin鈥檚 13 finches. A three-year programme to kill black rats on Isabela Island in the Galapagos has resulted in fewer nests being raided (Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, vol 365, p 1). Researchers have seen yearling mangrove finches for the first time in 10 years.
Autism paper dumped
The discredited 1998 paper linking the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine to autism has been retracted by The Lancet. The journal cited falsehoods that were exposed last week by the UK General Medical Council following a lengthy investigation of lead author Andrew Wakefield and two co-authors.