2025-11-09 08:54
TOKYO, Nov 9 (Reuters) - Japan issued a tsunami advisory for Iwate prefecture in the north of the country on Sunday, public broadcaster NHK said, asking residents to stay away from coastal areas. A tsunami was observed 70 km (45 miles) off the coast of Iwate Prefecture at 5:12 p.m. (0812 GMT) and was expected to reach the Pacific coastline soon, NHK said. The wave was expected to be about 1 metre (3 feet, 3 inches), it said. Sign up here. There were no abnormalities at the Onagawa nuclear power plant operated by Tohoku Electric Power Co (9506.T) , opens new tab, NHK said. An earthquake of magnitude 6.26 earlier struck off the east coast of Japan's largest island, Honshu, which includes Iwate, according to the U.S. tsunami warning system. https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/japan-issues-tsunami-advisory-iwate-prefecture-northern-japan-nhk-says-2025-11-09/
2025-11-09 07:58
MADRID, Nov 9 (Reuters) - Three people died and 15 were injured on Saturday as rough seas battered the Spanish holiday island of Tenerife, emergency services said. A rescue helicopter airlifted a man who had fallen into the water at La Guancha, a beach in the north of the island, but he was pronounced dead on arrival at hospital, emergency services said. Sign up here. In a separate incident, a man was found floating on the beach at El Cabezo in the south of the island. Lifeguards and medical staff were unable to resuscitate him and he was pronounced dead at the scene. A woman suffered a heart attack and died when a wave swept 10 people into the sea at Puerto de la Cruz in northern Tenerife. Three others from the group were seriously injured and taken to hospital for treatment. The Canary Islands, a Spanish archipelago off the west coast of Africa that includes Tenerife, are on alert for coastal hazards, the islands' emergency service said on Sunday. https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/three-die-heavy-seas-batter-spanish-island-tenerife-2025-11-09/
2025-11-09 06:41
Twenty-first storm of 2025 to hit Philippines makes landfall Two die from drowning and debris in heavy rains and wind One million people evacuated ISABELA, Philippines, Nov 9 (Reuters) - Super Typhoon Fung-Wong made landfall in the Philippines on Sunday with two fatalities reported and 1 million people evacuated ahead of one of the nation's most powerful storms this year. The storm crossed over the north of the archipelago's most populous island Luzon, weather bureau PAGASA said, with torrential rain, sustained winds of 185 kph (115 mph) and gusts of up to 230 kph (140 mph). Sign up here. It was the 21st storm this year to hit a nation only just recovering from Typhoon Kalmaegi, which left 224 dead in the Philippines and five in Vietnam. "We heard on the news that the typhoon is very strong, so we evacuated early," said Christopher Sanchez, 50, who camped with his family on a basketball court in Isabela province on Luzon. Given previous flooding, the family moved possessions to their roof before leaving. "We’re scared. We're here with our grandchildren and our kids," he said in the sports arena dotted by tents, elderly people on plastic chairs and children roaming. FATALITIES Luzon and another island Eastern Visayas bore the brunt of the storm's early onslaught, with one person drowned and another trapped under debris, authorities said. The storm was expected to weaken as it moves inland. Pope Leo offered prayers for the predominantly Catholic nation. "I am close to the people of the Philippines affected by a violent typhoon. I pray for the deceased and their families, for the injured and the displaced," he said on Sunday. In Luzon island's Aurora province where the storm arrived, lights went out but phone lines were still working, civil defence official Cheng Quizon told DZBB radio. Several airports, including Sangley near the capital Manila and Bicol to the south, closed. Fung-Wong is expected to head north of the Philippines and reach coastal waters on Monday morning while remaining a typhoon, PAGASA said, before heading out to sea and weakening as it reaches west Taiwan on Thursday. https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/philippines-evacuates-100000-people-fung-wong-intensifies-into-super-typhoon-2025-11-09/
2025-11-09 05:21
Nov 9 (Reuters) - An overnight drone attack by Ukraine temporarily disrupted power and heating supplies in the southwestern Russia city of Voronezh, a regional governor said on Sunday. The attack on Voronezh, the administrative centre of the wider Voronezh region, caused no injuries, Governor Alexander Gusev said on the Telegram messaging app. Sign up here. Several drones were suppressed by electronic warfare systems, sparking a fire at a utility facility that was quickly extinguished, he added. Safety measures led to brief changes in central heating temperatures in some homes and to short power cuts in parts of the city, but supplies later returned to normal, Gusev said. The Russian defence ministry did not mention any drones downed over the Voronezh region in its daily Telegram update on Sunday. The ministry reports how many drones its units destroy, not how many Ukraine launches. The ministry said a total of 44 Ukrainian drones were destroyed or intercepted overnight, including 43 over the border region of Bryansk and one over the Rostov region in southern Russia. There was no immediate comment from Ukraine. Ukraine has stepped up long-range drone and missile strikes inside Russia, hitting oil refineries, depots and logistics hubs it says feed the Kremlin's war machine. Moscow calls the attacks terrorism, while Ukraine says they are legitimate acts of self-defence in the war that Russia launched with its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. https://www.reuters.com/world/ukraine-drone-strike-temporarily-cuts-utilities-russias-voronezh-governor-says-2025-11-09/
2025-11-09 05:08
BEIJING, Nov 9 (Reuters) - China has suspended a ban on exports of gallium, germanium and antimony to the U.S., its commerce ministry said on Sunday, although the three metals remain subject to broader export controls requiring shippers to first get licences from Beijing. China restricted exports of the three metals between August 2023 and September 2024 before singling out the U.S. for an outright ban last December in response to new curbs imposed on its chip sector by Washington. Sign up here. The ban caused shortages among U.S. users and some importers resorted to workarounds like routing shipments through third countries to get their hands on materials used in products including semiconductors, fibre-optic cables, ammunition and flame retardants. The ban's suspension marks the latest relaxation of China's mineral export control regime following the recent meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in South Korea. The suspension took effect on Sunday and will last until November 27, 2026, China's commerce ministry said in a statement. However, the decision to suspend the ban did not revoke the earlier decisions to add the three metals to the dual-use export control list, so exporters will still need licences from Beijing for foreign sales. Sunday's announcement , opens new tab also did not revoke the decision to ban exports of any dual-use item to U.S. military users, which was announced alongside the metals ban last December. China's commerce ministry also on Sunday suspended a stricter regime of checks for exporters seeking licences to export certain types of dual-use graphite to the U.S. A phone call to the Ministry of Commerce's Bureau of Industry, Security, Import and Export Control was not answered on Monday. https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-suspends-ban-exports-gallium-germanium-antimony-us-2025-11-09/
2025-11-09 03:16
Global temperatures rising faster, sea levels increasing rapidly Coral die-off marks first climate tipping point, Amazon and Atlantic current at risk US climate work hit by Trump plans to cut, but other countries still spending on science BELEM, Brazil, Nov 9 (Reuters) - With the pace of climate change speeding up, extreme weather and other impacts are taking an increasing toll on populations and environments across the globe. Here are some of the developments this year in climate science: WARMER, FASTER Global temperatures are not just climbing, they are now climbing faster than before, with new records logged for 2023 and 2024, and at points in 2025. That finding was part of a key study , opens new tab in June that updated baseline data used in the science reports done every few years by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Sign up here. The new research shows the average global temperature rising at a rate of 0.27 degrees Celsius each decade – or almost 50% faster than in the 1990s and 2000s when the warming rate was around 0.2 C per decade. Sea levels are rising faster now too – at about 4.5 millimeters per year over the last decade, compared with 1.85 mm per year measured across the decades since 1900. The world is now on track to cross the 1.5 C warming threshold around 2030, after which scientists warn we will likely trigger catastrophic, irreversible impacts. Already, the world has warmed by 1.3-1.4 C since the pre-industrial era, according to the World Meteorological Organization. TIPPING POINTS Warm-water corals are in an almost irreversible die-off from successive marine heatwaves - marking what would be the first so-called climate tipping point, when an environmental system begins to shift into a different state. Researchers in October also warned that the Amazon rainforest could begin to die back and transform into a different ecosystem, such as savannah, if rapid deforestation continues as global warming crosses 1.5 C, which is earlier than previously estimated. They said meltwater from the thawing ice sheet atop Greenland could help cause an earlier collapse in the ocean current called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC, that keeps winters mild in Europe. In Antarctica, where ice sheets are also under threat, scientists are worried about declining sea ice surrounding the southernmost continent. Similar to what is happening in the Arctic, ice loss exposes dark water that can absorb more solar radiation - which amplifies the overall warming trend. It also jeopardizes the growth of phytoplankton that consume much of the world's CO2. LAND ON FIRE Along with heatwaves and drought, wildfires still threaten to be frequent and severe. This year’s State of Wildfires report , opens new tab, led by a group of weather agencies and universities, counted some 3.7 million square kilometers (1.4 million square miles) as having burned between March 2024 and February 2025 - an area about the size of India and Norway combined. That was slightly less than the annual average burned for the last two decades. But the fires produced higher CO2 emissions than before, as more carbon-dense forests burned. DEADLY HEAT Researchers are working on ways to assess heat-related health risks and tolls, as U.N. health and weather agencies estimate about half the world's population is already struggling. The agencies also estimate worker productivity dropping 2-3% for every degree above 20 C, while another study , opens new tab in the Lancet journal in October estimates global losses of more than $1 trillion from that lost productivity for last year alone. There is no consistent international definition for a heat-related death, but technology advances are helping scientists to bridge data gaps and compare conditions from place to place. For example in Europe, one team at the UK's Imperial College used mortality trends to estimate more than 24,400 deaths this summer related to heat exposure across about 30% of the European population. They attributed up to 70% , opens new tab of those deaths to climate-fueled heat, based on the same mortality trends applied to a model of Europe without global warming. For last year's record-hot European summer, another team used computer modeling to examine mortality statistics along with temperature data and health parameters, estimating , opens new tab more than 62,700 heat-related deaths across 32 countries, or about 70% of the continent's population. SCIENCE UNDER ATTACK The U.S. administration under climate-denying President Donald Trump is hoping to slash funding for agencies that collect and monitor climate and weather data, worrying a scientific community that says U.S. leadership will be hard to replace. Trump's 2026 budget request, yet to be approved by Congress, proposes halving the annual budget for NASA Earth Science to about $1 billion and cutting NOAA's spending by more than a quarter to $4.5 billion while eliminating its climate research arm, among other cuts. Elsewhere, however, public science spending is increasing, with record budgets for science research in China, the UK, Japan, and the European Union. The EU also last month opened its real-time weather data monitoring to public access. https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/cop/cop30-gathers-whats-latest-climate-science-2025-11-09/
