On the third day after lifting off from Florida bound for the Moon, the Orion spacecraft is "exceeding performance expectations," NASA officials said on Friday. . "Today we met to review the Orion spacecraft performance... it is exceeding performance expectations," said Mike Sarafin, head of the Artemis 1 mission.
Australia hopes to host the 2026 COP summit, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Saturday, seeking to overhaul his country's reputation for foot-dragging on climate change.. He has also vowed to co-host a COP summit with Pacific Island allies -- who are under serious threat from rising sea levels and who have long criticised Australia's climate change scepticism.
Climate negotiators were locked in efforts to break the deadlock at UN COP27 talks Friday as nations tussle over funding for developing countries battered by weather disasters and ambition on curbing global warming.. With wealthy and developing nations struggling to find common ground as talks went into the night, sources said Britain and several other countries, as well as the Alliance of Small Island States negotiating bloc, were circulating ideas in an attempt to find a compromise solution.
Scientists and government representatives meeting at a conference in France voted on Friday to scrap leap seconds by 2035, the organisation responsible for global timekeeping said.. The breakdown of which countries voted for the resolution was not yet known, but the United States and France have been among those leading the way for the change.
Egyptian artist Bahia Shehab had one goal at the COP27 climate talks in Egypt: to let people experience the "hell" that is global warming. . "There's research that said that people who are in a hotter place, in a hotter room, they're more likely to believe in climate change than those who are not," Shehab said at Egypt's Red Sea resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh, which is hosting the talks.
Environmental activists on Friday dumped orange paint over an outdoor sculpture by the American artist Charles Ray in central Paris, the latest in a string of artwork defacements aimed at spurring greater government efforts to fight climate change.. The incident came as climate activists targeted an Andy Warhol work in Milan on Friday, covering a car repainted by the American pop artist with flour -- two weeks after the same group threw pea soup at a Van Gogh painting in Rome.
Feeding cats and dogs wet food has a much larger climate impact than dry food, a new study found, suggesting small changes by pet owners can massively reduce their carbon footprint.. "Cat and dog owners could significantly reduce the environmental impact of their pets' diets by feeding them dry food (consisting of kibble or biscuits) rather than wet food with higher water content," it said.
Say hello to ronnagrams and quettametres: International scientists gathered in France voted on Friday for new metric prefixes to express the world's largest and smallest measurements, prompted by an ever-growing amount of data.. Joining the ranks of well-known prefixes like kilo and milli are ronna and quetta for the largest numbers -- and ronto and quecto for the smallest.
One of the world's first cities came close to being wiped off the map during tragic floods this summer in Pakistan.. Perched high above the Indus river, the city was equipped with a primitive drainage system and sewers, meaning much of the floodwaters could be evacuated.
In mountains overlooking an azure lake in southeast Albania, wildlife experts are tracking the Balkan lynx as part of last-gasp efforts to save the species from extinction.. - Timid and elusive - On the Mali i Thate mountain overlooking Lake Prespa, two experts taking part in the Balkan lynx recovery programme carefully install automated cameras at lynx height on oak trees.
