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London, United Kingdom (AFP) — by Maureen COFFLARD Leonardo DiCaprio has issued an impassioned call for immediate action on climate change in “Before the Flood”, a documentary film making its European premiere in London on Saturday. The Hollywood megastar, who won this year’s best actor Oscar for his role in “The Revenant”, takes viewers around the world to meet experts and politicians in order to reveal the scale of the problem, its effects and the […]
by Martin PARRY SYDNEY, Australia (AFP) — Australia’s permanent sub-Antarctic research base at World Heritage-listed Macquarie Island has won a reprieve from closure and will instead get a multi-million dollar revamp, the government said Friday, in a boost for science. The Australian Antarctic Division announced in September the station on the island — which lies in the Southern Ocean between Australia and Antarctica — would shut after almost seven decades due to environmental contamination concerns and […]
(AFP) — One in four mammals, one in eight birds, 40% of all amphibians and nearly one in three conifer trees; all are at risk of dying out. Some 20,000 of the world’s plant and animal species are now threatened with extinction out of 73,600 monitored — 1.8 million have been listed in total. Some 800 are already described as extinct while 69 species are only able to survive in captivity. Within the world’s mammal […]
BUCHAREST, Romania (AFP) — A brown bear was shot dead in Romania on Wednesday after entering from an adjacent forest and ambling over the roofs of a Transylvanian town, authorities said. “Two employees from the zoo tried to tranquilise it but this didn’t work,” said Luciana Lazar, a spokeswoman for police in Sibiu in central Romania. “So unfortunately the bear had to be killed because it became aggressive and people’s lives were in danger,” Lazar […]
MANILA, Philippines | AFP | Monday 10/10/2016 – 19:34 GMT+8 | 259 words The Zika virus is set to spread through Asia, the World Health Organization warned Monday, with hundreds of cases reported in Singapore and two Thai babies diagnosed with Zika-linked microcephaly. The mosquito-borne virus has been detected in 70 countries worldwide including at least 19 countries in the Asia Pacific region, said WHO director for health security and emergencies Li Ailan. A […]
MIAMI, United States (AFP) — Climate change is making the planet hotter and drier, and has about doubled the area burned by forest fires in the western United States in the past three decades, a study said Monday. Researchers found that since 1984, drier conditions and higher temperatures have caused fires to spread across an additional 16,000 square miles (41,500 square kilometers) — an area about 30 times the size of Los Angeles. This “approximately […]
NEW YORK, United States (AFP) — Extreme floods unleashed by massive storms on the scale of Hurricane Sandy in 2012 are expected to rise sharply in the coming decades in the New York City area, researchers said Monday. Using computer models to combine sea level rise and storm surge — flooding brought on by a cyclone — researchers found that such events will become far more common in the years to come. “The worst-case scenario […]
by Alvaro VILLALOBOS MADRID, Spain (AFP) — They may be cute, colourful and chatty, but South American quaker parrots have taken up residence in Madrid and other Spanish cities, irritating residents with their shrill squawks and destabilising the ecosystem. The small, bright green and grey-breasted birds — also known as monk parakeets — first arrived in Spain in cages as entertaining pets, but some either escaped or were let loose, getting their first taste of […]
It’s an un-wasteful effort to bring back the oyster to the waters of New York. Porcelain from recycled toilets mixed with clam shells are getting dumped into Jamaica Bay where the species has been extinct for decades. The materials will form a nursery bed for oyster larvae to grow on, explains John McLaughlin, of the city’s Department of Environmental Protection, “Those are receiver beds that is just a blank slate that is about 8,000 square feet […]
by Marlowe HOOD PARIS, France (AFP) — Invasive insects cause at least $77 billion (69 billion euros) in damage every year, according to a study released Tuesday that says this figure is “grossly underestimated” because it covers only a fraction of the globe. Climate change is on track to boost the area affected by nearly 20 percent before mid-century, the authors reported in the journal Nature Communications. Canvassing more than 700 recent scientific studies, researchers […]
An E. coli detection kit that allows users to detect the deadly disease quickly while at the water source, rather than in a laboratory has been developed by Canadian scientists.
BERKSHIRE, ENGLAND, UK (Reuters) — Monitoring bat populations using thermal imaging is allowing conservationists to keep tabs on the threatened mammal. There are 18 resident species of bat in the United Kingdom, and some are on course to become endangered, according to the Bat Conservation Trust. Numbers have declined due to loss of habitats like woodlands, changes in farming practices and disturbances from construction work. “Bats have declined in numbers significantly over the last 50 […]
