Warm winds take big bite of Arctic ice

Anchorage, Alaska

Alaska's warm weather this summer has all "gone north." Way north.

Scientists at the National Snow and Ice Data Center say strong, southerly winds from the North Slope have devoured a huge swath of Arctic ice larger than the state of Texas in the heart of the Beaufort Sea.

Combining that loss with the overall decline in sea ice in recent years should leave this year's end-of-summer Arctic ice pack close to its lowest measurement on record.

It may also open up the ice-encrusted Northwest Passage for the second year in a row, and only the second time in recorded history.

Washington

Cameras may catch student food thieves

For the first time, video cameras will monitor Fairfax County, Va., high-school cafeterias this fall to keep students from pilfering chicken wraps or veggie burgers in the lunch line.

The school system — the largest in the Washington, D.C., region — is turning to video surveillance, already widely used on school buses and outside school buildings, to combat what officials say has become a pervasive problem: food theft.

The Fairfax school system's food and nutrition-services department has estimated that $1.2 million worth of prepared food was lifted from cafeterias in the past school year.

New Orleans

Sharp slowdown in return to city

The re-population of New Orleans three years after Hurricane Katrina slowed drastically last year and may be hitting a plateau, a study released today finds.

The city's population grew 3 percent from 2007 to 2008, compared with a 19 percent increase from 2006 to 2007, according to the report by the Brookings Institution and the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center. The city is at about 72 percent of its pre-Katrina population of 450,000.

Also

Tropical Storm Edouard formed in the Gulf of Mexico on Sunday, and forecasters expected it to bring high winds and several inches of rain to the coasts of western Louisiana and eastern Texas. Forecasters expected the storm to strengthen and said it could reach near-hurricane strength by the time it made landfall in Texas on Tuesday morning.

Seattle Times news services