Science & Environment

Mark Poynting Climate and environment researcher Reuters Last month’s Los Angeles fires were one of the costliest disasters in US history Last month was the world’s warmest January on record and raised further questions about the pace of climate change, scientists say. January 2025 had been expected to be slightly cooler than January 2024 because of a shift away from …

Even as much of the United States shivered under frigid conditions last month, the planet as a whole had its warmest January on record, scientists said on Thursday. The warmth came as something of a surprise to climate researchers. It occurred during La Niña conditions in the Pacific Ocean, which tend to lower the globe’s average temperature, at least temporarily. …

The government has announced plans to make it easier to build mini nuclear power stations in England and Wales, as part of its efforts to boost UK economic growth. It said it will reform the “archaic” planning rules which ministers believe have held Britain back in the global race for clean, secure and affordable energy. Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer …

Dairy cows in Nevada have been infected with a new form of bird flu that is distinct from the version that has been spreading through herds over the last year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced on Wednesday. The finding indicates that the virus, known as H5N1, has spilled from birds into cows at least twice — leading to these …

Two weeks into President Trump’s sweeping freeze on foreign aid, H.I.V. groups abroad have not received any funding, jeopardizing the health of more than 20 million people, including 500,000 children. Subsequent waivers from the State Department have clarified that the work can continue, but the funds and legal paperwork to do so are still missing. With the near closure of …

It’s taken decades, but scientists may have finally found Earth’s first fowl. It started in 1993 on Vega Island, a frigid, windswept rock off the Antarctic Peninsula. A mostly headless skeleton of a loon-size diving bird emerged from rocks that, at 68 million years old, predated the dinosaur extinction. The species, which scientists named Vegavis iaai, presented a puzzle: What …

Novo Nordisk, the Danish pharmaceutical company behind Ozempic and Wegovy, capped off a somewhat turbulent 2024, reporting profit and revenue on Wednesday that comfortably beat Wall Street expectations. But the drugmaker said it expected sales growth to slow in 2025, as competition increases. Novo Nordisk retains its title as Europe’s most valuable company, but its share price has dropped about …

In 1786, a British judge named William Jones noticed striking similarities between certain words in languages, such as Sanskrit and Latin, whose speakers were separated by thousands of miles. The languages must have “sprung from some common source,” he wrote. Later generations of linguists determined that Sanskrit and Latin belong to a huge family of so-called Indo-European languages. So do …

Every July, at the opening ceremony of the San Fermín festival signaling the imminent start of the running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain, more than 5,000 people cram into the city’s central plaza. The crowd starts the morning dressed in white. By noon, much of their clothing has been dyed pink by the free-flowing sangria. Participants in the event …

NASA’s second thoughts about VIPER opened an opportunity for someone else to book that ride to the moon. Just because its cargo was canceled did not mean Astrobotic’s journey was off — it remains scheduled for later this year. And on Wednesday, a small startup named Venturi Astrolab Inc. announced it had claimed that opportunity to accelerate its own lunar …