Climate Change & Environment
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Cambodia looks to import Indian tigers to revive big cat population

Cambodia hopes to import four tigers from India this year under an agreement signed with New Delhi aimed at reviving the population of big cats in the kingdom, an environmental official said Monday.

Cambodia's dry forests were once home to scores of Indochinese tigers but conservationists say intensive poaching of both tigers and their prey has devastated their numbers.

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Hot seawater kill most cultivated coral in Florida Keys

Record hot seawater killed more than three-quarters of human-cultivated coral that scientists had placed in the Florida Keys in recent years in an effort to prop up a threatened species that's highly vulnerable to climate change, researchers discovered.

Researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration this week returned to five reefs where they planted staghorn and elkhorn coral, both classified as threatened in the endangered species list, to see how the repopulated critters had survived prolonged water temperatures in the 90s (30s Celsius) last summer and fall. Most of them didn't. They saw widespread death in both repopulated and wild coral on five Florida Keys reefs.

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California again braces for flooding as another wet winter storm hits it

The latest in a series of wet winter storms gained strength in California early Monday, with forecasters warning of possible flooding, hail, strong winds and even brief tornadoes as the system moves south over the next few days.

Gusts topped 30 mph (48 kph) in Oakland and San Jose as a mild cold front late Saturday gave way to a more powerful storm on Sunday, said meteorologist Brayden Murdock with the National Weather Service office in San Francisco.

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Landslide in eastern Afghanistan leaves at least 5 people dead and 25 missing

A landslide triggered by heavy rain and snowfall buried more than two dozen houses in a remote village in eastern Afghanistan, killing at least five people and leaving more than 20 others missing, a provincial official said Monday.

The landslide, which occurred Sunday night, destroyed or damaged more than two dozen houses in Noorgram district, according to Samiulhaq Haqbayan, the Taliban-appointed director of information and culture in Nuristan province.

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Greta Thunberg marches in France against oil drilling

Ecological activist Greta Thunberg Sunday joined a protest in the south-west of France against eight planned oil wells, which in theory will be banned in the country by 2040.

The "Stop Petrole Bassin d'Arcachon" group, which opposes oil drilling in the area around the seaside resort of Arcachon, claimed 3,000 showed up for the protest, but police said there were 1,200.

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Gas booming for UN COP29 host Azerbaijan

Following the U.N.'s COP28 climate talks in oil-fueled Dubai, the COP29 conference is headed for the historic cradle of oil, Azerbaijan, which is in the midst of a gas boom.

The former Soviet republic of 10 million people brimming with hydrocarbons is on track to increase its gas production by 35 percent in the next 10 years, contrary to efforts to contain global warming.

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54 confirmed dead in landslide that buried gold-mining village in Philippines

The death toll from a massive landslide that hit a gold-mining village in the southern Philippines has risen to 54 with 63 people still missing, authorities said Sunday.

The landslide hit the mountain village of Masara in Davao de Oro province on Tuesday night after weeks of torrential rains.

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Nearly half of world's migratory species are in decline, UN report says

Nearly half of the world's migratory species are in decline, according to a new United Nations report released Monday.

Many songbirds, sea turtles, whales, sharks and other migratory animals move to different environments with changing seasons and are imperiled by habitat loss, illegal hunting and fishing, pollution and climate change.

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Berlin's zoo is mourning Ingo the Flamingo, who died at what's believed to be the age of 75

The Berlin Zoo is mourning Ingo the Flamingo, its oldest resident, who died at what is believed to be at least 75 years of age and had lived there since the mid-1950s.

His place of origin is unclear. The zoo announced Ingo's death at an "imposing" age in social media posts on Wednesday. It said that a ring on the bird's leg with the inscription "Cairo, 23.6.1948" indicated what is believed to have been "his minimum age."

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Iceland volcano erupts for 3rd time since December, spewing lava into the sky

A volcano in southwestern Iceland erupted for the third time since December on Thursday, sending jets of lava into the sky and triggering the evacuation of the Blue Lagoon spa, one of the island nation's biggest tourist attractions.

The eruption began at about 0600 GMT (1 a.m. EST) along a three-kilometer (nearly two-mile) fissure northeast of Mount Sundhnukur, the Icelandic Meteorological Office said. The site is about 4 kilometers (2½ miles) northeast of Grindavik, a coastal town of 3,800 people that was evacuated before a previous eruption on Dec. 18.

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