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Ashlie Rodriguez

Wasps being used in battle against fruit-eating moths

Last updated Friday, July 8, 2011 - 9:23am

LOS ANGELES -- California agricultural officials will release hundreds of tiny, stinger-less wasps this month to combat the fruit- and leaf-eating light-brown apple moth, in a move to find alternatives to aerial pesticide spraying.

Business, Features, Agriculture, Insects, Pesticide Read more Comments

Report shows warmer weather in U.S. since 1970s

Ashlie Rodriguez, Los Angeles Times McClatchy Newspapers

Last updated Wednesday, June 29, 2011 - 5:57pm

The new normal is warmer.

That's the assessment of the nation's top weather agency, which releases data Friday that show the 30-year "normal" temperature in the United States.

"The climate of the 2000s is about 1.5 degree Fahrenheit warmer than the 1970s, so we would expect the updated 30-year normals to be warmer," said Thomas R. Karl, director of NOAA's National Climatic Data Center. That recent temperature trend was enough to drag the three-decade moving average, from 1981-2010, up by half a degree Fahrenheit from the 1971-2000 period, according to the report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Features, Climate change, Temperature, Weather Read more Comments