Newly-hatched ducklings have been known to follow afarmer around, thinking he’s Mom. Now an orphaned killerwhale, who was rescued from the busy Puget Sound, isrejecting her family for the company of boats.

When the two-year-old baby named Springer hears the sound ofa boat engine, she swims over and rubs against the hull.”When [the whales] are moving along slowly, cruising orfeeding, she is fine,” says Lance Barrett-Lennard of theVancouver Aquarium. “It is when she is alone she seeks thecompanionship of boats.”
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A new study shows that glaciers in Alaska are melting evenfaster than we thought. Anthony Arendt of the University ofAlaska used laser altimetry to measure the changes in volumeof 67 Alaskanglaciers over four decades. “Glaciers in Alaska seem to bethinning from the mid-1950s to the mid-1990s,” he says. Therate of thinning doubled between the mid-1990s and 2001.

“We know that the climate has had to change for that tohappen,” Arendt says. “Whether or not these changes inclimate are due to human influences, that?s not for us tosay, but it?s possible that it is linked to a larger-scalechange in global climate caused by human activity.”
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Bankrupt WorldCom may take the internet down with it. Theauction site eBay is already busy makingcontingency plans. “If the service ain’t there, it ain’tthere. That’s the bottom line,” says eBay spokesman KevinPursglove. “It doesn’t matter why or how it happened. Wejust need contingency plans to take care of customers.”

In case of a WorldCom crash, eBay has spread out its e-mailson different servers, and found backup providers for critical jobs. And it?s notthe only one: Around the world, companies are interviewingbackup vendors and adding emergency clauses to business contracts. WorldCom owns MCI, the second largestlong distance provider and UUNet, which carries most of thetraffic on the internet.
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When Richard Dolan, author of the superb history “UFOs andthe National Security State,” was on Dreamland July 20, hereminded us that 50 years ago, UFOs flying over WashingtonD.C. were seen by many credible witnesses and the event wasreported in newspapers nationwide. Anne Strieber speculatesabout why the media no longer reports on UFO sightings. Toread Anne’sDiary,click here.

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