Wednesday, Jan 07th
Last update09:24:54 AM GMT
Environmental Glance
Ireland’s abortion laws, anchored in the Eighth Amendment to the country’s constitution, are among the most restrictive in Europe, with abortion effectively outlawed in nearly all cases, including rape, incest or crisis pregnancies.
That could change. Irish voters cast ballots on Friday in a referendum to keep or repeal the Eighth Amendment. Repeal will mean that abortion will be made legal throughout the country.
A video of lava deluging a car during Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano eruption and other staggering photos provide a grim look at how powerful the spewing molten rock is.
Since it first began spewing lava into residential areas on Thursday, the volcano has forced about 1,700 evacuations as it blanketed the island’s Puna district, destroyed at least 35 structures and forced roadway closures. Authorities have identified the emergence of 10 fissures, elongated fractures or cracks in the earth’s surface from which lava spews.
Officials said Sunday it was impossible to predict when the destructive volcanic activity would cease. Kilauea, one of the world’s most active volcanoes, erupted last week after days of earthquakes. The volcanic activity intensified on Friday after powerful, back-to-back temblors shook the island.
The history of Earth Day began in Santa Barbara in early 1969, when an oil platform six miles offshore of the idyllic beach town on the central coast of California blew out, spewing some 100,000 barrels of crude into the Pacific. It was the largest oil spill in US history at the time (today it is the third-largest), and catalyzed the modern environmental movement.
Over the next year, Gaylord Nelson, a US senator from Wisconsin, marshaled the personnel, resources, and political capital to create what the politician called a “national teach-in on the environment.” The first Earth Day was held on April 1970, and its impact on public education and policy was tremendous.
The world’s greatest forests could lose more than half of their plant species by the end of the century unless nations ramp up efforts to tackle climate change, according to a new report on the impacts of global warming on biodiversity hotspots.
Mammals, amphibians, reptiles and birds are also likely to disappear on a catastrophic scale in the Amazon and other naturally rich ecosysterms in Africa, Asia, North America and Australia if temperatures rise by more than 1.5C, concludes the study by WWF, the University of East Anglia and the James Cook University.
The oil industry has been put on the defensive in the fight over the Trump administration’s plan to expand offshore drilling.
The backlash against Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s decision to consider oil and natural gas drilling nearly everywhere along the nation’s coasts has been fierce and bipartisan.
Drilling opponents have dominated the public conversation since the plan was released in January. Meanwhile, almost all of the Atlantic and Pacific coast governors have come out in opposition to the plan, spurring Zinke to remove Florida’s waters just days after the plan was released.
The sun won’t rise at the North Pole until March 21, and it’s close to the coldest time of year, but an extraordinary and possibly historic thaw swelled over the tip of the planet this weekend. Analyses show that the temperature warmed to the melting point as an enormous storm pumped an intense pulse of heat through the Greenland Sea.
Temperatures may have soared as high as 2 C at the pole, according to the U.S. Global Forecast System model. While there are no direct measurements of temperature there, Zack Labe, a climate scientist working on his PhD at the University of California at Irvine, confirmed that several independent analyses showed “it was very close to freezing,” which is more than 30 C above normal.
The Saudi-led coalition that is fighting Houthi rebels in Yemen is responsible for the deaths of scores of children since last summer, a United Nations report says.
Al Jazeera obtained excerpts from the confidential report by the UN Office on Children and Armed Conflict, which was sent to the UN Security Council on January 19.
According to the excerpts, the Saudi-led coalition killed 68 children and wounded 36 others from July to September 2017.
The report found there were at least 20 coalition raids every day - some targeting schools and homes.
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