- Saturday, 23 August 2025
BBC
India set to launch historic Moon Mission
India is set to launch its third Moon mission, aiming to be the first to land near its little-explored south pole. The Chandrayaan-3 craft with an orbiter, lander and rover is due to lift off at 14:35 on Friday (09:05 GMT) from Sriharikota space centre.
Boat carrying 200 migrants missing near Canaries
Spanish rescuers are searching waters off the Canary Islands for a boat carrying at least 200 African migrants who went missing more than a week ago. The aid group Walking Borders says the fishing boat sailed from Kafountine, a coastal town in southern Senegal that is roughly 1,700km (1,057 miles) from Tenerife.
France bans buying of fireworks for Bastille Day
France has banned the sale, possession and transport of all fireworks during the upcoming Bastille Day festivities. The government issued a decree on Sunday prohibiting "pyrotechnic articles" for the 14 July celebrations that mark France's national day.
How warming oceans are driving the climate juggernaut
It is clear we are speeding towards an ever hotter and more chaotic climate future, but we do have the technologies and tools to cut our emissions. The question now is whether we can do so rapidly enough to slow the climate juggernaut and keep the impacts of global warming within manageable boundaries.
Twitter threatens legal action over Threads app
Twitter is considering legal action against Meta over its fast-growing rival app Threads. Threads, which was launched to millions on Wednesday, is similar to Twitter and has been pitched by Meta bosses as a "friendly" alternative.
Rahul Gandhi's appeal in defamation case dismissed
The Gujarat high court has dismissed Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi's appeal seeking a stay on his conviction in a criminal defamation case. Gandhi was sentenced to two years in jail in March for his 2019 comments about Prime Minister Narendra Modi's surname at an election rally.
Suspected gas leak leaves 16 dead in South Africa
A suspected nitrate oxide gas leak in South Africa has led to the deaths of 16 people, local officials say. The victims - including women and children - died from gas inhalation at an informal settlement in Boksburg, east of Johannesburg.
World sees hottest day since records began
The world's average temperature reached a new high on Monday 3 July, topping 17 degrees Celsius for the first time. Scientists say the reading was the highest in any instrumental record dating back to the end of the 19th century.
Fifty bodies unclaimed weeks after India rail crash
More than 50 bodies remain unclaimed a month after a deadly train crash killed at least 293 people in India. The accident took place on 2 June in the eastern state of Odisha when a passenger train hit a stationery goods train and derailed onto an adjacent track.
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Hottest June kills UK fish and threatens insects
The UK's hottest June on record caused unprecedented deaths of fish in rivers and disturbed insects and plants, environment groups have warned. Nature is being "pounded by extreme weather without a chance to recover", the Wildlife Trusts said.
The AI trained to recognise waste for recycling
Someone who will not find those statistics surprising is Mikela Druckman. She has spent a lot of time looking at what we throw away, as the founder of Greyparrot, a UK start-up that has created an AI system designed to analyse waste processing and recycling facilities.
Pakistan strikes $3bn funding deal with IMF
Crisis-hit Pakistan has reached a staff-level agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) over $3bn (£2.4bn) of funding.
Climate change: China's green power surge offers hope on warming
Back in 2020, President Xi Jinping said that China would install over 1,200 gigawatts of solar and wind power by 2030. This new report says this target will be surpassed five years ahead of schedule.
World way off target to end deforestation
By Matt McGrath & Mark Poynting, June 27: A pledge by more than 100 world leaders to stop cutting down forests is well off track, according to new research.More of the world's older, carbon-rich tropical forests were cleared or burned last year than in 2021 when the deal was signed at a UN climate conference.Some 11 football pitches of forest were lost every minute in 2022, with Brazil dominating the destruction.But a sharp reduction in forest loss in Indonesia shows that reversing this trend is achievable.One of the key moments at the COP26 climate meeting in 2021 saw over 100 world leaders sign the Glasgow Declaration on forests, where they committed to working collectively to "halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030".In total, leaders from countries covering around 85% of global forests signed up. This included former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, who had relaxed the enforcement of environmental laws to allow development in the Amazon rainforest.The Glasgow pact was agreed upon after a previous agreement signed in 2014 failed to stem the relentless loss of trees.Now a new analysis carried out by Global Forest Watch shows that the new promise made in Glasgow is not being kept.Losses of tropical primary (old-growth) forests are seen as particularly critical for global warming and biodiversity.Rainforests in Brazil, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Indonesia absorb huge amounts of greenhouse gases.Clearing or burning these older forests sees that stored carbon released into the atmosphere, driving up temperatures around the world.These forests are also critical for maintaining biodiversity and the livelihoods of millions of people.Scientists warn that these functions - or "ecosystem services" - can't easily be replaced by planting trees elsewhere because these forests have developed over such a long period of time.According to the new data, gathered by the University of Maryland, the tropics lost 10% more primary rainforest in 2022 than in 2021, with just over 4m hectares (nearly 16,000 sq miles) felled or burned in total.This released an amount of carbon dioxide equivalent to the annual fossil fuel emissions of India."The question is, are we on track to halt deforestation by 2030? And the short answer is a simple no," said Rod Taylor from the World Resources Institute (WRI) which runs the Global Forest Watch.President Lula and his environment minister have promised to end deforestation in Brazil, EVARISTO SA"Globally, we are far off track and trending in the wrong direction. Our analysis shows that global deforestation in 2022 was over 1 million hectares above the level needed to be on track to zero deforestation by 2030."Brazil dominates the losses of primary tropical forest and in 2022 this increased by over 14%.In Amazonas state, which is home to over half of Brazil's intact forests, the rate of deforestation has almost doubled over the past three years.Bolivia, one of the few countries not to sign the Glasgow Declaration, also saw a rapid acceleration of forest losses in 2022, up almost a third in a year.Commodity agriculture is the main driver, according to researchers. Soybean expansion has resulted in nearly a million hectares of deforestation in Bolivia since the turn of the century.Although Ghana in West Africa has only a small amount of primary forest remaining, it saw a massive 71% increase in losses in 2022, mostly in protected areas. Some of these losses are close to existing cocoa farms.While the overall picture is not good, there are some positive developments that show that it is possible to rein in deforestation.Indonesia has reduced its primary tropical forest loss more than any other country in recent years since recording an all-time high in 2016.Analysis suggests this is down to both government and corporate actions.A moratorium on logging in new palm oil plantations was made permanent in 2019, while efforts to monitor and limit fires have been stepped up.Indonesia has stepped up fire monitoring and restricted new palm plantations, SULTAN IQBAL ABIYYUIt's a similar story in Malaysia. In both countries, oil palm corporations also appear to be taking action, with some 83% of palm oil refining capacity now operating under no deforestation, no peatland and no exploitation commitments.With a new president in Brazil committing to end deforestation in the Amazon by 2030, there is renewed hope that the promises made in Glasgow in 2021 might fare better in the coming years.But if the world wants to keep global temperatures under the critical 1.5C threshold, the time for action on forests is very short indeed, say the researchers."There's an urgency to get a peak and decline in deforestation, even more, urgent than the peak and decline in carbon emissions," said Rod Taylor from WRI."Because once you lose forests, they're just so much harder to recover. They're kind of irrecoverable assets."How is deforestation measured?The loss of tree cover can be monitored relatively easily by analysing satellite images - although there's sometimes uncertainty about the precise year in which trees have been lost.Measuring deforestation - which typically refers to human-caused, permanent removal of natural forest cover - is more complicated, because not all tree-cover loss counts as deforestation.For example, losses from fire, disease or storms, as well as losses within sustainable production forests, would not usually count as deforestation. There are difficulties with this - for instance, some fires may have been started deliberately to clear a forest, rather than being natural.Scientists try to take all of these factors into account to come up with an estimate for deforestation.The latest figures suggest a rise in (human-caused) global deforestation of about 3.6% in 2022 compared with 2021 - the opposite direction to what was pledged in Glasgow.Interestingly, whilst losses of the particularly important primary tropical forests rose by nearly 10% in 2022, overall global tree cover loss from all causes actually fell by nearly 10%.But researchers say this was because losses from forest fires were down in 2022, particularly in Russia. This is not thought to be part of a long-term trend.In fact, tree cover losses from fires have generally increased in the last two decades, and fires are expected to become more common in future due to climate change and alterations to the way land is used.
Why audiences turned against this Bollywood epic
Adipurush, a much-hyped, lavish Indian film, has suffered a box-office crash landing following a backlash from audiences and critics. The BBC's Meryl Sebastian looks at what went wrong with the film.
