Fears grow about Sydney after Australia fires merge into giant blaze
Sydney, AustraliaReuters Bushfires fanned by winds combined into a single giant blaze north of Sydney late on Friday, blanketing Australia’s biggest city in hazardous smoke, causing weekend sports games to be cancelled and prompting calls for outdoor workers to stay home. Wildfire has killed at least four people and destroyed more than 680 homes across […]
SNAPSHOT: A WALK IN THE WOODS IN ROMANIA
See FINEAS ANTON’s image…
New app predicts water-related conflict up to year in advance
London, UKThomson Reuters Foundation Conflicts over water are likely to flare up in Iraq, Mali and India in the coming year, according to the developers of an app launched on Thursday which aims to help prevent violence by flagging up potential flashpoints. They said the “groundbreaking” early warning tool, which has also predicted risks in […]
Record dry November in Australia fuels deadly fires
Sydney, AustraliaReuters Australia recorded its lowest level of rainfall for the month of November, the country’s weather bureau said on Thursday, as an unrelenting drought fuels deadly bushfires. All of Australia received less then 50 millimetres of rain during November, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology said, with parts of the west coast receiving less than […]
WHO decries ‘collective failure’ as measles kills 140,000
London, UKReuters Measles infected nearly 10 million people in 2018 and killed 140,000, mostly children, as devastating outbreaks of the viral disease hit every region of the world, the World Health Organization said on Thursday. In figures described by its director general as “an outrage”, the WHO said most of last year’s measles deaths were […]
Pope Francis wants you to set up a Nativity scene to fight banal consumer Christmas
Vatican CityRNS On Thursday, the Vatican hosted a Christmas tree lighting ceremony ahead of the holidays, but it was the Nativity scene that stole the show. Almost entirely made from wood, the Nativity scene ticks every box of Pope Francis’ pontificate. The plight of immigrants and refugees is depicted by the statue of a man […]
CHAPLAINS: AS AMERICANS BECOME LESS RELIGIOUS, THE ROLE MAY GROW
ALEJANDRA MOLINA, writing for Religion News Service, reports on an effort in the US to better understand the role of chaplains…
China blasts passage of US bill ordering sanctions over Uighur detention
RNS China has threatened to retaliate against the US after the House of Representatives approved a bill to sanction senior Chinese officials for helping orchestrate the country’s brutal crackdown against its Uighur Muslim minority. The Democrat-controlled House voted on Tuesday overwhelmingly in favour of the bipartisan Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act, a stronger version of the […]
ESSAY: TITAN – FIRST GLOBAL MAP UNCOVERS SECRETS OF A POTENTIALLY HABITABLE MOON OF SATURN
In an article first published on The Conversation, DAVID ROTHERY, professor of planetary geosciences at The Open University, looks at what mapping has revealed about Saturn moon, Titan…