International

"The European Union has reached a consensus on the price at which to cap Russian oil just days before its ban on most imports comes into force."

"Globally, waste pickers are responsible for collecting and recovering—from homes, businesses and landfills—up to 60% of all plastics which are then recycled. These workers do more than any other people to prevent plastic contaminating the environment, yet their work is rarely valued and they struggle to earn a decent living."

"When dignitaries from 196 countries converge in Montreal next week to rub shoulders and hash out a new global agreement to save nature, money will be on the agenda."

"Fernando Calderón-Gutiérrez is a Mexican underwater cave ecologist who dives in the coastal caves of Mexico, Belize, and the United States to document organisms and learn how they interact with their hostile environment."

"At the Dec. 7-19 gathering in Montreal, about 195 countries will be tasked with finalising a new global biodiversity deal to halt damage to plants, animals and ecosystems - similar to the 2015 Paris Agreement to tackle climate change."

"Scientists have managed to unearth the oldest known virus on Earth, having recovered the 48,500-year-old virus from the Russian permafrost, according to a recent study.' "The virus, a Pandoravirus, had been lying dormant in Russia's permafrost. The study sheds light on the dangers of climate change awakening prehistoric diseases from permafrost."

"Countries have begun to discuss a future global plastics treaty which would cut pollution, some hope entirely by 2040, at U.N. talks in Uruguay this week, with many states calling for curbs on plastic production as a way to reach that goal."

"The eruption of Hawaii’s Mauna Loa, the world’s largest active volcano, has interrupted a key site that monitors greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, officials said Tuesday."

"Almost a million stillbirths a year can be attributed to air pollution, according to the first global study. The research estimated that almost half of stillbirths could be linked to exposure to pollution particles smaller than 2.5 microns (PM2.5), mostly produced from the burning of fossil fuels."

"The madness of COP27 started at the airport, where 50 diesel buses idled under the hot sun with doors wide open and air conditioners blasting until they headed out, often with just a handful of attendees aboard, delivering them to a far-flung network of hotels sprawled along the reef-fringed coast of the southern Sinai Peninsula."