Fukushima clean-up falters six years after tsunami – Scale and difficulty of decommissioning “almost beyond comprehension”

By Justin McCurry8 March 2017 (The Guardian) – Barely a fifth of the way into their mission, the engineers monitoring the Scorpion’s progress conceded defeat. With a remote-controlled snip of its cable, the latest robot sent into the bowels of one of Fukushima Daiichi’s damaged reactors was cut loose, its progress stalled by lumps of […]

Japanese poaching fleet caught with dead whale in Australia sanctuary

15 January 2017 (Sea Shepherd Global) – After five weeks of patrolling the Southern Ocean, Sea Shepherd has located the Japanese whale poachers’ factory whaling vessel in the Australian Whale Sanctuary with a dead minke whale on its flensing deck, the first to be documented since the International Court of Justice ruled against their whaling […]

Populist autocrats threaten human rights in 2017 – “We forget at our peril the demagogues of the past: the fascists, communists, and their ilk”

Washington, DC, 12 January 2017 (Human Rights Watch) – The rise of populist leaders in the United States and Europe poses a dangerous threat to basic rights protections while encouraging abuse by autocrats around the world, Human Rights Watch said today in launching its World Report 2017 [pdf]. Donald Trump’s election as US president after […]

Bluefin tuna Sells for $632,000 at Tsukiji’s New Year Auction

TOKYO, 5 January 2017 (NBC News) – A sushi chain boss paid $632,000 for a 466-pound bluefin tuna at auction on Thursday. The 74.2 million yen winning bid for the prized but imperiled species was the second highest ever after a record 155.4 million yen bid in 2013 at the annual New Year auction at […]

Global coral bleaching event might become new normal, expert warns

By Michael Slezak22 September 2016 (The Guardian) – The worst global bleaching event on record could simply be the new normal, according to one of the foremost experts on coral reefs and their response to warming oceans. Mark Eakin, head of the Coral Reef Watch program at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, has […]

IWC meeting: Australia wants ‘scientific whaling’ ended as Japan prepares to resume whale slaughter – South Atlantic whale sanctuary proposal fails

By Sharon Livermore25 October 2016 (IFAW) – Today, at the second day of plenary meetings at the 66th International Whaling Commission in Portorož, Slovenia, a proposal from Latin American countries to form a South Atlantic Whale Sanctuary again failed to pass with the needed three-quarters majority vote. At the conclusion of the voting session, Matt […]

Timber company tells California town to find its own water – ‘The corporate mentality is that they can make more money selling this water to Japan’

By Thomas Fuller2 October 2016 WEED, California (The New York Times) – The water that gurgles from a spring on the edge of this Northern California logging town is so pristine that for more than a century it has been piped directly to the wooden homes spread across hills and gullies. To the residents of […]

Photo gallery: Hermit crabs who live in trash

By Anika Burgess 6 September 2016 (Atlas Obscura) – With a new report released yesterday into the vast increases in ocean temperatures, human activity on marine life affects all ends of the food chain. Take, for example, the coenobita purpureus, or blueberry hermit crabs, of Okinawa. Like other hermit crabs, they also need shells to […]

Sea Shepherd returns to ‘The Cove’ in Taiji, Japan

By Captain Paul Watson 31 August 2016 (Huffington Post) – Since 2009, Sea Shepherd Conservation Society has been on the ground in Taiji, Japan, documenting and bringing to light the atrocious dolphin drive hunt taking place from September to March. Originally dubbed Operation Infinite Patience, this Sea Shepherd campaign has volunteers on the ground enduring […]

July 2016 was Earth’s warmest month on record – ‘Absolutely the hottest month since the instrumental records began’

15 August 2016 (weather.com) – Global mean temperatures in July 2016 were the warmest on record not just for July, but for any month dating to the late 1800s, according to separate just-released analyses. NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies found July 2016 was the globe’s warmest July in their dataset dating to 1880. — […]

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