Mass graves were being readied for hundreds of victims of an Indonesian quake and tsunami on Monday as authorities battled to stave off disease and reach desperate people still trapped under shattered buildings. The death toll nearly doubled to 832 on Sunday but was expected to rise further after a disaster that has left the island of Sulawesi reeling.
Daimler, the German car maker that owns Mercedes-Benz, will be run by a non-German for the first time next year. Dieter Zetsche, 65, will be replaced by Ola Kaellenius, a 49-year-old Swede, as chief executive in a succession plan announced on Wednesday.
Emerging from the ice for a brief growing season every Antarctic summer, the lush green mosses of East Antarctica are finally succumbing to climate change. That is according to a study of the small, ancient and hardy plants - carried out over more than a decade.
Argentina is launching a new microwave imaging satellite to monitor natural disasters and soil moisture, in a long-term bid to bolster the farm sector, an industry that has historically been the backbone of the country’s economy.
The United Kingdom has deployed a team of specialists to the Caribbean to help mitigate the impact of impending storms threatening British Overseas territories. According to Defense Secretary Gavin Williamson, 87 engineers, medics, maritime experts and other specialists have joined the regular crew of RFA Mounts Bay, which is the mobile hub of the British relief effort.
Scientists from different British universities, Argentine researchers and representatives of the organizing agencies took part this week in Buenos Aires in a seminar organized jointly by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) from the UK, and the National Council for Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET) of Argentina.
Tempers flared at the International Whaling Commission (IWC) on Thursday as it voted to back a Brazilian proposal which would safeguard whales in perpetuity, after a bitter debate. The biennial meeting of the 89-nation body passed the host country's “Florianopolis Declaration” which sees whaling as no longer being a necessary economic activity.
Hurricane Florence, one of the strongest storms to threaten the East Coast of the United States in decades, continued to swirl in the Atlantic on Wednesday night on a path that is taking it dangerously closer to the Carolinas. Meanwhile, another storm system in the Atlantic gained strength on Wednesday and was named subtropical Storm Joyce.
An effort to create a safe haven for whales in the South Atlantic was defeated at the meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in Florianopolis, Brazil. The proposal, which was introduced by Brazil in 2001, received support from 39 countries but was opposed by 25, denying it the three-quarters' majority it needed to pass.
There's a 70% chance of a recurrence of the El Niño weather event before the end of this year, according to the World Meteorological Organization. The last El Niño occurred in 2015-16 and impacted weather patterns around the world, but researchers say they are not expecting this new one to be as intense as 2015-16.