A global analysis of extinction risk for the world’s plants, conducted by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew together with the Natural History Museum, London and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), has revealed that the world’s plants are as threatened as mammals, with one in five of the world’s plant species threatened with extinction.

The study is a major baseline for plant conservation and is the first time that the true extent of the threat to the world’s estimated 380,000 plant species is known, announced as governments are to meet in Nagoya, Japan in mid-October 2010 to set new targets at the United Nations Biodiversity Summit.

A 2008 Google Earth search led to the discovery of Kamil crater, one of the best-preserved meteorite impact sites ever found. Earlier this year, a gritty, sand-blown expedition reached the site deep in the Egyptian desert to collect iron debris and determine the crater’s age and origins.

One day within the last several thousand years, a rare metallic meteorite travelling over 12 000 km/hour smashed into Earth’s surface near what is today the trackless border region between Egypt, Sudan and Libya. The impact of the 1.3 m, 10-tonne chunk of iron generated a fireball and plume that would have been visible over 1000 km away, and drilled a hole 16 m deep and 45 m wide into the rocky terrain.

Since then, the crater had sat undisturbed by Earth’s geologic and climatic processes, which usually render all but the very largest terrestrial impact craters invisible. It was also, as far as is recorded, unseen by humans.

Moscow, Russia – Concentration of carbon monoxide in Moscow’s air has abated, however may slightly increase in the evening, an expert from the State Environmental Protection Organization Mosekomonitoring said on Tuesday.

“Currently, the concentration of carbon monoxide in Moscow is within the norm,” she said.

Rain in several of Moscow’s districts has helped disperse the smog that has been suffocating Muscovites over the last few days.

“But there is a probability that the concentration of harmful substances will slightly rise by evening,” she added.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska – A powerful earthquake has shaken an Aleutian Island region of Alaska but there is no threat of a tsunami.

The U.S. Geological Survey says the 6.7-magnitude quake struck at 9:56 p.m. Saturday and was centered in the Bering Sea about 110 miles northeast of Dutch Harbor or 930 miles west of Anchorage. The quake hit about 21 miles beneath the seabed.

Alaska Tsunami Warning Center says there was no danger of a tsunami from the temblor.

USGS geophysicist Jessica Sigala says residents of the Dutch Harbor, the nearest sizable community, reported feeling a “weak shaking” from the quake.

A magnitude 6 quake is capable of causing severe damage.

At least 17 people have been killed and dozens more are missing after a series of landslides in south-west China, state media says. The landslides, which were triggered by days of heavy rain, struck three rural communities in Sichuan and Yunnan provinces.

Four people were killed and 42 others were missing after one landslide in Xiaohe in Yunnan’s Zhaotong city. In Sichuan, two separate landslides left 13 people dead and two missing. Meanwhile further to the west in Qinghai province, 10,000 people have been evacuated from the area around an overflowing reservoir. Teams are trying to dig a channel to drain the reservoir, which has been filled far beyond capacity by recent heavy rain. It is the latest in a spate of weather-related incidents to hit China. Although seasonal, the rains are particularly heavy this year and disruption is severe. At least 43 people had died and 18 were missing after heavy rains along the Yangtze River in central and eastern China since 8 July, state media said. In Xiaohe in Yunnan, an official said that the side of a mountain crashed down on houses.

“The township is located in a river valley surrounded by mountains, people were buried in their homes,” the government official, who asked not to be named, told AFP news agency.

The other two landslides struck Yandai village in Garze and Sima village in Luzhou city. Search teams were working at all three sites, Xinhua news agency said, and relief supplies had been sent to Xiaohe. In Qinghai, soldiers were using bulldozers to cut a channel to drain water from the Wenquan reservoir, Xinhua reported. If it bursts, the reservoir could damage the nearby Qinghai-Tibet railway, along with the city of Golmud’s power and water plants, the agency said. Some parts of the city are reportedly already under 2m of water. Xinhua said the soldiers hoped to start draining the reservoir within the day.

Europe is continuing to swelter under a heatwave which has sent temperatures soaring. The punishing heat with temperatures as high as 40C (104F) has sparked a series of health warnings across the Northern region.

In Germany dozens of passengers on three trains had to be removed and some hospitalised after temperatures reached 50C (122F) after the air conditioning broke down during the weekend.  Cooler air pushing in from the Atlantic and Biscay has brought about a breakdown of the heat across Western Europe during Monday.  Violent thunderstorms have been triggered over France, Germany and the Low Countries with large hail, squally winds and risk of flash flooding in places. In Switzerland, recent heavy storms created by the sweltering heat have caused flash flooding and mudslides. Meanwhile, temperatures across south-eastern England, Western Europe and Scandinavia have now eased back to near normal. However, temperatures further south and east remain high with the chance of severe thunderstorms breaking out during this week.

A flood is an overflow of an expanse of water that submerges land. The EU Floods directive defines a flood as a temporary covering by water of land not normally covered by water. In the sense of “flowing water”, the word may also be applied to the inflow of the tide. Flooding may result from the volume of water within a body of water, such as a river or lake, which overflows or breaks levees, with the result that some of the water escapes its usual boundaries.

While the size of a lake or other body of water will vary with seasonal changes in precipitation and snow melt, it is not a significant flood unless such escapes of water endanger land areas used by man like a village, city or other inhabited area.

Floods can also occur in rivers, when flow exceeds the capacity of the river channel, particularly at bends or meanders. Floods often cause damage to homes and businesses if they are placed in natural flood plains of rivers. While flood damage can be virtually eliminated by moving away from rivers and other bodies of water, since time out of mind, people have lived and worked by the water to seek sustenance and capitalize on the gains of cheap and easy travel and commerce by being near water. That humans continue to inhabit areas threatened by flood damage is evidence that the perceived value of living near the water exceeds the cost of repeated periodic flooding.

BP to begin tests to close valves on new containment cap in Gulf of Mexico and hopes to temporarily stop oil gushing from wellhead BP has fitted a larger, tighter-fitting containment cap on the ruptured Gulf of Mexico wellhead that has been gushing with oil since the Deepwater Horizon explosion on 20 April. Crude oil continues to spill into the sea, but the company wants to begin testing the new cap’s internal pressure this morning by closing its valves and hopes to be able to stop the flow until more permanent measures can be taken.

BP warned that success was not certain: “It is expected, although cannot be assured, that no oil will be released to the ocean for the duration of the test. This will not, however, be an indication that flow from the wellbore has been permanently stopped.” BP said it does not expect to plug the undersea geyser for good before mid-August, after intercepting the rupture point with one of two relief wells now being drilled. Former US coastguard Admiral Thad Allen, who is overseeing the US government’s spill response operation, said that if the cap works it will be used to resume the siphoning of oil to ships on the surface until the ruptured well can be permanently plugged. The cap-and-seal stack, which is larger than the one removed on Friday and bolted over the top of the wellhead rather than clamped loosely over it, is designed to capture three times more leaking oil, or virtually the entire flow.