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Melting ice roads cut off Indigenous communities in Canada’s far north as unseasonably warm weather on Friday also saw its largest city, Toronto, break a winter heat record. Communities in Ontario and neighboring Manitoba provinces declared a state of emergency as the warm spell made the network of ice roads — which across Canada spans more than 8,000 kilometers (5,000 miles) between dispersed populations — unpassable. Many remote communities in Canada’s north depend on ice […]
A US judge has ordered Elon Musk to comply with a subpoena to answer questions from regulators about his purchases of Twitter shares last year. The order comes after Musk, who beefed up his stake in Twitter — now called X — before buying the company for $44 billion, did not show up for a scheduled deposition in September with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), according to a legal filing. “The court grants the […]
CLARK, Philippines, Feb 9, 2024 (AFP) – NASA has kicked off a series of marathon flights in Asia with the world’s biggest flying laboratory, in an ambitious mission to improve the models that help to forecast and fight air pollution. Millions of deaths each year are linked to air pollution, and improving the ability to identify its sources and behaviour can lead to more accurate warning systems for the public. Starting this week in the […]
By Juliette Collen PARIS, Feb 7, 2024 (AFP) – Saturn’s small moon Mimas seems an unlikely suspect in the hunt for life in Earth’s backyard — it is probably best known for looking like the “Death Star” in the Star Wars films. But scientists said on Wednesday that underneath the unassuming moon’s icy shell is a vast hidden ocean that has many of the ingredients necessary to host primitive alien life. Mimas is the latest […]
RIO DE JANEIRO, Feb 6, 2024 (AFP) – Sao Paulo opened an emergency operations center Tuesday to deal with a surge in dengue fever cases that has hit Brazil and South America just as millions of tourists arrive for carnival celebrations. Cases of the mosquito-borne disease have also risen sharply in Argentina, where a record 10,000 cases were reported in the first three weeks of the year. Paraguay has meanwhile declared a health emergency over […]
By Kelly MACNAMARA PARIS, Feb 8, 2024 (AFP) – Earth has endured 12 months of temperatures 1.5C hotter than the pre-industrial era for the first time on record, Europe’s climate monitor said Thursday, in what scientists called a “warning to humanity”. Storms, drought and fire have lashed the planet as climate change, supercharged by the naturally-occurring El Nino phenomenon, stoked record warming in 2023, making it likely the hottest in 100,000 years. The extremes have […]
Population numbers of endangered monarch butterflies have fallen sharply at their wintering sites in Mexico, experts said Wednesday, blaming the “sobering” drop primarily on climate change and the use of pesticides. The orange, black and white-spotted insects covered 0.90 hectares (2.2 acres) of forest in the 2023-2024 season, Gloria Tavera, conservation director at the National Commission for Natural Protected Areas, said. That marked a decline of 59 percent from the previous year, she told a […]
By Axl HERNANDEZ con Héctor VELASCO en Santiago Firefighters said Wednesday they had extinguished all wildfires in Chile’s coastal region of Valparaiso, where flames razed entire communities and left 131 dead. “The forest emergency that began on February 2 is considered to have been overcome,” said the fire department in the seaside resort town Vina del Mar, one of the worst-hit areas. Under a summer heatwave, almost 2,000 firefighters fought the blaze, finally quenching the […]
US companies are set to launch for the Moon on February 14, less than a month since a similar mission ended in failure with the spaceship burning up in the Earth’s atmosphere, NASA said Wednesday. The upcoming attempt features a lander built by Houston-based Intuitive Machines fixed to the top of a SpaceX rocket, while the last try involved a United Launch Alliance rocket and Astrobotics lander. But the stakes remain just as high: achieving […]
By Juan RESTREPO et Juan BARRETO GERLACHE STRAIT, Antarctica, Feb 7, 2024 (AFP) – In remote Antarctica, Colombian marine biologist Paulo Tigreros dips a net into the icy waters in his hunt for microplastics in what should be one of the best-preserved ecosystems in the world. Like a sieve, the net lets water pass through as it retains the small solid particles that float in the Gerlache Strait, a natural corridor approximately 160 kilometers (99 […]
A shipwreck believed to date from the 19th century has washed up on the snow-covered shores of Canada’s Atlantic island province of Newfoundland, attracting a bevy of looky-loos and archaeologists probing its mysterious past. Over the past weekend, a team of archaeologists and volunteers rushed to recover parts of the 30-meter (100 feet) long ship before tides take it back to the ocean depths whence it came. They managed to extract wooden planks, metal sheathing […]
By Daniel Lawler One in 10 premature births in the United States have been linked to pregnant women being exposed to chemicals in extremely common plastic products, a large study said on Wednesday. The chemicals, called phthalates, are used to soften plastic and can be found in thousands of consumer items including plastic containers and wrapping, beauty care products and toys. Phthalates have been known for decades to be “hormone disruptors” which affect a person’s […]
