Yellow cabs go green faster in NYC. New York City’s yellow taxi fleet now will go green at the rate of 300 new hybrid cars a month, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said, citing an agreement with car-makers to supply the fuel-light cabs. — Environmental News Network

Clam claims oldest animal record. The mollusc, which is thought to have lurked beneath the waves until at least the age of 405, would have been a juvenile when Galileo picked up his first telescope, Hamlet was first staged and the gunpowder plot failed to blow up King James I. Unfortunately the scientists who collected it cut in open in order to work out its age, killing the poor old thing. — The Guardian

Rare sighting of clouded leopard. A clouded leopard has been photographed by an automatic camera in Borneo’s Sebangau National Park, where the rare cats had not been seen before. Scientists from the Sebangau Felid Project say that the leopards, which were identified as a new species separate from mainland Asian leopards in 2007, number just 10,000 mature adults. — Yale Environment 360

50% extinction rate for Amazonian trees. Common tree species in the Amazon will survive even grim scenarios of deforestation and road-building, but rare trees could suffer extinction rates of up to 50 percent, predict Smithsonian scientists and colleagues. — Science Daily