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by Ernesto TOVAR Agence France-Presse LIMA, Peru (AFP) – Peru declared an environmental emergency Saturday to battle an oil spill caused by freak waves from a volcanic eruption in the South Pacific. The stunningly powerful eruption last Saturday of an undersea volcano near Tonga unleashed tsunami waves around the Pacific and as far away as the United States. In Peru, the oil spill near Lima has fouled beaches, killed birds and harmed the fishing and […]
Latest Omicron subvariant dubbed BA.2 detected in Britain, 40 other countries including India, Denmark and Sweden by Isabelle TOURNÉ Agence France Presse PARIS, France (AFP) — Scientists are keeping a close watch on a recently-discovered sub-variant of the Omicron version of the Covid-19 virus to determine how its emergence could effect future pandemic spread. The initial Omicron variant has become the dominant virus strain in recent months but British health authorities have notably identified […]
by Julien GIRAULT Agence France Presse AMIENS, France (AFP) — Hours before the window for lodging objections closes, EU environment and energy ministers meeting in France Friday differed sharply on a European Commission provision that would classify nuclear and natural gas energy as “sustainable”. The controversy pits countries led by France — where nuclear generates a world-leading 70 percent of electricity — against Germany, Austria and others in the 27-nation bloc. Debate over the […]
by Maddison Connaughton Agence France-Presse SYDNEY, Australia (AFP) – Tonga’s volcanic eruption felt like an “atomic bomb” that shook “the whole island”, an aid worker told AFP on Friday, as the Pacific nation raced to address a drinking water shortage. Almost a week after the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano exploded, unleashing a tsunami and cutting Tonga off from the rest of the world, witnesses are recounting the disaster. On Tongatapu, Tonga’s main island, “we felt a […]
MONTREAL, Canada (AFP) — Canadian authorities found the bodies of four people including a baby who apparently froze to death in a blizzard a few meters from the US border along a route used by migrants, officials said Thursday. The temperature Wednesday when the bodies were found amid vast snowdrifts, taking into account the wind, was minus 35 degrees Celsius (minus 31 degrees Fahrenheit). “At this very early stage of the investigation, it appears that […]
KALWARIA ZEBRZYDOWSKA, Poland (AFP) – In a battle against Poland’s constant smog, scientists are testing out a new “cannon” that uses soundwaves to push toxic particles higher into the atmosphere to allow residents to breathe. Installed on top of a metal container, the experimental device consists of a large upside-down cone that makes a loud sound every six seconds. The aim is to chase the smog from Kalwaria Zebrzydowska, which like many Polish towns and cities […]
by Amélie BOTTOLLIER-DEPOIS Agence France-Presse PARIS, France (AFP) – A giant iceberg that detached from Antarctica in 2017 released the equivalent of 61 million Olympic-sized swimming pools of fresh water as it melted, according to research published Thursday, raising questions over the impact on the marine ecosystem. The monstrous iceberg was twice the size of Luxembourg when it separated from the Larsen ice shelf, which has warmed faster than any other part of Earth’s southernmost […]
by Kelly MACNAMARA Agence France-Presse PARIS, France (AFP) – Scientists have discovered a vast reef of “pristine” rose-shaped corals apparently unharmed by climate change in deep water off the coast of Tahiti, UNESCO announced Thursday. Mapping approximately three kilometres (two miles) long and up to 65 metres (213 feet) wide, UNESCO said it was “one of the most extensive healthy coral reefs on record”. The UN heritage agency said it was “highly unusual” to find […]
MOSCOW, Russia (AFP) – Russia’s sole active female cosmonaut, Anna Kikina, is due to travel to the International Space Station in September on a Soyuz rocket, the national space agency said Thursday. Kikina, a 37-year-old engineer, will be only the fifth professional woman cosmonaut from Russia or the Soviet Union to fly to space. Last year, the Russian space agency Roscosmos said “our beauty” Kikina would fly aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon as part of a […]
PARIS, France (AFP) — Superbug infections killed 1.2 million people in 2019, according to a study published Thursday, which authors described as the most comprehensive assessment of the impact of antimicrobial resistance to date. The death toll means infections by bacteria resistant to antibiotics are directly responsible for more deaths than HIV/AIDS or malaria. The report, published in the Lancet, also found antimicrobial resistance played a role in up to 3.68 million other deaths. […]
by Marion DOUET Agence France-Presse LAKE KIVU, Rwanda (AFP) – The engineers aboard the floating power station on Lake Kivu could only watch nervously as the volcano in the distance erupted violently, sending tremors rumbling through the water beneath them. It was not the lava shooting from Mount Nyiragongo last May that spooked them, but the enormous concentrations of potentially explosive gases within Kivu, one of Africa’s great Rift lakes lying between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic […]
by Joe Prezioso NEW YORK, United States (AFP) — Exhausted and overwhelmed by the influx of mostly unvaccinated Covid patients, Dr James Samuel Pope, an intensive care physician at Hartford Hospital in the US state of Connecticut, hopes the Omicron wave of the pandemic will be the last. “It’s been very much the wild west for about the last two weeks,” says Pope, medical director of the ICU at Hartford Hospital. “More ER visits in […]
