Publication archives

BRITISH rock star Chris Martin leapt on to the Washington stage, driving screaming fans wild as he belted out one hit after another. As dazzling lights and glitter burst around the charismatic Coldplay frontman, captivated fans could have been forgiven for missing the ''Make Trade Fair'' logo inscribed on the singer's piano.

It's no accident that a punk-rock band from Salt Lake City, Utah, called itself Hospital Food. The typical fare at medical centers is ba-a-a-ad. "When you say 'hospital food,' people laugh because it's so lousy," says Jamie Harvie of Health Care Without Harm, a Minnesota-based nonprofit.

High overhead on many of these spring nights the dark skies are filled with unseen flocks of migrating birds, sturdy travelers winging their way back to the Upper Midwest from Mexico and Central and South America and other points south.

Some fourth-graders at Madison's Marquette Elementary School got to see something Wednesday they likely never will again - Principal Joy Larson wearing a boa. Not the fluffy, feathery kind, mind you. The 45-pound, 8-foot boa draped around Larson's neck and shoulders was scaly and very much alive.

The number of butterflies migrating through the state has fallen to a nearly 40-year low as populations already hurt by habitat loss and climate change encountered a cold, wet spring, researchers said.

Crews armed with machetes and chainsaws hack through walls of thorny sweet lime plants in this U.S. Caribbean territory, avoiding turpentine trees and guava berries in a bid to remove invasive plants threatening to wipe out the native species.

Three Southern states - Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina - asked the federal government Monday to protect hundreds of thousands of acres in national forests from road construction. The three states were the first in the nation to ask the Agriculture Department to use a new federal rule that governs whether roads can be built in pristine areas of national forests.

One of Rolland Perry's few regrets is that he didn't quite reach his goal of planting 1 million trees before retiring from his more than four-decade career as city forester. "I only got to 812,809," Perry, 70, said as he squinted at a computer-generated spread sheet tracking a career's worth of tree plantings, removals and other statistics.