The cracks in China’s economy appear to be widening, with signs of weakening growth amid a background of trade tensions. Adding to the worries, China’s stock market was the world’s worst performer last year, ending with a loss of 28%. This week Apple said slowing sales in China meant it would not meet sales expectations, triggering […]

The federal grand jury being used by Special Counsel Robert Mueller in his probe into Russian collusion in the US 2016 election has had its term extended by up to six months. The initial 18-month term was due to expire this weekend. The jury’s members have heard dozens of witnesses and have approved a swathe […]

HONOLULU  – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., is shooting back at critics who questioned why she was vacationing over the holidays in Hawaii amid a government shutdown. Pelosi told NBC’s Savannah Guthrie that she observed Christmas in the islands, but that she and other Democrats in the U.S. House “stood ready” to reconvene if a […]

A controversial plan to capture trash in the Pacific isn’t panning out as planned Cleaning up ocean pollution is no simple task, as an effort to fish plastic out of the Pacific Ocean is revealing. In September, scientists launched a 600-meter-long boom meant to herd plastic debris from the great Pacific garbage patch into a net (SN […]

Today’s babies will live on a planet without an Arctic. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recently announced there is only a dozen years left before the Earth’s temperature rises a few degrees, after which the risks of drought, floods, extreme heat and poverty for hundreds of millions of people will significantly worsen. The range […]

While there is no silver-bullet solution to the toxic tide of plastic surging into our oceans, recycling must form part of the answer. The problem, many experts say, is that current processes are not fit for purpose. The world produces around 300 million tonnes of plastic waste each year. To date, only 9 per cent of the plastic […]

A thought need to be spared for the good old Christmas tree — a tree that is loved and decorated as the central feature of many households for almost a whole month … and come January it is  stripped of all the lights and decorations and dumped. But don’t feel too bad for the trees […]

President Trump fired back Friday at Democrats calling for his impeachment within moments of the 116th Congress convening, claiming he’s had “the most successful first two years” of any president. Trump spoke out on the impeachment calls after a video surfaced of freshman Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib making a profanity-laced vow to remove him from […]

A Dutch project to clear plastic waste out of the Pacific ocean has had a second setback in a month – this time, one of the end parts of the boom used to catch rubbish has broken off. This ‘structural malfunctioning of the cleanup system’ means the team is returning to port earlier than planned, […]

Hawaii is sending avocados to the mainland after a 25-year ban. Weekly shipments are arriving at two Seattle companies. Hawaiian-grown avocados are headed to the mainland for the first time in 25 years after concerns over fruit flies stopped the shipments in 1992. Now the U.S. Department of Agriculture is allowing Hawaii to ship Sharwil […]