The daily casualty lists of U.S. troops killed in Iraq mention a hometown for each person – places large and small, urban and rural, where flag-draped coffins return to grieving communities.

According to a study by University of Wisconsin-Madison sociologists, rural communities across America have paid a proportionately more costly price in the Iraq war with higher death rates of American military members compared with metropolitan areas.

Every death leaves a hole in a family and community, but the casualty rates from the Iraq war show that troops from rural areas experience higher death rates regardless of the cause, military branch or rank.

The study, published in the latest volume of the journal Demographic Research, used data on all U.S. troop deaths in Iraq from the start of the war on March 20, 2003, through Dec. 31, 2007, as well as U.S. Census Bureau definitions of metropolitan and non-metropolitan areas.

While sociologists have previously looked at troop mortality according to demographics, no one had studied the geographic implications of Iraq war deaths on their hometowns, Curtis said.

‘The reason this was on our radar is that there are people studying rural issues and they talk about enlistment rates being high in rural areas. What enlistment […]

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THE Earth is a recycling scheme that has been running for a third of the age of the universe. Microbes and plants endlessly pull carbon, nitrogen and oxygen from the atmosphere and pump them back out in different forms. Water evaporates from the oceans, rains down on the land, pours back to the seas. As it does so it washes away whole mountain ranges-which then rise again from sea-floor sediments when oceans squeeze themselves shut. As oceans reopen new crust is pulled forth from volcanoes; old crust is destroyed as tectonic plates return to the depths from which those volcanoes ultimately draw their fire.

The Earth has finite resources of matter. But thanks to its own internal heat and the light of the sun it has almost unlimited supplies of energy with which to remake itself over a vast range of timescales. Water lasts in the atmosphere for a fortnight or so; carbon dioxide stays in the oceans for thousands of years. Mountains rise and fall over tens of millions of years; oceans open and close at rates even slower than that.

And for some things, in some places, there is a sort of stillness. The argon in the atmosphere just sits […]

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While Pakistan has been hit by catastrophic flooding, Russia has endured a lethal heatwave.

Some 1,200 people have been killed in the deluges sweeping Pakistan, but in Moscow more than 30 are reported to have died in wildfires as temperatures have soared to a new record for the region of 38C (100F).

It marks out 2010 as the year of extreme weather – and experts predict the pronounced conditions will continue across the globe.

Last month alone the UK was hit by a hosepipe ban, saw tarmac melting on roads and the population was issued health warnings about the dangers of too much sun.

Yet despite the heatwave, it was also the wettest July ever recorded.

According to provisional statistics from the Met Office, the country was 46 per cent wetter than average and some areas faced devastating floods.
An Envisat satellite image gives an aerial view of the wildfires raging east of Moscow

Britain was not alone. The mercury climbed to its highest point in decades in other parts of Europe, the U.S. and Japan as record temperatures were recorded.

In Russia the army was drafted in to battle the wildfires which threatening dozens of towns and villages.

Thick smoke and ash slowed firefighting efforts and […]

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MOSCOW (AFP) – Russia, the world’s third wheat exporter, Thursday banned grain exports for the next four-and-a-half months due to a record drought that has destroyed millions of hectares (acres) of its land.

Wheat futures shot up to new two-year highs on commodities markets after the sudden announcement from Prime Minister Vladimir Putin raised concerns about global grain supplies.

‘In connection with the unusually high temperatures and the drought, I consider it right to impose a temporary ban on the export from Russia of grain and other products produced from grain,’ Putin told a government meeting.

Russia earlier this week slashed its 2010 grain harvest forecast to 70-75 million tonnes, compared with a harvest of 97 million tonnes in 2009, owing to the worst drought for decades.

Last year, Russia exported 21.4 million tonnes of grain and observers had already warned that could be sharply lower this year owing to the drought.

The prime minister’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the export ban would come into force August 15 and remain in place until December 31.

‘We must not allow an increase in domestic prices and must preserve the headcount of our cattle,’ Putin said in comments broadcast on state television.

Putin signed a decree imposing the ban […]

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