Russia Shuts About 62 Miles of Black Sea Beaches After Oil Spill

Russia shut about 62 miles (100 kilometers) of Black Sea beaches, after a December fuel spill that's resulted in environmental damage claims of about $1 billion.
As many as 141 beaches in Anapa and nine in the Temruk area will remain closed for swimming during upcoming summer season due to potential health risks following the spill, the Russian safety watchdog known as Rospotrebnadzor said in a statement this month.

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Atlantic

2 days ago

• Atlantic

Photos of the Week: Devil-Angels, Highland Cows, Hot Dogs

A record-setting drone light show in China, the 88th Tour de Suisse in Switzerland, the Superman World Tour in the Philippines, a volcanic eruption in Indonesia, and much more Mustafa Kilic / Anadolu / Getty A flock of sheep is herded through a valley toward the foot of Mount Nemrut in Kiyiduzu village, in the Tatvan district of Bitlis, Turkey. Claudia Morales / Reuters Dancers dressed as devil-angels perform the Diablada dance during the Gran Poder parade in La Paz, Bolivia, on June 14, 2025. Gill Carpenter wears an ornate hat as she arrives on the second day of the Royal Ascot horse race in Ascot, England, on June 18, 2025. A villager watches the eruption of Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki, as seen from Talibura village in Sikka, East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia, on June 17, 2025. Missiles launched from Iran are intercepted high in the atmosphere, as seen from Ashkelon, Israel, on June 18, 2025. Israel's Iron Dome air defense system launches to intercept missiles over Tel Aviv on June 13, 2025. A Russian drone approaches a building during a massive missile and drone air attack by Russian forces in Kyiv, Ukraine, on June 17, 2025. Maxym Marusenko / NurPhoto / Getty A rescuer holds an injured kitten found at the site of a Russian ballistic missile strike on a residential building during a massive overnight attack in Kyiv on June 17, 2025. According to preliminary reports, 15 people were killed and 114 were injured. Superman fans dressed in costumes pose during an event, part of the first stop of the Superman World Tour, in Pasig city, Philippines, on June 19, 2025. Alper Tuydes / Anadolu / Getty A pheasant is seen in the floodplain forests located in the Karacabey district of Bursa, Turkey, among fields of wild lavender. Jens Büttner / DPA / Getty Poppies and other plants bloom in a field in Mecklenburg–Western Pomerania, in northeastern Germany, on June 17, 2025. Suleyman Elcin / Anadolu / Getty An aerial view shows handwoven carpets laid out in open fields to naturally soften their colors under the sun, in the Döşemealtı district in Antalya, Turkey, on June 18, 2025. Avishek Das / SOPA Images / LightRocket / Getty A child poses with their face painted during a Bahurupi performance event in Canning, West Bengal, India, on June 15, 2025. A dog shakes the water from its fur after swimming in one of the ponds on Hampstead Heath in London, on June 19, 2025. French Police enter the water to try and stop migrants boarding small boats that had come to collect them on June 13, 2025, in Gravelines, France. Police used tear gas and pepper spray to try and disperse hundreds of migrants aiming to board several boats but were ultimately overwhelmed by the sheer number of people. A record number of migrants (more than 15,000) have left the northern French coastline and arrived in the United Kingdom so far this year. Fabrice Coffrini / AFP / Getty Visitors stand next to the artwork No, 2021 by the Italian visual artist Maurizio Cattelan, displayed at the Gagosian Gallery during the Art Basel fair for Modern and contemporary art, in Basel, Switzerland, on June 17, 2025. Law-enforcement officers on horseback approach demonstrators during a protest on June 14, 2025, in Los Angeles. New York City Comptroller Brad Lander is placed under arrest by ICE and FBI agents outside federal immigration court on June 17, 2025, in New York City. Nhac Nguyen / AFP / Getty Vietnamese farmers transport harvested lychees to sell to traders at a wholesale market in the Lục Ngạn District of Vietnam's Bắc Giang province on June 18, 2025. Palestinians carry sacks and boxes of food and humanitarian aid that was unloaded from a World Food Program convoy that had been heading to Gaza City in the northern Gaza Strip, on June 16, 2025. Mauri Vansevenant leads the pack during Stage 3 of the 88th Tour de Suisse, from Aarau to Heiden, on June 17, 2025, in Heiden, Switzerland. Highland cows are herded at low tide, in Sollas, Scotland, on June 13, 2025. Every June, the Ardbhan herd of Highland cattle makes the two-mile journey across the sea at low tide from the Hebridean island of Vallay to North Uist on the mainland, where they give birth before returning to graze the island's nutritious machair grassland over winter. Sebastien Bozon / AFP / Getty A Pieris rapae butterfly alights on a flower in a field in Soultz-Haut-Rhin, France, on June 18, 2025. A flight test demonstrates an escape system for China's new-generation crewed spacecraft Mengzhou at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Jiuquan, Gansu province, China on June 17, 2025. A drone light show featuring 11,787 drones set a new Guinness World Record on June 17, 2025, in Chongqing, China. The display earned the title for the largest aerial image formed by the most drones. Serhii Korovainyi / Reuters A service member of a drone unit of the 24th Separate Mechanized Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces prepares a heavy-combat drone before its flight over positions of Russian troops, amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine, in the Donetsk region, on June 11, 2025. An assortment of 7,000 illicit firearms and small weapons, recovered during various security operations, are burned at the National Police Leadership Academy in the Bulbul area of Ngong district, near Nairobi, Kenya, on June 13, 2025. A law-enforcement officer points a Taser at a person wearing a hot-dog costume during a protest in Portland, Oregon, on June 14, 2025. Alan Taylor is a senior editor at The Atlantic.

Yahoo

6 days ago

• Yahoo

Study finds planetary waves linked to wild summer weather have tripled since 1950

WASHINGTON (AP) — Climate change has tripled the frequency of atmospheric wave events linked to extreme summer weather in the last 75 years and that may explain why long-range computer forecasts keep underestimating the surge in killer heat waves, droughts and floods, a new study says. In the 1950s, Earth averaged about one extreme weather-inducing planetary wave event a summer, but now it is getting about three per summer, according to a study in Monday's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Planetary waves are connected to 2021's deadly and unprecedented Pacific Northwest heat wave, the 2010 Russian heatwave and Pakistan flooding and the 2003 killer European heatwave, the study said. 'If you're trying to visualize the planetary waves in the northern hemisphere, the easiest way to visualize them is on the weather map to look at the waviness in the jet stream as depicted on the weather map,' said study co-author Michael Mann, a University of Pennsylvania climate scientist. Planetary waves flow across Earth all the time, but sometimes they get amplified, becoming stronger, and the jet stream gets wavier with bigger hills and valleys, Mann said. It's called quasi-resonant amplification or QRA. This essentially means the wave gets stuck for weeks on end, locked in place. As a result, some places get seemingly endless rain while others endure oppressive heat with no relief. 'A classic pattern would be like a high pressure out west (in the United States) and a low pressure back East and in summer 2018, that's exactly what we had,' Mann said. 'We had that configuration locked in place for like a month. So they (in the West) got the heat, the drought and the wildfires. We (in the East) got the excessive rainfall.' 'It's deep and it's persistent,' Mann said. 'You accumulate the rain for days on end or the ground is getting baked for days on end.' The study finds this is happening more often because of human-caused climate change, mostly from the burning of fossil fuels, specifically because the Arctic warms three to four times faster than the rest of the world. That means the temperature difference between the tropics and the Arctic is now much smaller than it used to be and that weakens the jet streams and the waves, making them more likely to get locked in place, Mann said. 'This study shines a light on yet another way human activities are disrupting the climate system that will come back to bite us all with more unprecedented and destructive summer weather events,' said Jennifer Francis, a climate scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center who wasn't involved in the research. 'Wave resonance does appear to be one reason for worsening summer extremes. On top of general warming and increased evaporation, it piles on an intermittent fluctuation in the jet stream that keeps weather systems from moving eastward as they normally would, making persistent heat, drought, and heavy rains more likely,' Francis said. This is different than Francis' research on the jet stream and the polar vortex that induces winter extremes, said Mann. There's also a natural connection. After an El Nino, a natural warming of the central Pacific that alters weather patterns worldwide, the next summer tends to be prone to more of these amplified QRA waves that become locked in place, Mann said. And since the summer of 2024 featured an El Nino, this summer will likely be more prone to this type of stuck jet stream, according to Mann. While scientists have long predicted that as the world warms there will be more extremes, the increase has been much higher than what was expected, especially by computer model simulations, Mann and Francis said. That's because the models 'are not capturing this one vital mechanism,' Mann said. Unless society stops pumping more greenhouse gases in the air, 'we can expect multiple factors to worsen summer extremes,' Francis said. 'Heat waves will last longer, grow larger and get hotter. Worsening droughts will destroy more agriculture.' ____ The Associated Press' climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP's standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at

Yahoo

04-06-2025

• Yahoo

Pisgah Class of 2025 embodies resiliency

Jun. 4—Resiliency. It's a word that has defined Haywood County's easternmost town, particularly over the last few years. Between catastrophic floods only three years apart and the closure of the town's mill, folks from Canton have faced it all. While the whole town has faced those struggles, this year's graduating class from Pisgah High School has been particularly challenged. While struggling to get through high school is difficult enough, having these disasters thrown on top only made it tougher. Those students celebrated that resilience during commencement ceremonies Friday evening, May 30, at Western Carolina University's Ramsey Center. "We made it. It might sound like a simple phrase, but after everything we've been through, those three words carry a lot of weight," graduate Carter Francoeur said. "We went through things most schools and classes can never dream of facing." Even before these seniors reached high school, they were facing the COVID pandemic that had plagued the world. Then their first year of high school was marred by Tropical Storm Fred's floodwaters, which devastated their community. "We really never knew what normal meant because the first flood was our freshman year. We had to show perseverance and make sure we had our ducks in a row," Francoeur said. Outside of floods, the graduates missed time at one point when a hacker compromised the school system's network and demanded the district pay a ransom. "Through a global pandemic, devastating floods and even that random Russian who shut down our school for a week, we learned to adapt, to overcome and to keep moving forward," graduate Mable James said during her commencement speech. Then, in the group's senior year, it happened again with Helene bringing heavy rainfall and flooding to the mountains — causing devastating results and forcing students to miss school days once again. "It was a little different, especially with missing a month of school because of one flood and two months of school because of another flood," said graduate Samuel Payne. While students might not have been at school, they were still staying active in the community they hold dear. "Me and my church did a lot of flood recovery and helping people with their houses," said Payne, who plans to major in fish and wildlife management at Haywood Community College. "I saw a lot of these same guys I'm out here with graduating today out there too. It just shows how much the community means to these guys." While everyone faced challenges as a community, most faced challenges in their personal lives, as well. Some of those moments turned into humorous memories for the graduates looking back. "When we did my first chorus concert, I got up there and played guitar and started in the wrong key," Payne said. "My friends all turned and looked at me like, 'What the heck are you doing man?' We ended up playing that whole song in the wrong key. It was a good moment. Nobody knew it but us." Making it through all of that made reaching graduation that much sweeter for this year's class. "We've been through more than most other graduating classes and still made it. It felt good," said graduate Eli Turner. It also proved to the graduates that they can overcome whatever obstacle is in their way. "To me, graduation meant proof," said graduate Rebecca Terrell. "Proof that I could commit, endure and succeed, even when it was hard. It was a moment to acknowledge how far I'd come, both academically and personally. It meant that the version of myself who started this journey had evolved into someone stronger, wiser and more capable." Through all of this, the class of 2025 built on an already strong sense of camaraderie, not only among themselves but within their community. "I am so proud to be a black bear, and I know that Pisgah High School will always be a part of us, no matter where life leads," James said. For some, that's a feeling of togetherness that has been building since the day they were born. "It's meant a lot," said Francoeur, a Goodnight Scholarship recipient who plans to major in pre-med biology at N.C. State University. "All my family has been at Pisgah for years and years. I grew up going to all the football and basketball games with my grandfather." All that hard work in the classroom and away from it has paid off in a big way. As of May 21, the graduating class had racked up nearly $2 million in scholarship money. While that money is impressive, even more of the students will be going straight into the workforce or into the military — helping the community in ways outside of higher education. When asked what was next for him, Turner said "probably work." "I don't have to wake up and go to school every day and can work and make money and be more," Turner said. Beyond that, the graduates were molded into young adults by the four years of hardships, adaptability and fond memories. "That resilience became part of who we are," Francoeur said. Pisgah seniors recognized their most influential teacher during commencement, awarding the honor to W.C. Godfrey, who works in career and technical education. Math teacher Kristy Sorrells was named the school's teacher of the year by her fellow instructors. About 220 Pisgah graduates received their diplomas during the ceremony.