Photo: Michael Graham Richard Can BYD Deliver on EV Promises? For a while it looked like BYD would be a leader in electric cars and plug-in hybrids. They had aggressive release schedules, great battery technology (at least on paper), and being based in China, they had some cost advantages over most of their competitors. They even had backing by none other than Warren Buffett! But then we started hearing about Read the full story on TreeHugger

With China getting ready to tie the entire world together with high speed rail, it is easy to forget that America once dominated when it came to innovation in transport. Back in 1870, Alfred Ely Beach built a pneumatic subway under Broadway. (in secret yet; he just had a permit for a package delivery system) ...Read the full story on TreeHugger

French container ship in Vohemar, Madagascar, March 12. Photo Derek Schuurman There was a coup in Madagascar last March, and ever since there has been widespread poaching in the National Parks, for birds, lemurs and lumber. Rosewood is one of the world's most valuable tropical woods, ($ 5,000 per cubic meter) so $40 million of it was chopped (with permission of the new government, that needs the money) and was going to be shipped out in December. (see Read the full story on TreeHugger

Photo: CC The Food Was Too Expensive... Sad story of the day: 11 rare and endangered Siberian Tigers starved to death while confined to "cold, cramped metal cages" at the Shenyang Forest Wild Animal Zoo in China's North-East. The deaths took place in the past three months, with reports saying that "the tigers starved to death, having been fed nothing but chicken bones". The food bill for the tigers ran to about $1,320 (9,000 yuan) a day....Read the full story on TreeHugger

Photos via the BBC It's one of the (if not the) rarest flower in the world: the Middlemist's Red exists in only two known locations: a greenhouse in the UK, and a garden in New Zealand. Imported to Britain two hundred years ago from China, back when flowers where a luxury item, it has since been exterminated in its original homeland. And now the Middlemist is blooming again--nice looking flower, right?...Read the full story on TreeHugger