Paris (AFP) Dec 2, 2020 After two months of trekking across France, a French-British duo have completed their campaign to stop mask litter during the coronavirus crisis, having picked up every discarded face covering they spotted while walking to Paris from the Mediterranean city of Marseille. Edmund Platt, a British environmental activist, and his French friend Frederic Munsch set off on October 1 to follow … Continue reading Viral trash: French Covid clean-up nets mounds of masks

Jakarta (AFP) Dec 4, 2020 Every year, pounding rains wash away mountains of plastic waste from the streets of Jakarta, with some of it ending up as far away as Bali’s beaches. So scientists are turning to satellites to trace the rubbish and figure out how to tackle the problem. Indonesia allows more waste to enter the ocean than any other country apart from China. … Continue reading Trash tracking satellites help Indonesia tackle marine waste

Geneva (AFP) Dec 2, 2020 Climate change has become the biggest threat to UN-listed natural world heritage sites like glaciers and wetlands, and has pushed Australia’s Great Barrier Reef into “critical” condition, conservationists said Wednesday. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) revealed in a new report that shifts due to the changing climate now imperil a full third of the 252 UNESCO-listedhttp://dlvr.it/RmvYLL Continue reading Climate change biggest threat to natural World Heritage sites

Abidjan (AFP) Dec 2, 2020 The world’s two biggest cocoa suppliers, Ivory Coast and Ghana, have taken a tussle with chocolate multinationals to the battlefield of public opinion. In an unprecedented move, the cocao boards of the two West African countries have publicly accused US chocolate giants Mars and Hershey of sidestepping a deal designed to shore up income for poor farmers. Both companies deny … Continue reading African cocoa producers unleash PR offensive on chocolate giants

CRM giant Salesforce has signed a definitive agreement to purchase enterprise communications platform Slack. “Together, Salesforce and Slack will shape the future of enterprise software and transform the way everyone works in the all-digital, work-from-anywhere world, said Marc Benioff, Chair and CEO, Salesforce.http://dlvr.it/RmvY7d Continue reading Salesforce to Acquire Slack in $27.7 Billion Deal

Sydney (AFP) Dec 2, 2020 Australia’s global allies voiced support for the country’s beleaguered wine industry Wednesday, vowing to down a glass to lessen the impact of choking Chinese sanctions. China on Friday announced it would impose anti-dumping tariffs on Australian wine, the latest salvo in a barrage of trade sanctions that critics say are politically motivated. In response, supporters including Taiwan andhttp://dlvr.it/Rmqn74 Continue reading Allies raise a glass to Australia amid China wine dispute

Singapore (AFP) Dec 1, 2020 Hong Kong and Singapore on Tuesday indefinitely delayed a “travel bubble” in a new blow to their hard-hit tourism and aviation industries as the Chinese city battles a coronavirus surge. The arrangement allowing people to travel between the financial hubs without quarantining had been due to launch on November 22, but was postponed for two weeks as Hong Kong saw … Continue reading Hong Kong, Singapore ‘travel bubble’ delayed indefinitely

Wuhan, China (AFP) Dec 1, 2020 Wuhan native Liu Pei’en shut down his investment business and converted to Buddhism to try to make sense of his father’s death last January from suspected Covid-19. Zhong Hanneng still struggles to sleep or eat following the death of her son from the disease nearly 10 months ago, and says friends and relatives are shunning her family because of … Continue reading ‘I died too’: A year after outbreak, Wuhan kin struggle to move on

Baltimore MD (SPX) Dec 01, 2020 Human activity endangers coral health around the world. A new algal threat is taking advantage of coral’s already precarious situation in the Caribbean and making it even harder for reef ecosystems to grow. Just-published research in Scientific Reports details how an aggressive, golden-brown, crust-like alga is rapidly overgrowing shallow reefs, taking the place of coral that was damaged bhttp://dlvr.it/Rmm0Wv Continue reading Caribbean coral reefs under siege from aggressive algae

Boston MA (SPX) Dec 01, 2020 Methane, the main component of natural gas, is the cleanest-burning of all the fossil fuels, but when emitted into the atmosphere it is a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. By some estimates, seafloor methane contained in frozen formations along the continental margins may equal or exceed the total amount of coal, oil, and gas in all … Continue reading An escape route for seafloor methane