Ocean advocates warned on Friday that the door may fly open for undersea mining in the near future in the absence of solid environmental rules that more and more nations demand.. As two weeks of negotiations concluded Friday over possible environmental rules restricting large-scale mining of the seabed, NGOs voiced fear that industry may soon be given the green light.
A "catastrophic" tornado tore through the southern US state of Arkansas on Friday, and authorities said it caused "widespread damage" and left 24 people hospitalized.. Authorities in Pulaski County surrounding the state capital said it suffered "significant storm and tornado damage."
The giant skeletons of burnt and dismantled gold dredgers litter the rivers of northwest Colombia, where the government is waging a full-out war on illegal mining.. Criminal groups in Colombia make almost as much money from illegal mining as they do from trafficking cocaine, authorities say.
Fifteen people were injured, including at least one seriously hurt, in two separate train derailments that happened in quick succession Friday in stormy wind in northwestern Switzerland, police said.. Three people were injured in the first, including the driver, and 12 were injured in the second, with wind speeds of 136 kilometres per hour recorded nearby.
US officials filed suit Friday against Norfolk Southern, seeking financial penalties after the company's toxic rail derailment in Ohio led to residential evacuations in early February.. The suit hits the rail company for unlawful discharge of toxic materials into US waters, seeking about $60,000 per day for each clean water violation.
Austrian glaciers last year retreated "more than ever", the country's Alpine Club said Friday, as climate change threatens glaciers around the globe.. "The drastic glacier retreat undoubtedly makes the consequences of the anthropogenic massively intensified climate change clear," it added, warning that glaciers in Austria would disappear at the latest in 2075.
Plans to build wind farms next to a South African national park have riled wildlife activists who worry the turbines will ruin the landscape and impact elephants.. More than 200 turbines are slated to be erected in the vicinity of the Addo Elephant National Park, in the country's south, after the Environment Ministry dismissed a legal bid to block the project last year.
The anti-migrant wall being built in the northwest of the Dominican Republic crisscrosses a thick mangrove forest and threatens the ecosystem by depriving it of water, environmental groups warn.. The national park's ecosystem is rich with four types of mangroves that grow in the Dominican Republic, he explained.
Hundreds of Thai firefighters and soldiers battled a forest blaze less than 100 kilometres (60 miles) from Bangkok on Friday as the kingdom grapples with air pollution that has made more than 1.7 million people ill already this year.. The blaze comes as Thailand grapples with a spike in pollution caused in part by agricultural burning that has seen the air in some northern cities rank among the dirtiest and most hazardous in the world this week.
Research laboratory Midjourney has paused free trials of its image-generation software after users cranked out realistic deepfakes including of former US president Donald Trump getting arrested and Pope Francis in a puffer jacket.. On Thursday Midjourney denied a request by AFP to generate an image of the former president being arrested in front of Trump Tower in New York.
