BRAKING NEWS: Toyota Motor Corp. announced early Tuesday that it will recall 437,000 of its third-generation Prius hybrids worldwide, as well as 14,500 Lexus hybrids, following the global uproar over brake pedals that become momentarily unresponsive in certain driving conditions. Toyota had already developed a software patch to fix the Prius problem last month — initially opting not to tell customers and regulators — and its recall includes only Prius models sold before that point. The Japanese automaker will now offer a similar software patch for the recalled 2010 Lexus HS 250h; both the Prius and Lexus braking problems occur when the gas-electric hybrids switch between their two braking systems while driving over slick or bumpy surfaces, Toyota has said. Tuesday's hybrid recalls come on the heels of Toyota's recall of 5.4 million vehicles for sticky accelerator pedals last month, widely seen as a devastating blow to its reputation for quality. Akio Toyoda, the company's president, writes an op-ed in today's Washington Post outlining "Toyota's plan to repair its public image." (Sources: Detroit News, Washington Post)

 

CLIMATE SERVICE: The Obama administration on Monday proposed creating a new federal agency charged with studying and reporting on climate change, the AP reports. The chiefs of the Commerce Department and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that NOAA will establish the new Climate Service in the vein of its existing National Weather Service and National Ocean Service, centralizing much of the climate research that has until now been conducted by a scattering of different agencies. The U.S. Climate Service will be "one-stop shopping into a world of climate information," NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco said, and while it must first be approved by a congressional committee, officials say it could be in operation by the end of the year. NOAA reported earlier this year that the decade of 2000-2009 was the warmest on record, breaking the previous high set by the 1990s, and much of that warming is widely blamed on human actions, namely the release of greenhouse gases by burning fossil fuels. (Source: Associated Press)

 

CARP SHOOT: As Asian carp continue threatening to break into the Great Lakes, federal authorities on Monday announced a new $78.5 million plan to keep the invasive, voracious fish out of the world's largest freshwater ecosystem. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the EPA and other agencies outlined the plan during a meeting in Washington, D.C., with leaders of some Great Lakes states; it would be paid for using money already set aside for Great Lakes restoration, and would include new flood barriers and a third electronic barrier in hopes of preventing Asian carp from using shipping channels to enter Lake Michigan. It also suggests closing the navigational locks along those channels more often, theoretically giving the carp fewer chances to make the leap into the lakes. Illinois and Chicago officials are largely in favor of the plan, since they don't want to close the shipping channels that support a busy barge industry between the Mississippi River and Lake Michigan. But conservationists, along with officials from Michigan, argue the plan doesn't do nearly enough. "They just need to shut the locks down, at least temporarily," Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm says. (Source: New York Times) 

 

WHALE FAIL: Old sailors' tales described oceans brimming with whales, and while some of these accounts may be exaggerated, Fred Pearce writes today in New Scientist that they may not be so far off — meaning our modern idea of how many whales is "normal" could be completely wrong. The singing sea mammals are now rare, still slowly recovering from centuries of whaling that ended in 1986 with an international moratorium on whale hunting. But not only does that moratorium have loopholes — as proven by Japan's continued whaling activities, which it says are for research — it has a finish line that some scientists say may not be set far enough away. The International Whaling Commission's rules say hunts can be reconsidered when a given species has returned to 54 percent of its pre-hunting levels. But if historic accounts and new genetic tests of whale populations are correct, whales may have once been the dominant species in Earth's oceans — potentially upending our understanding of marine ecology, and casting the plight of today's whales in an even more dismal light. (Source: New Scientist)

 

BEETLE MANIA: Freddie Mercury, Axl Rose and even Rush Limbaugh failed to scare away Arizona's encroaching infestation of bark beetles — which are decimating pine forests throughout the Western U.S. (see photo) — but scientists may have finally found something that can get on the insects' nerves: themselves. Bark beetles have been spreading rapidly in recent years, fueled by drought and perhaps also climate change, and researchers from Northern Arizona University have been trying to aggravate them by playing loud music — including Queen, Guns N' Roses, and Rush Limbaugh in reverse — much as police sometimes do during hostage situations. None of it seemed to faze them, but when the researchers began playing digitally altered recordings of the beetles' own calls, they saw immediate results: The beetles stopped mating, burrowing and eating, with some fleeing and others fighting. The researchers still aren't sure why the sounds have this effect, or even where the beetles' ears are located, but they say it offers some hope for stopping a wave of destruction that threatens to obliterate the West's pine forests. (Source: Arizona Republic)

 

— Russell McLendon