• Wind farm in China to be country's largest
• World's climate negotiators start work on 'Kyoto II'
• Lights out for Asia in 'Earth Hour'

• Science Daily reports: Transcendental Meditation can lower blood pressure
• Maharishi School students in Iowa, USA win four international photography awards
• Prime Minister of the Global Country of World Peace gives introduction to the Unified Field conference series - Part I

• Diesel fumes can affect your brain, Dutch scientists say
• Egypt: Nile Delta under threat starting 2020 - minister
• Rain forests fall at 'alarming' rate

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Positive Trends
10 Short Summaries of Top Stories

Wind farm in China to be country's largest
1 April 2008 - China's Huaneng Group will start in June building the country's largest wind farm of 300 megawatts, a Chinese paper said, as the world's second-largest energy user seeks to grow its tiny renewables sector. The project plans a total of 200 turbines to be erected in a 100-square-kilometre area in Fuxin city of northeast Liaoning province. China, keen to boost the use of clean energy and cut its heavy reliance on coal, earlier this month doubled its target for installed wind power capacity. (more)

World's climate negotiators start work on 'Kyoto II'
1 April 2008 - Scientists and officials from across the world meet in Thailand this week for the first formal talks in the long process of drawing up a replacement for the Kyoto climate change pact by the end of 2009. Around 190 nations agreed in Bali last year to start the two-year negotiations to replace Kyoto, which only binds 37 rich nations to cut emissions of greenhouse gases by an average of five per cent from 1990 levels by 2012. UN climate experts want the new pact to impose curbs on all countries. (more)

Lights out for Asia in 'Earth Hour'
30 March 2008 - Sydney's iconic Opera House and Bangkok's famous Wat Arun Buddhist temple went dark Saturday night as cities around the world turned off their lights for a campaign to raise awareness of climate change. (more)

World: Switch off, save planet message goes global
30 March 2008 - People switched off lights around the world on Saturday, dimming buildings, hotels, and restaurants to show concern with global warming. More than 380 towns and cities and 3,500 businesses in 35 countries signed up for the campaign that is in its second year after it began in 2007 in Sydney alone. (more)

Cities go dark in worldwide green effort
29 March 2008 - Lights dimmed and flickered out in New Zealand and Fiji on Saturday as the two countries became the first to launch Earth Hour, a global campaign to raise awareness about climate change. Hundreds of cities and towns in more than 35 nations promised to join them, organizers said. (more)

Spending money on others brings happiness, study finds
22 March 2008 - Spending as little as $5 a day on someone else could significantly boost happiness, a team at the University of British Columbia and Harvard Business School found. Their experiments on more than 630 Americans showed they were measurably happier when they spent money on others. (more)

US: Bees look good so far in Ohio
22 March 2008 - In Ohio bees are plentiful this year. The numbers of honey bees surviving the winter across Ohio are up from last year by 85 per cent. The higher numbers so far this year are good news for Ohio farmers who rely on bees to pollinate more than 70 crops, including apples, strawberries, and pumpkins. (more)

A new study verifies giving is better than getting
21 March 2008 - Researchers found people who made gifts to others or to charities reported they were happier than those who didn't share, according to a report in Friday's issue of the journal Science. (more)

United States: It pays to play nice, Harvard study says
21 March 2008 - When it comes to playing games, nice guys do finish first, a new study suggests. Common game theory has held that punishment makes two equals cooperate. But when people compete in repeated games, punishment fails to deliver, said study author Martin Nowak. Co-author David Rand stated, 'It's a very positive message. In general, the thing that is most, sort of, rational and best for your own self-interest is to be nice.' (more)

United States: Steelcase supports Wege wind energy farm in Texas
21 March 2008 - Steelcase Inc, a maker of office furniture, said on Tuesday it had pledged to buy all the renewable energy credits generated by a Texas wind farm for at least five years, as part of its plan to reduce its carbon impact by 25 per cent. (more)

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Success of Maharishi's Programmes
10 Short Summaries of Top Stories

Science Daily reports: Transcendental Meditation can lower blood pressure
15 March 2008 - A new University of Kentucky study, which appears in the March issue of the American Journal of Hypertension, reports that Transcendental Meditation can effectively control high blood pressure without causing the possible negative side effects associated with anti-hypertension drugs. (more)

Maharishi School students in Iowa, USA win four international photography awards
1 March 2008 - Four photography students at the Maharishi Middle and Upper School in Fairfield, Iowa, USA recently won awards in the 2008 PIEA (Photo Imaging Education Association) International Photography Competition. The 2008 contest received 6,150 entries from 1,309 participants from 115 schools in nine countries. (more)

Prime Minister of the Global Country of World Peace gives introduction to the Unified Field conference series - Part I
23 February 2008 - On the Maharishi Channel's 'News from Around the World', Dr Bevan Morris, Prime Minister of the Global Country of World Peace, gave a live inaugural address for the launching of a new series of videotaped lectures on the Unified Field by renowned physicist Dr John Hagelin, Raja [Administrator] of Invincible America for the Global Country of World Peace. (more)

25 Unified Field Conferences are launched today in cities across Russia and Ukraine
3 February 2008 - The unique new 12-part videotaped conference series, entitled 'The Unified Field: The Key to Enlightenment, National Invincibility, and World Peace' and featuring world-renowned quantum physicist Dr John Hagelin, was launched today in the following 25 cities of Russia and Ukraine. (more)

Dr John Hagelin to present the Unified Field as the key to enlightenment, national invincibility, and world peace
3 February 2008 - A unique new 12-part videotaped conference series, entitled 'The Unified Field: The Key to Enlightenment, National Invincibility, and World Peace' and featuring world-renowned quantum physicist Dr John Hagelin, will be launched on 4 February 2008, in cities throughout the United States and around the world. (more)

India's timeless Vedic heritage: Meeting the challenges of our modern age - Part II
29 January 2008 - A series of Nobel-Prize-winning discoveries during the past quarter century have revealed a universal field of intelligence at the basis of mind and matter--the Unified Field or 'heterotic superstring.' During the meditative state, which is very easily and systematically achieved during Transcendental Meditation, human awareness opens to the direct experience of the Unified Field, resulting in a wide range of benefits. (more)

New research project in Italy to investigate EEG coherence in Transcendental Meditation and Yogic Flying
20 January 2008 - A new research project, now in the advanced planning stage at the nuclear and sub-nuclear faculty of 'La Sapenza', the oldest and largest university in Rome, will investigate increased EEG brain wave coherence during Transcendental Meditation, Yogic Flying, and higher states of consciousness. (more)

Research on EEG brain wave coherence: Visualizing Totality, Brahm, in the physiology - Part II
11 January 2008 - During a recent Global Family Chat on the Maharishi Channel, Dr Alarik Arenander, Director of the Brain Research Institute at Maharishi University of Management, Fairfield, Iowa, USA, and world expert on EEG brain wave coherence through Maharishi's Transcendental Meditation (TM) Technique, discussed how the research in this area helps us 'to visualize Totality - Brahm' in the physiology; and also presented a new area of research on EEG coherence produced by listening to Vedic recitation. (more)

Research on EEG brain wave coherence: Visualizing Totality, Brahm, in the physiology - Part I
10 January 2008 - During a recent Global Family Chat on the Maharishi Channel, Dr Alarik Arenander, Director of the Brain Research Institute at Maharishi University of Management, Fairfield, Iowa, USA, and world expert on EEG brain wave coherence through Maharishi's Transcendental Meditation (TM) Technique, discussed how research in this area helps us 'to visualize Totality, Brahm' in the physiology; and also presented a new area of research on EEG coherence produced by listening to Vedic Recitation. (more)

Nanosolar panels presented at World Congress of Rajas
7 January 2008 - During the recent World Congress of Rajas (Administrators) held in MERU, Holland, architect and long-time teacher of the Transcendental Meditation Technique, Mr Robert Noble, presented sustainable building materials and techniques to the delegates. (more)

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Flops
10 Short Summaries of Top Stories

Diesel fumes can affect your brain, Dutch scientists say
10 March 2008 - Inhaling diesel exhaust triggers a stress response in the brain that may have damaging long-term effects on brain function, Dutch researchers said. Previous studies have found very small particles of soot, or nanoparticles, are able to travel from the nose and lodge in the brain. But this is the first time researchers have demonstrated a change in brain activity. The study results appear to be another black mark for nanoparticles found in traffic fumes, which have already been linked with increased rates of respiratory and cardiovascular disease. (more)

Egypt: Nile Delta under threat starting 2020 - minister
10 March 2008 - Rising sea levels will threaten 15 per cent of the Nile Delta by 2020, the rich agricultural area which is home to about half of the 75 million Egyptians, Environment Minister George Maged said. Egyptian newspapers have quoted foreign reports on the potential threat to the Nile Delta, an alluvial plain much of which lies only a few metres (feet) above sea level. (more)

Rain forests fall at 'alarming' rate
3 February 2008 - From Brazil to central Africa to once-lush islands in Asia's archipelagos, human encroachment is shrinking the world's rain forests. The alarm was sounded decades ago by environmentalists -- and was little heeded. The picture, meanwhile, has changed: Africa is now a leader in destructiveness. The numbers have changed: UN specialists estimate 60 acres of tropical forest are felled worldwide every minute, up from 50 a generation back. And the fears have changed. Experts still warn of extinction of animal and plant life, of the loss of forest peoples' livelihoods, of soil erosion, and other damage. But scientists today worry urgently about something else: the fateful feedback link of trees and climate. (more)

Caffeine ups blood sugar level in diabetics: US study
29 January 2008 - Cutting down on caffeine could help people with the most common form of diabetes better control their blood sugar levels, researchers said on Monday. Giving caffeine to a small group of people with type 2 diabetes caused their levels of the blood sugar glucose to rise through the day, especially after meals, researchers at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina, found. 'Caffeine appears to disrupt glucose metabolism in a way that could be harmful to people with type-2 diabetes,' James Lane, a Duke medical psychologist who led the study, said in an interview. (more)

Dozens of rare reptiles die in India
22 January 2008 - Conservationists and scientists scrambled Tuesday to determine what has killed at least 50 critically endangered crocodile-like reptiles in recent weeks in a river sanctuary in central India. Everything from parasites to pollution has been blamed for the deaths of the gharials. (more)

Arctic oil activity seen up, eco-risks loom-report
21 January 2008 - Exploitation of the Arctic's huge oil and gas wealth poses a growing danger to an icy wilderness that can recover only slowly from heavy oil spills, a report by the eight-nation Arctic Council said on Monday. Around 100 scientists have been working on the report 'Arctic Oil and Gas 2007' since 2002. The report was delayed until this year from 2007, and sources familiar with the process said that the United States and Sweden had blocked publication of policy recommendations. (more)

Greenhouse gases at new peak in sign of Asia growth
20 January 2008 - Atmospheric levels of the main greenhouse gas have set another new peak in a sign of the industrial rise of Asian economies led by China, a senior scientist said on Saturday. The levels have risen by about a third since the start of the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century, in tandem with more use of fossil fuels in power plants and factories, and defying recent international efforts to cut back. (more)

Nuclear waste disposal worldwide
20 January 2008 - Countries around the world are starting, expanding, or reviving nuclear power programmes. The US, the country with the most nuclear reactors, has no central system for dealing with waste. France 'vitrifies' its deadliest waste, turning it into glass to make it more stable, and stores it in shallow underground canisters. International environmental groups complain of poor safety records and oversight at Russia's reprocessing plants. (more)

Transgenic pigs bred for human transplant operations, says China
9 January 2008 - Following the successful breeding of pig embryos injected with fluorescent green die, Chinese scientists have issued a statement that 'the technology to breed transgenic pigs via cell nuclear transfer is mature.' Chinese scientists bred the pigs using somatic cell nuclear transfer technology following similar experiments in the United States, South Korea, and Japan. Liu Zhonghua, a professor at Northeast Agricultural University in Harbin, capital of Heilongjiang province, was quoted as saying, 'This technology promises to breed excellent transgenic pigs and even raise special pigs to provide organs for human transplant operations in the future.' (more)

South Korea's worst oil spill threatens bird haven
17 December 2007 - South Korea's worst oil spill is threatening to enter a bay that is an important winter rest stop for migratory birds, the coastguard and a conservation group said on Monday. The bay is home for about 400,000 migratory birds, representing 300 different species that pass through during the South Korean winter, according to a statement by the Seosan Cheonsu Bay Bird Watching Fair Organisation Committee. Tens of thousands of volunteers, soldiers, and others have battled for 10 days to clean up 10,500 tonnes of crude oil that spewed from a tanker. The spill then washed up on west coast beaches popular with tourists and blackened a nature reserve. (more)