Beijing (AFP) June 23, 2022 Record floods were expected in parts of southern China Thursday as heavy rains pushed water levels in the Pearl River delta to their highest in almost a century. Hundreds of thousands of people have been evacuated from the worst-hit parts of the region, which includes Guangdong province, a manufacturing and logistics hub that is home to China’s tech capital Shenzhen. … Continue reading Record floods threaten southern China

Dar Es Salaam (AFP) June 22, 2022 Tanzania Wednesday said it would tackle “illegal immigrants” in the northeastern area of Loliondo, where it has alleged Kenyan Maasai pastoralists are supporting opponents to a planned wildlife protection area. The Maasai of Loliondo have accused the government of trying to force them off their land in order to organise safaris and hunting expeditions. But the government has … Continue reading Tanzania accuses Kenyan Maasai of backing opponents to wildlife protection area

Dhaka (AFP) June 21, 2022 Bangladeshi ferryman Kalu Molla began working on the Buriganga river before the patchwork of slums on its banks gave way to garment factories – and before its waters turned pitch black. The 52-year-old has constant cough, allergies and skin rashes, and doctors have told him the vile-smelling sludge that has also wiped out marine life in one of Dhaka’s main … Continue reading Dead rivers: The cost of Bangladesh’s garment-driven economic boom

Atalaia Do Norte, Brazil (AFP) June 22, 2022 The pirarucu is one impressive fish: a huge, thrashing Amazonian monster with red-and-black scales the size of serving spoons. Still, it’s just a fish. How is it possible it could have gotten British journalist Dom Phillips and Brazilian Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira murdered? Police say Phillips, 57, and Pereira, 41, were shot dead on June 5 returning … Continue reading Fish trade’s murky waters cloud double murder in Amazon

Bonn (AFP) June 22, 2022 Egypt hopes to jump-start the action needed to face a warming world when it takes the presidency of major UN climate talks in November, but warns that countries need a “reality check” as progress stalls. Presiding over the inflection point when a decades-long United Nations climate process switches from negotiation to “implementation”, Egypt has set a high bar for its … Continue reading Egypt calls for ‘reality check’ in UN climate talks

Greenbelt MD (SPX) Jun 21, 2022 Greenland’s fjords harbor a unique group of polar bears that rely on glacial ice, a NASA-funded study reports in Science. Polar bears throughout the Arctic depend on sea ice as a platform for hunting seals. As human-caused climate change warms the planet and Arctic sea ice melts away, polar bears are scrambling to find ice to hunt on. But … Continue reading Subpopulation of Greenland polar bears found

Longyearbyen (AFP) June 22, 2022 Tor Selnes owes his life to a lamp. He miraculously survived a fatal avalanche that shed light on the vulnerability of Svalbard, a region warming faster than anywhere else, to human-caused climate change. On the morning of December 19, 2015, the 54-year-old school monitor was napping at home in Longyearbyen, the main town in the Norwegian archipelago halfway between mainland … Continue reading Warming climate upends Arctic mining town

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Jun 21, 2022 End-Permian extinction (EPE) is the greatest biotic crisis in Earth’s history, eliminating more than 90% of species in the oceans and more than 70% of species on land. Researchers led by Dr. LI Menghan from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) conducted a S-isotopic study on EPE in the Sydney Basin, and found a sharp … Continue reading Researchers reveal new mechanism of end-permian terrestrial mass extinction

Copenhagen, Denmark (SPX) Jun 21, 2022 Greenland’s many small glaciers are melting more rapidly as the Arctic warms, contributing to sea level rise, yet they are less well-studied than the main Greenland Ice Sheet. A new study documents about a 50% increase in melting in these small but important glaciers over the past two decades. The new study, published in the AGU journal Geophysical Research … Continue reading Melting accelerates for thousands of Greenland’s northern glaciers

Nairobi (AFP) June 20, 2022 A repeatedly postponed UN summit tasked with protecting nature and halting accelerating species loss will be held in early December, more than two years behind schedule, sources told AFP. Originally slated to take place in China, the COP15 conference on biological diversity – or biodiversity – is now set for December 5 to 17 in Montreal, they said. “Governments have … Continue reading Thrice postponed UN biodiversity summit set for December