WASHINGTON, June 21 (Reuters) – Dead bodies, diseased lungs
and a man on a ventilator were among the graphic images for
revamped U.S. tobacco labels, unveiled on Tuesday by health
officials who hope the warnings will help smokers quit.

Proposed in November under a law that put the
multibillion-dollar tobacco industry under the control of the
U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the new labels must be on
cigarette packages and in advertisements no later than
September 2012. They represent the first change in cigarette
warnings in 25 years.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A major offshore Arctic oil spill could severely challenge the Coast Guard, with no available infrastructure to base rescue and clean-up operations, the Coast Guard commandant said on Monday.

“There is nothing up there to operate from at present and we’re really starting from ground zero,” said Adm. Robert Papp Jr. “Now’s the time to be not just talking about it, but acting about it.”

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A monster black hole shredded a Sun-like star, producing a strangely long-lasting flash of gamma rays that probably won’t be seen again in a million years, astronomers reported on Thursday.

That is definitely not the norm for gamma ray bursts, energetic blasts that typically flare up and end in a matter of seconds or milliseconds, often the sign of the death throes of a collapsing star.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Sunspot cycles — those 11-year patterns when dark dots appear on the solar surface — may be delayed or even go into “hibernation” for a while, a U.S. scientist said on Wednesday.

But contrary to some media reports, this does not mean a new Ice Age is coming, Frank Hill of the National Solar Observatory said in a telephone interview.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – This year’s record Mississippi River floods are forecast to create the biggest Gulf of Mexico “dead zone” since systematic mapping began in 1985, U.S. scientists reported on Tuesday.

Often created by farm chemical run-off carried to the Gulf by the Mississippi, the 2011 low-oxygen “dead zone” could measure 8,500 to 9,421 square miles (22,253 to 26,515 sq km), or an area roughly the size of New Hampshire, the U.S. Geological Survey said in a statement.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – China is on track to cut its energy intensity — the amount of power consumed for every dollar of economic output — by 20 percent from 2005 levels, a Chinese environmental policy expert said on Tuesday.

As of 2009, the most recent year considered in the report by the non-governmental Climate Policy Initiative, China is on its way to meeting its own ambitious targets for 2010, according to Qi Ye, the group’s director at Tsinghua University in Beijing.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Efficient cookstoves and better crop seeds could play a key role in saving forests in sub-Saharan Africa, helping to cut emissions of climate-warming carbon dioxide, environmental experts reported on Sunday.

This is important, since deforestation and forest degradation are the second-largest source of human-caused carbon dioxide emissions after the burning of fossil fuels. While forests stand, they take in and lock up carbon dioxide; when they burn, they release it into the atmosphere.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. government put the Atlantic bluefin tuna on an environmental watchlist as a “species of concern” on Friday, and will keep checking for any impact on these fish from the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

At this time, the species is not threatened or endangered and so will not be listed as such under the Endangered Species Act, which would trigger immediate protections, officials at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in a telephone briefing.