List of All Articles with Tag 'ce'

By David Lawder WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank agreed on Thursday to deepen their cooperation on

By Stephen Nellis The Biden administration "has not blocked chip sales to the Middle East," a U.S. Department

Wild boar in southeastern Germany have long contained high levels of radioactive substances, which has been attributed to the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster. But as radioactivity levels have fallen in other animals, they have stayed much the same among boar. Now, scientists have worked out the secret behind the so-called “wild boar paradox”. Research shows there is another culprit for the high levels of radioactivity: nuclear weapons tests from the mid-20th century. And both the weapons and the nuclear reactor meltdown continue contaminating the boar because of their diet. While the muscular boar seem healthy, the dangerous levels of radioactive caesium, the main contaminator, have prompted people to stop hunting them. In turn, there is now an overpopulation issue. “Our work reveals deeper insights into the notorious radio-cesium contamination in Bavarian wild boars beyond the total radionuclide quantification only,” radioecologist Felix Stäger from Leibniz University Hannover wrote in a paper. After a nuclear incident, radioactive materials can pose a significant threat to ecosystems. This happened after the Chernobyl meltdown in 1986, where there was an increase in radioactive caesium contamination. The main component of this, caesium-137, has a half-life of about 30 years, meaning it loses its radioactivity fairly quickly. However, caesium-135, which is created via nuclear fission, is far more stable. It has a half-life of more than 2m years. The ratio of cesium-135 compared to cesium-137 can help us work out where the cesium came from. A high ratio indicates nuclear weapon explosions, while a low ratio points to nuclear reactors like Chernobyl. So the researchers analysed caesium levels from 48 wild boar meat samples from 11 regions of Bavaria. It turns out that nuclear weapons testing was responsible for between 12 per cent and 68 per cent of the unsafe contamination in the samples. “All samples exhibit signatures of mixing,” wrote the researchers. “Nuclear weapons fallout and [Chernobyl] have mixed in the Bavarian soil, the release maxima of which were about 20−30 years apart.” So while Chernobyl remains the main source of caesium in wild boar, about a quarter of the samples showed enough contributions from weapons fallout to exceed safety limits even before the reactor meltdown comes into account. And because wild boar eat so many truffles, it has been exacerbated. The fungus absorbs high levels of contamination from both sources. Wild boars' diets, which include underground truffles, have absorbed varying levels of contamination from both sources, which has contributed to the animals' persistent radioactivity. “This study illustrates that strategic decisions to conduct atmospheric nuclear tests 60−80 years ago still impact remote natural environments, wildlife, and a human food source today,” the authors concluded. The study was published in Environmental Science & Technology. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Whale hunting is set to return in Iceland despite hopes the temporary ban would remain. Iceland‘s minister of food, agriculture and fisheries, Svandís Svavarsdóttir, announced on Thursday that this summer’s temporary ban on whaling would be lifted in a move international marine conservation organisation OceanCare has described as ‘disappointing’, A suspension on whaling was put in place by the Icelandic government in June, set to expire in August 2023, due to animal welfare concerns. It came after monitoring by Iceland’s Food and Veterinary Authority on the fin whale hunt found that the killing of the animals took too long based on the main objectives of the Animal Welfare Act. An investigation found that around 40% of hunted whales did not die instantly, with an average time to death of 11.5 minutes. Iceland’s Food and Veterinary Authority found that two whales had to be shot four times. One of the whales took almost an hour to die, while the other took almost two hours. In anticipation of the ban being lifted, two Icelandic whaling vessels left port yesterday to resume whale hunting, OceanCare said. The organisation said they are “gravely disappointed” that the ban has been lifted, and claimed the decision could mean that there will now “be a race to kill as many whales as possible in the remaining weeks of reasonable hunting weather” before whale hunting season ends in mid-September. “It is deplorable that this cruel practice has been allowed to resume,” said Nicolas Entrup, OceanCare’s director of International Relations. “We are bitterly disappointed by the decision which entirely goes against the clear facts that are available to the government and people of Iceland. We can almost be certain that the Icelandic whalers will not meet the imposed requirements. “This cruel, unnecessary and outdated practice needs to stop,” he said. Meanwhile, animal protection charity Humane Society International called Svavarsdóttir’s decision “devastating” and “inexplicable”. Ruud Tombrock, HSI’s executive director for Europe, said: “It is inexplicable that minister Svavarsdóttir has dismissed the unequivocal scientific evidence that she herself commissioned, demonstrating the brutality and cruelty of commercial whale killing. “There is simply no way to make harpooning whales at sea anything other than cruel and bloody, and no amount of modifications will change that. Whales already face myriad threats in the oceans from pollution, climate change, entanglement in fish nets and ship strikes, and fin whale victims of Iceland’s whaling fleet are considered globally vulnerable to extinction. “With the need for whale protection so critical. this is a devastating rejection of a once-in-a-generation opportunity to end the slaughter at sea. “There is a new shameful entry in the conservation history books―Iceland had a chance to do the right thing and it chose not to.” Iceland’s whaling season runs from mid-June to mid-September. Annual quotas authorise the killing of 209 fin whales, but none were killed between 2019-2021 due to a dwindling market for whale meat. Some 148 fin whales were killed in 2022 during whaling season. Iceland, Norway and Japan are the only countries in the world that have continued whale hunting in the face of fierce criticism from environmentalists and animal rights’ defenders. OceanCare said the lifting of the ban calls into question the announced phase-out of whaling over the next few years. A decision about Iceland’s self-allocated whaling quota for the next several years is expected towards the end of this year. In 2009, several countries including the UK, the US, Germany, France, Portugal and Spain condemned Iceland’s whaling policy. Japan, which is the biggest market for whale meat, resumed commercial whaling in 2019 after a three-decade hiatus. Read More Iceland suspends annual whale hunt due to ‘animal welfare concerns’ – and may never bring it back Humpback whale spotted off Cornwall coast in rare sighting Humpback whale found on beach died after entanglement in creel lines, tests show Italy's Meloni visits Naples suburb where 2 girls were allegedly raped by youths, pledges crackdown Putin’s forces pushed back by Ukraine counteroffensive after ‘largest’ drone strike Zelensky makes long-range weapon claim after strike deep inside Russia

Up to 9in (23cm) of rain and life-threatening flash flooding could hit parts of eastern North Carolina.

Who is General Brice Nguema, the man who overthrew the president he was supposed to protect?

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Critics are pushing to reform ethics standards for the nine justices of the US Supreme Court.