Dubai (AFP) June 13, 2022 The United Nations is launching a crowd-funding campaign for an operation intended to prevent an ageing Yemeni oil tanker from unleashing a potentially catastrophic spill in the Red Sea, a senior official said Monday. “We hope to raise $5 million by the end of June,” David Gressly, the UN’s humanitarian coordinator for the war-hit country, told an online press briefing, … Continue reading UN crowd-funds to prevent oil spill disaster off Yemen

New York (AFP) June 13, 2022 After a period of blissful silence overhead due to the Covid-19 pandemic, New Yorkers are dealing again with a familiar problem: noisy helicopters. “With the bigger helicopters, my apartment vibrates,” said Melissa Elstein, who campaigns to ban non-essential chopper flights. “They pollute our air, creating noise pollution which has negative health impacts,” the 56-year-old told AFP.http://dlvr.it/SS7YhG Continue reading ‘My apartment vibrates’: New Yorkers fight noisy helicopter rides

Bremerhaven, Germany (SPX) Jun 10, 2022 The features of the ocean floor help determine how water masses and ocean currents move and how they affect our climate. Biodiversity is also influenced by seafloor landforms. Accordingly, having as precise information on the seafloor topography as possible is indispensable for oceanographic and climate research. With the second version of the International Bathymetric Chart of the Southern Oceahttp://dlvr.it/SS37TD Continue reading The Southern Ocean as never seen before

Leipzig, Germany (SPX) Jun 10, 2022 The Sentinel-2 space mission began with the launch of Earth observation satellite Sentinel-2A in June 2015, and Sentinel-2B was launched in March 2017. Since then, these two satellites have been orbiting in space at an altitude of nearly 800 kilometres and, as part of ESA’s Copernicus programme, providing data for, e.g., climate protection and land monitoring. very three to … Continue reading Studying grassland from space

London, UK (SPX) Jun 10, 2022 At the current rate of retreat the vast glaciers, which extend deep into the heart of the ice sheet, could contribute as much as 3.4 metres to global sea level rise over the next several centuries. Antarctica is covered by two huge ice masses: the East and West Antarctic Ice Sheets, which feed many individual glaciers. Because of the … Continue reading Antarctic glaciers losing ice at fastest rate for 5,500 years, finds study

Otumba, Mexico (AFP) June 12, 2022 As a tiny cub four years ago, Frida the Bengal tiger was found chained up in a restaurant parking lot in Mexico City, dirty, emaciated and unable to walk. Rescued and rehabilitated, she is now a popular attraction at the Reino Animal (Animal Kingdom) park along with hundreds of other exotic creatures taken from misguided Mexican “pet” owners – … Continue reading Far from home, new chance in Mexico for Frida the rescued ‘pet’ tiger

Osaka, Japan (SPX) Jun 10, 2022 For millennia, philosophers have pondered the question of whether humans are inherently good. But now, researchers from Japan have found that young infants can make and act on moral judgments, shedding light on the origin of morality. In a study recently published in Nature Human Behaviour, researchers from Osaka University, in collaboration with Otsuma Women’s University, NTT Communicatiohttp://dlvr.it/SS37RX Continue reading Are we born with a moral compass

Shanghai (AFP) June 9, 2022 Shanghai will lock down a district of 2.7 million people on Saturday to conduct mass coronavirus testing, city authorities said, as the Chinese metropolis struggles to fully emerge from punishing curbs. The city eased many restrictions last week, after confining most of its 25 million residents to their homes since March as China battled its worst Covid outbreak in two … Continue reading Shanghai to lock down and test 2.7 million as Covid fears linger

Los Angeles (AFP) June 8, 2022 The custodians of the primal forests that stretch across eight Latin American countries said national leaders gathering in Los Angeles this week had to listen to them if they wanted to save the Amazon. Indigenous leaders from across South America are in the United States for the Summit of the Americas, a semi-regular gathering of heads of state from … Continue reading Amazon’s indigenous leaders make plea at Americas summit

Washington (AFP) June 9, 2022 Lorando Duncan wears long-sleeved shirts because his arms bear scars he doesn’t like to show: those of the drugs he has been injecting into his veins for decades. Born in the US capital Washington 65 years ago, the slender African American has been using heroin almost all his adult life. But the advent of fentanyl, an ultra-powerful and addictive synthetic … Continue reading Black Americans bear the brunt of fentanyl ‘epidemic’ in Washington