Archive for June 2021

Clouds can be a nuisance when scientists are trying to observe features on Earth’s surface. But at other times, clouds are exactly what they want to see. These images highlight some of the more unusual and beautiful clouds observed in recent years from space.

On June 17th a judicial decision marks a new phase for the struggle over water flow to the “Volta Grande” (“Big Bend”) of Brazil’s Xingu River between the two dams that make up the Belo Monte complex. The outcome will be consequential for the Indigenous people and ribeirinhos (traditional Amazonian riverside dwellers) who depend on […]

COLOMBO — Folklore has it that babies were delivered by storks, who carried them in slings from their beaks and left them at the door of unsuspecting couples. But the script was flipped for Premathilaka Peramuna, who opened his door in the town of Baduraliya, in western Sri Lanka, to find a chick huddled inside […]

Chocolate mountains and a salty lake highlight this desert landscape.

This year’s drought is worse than in 2001, when political and environmental tensions exploded into the national spotlight.

COLOMBO — Satellite images have captured a silvery slick spreading on the surface of the sea from the burnt-out wreck of a cargo ship that sank off Colombo earlier this month, but authorities deny there’s been a much-feared fuel oil spill. The images first appeared on June 4, two days after the Singapore-flagged X-Press Pearl […]

The issuing of General Order No. 3 by Union troops on June 19, 1865, marked the official end of slavery in Texas and the U.S.

Juneteenth marks the date in 1865 where an estimated 250,000 enslaved people in Texas were freed, marking the official end of slavery in the Confederacy – two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, and six months before the 13th Amendment to the Constitution finally banned slavery nationwide. As much as Juneteenth is worthy of celebration, liberation […]

Virunga National Park’s forests are some the most biodiverse in Africa and among the last bastions of mountain gorillas, okapis, Ruwenzori duikers and many other endangered species. Guarded by some of the highest, most inaccessible mountains on the continent, as well as the international scrutiny afforded by its designations as a national park and UNESCO […]

As lawmakers tussle over the future of Indigenous land rights in Brazil’s capital, Indigenous people in a municipality in Rio de Janeiro state are fighting off attacks and threats by settlers who reject their ancestral land rights over a territory being processed for official recognition. Indigenous people in the Tekohá Dje’y territory in Paraty, a […]