by Jitendra JOSHI Agence France-Presse MANCHESTER, United Kingdom (AFP) – British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s pointman for the COP26 climate summit insisted Tuesday that his own Conservative party was on board with the ambition of saving the planet. COP26 president Alok Sharma said that despite grumbling on the party’s right wing at its annual conference, MPs all saw the potential for a green economic revolution. “Sometimes people don’t perceive the Conservatives as leading on this,” […]
Life
Two stranded humpback whales rescued in Argentina
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AFP) — Rescue teams saved two stranded whales along the Atlantic coast of Argentina Tuesday, the World Marine Foundation said. The animals were stranded on the beach of the seaside resort town of La Lucila del Mar, 220 miles (360 kilometers) south of Buenos Aires, just as spring arrives to the southern hemisphere. “The first, which was stranded on Sunday, was a juvenile female humpback whale, 32 feet (9.8 meters) long and […]
Severe droughts dry up dreams of Turkish farmers
by Raziye Akkoc Agence France-Presse AKKUZULU, Turkey (AFP) – Turkish farmer Hava Keles stares inconsolably at withered vines of rotting tomatoes in a field that has been devastated by a series of droughts blamed on climate change. “My tomatoes, my beans, my peppers are ruined. My watermelons didn’t even grow. The cucumbers I planted have shrivelled up on the branches,” lamented Keles, 58, standing in an arid Anatolian plot in Akkuzulu, north of Ankara. Keles […]
Dry year leaves Syria wheat farmers facing crop failure
by Delil Souleiman with Maher al-Mounes in Damascus Agence France-Presse TAL SHAEER, Syria (AFP) – After Syrian farmer Abdelbaqi Souleiman lost his last wheat crop to a wildfire, he had hoped for a better harvest this summer. But this spring there was hardly any rain. “Last year the field I planted was burnt to the ground,” said the 48-year-old. “This year there wasn’t enough rain, and we didn’t harvest any wheat.” As man-made climate change […]
Climate change threatens the Everglades, Florida’s gem
by Gerard MARTINEZ Agence France-Presse MIAMI, Florida (AFP) – Umberto Gimenez loves alligators. He gives them nicknames such as “Smile” and “Momma Gator” and laughs when he thinks of their antics. Gimenez, an airboat captain, has found his paradise in Florida’s Everglades National Park, a natural gem in the southeastern US state at risk from climate change. “It’s an amazing place and there’s only one in the world,” he says. The largest wetland in the […]
Global warming kills 14 percent of world’s corals in a decade
by Marlowe HOOD Agence France-Presse PARIS, France (AFP) – Dynamite fishing and pollution — but mostly global warming — wiped out 14 percent of the world’s coral reefs from 2009 to 2018, leaving graveyards of bleached skeletons where vibrant ecosystems once thrived, according to the largest ever survey of coral health. Hardest hit were corals in South Asia and the Pacific, around the Arabian Peninsula, and off the coast of Australia, more than 300 scientists […]
Facebook blames major outage on router work
SAN FRANCISCO, United States (AFP) — Facebook late Monday blamed a major outage across its platforms on configuration changes it made to routers that coordinate network traffic between its data centers “This disruption to network traffic had a cascading effect on the way our data centers communicate, bringing our services to a halt,” Facebook vice president of infrastructure Santosh Janardhan said in a post. © Agence France-Presse
Facebook fights global outage and whistleblower revelations
by Joshua Melvin with Thomas Urbain in New York Agence France Presse WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — Facebook battled dueling crises on Monday as it faced a large-scale outage of its dominant social network for seven hours, and fought against a whistleblower’s damning revelations. Many long-held fears and criticisms about the platform seem to have been backed up by Facebook’s own research, which ex-worker Frances Haugen has turned over to authorities and the Wall […]
Pfizer jab prevents severe Covid for at least 6 months: study
PARIS, France (AFP) — Vaccination with two doses of the Pfizer jab stays highly effective against severe Covid — including the Delta variant — for at least six months, an analysis of US patients said Monday. While previous data from clinical trials has shown jabs protect against hospitalisation, the study published in the Lancet measures one vaccine’s effectiveness over time in a real-world setting. Pfizer and healthcare provider Kaiser Permanente looked at records from 3.4 […]
Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp hit by outage: tracker
by Julie Jammot with Joshua Melvin in Washington Agence France Presse SAN FRANCISCO, United States (AFP) — Facebook and its Instagram and WhatsApp platforms were hit by a massive outage Monday, impacting potentially tens of millions of users as the social media giant faces fallout over its effect on teens and misinformation. Tracker Downdetector was showing outages in heavily populated areas like Washington and Paris, with problems being reported from around 1545 GMT. “We’re […]
Dr. Genesis Rivera: A journey completed, a life well lived
His passion and dedication in medicine and music is well-known. Dr. Genesis Rivera, 75, who was the first dean of the New Era University’s College of Music and who served as dean of the NEU College of Medicine before his demise, contributed much in both fields which he loved dearly. He dedicated his life using his God-given talents to serve God and to help others, and is fondly remembered by those whose lives he […]
Fires, floods, flying insects: 10 recent climate-fuelled disasters
by Natalie HANDEL PARIS, France (AFP) — From a summer of fire and record floods, to freak frosts and locusts invasions, experts say man-made climate change is wreaking havoc on the world’s weather. Here are some of the most devastating climate-fuelled disasters from the past two years: Mediterranean on fire Greece’s worst heatwave in decades fuelled deadly wildfires that burned nearly 100,000 hectares (250,000 acres) this year in what the prime minister called the country’s […]





