Breaking Waves: Ocean News

Trump administration puts Fema workers back on administrative leave

admin — Tue, 02 Dec 2025 20:23:02 +0000

Fourteen workers who signed a petition that warned cuts put the US at risk were initially suspended in August

The Trump administration is reversing the reinstatement of workers at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) who were placed on administrative leave after writing an open letter of dissent.

Global heating and other human activity are making Asia’s floods more lethal

admin — Tue, 02 Dec 2025 19:19:02 +0000

Much improved response systems are struggling to cope with ever more powerful and destructive storms

Death toll from Indonesia floods passes 700 as 1 million evacuated

Families stranded on their rooftops. Homes buried by fast-flowing mud. Jagged brown craters scarring lush green hillsides.

Revealed: Mexico’s industrial boomtown is making goods for the US. Residents say they’re ‘breathing poison’

admin — Tue, 02 Dec 2025 14:00:34 +0000

Polluting facilities in Monterrey, which has close ties to the US, are pumping toxic heavy metals into the city’s air and threatening residents’ health

Leer en español en Quinto Elemento Lab

An industrial boom in a US manufacturing hub in Mexico is contributing to a massive air pollution crisis that is threatening residents’ health, according to new research by the Guardian and Quinto Elemento Lab.

‘They’re a lot like us’: saving the tiny punk monkeys facing extinction

admin — Tue, 02 Dec 2025 13:00:33 +0000

In the tropical dry forests of northern Colombia, a small team is gradually restoring the degraded habitat of the rare cotton-top tamarin

Luis Enrique Centena spent decades silencing the forest. Now, he listens. Making a whistle, the former logger points up to a flash of white and reddish fur in the canopy. Inquisitive eyes peer back – a cotton-top tamarin, one of the world’s rarest primates.

Nine boars found dead in Spanish swine fever outbreak

admin — Tue, 02 Dec 2025 11:26:48 +0000

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.

Life Invisible: the fight against superbugs starts in the driest place on Earth

admin — Tue, 02 Dec 2025 10:38:58 +0000

Cristina Dorador is on an urgent mission in the world’s highest 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

‘I kept smelling a horrible nasty smell’: the risks of England’s old dumping grounds

admin — Tue, 02 Dec 2025 07:00:20 +0000

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.

UK and Europe’s hidden landfills at risk of leaking toxic waste into water supplies

admin — Tue, 02 Dec 2025 07:00:19 +0000

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

People living along polluted Thames file legal complaint to force water firm to act

admin — Tue, 02 Dec 2025 00:01:10 +0000

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.

Floods kill at least 1,100 people across south and south-east Asia – video

admin — Mon, 01 Dec 2025 19:01:38 +0000

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.