Hundreds of police, rangers and military personnel deployed to tackle virus threatening pork export industry
Spanish authorities have deployed hundreds of police officers, wildlife rangers and military personnel in an effort to contain an outbreak of highly infectious African swine fever (ASF) outside Barcelona before it becomes a major threat to the country’s €8.8bn-a-year pork export industry.
Officials believe the virus, detected in the municipality of Bellaterra, may have begun to circulate after a wild boar ate contaminated food that had been brought in from outside Spain.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
12/02/2025 - 05:38
Cristina Dorador is on an urgent mission in the world’s driest desert, the Atacama in Chile. As the rise of drug-resistant superbugs kills millions per year, Cristina has made it her mission to uncover new, life-saving antibiotics in the stunning salt flats she has studied since she was 14. Against the magnificent backdrop of endless plains, microscopic discoveries lead her team of scientists to question how critically lithium mining is damaging the delicate ecosystem and impacting Indigenous communities
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12/02/2025 - 02:00
For some, the smell brings on nausea and headaches. Others fear ‘forever chemicals’ seeping into the water
UK and Europe’s hidden landfills at risk of leaking toxic waste into water supplies
“I just kept smelling this horrible, nasty smell … like animal excrement, and I was wondering what it was,” says Jess Brown, from Fleetwood, Lancashire.
Brown’s mother suffers from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and she believes the smells make it worse. She also worries for her eight-year-old daughter, whose asthma worsens when the odour seeps indoors.
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12/02/2025 - 02:00
Exclusive: Rising flood risks driven by climate change could release chemicals from ageing sites – posing threats to ecosystems
‘I kept smelling a horrible nasty smell’: the risks of England’s old dumping grounds
Thousands of landfills across the UK and Europe sit in floodplains, posing a potential threat to drinking water and conservation areas if toxic waste is released into rivers, soils and ecosystems, it can be revealed.
The findings are the result of the first continent-wide mapping of landfills, conducted by the Guardian, Watershed Investigations and Investigate Europe.
Disclaimer: This dataset may contain duplicate records. Duplicates can arise from multiple data sources, repeated entries, or variations in data collection processes. While efforts have been made to identify and reduce duplication, some records may remain.
Journalismfund.eu provided funding support for the investigation.
This article was corrected on 2 December 2025; the original version said the analysis had found 335 landfills in coastal erosion zones in England, Wales and France; in fact it had found 346.
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12/01/2025 - 19:01
Residents claim raw sewage and poorly treated effluent as result of Thames Water’s failings are threat to health
Communities across south-east England are filing the first coordinated legal complaints that sewage pollution by Thames Water negatively affects their lives.
Thames Water failed to complete upgrades to 98 treatment plants and pumping stations which have the worst records for sewage pollution into the environment, despite a promise to invest in them over the last five years.
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12/01/2025 - 14:01
Sri Lanka and Indonesia deployed military personnel as they raced to help victims of devastating flooding that has killed more than 1,100 people across four countries in Asia.
Millions of people have been affected by a combination of tropical cyclones and heavy monsoon rains in Sri Lanka, parts of Indonesia’s Sumatra, Thailand and Malaysia in recent days.
In Indonesia, at least 604 people have been killed and 464 remain missing, according to the national disaster agency. The death toll stands at 366 in Sri Lanka, with 366 missing, and 176 dead in Thailand. Three deaths have been reported in Malaysia
Sri Lanka and Indonesia deploy militaries as Asia floods death toll passes 1,100
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12/01/2025 - 13:27
Site removes feature after real estate agents and some homeowners say scores appear arbitrary and hurt sales
Zillow, the US’s largest real estate listing site, has removed a feature that allowed people to view a property’s exposure to the climate crisis, following complaints from the industry and some homeowners that it was hurting sales.
In September last year, the online real estate marketplace introduced a tool showing the individual risk of wildfire, flood, extreme heat, wind and poor air quality for 1m properties it lists, explaining that “climate risks are now a critical factor in home-buying decisions” for many Americans.
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11/28/2025 - 00:00
npj Ocean Sustainability, Published online: 28 November 2025; doi:10.1038/s44183-025-00169-8
Summarising CBD target 3 to “30 × 30” emphasizes area coverage, but conservation success depends on MPA quality. Many existing MPAs are under-protected, and rapidly designating new areas risks creating ‘paper parks’ without ecological or social benefits. Prioritizing strictly or fully managed MPAs, supported by a clear and shared definition, is essential to achieve meaningful biodiversity outcomes. Quality-focused strategies ensure that global targets benefit both nature and people, rather than merely meeting numerical goals.
11/25/2025 - 00:00
npj Ocean Sustainability, Published online: 25 November 2025; doi:10.1038/s44183-025-00166-x
Coral reefs span borders, so must solutions: transboundary conservation in complex political environments
World Ocean Explorer Wins Gold Medal Serious Simulation Award from Serious Play Annual International Competition
10/26/2023 - 14:35
For Immediate Release October 19, 2023
Sedgwick, Maine USA World Ocean Explorer, a 3D virtual aquarium and educational simulation, was recently cited for excellence, winning a Gold Medal Award in the 2023 International Serious Play Awards Program.
World Ocean Explorer is an innovative 3D virtual aquarium designed for educational exploration of the world’s oceans. With interactive exhibits and a lobby space, visitors can immerse themselves in realistic marine environments, including a DEEP SEA exhibit funded by Schmidt Ocean Institute, showcasing unprecedented deep-sea discoveries off Australia. Targeted at 3rd graders and beyond, this immersive experience offers a range of perspectives on the ocean environment and can be explored through guided tours or user-controlled interfaces. Visit DEEP SEA at worldoceanexplorer.org/deep-sea-aquarium.html.
Serious Play Conference brings together professionals who are exploring the use of game-based learning, sharing their experience, and working together to shape the future of training and education. For more information on Serious Play Award Program visit seriousplayconf.com/international-serious-play-award-programs.
World Ocean Explorer is a transformative virtual aquarium designed to deepen understanding of the world ocean and amplify connection for young people worldwide. Organized around the principles of Ocean Literacy and the Next Gen Science Standards, World Ocean Explorer brings the wonder and knowledge of ocean species and systems to students in formal and informal classrooms, absolutely free to anyone with a good Internet connection. As an advocate for the ocean through communications, World Ocean Observatory believes there is no better investment in the future of the sustainable ocean than through a new approach to educational engagement that excites, informs, and motivates students to explore the wonders of our marine world and to understand the pervasive connection and implication for our future, inherent in the protection and conservation of all aspects of our ocean world.
World Ocean Explorer presents an astonishing 3-dimensional simulated aquarium visit, organized to reveal the wonders of undersea life, with layers of detailed data and information to augment the emotional connection made to the astonishing beauty and complexity of the dynamic ocean. Within each of the virtual exhibits, students visit exemplary theme-based sites with myriad opportunities to understand the larger perspectives of scientific knowledge as organized and visualized to dramatize the impact and change on ocean life as a result of natural and human-generated events. Through immersion among displays, mixed media and 3D models, the experience of an aquarium visit will be brought into classrooms or home school environments as a free, accessible, always available opportunity for teaching and learning. All of this will be available to a world audience without physical limitation or cost. World Ocean Explorer, a project of the World Ocean Observatory, receives support from the Seth Sprague Educational and Charitable Foundation, Visual Solutions Lab, the Climate Change Institute, the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation, and The Fram Museum Oslo. To learn more about the current and future exhibits of World Ocean Explorer, visit worldoceanexplorer.org.
media contact
Trisha Badger, Managing Director, World Ocean Observatory | [email protected] +12077011069
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