Articles with 600-800 Words

Today, Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, and Buddhists worldwide, will begin the countdown to Diwali. Also called the Festival of Lights, the annual event is the most anticipated and eagerly awaited of all Indian celebrations. Though the holiday is always observed in late October or early November, the exact date which is determined by the position of the moon and the Hindu lunar calendar, differs....

The great frigatebird, a species of seabird found across the world’s tropical seas, has a 7 foot wingspan — the largest of any bird species its size. Past research had indicated that these adept pilots could stay aloft as long as a week at a time. It turns out, that the experts and even Christopher Columbus, who noticed the birds on his 1492 voyage to the Americas — and remarked “does not alight on the sea nor depart from land 20 leagues (70 miles)” — had vastly underestimated the magnificent bird’s flying prowess and smarts!...

Monday, August 8, was Earth Overshoot Day. Calculated annually by the environmental advocacy group, Global Footprint Network, it is the day when humanity has consumed all the natural resources — produce, meat, fish, water, and wood — that our planet can regenerate in a single year. This means that for the rest of 2016, we will be using natural resources that are impossible to replace....

Water, or rather the lack of it, is one of the most pressing issues of our times. Unprecedented droughts and growing populations have left many countries struggling to keep up with demand. Given that agriculture is the largest single user of freshwater, providing farmers with new conservation techniques would go a long way in alleviating our water woes. It turns out that a “miracle” powder has been helping drought-stricken Mexican farmers do exactly that for over a decade!...

In July 2016, much to the dismay of environmentalists and the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) — the federal government body in charge of the nation's waterways — granted the final permits to allow construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). When completed, the 1,172-mile-long, $3.8 billion USD pipeline that snakes through four states will be able to transport up to 500,000 barrels of crude oil from the Bakken Formation area of North Dakota to refineries in Illinois, daily. The builder, Dakota Access, LLC, a subsidiary of Texas-based Energy Transfer Partners, asserts that the underground pipeline is a more direct, cost-effective, safer, and environmentally responsible way to transport crude oil....

Sunday, September 11, 2016, marks the 15th anniversary of the most daring and deadliest terrorist attack on American soil. Planned and executed by Islamic extremist organization Al Qaeda, the unprovoked act of violence is what led to our ongoing "Global War On Terrorism” and changed life as we knew it, forever....

On Wednesday, August 24, the residents of the Apennine regions in central Italy were jolted awake at 3.36 a.m. by a 6.2 magnitude earthquake. To make matters worse, it was followed by over 80 aftershocks, including a 5.5 magnitude tremor that hit Umbria an hour later, at 4.33 a.m....

While your pet fish may appear to be oblivious of your presence, chances are it knows you extremely well and can probably even identify you from a crowd of humans! At least, that is the conclusion reached by scientists the University of Oxford in the U.K. and the University of Queensland in Australia, following an extensive study of the archerfish, a species of tropical fish that can be found all the way from India, to Indonesia, the Philippines, and Australia....

With more than 16,000 jumps to his credit, professional skydiver Luke Aikins has performed many heart-stopping stunts, but his latest feat tops them all. On July 30, 2016, the 42-year-old daredevil became the first man in the world to leap off a plane from an altitude of 25,000 feet without a wingsuit or parachute! Instead, he relied on a net that measured 100-by-100-feet, or less than one-third the size of a football field, to break his fall and help him land safely....