| Good morning! And welcome to the Daily Briefing for Tuesday, April 20. To stay on top of Earth-friendly news all day, visit us at Mother Nature Network.
 BLUE-SKY THINKING: The skies are reopening over Europe today, even amid reports that a new ash cloud is spreading southward from Iceland's ongoing volcanic eruption. The Eyjafjallajökull volcano has already cost Europe's airline industry an estimated $1 billion since it sprang to life last Wednesday, pumping out a high-flying plume of ash that has grounded thousands of flights and stranded weary travelers for days. Scientists and airline executives are at odds over whether it's safe to fly - test flights conducted by British Airways and Air France-KLM found no problems, but many experts are defending the flight ban, and say airplanes should at least install devices to measure surrounding ash levels. NATO recently limited its military exercises in Europe after volcanic glass was found in the engines of its fighter jets, and vulcanologists warn the eruption may still just be warming up. Eyjafjallajökull has a history of long-lasting eruptions, and also tends to trigger the nearby Katla volcano to erupt, which went off in the 1700s and created unusually cold conditions in the United States, freezing the Mississippi River north of New Orleans. Aside from the past week's economic calamity, however, Eyjafjallajökull hasn't been all bad news so far - it has at least caused a dip in carbon dioxide emissions from airplanes over Europe, the Guardian reports, although it's not spewing out enough sulphuric acid to shade and cool the planet, as the eruption of Mount Pinatubo did in 1991. (Sources: New York Times, USA Today, Guardian, Associated Press, Reuters)  SALT UNDER ASSAULT: The Food and Drug Administration is planning to gradually wean Americans off of sodium, the Washington Post reports, scaling back the country's salt intake over several years in an effort to reduce U.S. rates of hypertension and heart disease. It would amount to the first-ever legal limits on salt content in food, and the FDA will work with the food industry and health experts to roll out the new changes slowly, so Americans' palates can adjust to their less salty diet. "This is a 10-year program," one FDA source tells the Post. "This is not rolling off a log. We're talking about a comprehensive phase-down of a widely used ingredient. We're talking about embedded tastes in a whole generation of people." Nearly 80 percent of all salt in American diets comes from processed foods, which makes it difficult for consumers to cut back by simply shunning the salt shaker, which only contributes about 11 percent of overall intake. "We can't just rely on the individual to do something," one epidemiologist tells the Post. "Food manufacturers have to reduce the amount of sodium in foods." Many food makers are already doing so voluntarily, including Conagra, Kraft Foods, General Mills, Sara Lee and others, but not everyone is on board with the idea. The science on sodium's health effects remains unclear, according to an official with the Salt Institute, who adds that FDA regulation "would be a disaster for the public." (Source: Washington Post)  GOING TURQUOISE: In today's Science Times, the NYT's John Tierney offers "7 new rules to live by" for this week's 40th anniversary of Earth Day. The premise of Tierney's list is that Earth Day - and environmentalism itself - has drastically changed since April 22, 1970, and that the word "green" no longer applies to the new guard of environmentalists. Today's eco-philes are more turquoise than green, Tierney argues, combining a 21st century "blue-sky" attitude into their creaky green ethos. He calls them "Turqs," and proceeds with a list of mostly contrarian or counterintuitive rules that point out how the Earth's troubles have transformed over the last 40 years. For example, climate change now overshadows once-urgent issues like pesticide use and nuclear meltdowns, while opposition to nuclear power helped introduce a new generation of coal-fired power plants that are now heating up the planet. Tierney goes on to dispel the positive mystique of organic foods and the negative mystique of genetically modified foods, and wraps up with a one-line mantra for rule No. 7: "We are as gods and have to get good at it." (Source: New York Times)
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