CHICAGO, April 24, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit reversed a lower court's ruling against an Illinois student Wednesday, saying the district court must order a Naperville high school to suspend its ban on a T-shirt that reads "Be Happy, Not Gay" while the student's lawsuit proceeds.  School officials prohibited student Alex Nuxoll, who is represented by Alliance Defense Fund attorneys, from wearing the clothing.
"Christian students shouldn't be discriminated against for expressing their beliefs," said ADF Senior Counsel Nate Kellum. "Public school officials cannot censor a message expressing one viewpoint on homosexual behavior and then at the same time allow messages that express another viewpoint.  The court's ruling is a victory for all students seeking to protect their First Amendment rights on a school campus."
Nuxoll, a student at Neuqua Valley High School, desires to express his perspective at various times throughout the year, including the next school day after the "Day of Silence."  Other students at the school are permitted to wear shirts with messages supporting homosexual behavior as part of the "Day of Silence," which is sponsored by the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network.  The 7th Circuit ruling prevents school officials ...   more »

By Ayesha Rascoe - Analysis
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Midwest has enjoyed nearly 20 years without a major drought but forecasters worry the corn belt's luck could dry up this year, further squeezing tight global supplies amid soaring food prices.
With its last major drought in 1988, the Midwest has reached its average span of 18.6 years between droughts.
Considering that statistic and current weather conditions, Iowa State University extension climatologist Elwynn Taylor said the corn belt has a one in three chance of drought this year.
"We do have to be prepared," Taylor said. "A 33 percent chance is high, that's a risk."
The Midwest's chances of drought are exacerbated by La Nina, an unusual cooling of Pacific Ocean surface temperatures that can trigger widespread changes in global weather patterns. If La Nina has not dissipated by July, Taylor saw a 70 percent chance for U.S. corn yields below the 30-year trend of 150.6 bushels per acre.
"We don't have any reason to think La Nina causes drought, but it certainly does aggravate it," Taylor said.
Drought is not a foregone conclusion for the Midwest, where excessive wetness has held up spring corn plantings. Crops may benefit from ...   more »

    BEIJING, April 24 (Xinhuanet) -- Mountain pine beetles that are destroying forests along much of the Rocky Mountain range are doing so much damage that they may affect climate change, Canadian researchers reported on Wednesday.
    The damage is nearly equivalent to the polluting effects of forest fires, they reported in the journal Nature.
    "In the worst year, the impacts resulting from the beetle outbreak in British Columbia were equivalent to 75 percent of the average annual direct forest fire emissions from all of Canada during 1959-1999," Werner Kurz of the Canadian Forest Service in Victoria, British Columbia and colleagues wrote.
    Usually, a forest is a carbon "sink," soaking up carbondioxide that would otherwise affect the atmosphere and help hold in heat.
    The beetle, namely Dendroctonus ponderosae, changed that. Dead trees release carbon as they rot, and of course fail to use carbon dioxide as they would if alive.
    The beetles lay eggs under the bark of lodge-pole pine and jack-pine trees, eventually killing them. Once beetles infest a tree, it cannot be saved.
    They have destroyed 50,000 square miles (130,000 square kilometers) of forest in western Canada alone. Hundreds of thousands of square ...   more »

By Julie Steenhuysen
CHICAGO (Reuters) - A proposed solution to reverse the effects of global warming by spraying sulfate particles into Earth's stratosphere could make matters much worse, climate researchers said on Thursday.
They said trying to cool off the planet by creating a kind of artificial sun block would delay the recovery of the Antarctic ozone hole by 30 to 70 years and create a new loss of Earth's protective ozone layer over the Arctic.
"What our study shows is if you actually put a lot of sulfur into the atmosphere we get a larger ozone depletion than we had before," said Simone Tilmes of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, whose research appears in the journal Science.
The sulfur injection idea has been proposed by a number of climate scientists as a potential solution to global warming.
Tilmes said the idea was intended to mimic the effects of a major volcanic eruption. Such eruptions in the past sent plumes of sun-blocking sulfur into an upper layer of the atmosphere known as the stratosphere that cooled temperatures on Earth.Ozone in the stratosphere provides a protective layer high above Earth's surface that guards against harmful solar radiation....   more »