Environment

Schools in two cities in the Indonesian part of Borneo Island will be closed for a week after smoke from forest fires caused air quality to hit "dangerous" levels, a local government official said Sunday. Indonesia and neighboring countries in Southeast Asia are regularly hit ...

An unidentified animal howl recorded in the Okuchichibu mountains bears a strong resemblance to a wolf howl, according to an analysis of audio samples provided by Hiroshi Yagi, an independent researcher who has been working to prove the existence of the officially extinct Japanese ...

The U.S. will account for almost two-thirds of the world's new oil and natural gas output in the decade ahead, making it a critical obstacle to stopping climate pollution, a London-based advocacy group says. Propelled by the shale boom, the U.S. will pump out the ...

Luxembourg began clear-up operations on Saturday after a violent tornado ripped through the tiny state's southwest, causing serious damage to dozens of homes and injuring 19 people. The tornado hit towns close to the French and Belgian borders Friday, with winds of almost 130 kph ...

Floating plastic garbage has swamped a remote Pacific island once regarded as an environmental jewel and scientists say little can be done to save it while a throwaway culture persists. Henderson Island is an uninhabited coral atoll that lies almost exactly halfway between New Zealand ...

Equipped with fishing rods and thick gloves, a group peers into the water from one of the many boats that line Amsterdam's famous canals. But it's not fish they're hunting on their cruise along one of the Dutch capital's most famous tourist attractions — it's ...

With concern, but little surprise, I read an article by Daphne Rousseau in The Japan Times on July 2 about a mass extinction of insects in Krefeld, Germany, near the Dutch border. There, based on a study going back almost 30 years, entomologist Martin Sorg ...

Rescuers in India have evacuated more than 500 passengers from a train after it got stuck in monsoon floodwaters between two stations near Mumbai. A statement by the Disaster Management Office in Maharashtra state said the Mahalaxmi Express train, which left Mumbai at around 8.15 ...

Parvin Begum, who saw her home on a secluded island in northern Bangladesh steadily devoured by floods this month, feels lucky. She received some money before the disaster hit under a new form of aid, used for the first time in Bangladesh by the government ...

Cicadas — known as semi in Japanese — are a superfamily of insects with around 2,000 known species worldwide, around 35 of which live in Japan.