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by Martín SILVA Agence France-Presse Santo Corazón, Bolivia (AFP) – The road through San Matias, Bolivia, is a no man’s land. Hundreds of thousands of hectares of once lush forest are now a wasteland of twisted, carbonized tree stumps. It is a protected area, but San Matias — which also hosts subsistence farmers, cattle ranches and quartz mines — burns every year as land is cleared for the next planting season. The practice is legal […]
COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AFP) – Greenland’s parliament voted Tuesday to ban uranium mining and exploration in the vast Danish territory, following through on a campaign promise from the ruling left-wing party which was elected earlier this year. The Inuit Ataqatigiit (IA) party won snap elections in April that were originally triggered by divisions over a controversial uranium and rare earth mining project. The IA won 12 seats in the 31-seat Greenlandic national assembly, beating its rival Siumut, […]
by Kelly MACNAMARA / Marlowe HOOD / Patrick GALEY Agence France-Presse GLASGOW, United Kingdom (AFP) – A flurry of emissions pledges around the COP26 climate summit will likely do little to slow global warming, the UN said Tuesday, calling on nations to sharply accelerate their greenhouse gas cuts this decade. Nations have presented a range of new and enhanced commitments — including a vow by India to be carbon neutral by 2070 — in recent […]
READING, United Kingdom (AFP) – A striped design showing the impact of global warming on 170 years of world temperatures at a glance has become a hit at the UN’s COP26 climate summit in Glasgow. The lined red and blue image, which shows global average temperatures from 1850 to 2020, has been on display at the talks in exhibitions on sustainability, adorned face masks and clothes and even graced the wall of the summit’s cafeteria. […]
LONDON, United Kingdom (AFP) – UK aircraft engine maker Rolls-Royce on Tuesday launched plans to build small low-cost nuclear reactors to help cut the nation’s carbon emissions. The news comes as Britain pushes ahead with large-scale projects, including Hinkley Point C which will be the nation’s first new nuclear plant for a generation. Rolls-Royce said it had created a new Small Modular Reactor (SMR) division after clinching a cash injection of £405 million ($547 million, […]
WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — Drugmakers Pfizer and BioNTech announced Tuesday they have formally submitted a request asking US officials for emergency authorization of their Covid-19 booster vaccine for people aged 18 and older. The move follows research published by the companies in late October indicating a third shot is 95.6 percent effective against symptomatic infection, based on clinical trials carried out on 10,000 people. The companies asked the US Food and Drug Administration to […]
LOS ANGELES, United States (AFP) — An original Apple computer, hand-built by company founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak 45 years ago, sold for $400,000 at auction in the United States on Tuesday. The functioning Apple-1, the great-great-grandfather of today’s sleek chrome-and-glass Macbooks, had been expected to fetch up to $600,000 when it went under the hammer in California. The so-called “Chaffey College” Apple-1 is one of only 200 made by Jobs and Wozniak at […]
GENEVA, Switzerland (AFP) — The World Health Organization’s chief scientist said Tuesday she was looking forward to the “second generation” of Covid-19 vaccines, which could include nasal sprays and oral versions. Soumya Swaminathan said such vaccines could have advantages over the current crop as they would be easier to deliver than injections and could even be self-administered. Swaminathan said there were 129 different candidate vaccines that have got as far as clinical trials — being […]
WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — Moderna has applied to the European Union’s medicine regulator for approval of its Covid-19 vaccine for children aged six to 11, the US biotechnology company announced Tuesday. The dosage for the two injections administered four weeks apart has been adjusted to 50 micrograms, compared with the 100 micrograms for shot recipients in older age groups. “We are pleased to announce the submission of this variation to the EMA,” the European […]
SUNDARBANS, India (AFP) — With India facing ever more powerful cyclones, women in the world’s largest mangrove forest are planting thousands of saplings to help protect their coastal communities from climate change. The Sundarbans straddle the coastline into neighbouring Bangladesh and are home to some of the world’s rarest creatures, including the Bengal tiger and the Irrawaddy dolphin. The forest has been designated a World Heritage site but has in the past suffered from illegal […]
by Lucie AUBOURG WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — In 1921, the celebrated French scientist Marie Curie made a six-week trip to the United States, where she visited the White House and received from the hands of the president himself a very unusual gift: a gram of radium. At the time, the radioactive element was extremely hard to extract from minerals and could cost more than ten times as much as a diamond of the same […]
CALAIS, France (AFP) – French animal experts said on Sunday they were preparing to conduct an autopsy on a 19-metre-long whale that died after getting stranded at the northern port of Calais. The fin whale, weighing around 15 tonnes, apparently beached itself after getting injured, a rare phenomenon in the area. “It is a female, about 30 years old, who ran aground on Saturday,” Jacky Karpouzopoulos of the CMNF animal protection group told AFP. “She […]
