(Reuters) – A magnitude 6.8 earthquake struck near the coast of Northern Chile on Tuesday, the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences said, with local news media reporting some damage and minor landslides in areas near the epicenter. Chile’s interior minis... More »
(Reuters) – A magnitude 6.8 earthquake struck near the coast of Northern Chile on Tuesday, the GFZ German Research Center for Geosciences said, and some damage and minor landslides were reported in areas near the epicenter, according to local media. A number o... More »
PITTSBURGH (Reuters) – Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden said on Monday he would not ban hydraulic fracturing, a controversial method of drilling for crude oil and natural gas, if elected and called Republican assertions that he supports such a ban a... More »
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – California fire officials on Sunday reported significant headway battling the two largest of dozens of lightning-sparked blazes raging in and around the greater San Francisco Bay area since mid-August, though 60,000 people remained unde... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Sharks have more complex social lives than previously known, as shown by a study finding that gray reef sharks in the Pacific Ocean cultivate surprising social networks with one another and develop bonds that can endure for years. The re... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Scientists have identified a chemical compound released by locusts that causes them to swarm, opening the door to possible new ways to prevent these insects from devouring crops vital to human sustenance as they have for millennia. Resea... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – British actress Naomie Harris and musician Brian Eno have teamed up to produce a short film backing calls for urgent action to slow climate change, in support of civil disobedience campaign Extinction Rebellion. Harris, who plays Eve Moneype... More »
KUANTAN, Malaysia (Reuters) – Some skin, eggs and tissue samples are all that remain of Malaysia’s last rhino, Iman, who died last November after years of failed breeding attempts. Now scientists are pinning their hopes on experimental stem cell technology to ... More »
BANGKOK (Reuters) – Flash floods killed at least two people and swept through hundreds of houses in northern Thailand, authorities said after tropical storm Sinlaku dumped heavy rains on 18 provinces over the weekend. Muddy, waist-high waters poured into homes... More »
DEL MAR, Calif. (Reuters) – Scientists are using drones and other technology to study great white sharks along the coast of Southern California to better understand interactions between these marine predators and people and assess the risks to human beachgoers... More »
FRANKFURT (Reuters) – BMW (BMWG.DE) will offer a fully electric 5-series as part of sweeping product overhaul unveiled on Monday as the German carmaker seeks to lower vehicle emissions during production and on the road. “In ten years, the goal is to have a tot... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – For fish inhabiting the immense darkness of the deep sea, being ultra-black offers great camouflage in a fish-eat-fish world. Scientists studying some of these exotic creatures now have unraveled the secret behind their extreme color. Th... More »
TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan’s environment ministry warned on Tuesday that the electricity industry, which accounts for 40% of its carbon emissions, will miss its target for cutting carbon dioxide (CO2) by 2030, calling for it to take further measures. The warning ... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Researchers diving into dark submerged caves on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula have found evidence of an ambitious mining operation starting 12,000 years ago and lasting two millennia for red ochre, an earth mineral pigment prized by prehist... More »
NAIROBI, (Reuters) – Eat them, poison them, and use scent to drive them to cannibalism – as a second wave of locusts threatens to devour East Africa’s crops, scientists in a Nairobi lab are experimenting with novel ways to kill them. Swarms are the worst for t... More »
(Reuters) – Broadway theaters will remain closed through Jan. 3, 2021, industry group the Broadway League said on Monday, extending their coronavirus-related shutdown for another four months. The New York City theaters, which went dark in mid-March, had previo... More »
LONDON/GENEVA (Reuters) – Pine trees are bursting into flames. Boggy peatlands are tinderbox dry. And towns in northern Russia are sweltering under conditions more typical of the tropics. Reports of record-breaking Arctic heat – registered at more than 100 Fah... More »
POSTOJNA, Slovenia (Reuters) – Three rare aquatic creatures known as baby dragons are going on display in an aquarium at Slovenia’s Postojna Cave, one of the country’s biggest tourist attractions. The cave-dwelling animals, officially called proteus or olms, h... More »
SYDNEY (Reuters) – The world’s largest population of nesting green turtles is nearly twice as big as previously thought, scientists said on Wednesday, after drones enabled better surveys of the animals. Australian scientists determined that there were about 64... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Eleven years ago, environmental scientist Jesse Ausubel dreamed aloud in a commencement speech: What if scientists could record the sounds of the ocean in the days before propeller-driven ships and boats spanned the globe? They would liste... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – American actress Whoopi Goldberg has leant her voice to an Extinction Rebellion animated film highlighting the precarious state of the planet’s natural environment. The three-minute film entitled “Gigantic Change” was released on Friday to c... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – Protesters blocked construction sites along the route of a planned high-speed rail link on Monday, aiming to stop swathes of British woodlands being felled for a project that has also faced criticism over spiralling costs. Prime Minister Bor... More »
BEIJING (Reuters) – Wearing a dress she made of eight giant plastic inflatable roses over a wire structure and a headpiece crowned by a globe, Chinese performance artist Kong Ning is using fashion to draw attention to environmental protection on Earth Day. “Ro... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – Indigenous elders from Alaska to Australia have come together to deliver some tough love in a new film for Earth Day: the human race will only survive if we start putting our minds at the service of our hearts. Produced by Academy and Emmy a... More »
BARCELONA (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – British actor and filmmaker Idris Elba launched a new United Nations fund on Monday to help farmers in poorer nations, calling on richer economies to provide aid to prevent “needless hunger and suffering” stemming from ... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Antarctica is now a harsh land of ice and snow, but has not always been that way. Earth’s southernmost continent long ago was home to temperate, swampy rainforests teeming with life, scientists said on Wednesday based on pristinely prese... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – On a crag of rock called Brother’s Point on Scotland’s Isle of Skye, scientists have identified two bustling footprint sites that reveal an abundance of dinosaurs that thrived 170 million years ago including an early member of a celebrat... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Scientists have spotted in rocks from northern China what may be the oldest fossils of a green plant ever found, tiny seaweed that carpeted areas of the seafloor roughly a billion years ago and were part of a primordial revolution among ... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Fireflies are under threat globally, with familiar hazards such as habitat loss and pesticides compounded by another peril: humankind’s ubiquitous nighttime artificial light that plays havoc with their balletic nocturnal courtship, scien... More »
BOSTON (Reuters) – New York state’s top pension fund official said it was reviewing whether to divest from 27 coal companies and could make decisions on $98 million in holdings within two months. The reviews by the third-largest U.S. state pension system, with... More »
SAO PAULO (Reuters) – Brazil’s right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro said on Tuesday he will create an “Amazon Council” to protect and ensure the “sustainable development” of the world’s largest rainforest, following intense criticism of his environmental polici... More »
MANILA (Reuters) – A restive volcano in the Philippines has a high risk of eruption as it is “recharging” with fresh magma and rising emissions of toxic gas, a top scientist said on Monday, while authorities ordered commercial establishments to stay shut. Eart... More »
SYDNEY (Reuters) – Australia on Monday boosted emergency funding for small businesses hit by bushfires that have ravaged the country for months, as the mounting costs of the disaster cast doubt on the government’s ability to deliver a promised budget surplus. ... More »
KANGAROO VALLEY (Reuters) – Hard-hit businesses in Australia’s blaze-ravaged Kangaroo Valley are calling for tourists to return now that the wildfires are under control, and fear firms and jobs will be lost unless the all-clear message is heard. The tourism in... More »
(Reuters) – The bushfire smoke that hampered the buildup to the Australian Open highlights the need for Tennis Australia to be doing much more to combat climate change, the country’s national environmental lobby group said. The Australian Open, the season open... More »
BERLIN (Reuters) – U.S. electric car pioneer Tesla (TSLA.O) has agreed to buy a property on the outskirts of Berlin, bringing it a step closer to opening its first European factory, local authorities said on Sunday. The U.S. carmaker last November announced pl... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Investor Jeffrey Ubben, already betting there is money to be made from coaxing corporations into being better citizens, gained an ally on Tuesday when BlackRock Inc chief Laurence Fink told companies to tackle climate change or face his wr... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – A climate research organization will offer access to a risk model that predicts the probability of flooding for homes across the United States, giving the public a look at the data institutional investors use to gauge risk. First Street Fo... More »
(Reuters) – A man has successfully cooked a pork roast in a car on a scorching hot day in Australia. Stu Pengelly placed the slab of pork in a baking tin on the car seat of his red Datsun Sunny in Perth, Western Australia, for around 10 hours. “It worked a tre... More »
PALISADES, N.Y. (Reuters) – Some 20 miles north of New York City, a team of scientists is searching for clues about how the environment is changing by studying organisms not usually found in the woods around here: corals. In the labs of the Lamont-Doherty Eart... More »
PARIS (Reuters) – In a change of scene, Santa Claus is donning flippers and a diving mask along with his traditional red-and-white outfit to scuba dive in a Paris aquarium as he teaches kids about global warming and climate issues during the festive season. Th... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Since 1978, researchers have scooped up and measured tens of thousands of birds that died after crashing into buildings in Chicago during spring and fall migrations. Their work has documented what might be called the incredible shrinking... More »
DAX, France (Reuters) – The ducks on a small French smallholding may carry on quacking, a French court ruled on Tuesday, rejecting a neighbor’s complaint that the birds’ racket was making their life a misery. The court in the town of Dax ruled that the noise f... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Genetic material extracted from a 1.9 million-year-old fossil tooth from southern China shows that the world’s largest-known ape – an extinct creature dubbed “Giganto” that once inhabited Southeast Asia – was an oversized cousin of today... More »
SHANGHAI (Reuters) – Accumulated waste from China’s e-commerce and express delivery sectors stands to more than quadruple by 2025 unless action is taken to rein it in, green groups said on Monday, as an online shopping spree known as Singles’ Day broke new sal... More »
WELLINGTON (Reuters) – A satellite mission to measure global methane emissions from oil and gas facilities will be based in New Zealand, the government said on Wednesday, in a collaboration with a U.S. environmental group. The MethaneSAT, due to be launched in... More »
PRAGUE (Reuters) – Czech scientists have opened a lab to experiment growing food for environments with extreme conditions and lack of water, such as Mars. The “Marsonaut” experiment by scientist Jan Lukacevic, 29, and his team at the Prague University of Life ... More »
(Reuters) – When a fast-moving wildfire licked up to the fringes of the sprawling Getty Center complex on Tuesday, the staff of the Los Angeles museum betrayed no sign of panic, confident that its priceless art was safe and secure within its walls. Mindful of ... More »
(Reuters) – A major wildfire burning in Los Angeles near the famed Getty Center art museum was likely sparked by a tree branch falling on power lines in high winds, fire officials said on Tuesday. The Los Angeles Fire Department said the preliminary determinat... More »
LONDON/MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian oil producer Lukoil and Hungarian energy company MOL are set to sign a settlement deal over contaminated oil during Russian President Putin’s visit to Budapest this week, four industry sources told Reuters. A high level of org... More »
(Refile changes to biennial from biannual in paragraph 2) MELBOURNE (Reuters) – More than 40 racing teams from 21 countries left Darwin on Sunday to race across Australia to the southern city of Adelaide in the world’s fastest solar powered cars. The 3,000 kil... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. regulators on Friday gave the green light for genetically modified cotton to be used for human consumption, paving the way for a protein-packed new food source – edible cottonseed that tastes a bit like chickpeas – that its develope... More »
((This story corrects to remove temperature conversions in fifth paragraph)) By Barbara Goldberg NEW YORK (Reuters) – Two-thirds of bird species in North America, already disappearing at an alarming rate, face extinction unless immediate action is taken to slo... More »
MELBOURNE (Reuters) – A highly poisonous fungus, with toxins that can be absorbed through the skin, has been identified for the first time in the rain forest near the Great Barrier Reef, Australian scientists said on Thursday. The Fire Coral fungus, which is b... More »
KEY WEST, Fla. (Reuters) – Emily Hower, a research assistant at Nova Southeastern University doing field work on coral off Key West in Florida, bobs up out of the water and removes her diving mask. The news is not good. Most of the pillar coral that her team h... More »
ST THOMAS, Virgin Islands/NEW YORK (Reuters) – Off the coast of St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands, a group of scientists is tearing a reef apart in a feverish attempt to save some of its coral. They are battling a fast-moving, lethal disease that researche... More »
MIKHMORET, Israel (Reuters) – On a Mediterranean beach in Israel, a newly-hatched baby turtle fumbles along the sand, making its way to the sea for the very first time. The hatchling, one of 60 to be released into the wild this week, is part of a unique conser... More »
WEISSSEESPITZE, Austria (Reuters) – Scientists are racing to read a rapidly melting archive of climate data going back thousands of years – the inside of Austria’s Alpine glaciers. Mountain glaciers are receding the world over as average global temperatures ri... More »
KAMPALA (Reuters) – A nine-year-old girl has died of Ebola in the East African nation of Uganda, a hospital official said, a day after she tested positive for the disease after crossing the border from neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo. “It is true she ... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – As Hurricane Dorian advances on a course likely to slam the Florida peninsula within days, U.S. space agencies and aerospace companies are sheltering millions of dollars in hardware and assets along the Space Coast. Dorian, expected to s... More »
(Reuters) – New Jersey unveiled a $120 million plan on Monday to speed up the replacement of old lead pipes in Newark in response to mounting alarm about the toxic metal leaching into the drinking water in the state’s largest city. Newark officials began handi... More »
NAIROBI (Reuters) – Seven eggs from the world’s last two remaining northern white rhinos have been successfully fertilized artificially, reviving hopes of saving the endangered animals, scientists said on Monday. The world’s last male northern white rhinoceros... More »
APOLLO BEACH, Fla. (Reuters) – Scientists in Florida have artificially induced reproductive spawning of an endangered Atlantic coral species for the first time in an aquarium setting, a breakthrough they say holds great promise in efforts to restore depleted r... More »
SHANGHAI (Reuters) – Chinese financial institutions provided at least $1 billion in “green” financing to coal-related projects in the first half of this year, a review of financial data showed, with fossil fuels still playing a major role in Beijing’s energy s... More »
MANILA (Reuters) – The Philippines has set up a crisis management team to determine if the deadly African swine fever virus has reached the country after officials detected a rise in pig deaths in some areas. The Bureau of Animal Industry had reported an incre... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Genetic research that reconstructed the past population dynamics of the cave bear, a prominent prehistoric denizen of Europe, implicates Homo sapiens rather than climate cooling in the Ice Age extinction of these brawny plant-loving beas... More »
SRAGEN, Indonesia (Reuters) – An Indonesia man is walking backwards from his home in eastern Java to the capital Jakarta to raise awareness of deforestation in a country with one of the highest rates in the world. The more than 700 km (435 miles) would be ardu... More »
(Reuters) – Swarms of grasshoppers have descended upon America’s Sin City in unusual abundance this week, disrupting weather radars, deterring tourists and invoking hysteria on social media. The clouds of buzzing insects, whose migration through the Las Vegas ... More »
BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s agriculture ministry said on Monday it will carry out checks on local veterinary authorities in 10 provinces as it tries to slow the ongoing spread of the deadly African swine fever virus. The investigations come after China’s cabin... More »
CHICAGO (Reuters) – An alligator has taken up residence in a Chicago lagoon, surprising locals after a winter of polar temperatures in the third-largest U.S. city. Police confirmed the reptile had been spotted on Tuesday in Humboldt Park Lagoon, on Chicago’s w... More »
BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s southwestern region of Guangxi has confirmed a new outbreak of African swine fever, the agriculture ministry said on Saturday. The new outbreak has killed 1 pig and infected 42 more on a farm in Guigang city, the Ministry of Agricul... More »
VIENNA (Reuters) – European and U.N. bodies on Thursday outlined a joint push for global action on space junk, saying that debris orbiting the earth must be cleaned up as satellites launched by private companies and other new entrants are adding to the crowdin... More »
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – A swarm of many millions of ladybugs taking to the sky in Southern California this week to hunt for aphids has been captured on a radar screen as a massive blob, officials said on Thursday. The insect swarm spanned 80 miles by 80 miles ... More »
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – U.S. government biologists have launched a special investigation into the deaths of at least 70 gray whales washed ashore in recent months along the U.S. West Coast, from California to Alaska, many of them emaciated, officials sai... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – Kate, Britain’s Duchess of Cambridge, released new pictures of her family playing in a woodland wilderness garden she designed for London’s Chelsea Flower Show. Co-created with landscape artists Andree Davies and Adam White, Kate’s “Back to ... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – The Trump administration made it easier for oil refineries to get waivers from the nation’s biofuel law at least four months before a 2017 court decision it often cites to justify the move to the corn lobby, and the move was motivated by a... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – When Ohio University integrative biologist Nancy Stevens peered into a drawer in the wooden cabinets on the top floor of a Nairobi museum in 2010, she saw a chunk of rock containing massive teeth and knew she had come across something im... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Sun bears, the smallest of the world’s eight bear species, are generally solitary animals, content to spend most of their time alone outside mating season, foraging for fruit, rodents, birds and insects in Southeast Asian tropical forest... More »
(Reuters) – The U.S. Air force said on Friday it had stopped accepting Boeing Co’s KC-46 tankers since Feb. 20 and is working with the company to resolve the issue of foreign object debris (FOD) that were found in the aircraft. “No aircraft have been accepted ... More »
BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany’s Economy Minister Peter Altmaier on Monday said that he did not want Germany to compensate for a planned phase out of coal-fired power by 2038 by importing nuclear power from neighboring countries. “We want energy security to be pro... More »
PARIS (Reuters) – A lemur made of damaged car bumpers and bin lids. An owl made from plastic junk. Colorful animals have popped up in Paris as part of a new exhibition by Portuguese street artist Bordalo II, who aims to highlight the effect of waste on the env... More »
BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s State Grid Corp [STGRD.UL] will invest 38.7 billion yuan ($5.66 billion) to build five pumped hydro storage plants across the country, in an effort to ease the stranded power system amid Beijing’s push to boost clean energy consumpt... More »
PARIS (Reuters) – French tech company Sigfox has developed a bite-size tracker that can be inserted into the horns of rhinos to help conservationists monitor and protect the endangered species. With the dramatic decline of animal species in the past century mo... More »
ABIDJAN (Reuters) – Desire Koffi often walks through Koumassi, a popular district of Ivory Coast’s main city Abidjan, to collect old mobile phones that he buys from people for 500 CFA francs ($0.8726) a pair. Back home, the 24-year-old Ivorian artist dismantle... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – A man was caught at New York’s JFK airport last weekend trying to smuggle dozens of South American finches into the country, a bird that Guyanese immigrants covet for chirping but officials fear could spread disease, officials said on Thur... More »
JINAN, China (Reuters) – In the near pitch-dark, you can hear them before you see them – millions of cockroaches scuttling and fluttering across stacks of wooden boards as they devour food scraps by the tonne in a novel form of urban waste disposal. The air is... More »
SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Researchers in Singapore are seeking a patent for a new sound-proof and heat-resistant material made from recycled plastic bottles they say could help reduce plastic waste dumped in oceans and clogging landfills. The National University o... More »
SYDNEY (Reuters) – Authorities in Australia have caught a saltwater crocodile measuring almost 5 meters (16.4 ft), one of the biggest on record, to stop it from reaching a populated area, the Department of Tourism said on Tuesday. Weighing up to 600 kg (1,322 ... More »
PAHOA, Hawaii (Reuters) – Dressed in heavy cotton, a helmet and respirator, Jessica Ball worked the night shift monitoring “fissure 8,” which has been spewing fountains of lava as high as a 15-story building from a slope on Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano. The lava p... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – Scientists have created hybrid embryos from the sperm of near-extinct northern white rhinoceroses in the laboratory, hoping they can ultimately help save the species. The northern white rhino is the world’s most endangered mammal, and its on... More »
The oil spill from a stricken Iranian tanker Sanchi that sank on Sunday is seen in the East China Sea, on January 16, 2018 in this photo provided by Japan’s 10th Regional Coast Guard. 10th Regional Coast Guard Headquarters/Handout via REUTERS TOKYO (Reuters) –... More »
Artist’s life reconstruction of the titanosaurian dinosaur Mansourasaurus shahinae on a coastline in what is now the Western Desert of Egypt approximately 80 million years ago is pictured in this undated handout image obtained by Reuters on January 29, 2018. A... More »
MELBOURNE (Reuters) – More than 10,000 homes in Australia’s second most populous state were stuck without power on Monday as a surge in demand amid scorching heat overloaded the grid, in the latest blow to the nation’s stretched power sector. The outages on di... More »
FILE PHOTO: People watch the first sunrise on New Year’s Day at a beach in Tokyo, Japan, January 1, 2018. REUTERS/Toru Hanai/File Photo OSLO (Reuters) – The idea of spraying a haze of sun-dimming chemicals high above the Earth as a quick way to slow global war... More »
A street-lamp is seen on the flooded banks of the Seine River in Paris, France, after days of almost non-stop rain caused flooding in the country, January 24, 2018. REUTERS/Christian Hartmann PARIS (Reuters) – The Louvre museum in Paris closed its basement dis... More »
LIMA (Reuters) – Pope Francis may have divine inspiration but not divine inflation: on Friday he suffered what millions of ordinary people have to deal with — a flat tire. While the pope was being driven into Lima from the airport, one of the wheels of the Fia... More »
Lolita the Killer Whale is seen between shows at the Miami Seaquarium in Miami January 21, 2015. REUTERS/Andrew Innerarity (Reuters) – A federal appeals court on Friday rejected efforts by animal rights advocates to force the Miami Seaquarium in Florida to rel... More »
BERLIN (Reuters) – German Agriculture Minister Christian Schmidt is backing an “intelligent reduction” of Germany’s growing wild boar population to prevent a further spread of African Swine Fever (ASF), the Rheinische Post newspaper reported on Friday. The DBV... More »
ZURICH (Reuters) – Switzerland has banned the common culinary practice of throwing fresh lobsters into boiling water as part of an overhaul of its animal protection rules. “Live crustaceans, including the lobster, may no longer be transported on ice or in ice ... More »
TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) – An earthquake of magnitude 7.6 that struck near remote islands belonging to Honduras on Tuesday was felt across northern Central America but there were no immediate reports of casualties or major damage. The quake rattled windows in the... More »
