Washington, DC - The increasing trend of international land grabbing when governments and private firms invest in or purchase large tracts of land in other countries for the purpose of agricultural production and export can have serious environmental and social consequences.

Washington, DC - President Barack Obama: "On behalf of the American people, I wish to extend my deepest condolences to the people of India on the passing of former Indian President Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam. 

San Diego, California - The Dvur Kralove Zoo in the Czech Republic has announced that an elderly northern white rhinoceros, Nabiré, has passed away. The female rhino was born in 1983 and died July 27, 2015 from complications with a pathological cyst. Her death leaves only four northern white rhinos remaining in the world: an elderly female at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, named Nola; and three under human care at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in the African nation of Kenya: a male, Sudan; and two females, Najin and Fatu.

Washington, DC - Secretary of State John Kerry: " Teresa and I were deeply saddened to learn of the death of Samuel Pisar, the stepfather of Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken, and a man of enormous resilience and inspiring courage. A native of Poland, Samuel's parents and younger sister were killed during the Holocaust while he survived imprisonment in Auschwitz, Dachau and other concentration camps before escaping what his Nazi captors intended to be a death march.

West Lafayette, Indiana - Imaginestics LLC, whose visual search engine called VizSeek helps people find industrial products faster and more accurately than conventional search engines, has launched a new software-as-a-service platform for company industrial product catalogs.

West Lafayette, Indiana - The discovery of a previously unknown type of metal deformation – sinuous flow - and a method to suppress it could lead to more efficient machining and other manufacturing advances by reducing the force and energy required to process metals.