• blogTO shares photos of old Toronto department stores.
• Discover's Citizen Science Salon reports on how people are facing California seals and sea lions faced with famine.
• D-Brief warns people to be cautious about the newest claim of detections of extraterrestrial intelligence.
• The Dragon's Gaze reports on the discovery through microlensing of a ( Read more... )

Anti-nuclear activist Zach Ruiter writes about the latest campaign against the nuclear processing plant on Lansdowne just north of Dupont, just west of me.

Toronto's west end has a new nuclear neighbour. General Electric Hitachi announced August 19 that it plans to sell its Canadian nuclear operations, including its uranium pellet plant on ( Read more... )

• The BBC reports from Asmara, Eritrea's capital, on the eve of war.
• Bloomberg notes the economic problems of Hong Kong and Singapore, looks at the final day of campaigning in the Brexit referendum, and notes the interim president of Brazil's desire to oust Rousseff.
• Bloomberg View takes issue with the rejection of nuclear energy in the name of the ( Read more... )

• Bloomberg looks at Argentina's push for renewable energy, reports on Rosatom's interest in developing South Africa as an entry into the African nuclear market, writes about China's opposition to anything remotely like separatism in Hong Kong, and looks at Poland's demand for an apology for Bill Clinton critical of the new government.
• Bloomberg View ( Read more... )

• The Big Picture shares photos of a Shanghai neighbourhood that refuses to sell out to developers.
James Bow rates California rail.
• Centauri Dreams looks at the large dwarf planet 2007 OR10.
• Dangerous Minds notes a campaign by a 9/11 conspiracy theorist to raise funds to buy an airplane and a building.
• The Dragon's Gaze looks at the Kepler-223 system.
• ( Read more... )

• Bloomberg notes two former British intelligence chiefs saying that the United Kingdom is safer within the European Union than without, wonders if Saudi Arabia will be able to accept the economic shocks involved in transitioning away from oil, suggests South Australia could profit hugely from storing nuclear waste, and shares one journalist's ( Read more... )

• Bloomberg notes the European Parliament's criticism of Turkey's democratic deficit, reports the Czech foreign minister's statement that Brexit propagandists are distorting the reality, reports on Putin's preparation for upcoming national elections, and looks at an American nuclear engineer accused of transferring technology to China.
• CBC reports on ( Read more... )

• Bloomberg notes an unexpected housing shortage in the Midwest, and considers the impact of the Panama scandal on the British Virgin Islands' economic model.
• Bloomberg View calls for better regulation of the high seas, suggests (from the example of Yugoslav refugees in Denmark) that low-skilled immigrants can be good for working classes, and notes ( Read more... )

• Centauri Dreams looks at the nascent planets of HL Tauri, notes the water ice mountains of Titan, and notes the implications of red dwarfs for SETI searches.
• Discover's The Crux looks at the moving frontiers of nuclear fusion research.
• D-Brief suggests the Moon has a critical influence on Earth's magnetic field and notes a new effort to track down ( Read more... )

Wired's Nick Stockton notes the interest of Russia's Roscosmos in developing nuclear thermal rocketry to make quick manned interplanetary flights. Something like this may indeed be needed for crewed interplanetary flight to be viable. The central prbolem is one of funding.

Nuclear thermal is but one flavor of nuclear propulsion. Rosatom did not ( Read more... )