Hurricane Ian slammed into the coast of southwest Florida as a monster Category 4 storm on Wednesday with powerful winds and torrential rains threatening "catastrophic" damage and flooding.. The NHC said Ian was packing maximum sustained winds of 150 miles (240 kilometers) per hour when it made landfall and forecast "catastrophic storm surge, winds and flooding in the Florida peninsula."
Barbados on Tuesday became the first country to secure agreement on a financing package under a new IMF fund aimed at helping low-income countries tackle the impacts of climate change.. The IMF aims to mobilize $45 billion for the RST with contributions from member governments and provide 20-year loans available to about 140 low- and middle-income nations eligible for the funding. hs/sw
Planet-heating methane spewing into the atmosphere from the damaged Nord Stream pipelines only has a modest impact on climate change, say scientists, but sharply highlights the risks of fossil-fuel driven greenhouse gas emissions.. Experts said the incident further underscores the need to urgently switch from polluting fossil fuels, both to combat climate change and ensure energy security.
Italy's Samantha Cristoforetti on Wednesday became the first European woman to take over command of the International Space Station during a ceremony broadcast live from space.. During a relaxed ceremony, Artemyev handed Cristoforetti a golden key, symbolising that she is the new commander of the space station until she returns to Earth on October 10.
Cuba was still without electricity on Wednesday more than 12 hours after a massive power cut caused by Hurricane Ian, which killed two people and left widespread damage.. Western Cuba was battered by the fierce tropical storm on Tuesday that left the country's power network damaged.
Fish fossils dating back 440 million years are helping to "fill some of the key gaps" on how humans evolved from fish, researchers said on Wednesday.. The fossils "help to trace many human body structures back to ancient fishes, some 440 million years ago, and fill some key gaps in the evolution of 'from fish to human,'" researchers from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) under the Chinese Academy of Sciences said.
Experts on Wednesday said they were encouraged after preliminary data for a new Alzheimer's drug showed it slowed cognitive decline, the first medicine to accomplish this goal.. "This is the first drug that's been shown to not only remove the build-up of a protein called amyloid in the brain, but to have a small but statistically significant impact on cognitive decline in people with early-stage disease," said Susan Kohlhaas of Alzheimer's UK. But experts cautioned their comments were tempered by the preliminary nature of the results, which were announced by press release ahead of publication in a peer-reviewed journal, as the companies look to bring the treatment to market as early as January 2023 in the United States.
Guinea's oldest chimpanzee and one of the last members of a globally famous endangered community has died in solitude around the age of 71, the environment ministry said.. Fana had been showing signs of exhaustion over the past few months, the environment ministry said on Facebook Tuesday.
Havana resident Maykel was helping his friend fix an "almendron" -- as the decades-old American cars that ply Cuba's streets are known -- when the lights suddenly cut out late Tuesday.. Maykel, 35, said dryly.
Almost half of all bird species are in decline globally and one in eight are threatened with extinction, according to a major new report warning that human actions are driving more species to the brink and nature is "in trouble".. Human actions are driving species rapidly towards extinction, undermining ecosystem functions and services vital to our own survival," the report said.
