Environment

A red alert for air pollution has been issued in the Chinese capital for the first time this year as choking smog is expected to cover the city and surrounding areas in north China during the next five days. The red alert, the highest in the color-coded warning system, will come into force at 08:00 p.m. local time on Friday. Private cars will be ordered off the road, with an odd-even number plate system in force, according to a notice posted on the official website of the Beijing municipal government.

NASA scientists have found brand new evidence of life on Mars in the form of a chemical element that is essential for DNA synthesis. According to a 14 December announcement at the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco, NASA’s Curiosity rover found the chemical element boron on the surface of the red planet – a chemical that is crucial in supporting life. Sputniknews.com reports: “No prior mission to Mars has found boron,” said Patrick Gasda, a researcher at the US Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

Several thousand snow geese were burned and poisoned to death when they landed in a Montana lake filled with sulphuric acid and toxic heavy metals. The migrating snow geese met their untimely deaths after a snowstorm forced the large flocks to take refuge in the acidic, metal-laden waters of an old open pit mine. The water is as acidic as distilled vinegar and strong enough to liquefy the steel propeller of a motorboat, according to Natural News. The Berkeley Pit is a massive 700 acre crevice left behind from nearly 30 years of copper mining.

While hardly a surprise by now, having been leaked initially over the weekend, moments ago President-elect Donald Trump formally confirmed his plans to nominate former Texas Gov. Rick Perry as Energy secretary.