Category: environment

REYKJAVIK: Residents of the Icelandic fishing town of Grindavik are facing a second evacuation as new volcanic fissures have opened nearby, prompting the National Commissioner of Police to issue an evacuation order, CNN reported. Grindavik, situated approximately 70 kilometres southwest of Reykjavik on the Reykjanes peninsula, had previously been evacuated in November due to heightened seismic activity that culminated in…

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Today Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo called for a “halt to the use of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines” in a press release and X thread. In a statement posted on X, Ladapo wrote, “The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have always played it fast and loose with COVID-19 safety,…

Earth last year shattered global annual heat records, flirted with the world’s agreed-upon warming threshold and showed more signs of a feverish planet, the European climate agency said Tuesday. In one of the first of several teams of science agencies to calculate how off-the-charts warm 2023 was, the European climate agency Copernicus said the year was 1.48 degrees Celsius (2.66…

Bottled water has been found to contain hundreds of thousands of tiny plastic particles, the vast majority of which are nanoplastics (<1μm in length), according to new research. Nanoplastics are thought to be more toxic to humans because their small size means they can pass more easily from the gut into the body than microplastics (1μm to 5mm in length)….

Negotiators are convening this week in Nairobi for the latest round of talks aimed at creating a new scientific panel to advise the world’s governments on how to tackle chemical waste. But as the talks get underway, concerns have been voiced about potential conflicts of interest that could undermine the panel. The warning comes as efforts to agree a global…

There are continued warnings that the US has been without a chemical security programme since late July, leaving more than 3000 high-risk chemical facilities in the country vulnerable to terrorist, cyber- and physical attacks. The Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) programme, which was authorised 17 years ago and is managed by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), is charged…

ACAPULCO, Mexico — As a bright, hot sun filled Acapulco in the days following the furious arrival of Hurricane Otis, it revealed a city utterly transformed by destruction. The Category 5 storm slammed into the Pacific coast early Wednesday, killing at least 27 people, with at least four still missing, according to Mexican officials. Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador,…

Iran is currently grappling with a severe water crisis, a situation clearly underscored by the United Nations’ water status and conditions index. The crisis is most pronounced in the central plateau of Iran, where an absolute water shortage is unfolding. Regime officials have often attributed this crisis to factors like low rainfall and excessive water consumption. However, the Majlis Research…

The Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) is calling on the UK government to reduce the current cap on individual per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in drinking water from 100ng/l to 10ng/l, warning that levels above this pose a significant risk to public health. The RSC’s call follows new analysis revealing that more than a third of water courses tested in…

Over 400,000 nuisance calls in total have been made to the Japanese Embassy in Beijing since the release of treated radioactive water from the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant into the sea began in late August, Japanese government sources said Tuesday. On the back of growing anti-Japan sentiment in China, the daily number of harassing calls received by the embassy…

The Air Force launched an unarmed Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile over the Pacific Ocean in a routine test early Wednesday, the service said in a release. The missile was fired from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, around 1:30 a.m. local time, and traveled about 4,200 miles to the Marshall Islands, where the U.S. has conducted nuclear weapons tests for…

DES MOINES, Iowa — The harassment started to intensify as TV meteorologist Chris Gloninger did more reporting on climate change during local newscasts — outraged emails and even a threat to show up at his house. Gloninger said he had been recruited, in part, to “shake things up” at the Iowa station where he worked, but backlash was building. The…

The grey, two-storey home with white trim toppled and slid, crashing into the river below as rushing waters carried off a bobbing chunk of its roof. Next door, a condo building teetered on the edge of the bank, its foundation already having fallen away as erosion undercut it. The destruction came at the weekend as a glacial dam burst in…

The Air Force has detected unsafe levels of a likely carcinogen at underground launch control centers at a Montana nuclear missile base where a striking number of men and women have reported cancer diagnoses. A new cleanup effort has been ordered. The discovery “is the first from an extensive sampling of active U.S. intercontinental ballistic missile bases to address specific cancer…

It’s so hot in Florida right now that the ocean temperature in one area just crossed into the triple digits. On Monday, a water temperature sensor in Manatee Bay near Everglades National Park recorded a temperature of 101.1 degrees, according to a park spokesperson. The startling data matched high water temperatures observed elsewhere in the Florida Bay recently, and the…

The heaviest rain to hit the Atlantic Canadian province of Nova Scotia in more than 50 years triggered floods causing “unimaginable” damage, and four people are missing, including two children, officials said Saturday. The storm, which started Friday, dumped more than 25 cm (10 inches) on some parts of the province in just 24 hours — an amount that usually…