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By Paola LÓPEZ CUYABENO, Ecuador, April 22, 2024 (AFP) – Biologists on a trail in the Ecuadoran Amazon hold their breath as they distribute a foul-smelling delicacy to lure butterflies, critical pollinators increasingly threatened by climate change. A team has hung 32 traps made of green nets, each baited with rotting fish and fermented bananas. They are meant to blend in with the forest canopy. Their pungent odor clearly does not. Since last August, a […]
By Nick Perry PARIS, April 22, 2024 (AFP) – Europe endured a record number of “extreme heat stress” days in 2023, two leading climate monitors said Monday, underscoring the threat of increasingly deadly summers across the continent. In a year of contrasting extremes, Europe witnessed scorching heatwaves but also catastrophic flooding, withering droughts, violent storms and its largest wildfire. These disasters inflicted billions of dollars in damages and impacted more than two million people, the […]
By Amanda MOUAWAD Dubai airport, one of the world’s busiest, witnessed major disruption for a third straight day Thursday after the heaviest rains on record drenched the desert United Arab Emirates. Emirates, Dubai’s state-owned flagship airline, and sister carrier flydubai resumed check-ins after telling passengers to stay away on Wednesday, when thousands of delayed passengers clogged the airport. The airport, which handles more international passengers than any other, hopes to resume “something approaching normality” within […]
DAKAR, April 18, 2024 (AFP) – The deadly heatwave that hit Africa’s Sahel region in early April would not have occurred without “human-induced” climate change, according to a study by the World Weather Attribution (WWA) group published Thursday. The West African nations of Mali and Burkina Faso experienced an exceptional heatwave from April 1 until April 5, with soaring temperatures above 45 degrees Celsius triggering a large number of deaths. Observations and climate models used […]
MANADO, Indonesia, April 18, 2024 (AFP) – Indonesian rescuers raced to evacuate thousands of people Thursday after a volcano erupted five times, forcing authorities to close a nearby airport and issue a warning about falling debris that could cause a tsunami. The crater of Mount Ruang flamed with lava against a backdrop of lightning bolts overnight after erupting four times on Wednesday, forcing authorities to raise its alert level to the highest of a four-tiered […]
TOKYO, April 18, 2024 (AFP) – Eight people were reported injured Thursday after a 6.3-magnitude earthquake struck off southwestern Japan, but there appeared to be no major damage or tsunami. The epicentre of the quake, which hit at 11:14 pm (1414 GMT) Wednesday, was located between the islands of Kyushu and Shikoku, the US Geological Survey said. Japan experiences around 1,500 quakes every year. The vast majority are mild and even larger quakes usually cause […]
PESHAWAR, Pakistan, April 17, 2024 (AFP) – At least 65 people have died in storm-related incidents including lightning in Pakistan, officials said, with rain so far in April falling at nearly twice the historical average rate. Heavy downpours between Friday and Monday unleashed flash floods and caused houses to collapse, while lightning killed at least 28 people. The largest death toll was in northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where 32 people have died, including 15 children, and […]
JAKARTA, April 17, 2024 (AFP) – A volcano erupted several times in Indonesia’s outermost region overnight Wednesday, forcing hundreds of people to be evacuated after it spewed lava and a column of smoke more than a mile into the sky. Mount Ruang, a stratovolcano in North Sulawesi Province, first erupted at 9:45 pm on Tuesday (1345 GMT) and twice again in the early hours of Wednesday, the country’s volcanology and geological agencies said. There were […]
TOKYO, April 15, 2024 (AFP) – Temperatures in Japan’s northern city of Sapporo — famous for winter sports — passed 25 degrees Celsius (77 Fahrenheit) on Monday, the earliest point of the year on record, a weather agency official said. Sapporo, the main city on the country’s northern island of Hokkaido, hosted the Winter Olympics in 1972 and each winter holds a snow festival where massive ice sculptures draw tens of thousands of visitors. “The […]
ORENBURG, Russia, April 13, 2024 (AFP) – Russian emergency services on Saturday said they had evacuated thousands of people from the Orenburg region in the south of the Urals as flood water continued to rise. Fast-rising temperatures have melted snow and ice, and along with heavy rain have caused a number of major rivers that cross Russia and Kazakhstan to overflow this month. In the city of Orenburg, one of the worst affected areas in […]
By Rosa SULLEIRO BARCELONA, April 12, 2024 (AFP) – Scientists at a United Nations conference in Spain called Friday for more research into the sharp rise in ocean temperatures which they warn could have devastating consequences. “The changes are happening so fast that we are not able to keep pace with the impact,” the executive secretary of UNESCO’s intergovernmental oceanographic commission, Vidar Helgesen, told AFP on the sidelines of the three-day “Ocean Decade” conference in […]
HANOI, April 6, 2024 (AFP) – Thousands of people in Vietnam are suffering a “severe” shortage of fresh water because of drought and salinisation, prompting authorities to declare a state of emergency on Saturday. A weeks-long heatwave has brought drought and saline intrusion to an area of Tien Giang province, 60 kilometres (37 miles) south of business hub Ho Chi Minh City. The province’s Tan Phu Dong area — with 12 kilometers of coastline along […]
