Subterranean blazes: Indonesia struggles to douse fires both above and below ground
Thousands of Indonesian firefighters are locked in an around-the-clock game of Whack-a-Mole as they battle to extinguish an invisible enemy — underground fires that aggravate global warming. Vast blazes are ripping across the archipelago's rainforests, unleashing a toxic haze over Southeast Asia that has triggered ...
Scientists warn world must transform food production or face possible unrest
The world must diversify its food production and consumption, or face damaging supply disruptions that could lead to suffering and social unrest, scientists warned Monday. A new global study found the health and environmental benefits of transforming the way we farm would outweigh heavily the ...
Schools closed for a week due to 'dangerous' air pollution in Indonesia's Borneo Island
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 ...
Brazil's Amazon chief Raoni Metuktire tapped for 2020 Nobel Peace Prize nomination
A group of Brazilian anthropologists and environmentalists has put forward Chief Raoni Metuktire of the Kayapo tribe as a candidate for the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize for a lifetime of work protecting the Amazon rainforest. Raoni — an unmistakable Amazon icon with his large lip ...
New Environment Minister Shinjiro Koizumi vows Japan will take lead role on plastic waste
Koizumi said he wants to make Japan a leader in environmental issues and speak with Fukushima’s fishermen about what to do with Tepco’s radiation-tainted water.
Plan to cut down gingko trees in Fukuoka to improve wheelchair access sparks backlash
An ongoing redevelopment project in the city of Fukuoka has sparked outrage among some local residents and calls for the authorities to reconsider their decision to cut down fully grown ginkgo trees along Fukudai-dori avenue, one of the city's main roads. The Nishinippon Shimbun newspaper ...
U.S. House votes to bar Arctic drilling in Alaska but Senate action unlikely
The Democratic-controlled House on Thursday voted to reinstate a decades-long ban on oil and gas drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge — a largely symbolic move aimed at reversing a plan by President Donald Trump to drill in the pristine refuge. The 225-193 vote ...
For more than 20 years, the eastern Michigan town of Lapeer sent leftover sludge from its sewage treatment plant to area farms, supplying them with high-quality, free fertilizer while avoiding the expense of disposal elsewhere. But state inspectors ordered a halt to the practice in ...
Trump administration to drop Obama-era water protection rule
The Trump administration is revoking an Obama-era regulation that shielded many U.S. wetlands and streams from pollution but was opposed by developers and farmers who said it hurt economic development and infringed on property rights. Even before the official announcement, scheduled for later Thursday, environmental ...
English Channel dolphins carry 'toxic cocktail' of chemicals, some banned for decades
Bottlenose dolphins in the English Channel harbor a "toxic cocktail" of chemicals, some of which have been banned for decades and which may be harming the rare marine mammals' health, scientists said Thursday. Belgian and French scientists said they've detected high accumulations of industrial fluids ...
Conservationists have successfully created two northern white rhino embryos in a key step towards pulling the species back from the brink of extinction, scientists in Italy said Wednesday. There are only two survivors in the world, and both are female and unable to carry calves. ...
World must adapt to 'inevitable' climate change and invest now or pay high price later, warns report
Nations rich and poor must invest now to protect against the effects of climate change or pay an even heavier price later, a global commission warned Tuesday. Spending $1.8 trillion across five key areas over the next decade would not only help buffer the worst ...
