Photo: Besart Ademi / Unsplash (CC0)
In today’s edition: Kosovo’s decades-long landmine-clearance mission reaches its end, 30,000 non-biting mosquitoes are released in Lisbon to combat disease-carrying pests, and a new airport is cooled by natural ventilation instead of air conditioning.
The Halo Trust, a mine-clearance charity, announced this week that it has completed its work in Kosovo, saying the land cleared of mines has “paved the way for Kosovo’s recovery.” More than 800,000 people were displaced during the 1998-99 conflict. In the first month after the war, an estimated 150 people were killed or injured by landmines, 71% of them under the age of 24.
Source: Squirrel News
Thirty thousand sterile male mosquitoes have been released in Lisbon’s Alvalade district this week as part of a final trial to curb the Asian tiger mosquito, which can spread dengue, Zika and yellow fever.
Source: Euronews
The United Nations has adopted its first declaration on sea-level rise, reaffirming protections for low-lying island nations and their maritime rights as rising seas threaten their territory.
Source: Grist
A rapid NHS test can diagnose brain tumours in as little as two hours, compared with up to eight weeks previously. Identifying the tumour type during surgery means that the genomic test could help patients begin treatment sooner, reducing weeks of uncertainty and anxiety.
Source: BBC News
Doctors have developed a simple test that could help rule out womb cancer in women who experience bleeding after menopause. The test uses urine and vaginal fluid samples, with hopes high that thousands of lower-risk women could be spared internal ultrasounds and hysteroscopies.
Source: The Guardian
As wildfires and floods intensify across the world, a growing body of research suggests that Indigenous land-management practices and ecological governance can offer effective, time-tested ways to prevent and manage climate disasters.
Source: Grist
The newly constructed arrivals terminal at Roland Garros Airport on Réunion Island demonstrates advanced green architecture by functioning without energy-intensive air conditioning, relying instead on a unique ceiling design that funnels natural tropical winds to cool the building.
Source: The Guardian
After decades of raising pigs for slaughter, the Faaborg family in central Iowa has turned its farm into a specialty mushroom operation. With support from The Transfarmation Project, they now grow mushrooms and sell them as tinctures, coffee blends and flavoured salt.
Source: NPR
A restored wetland in Cheshire is now home to almost two-thirds of the UK’s breeding black-necked grebes, one of the country’s rarest birds. Once a dumping ground for dredging from the Manchester Ship Canal, Woolston Eyes near Warrington now hosts the UK’s largest colony, with the species averaging just 55 breeding pairs nationwide each year.
Source: BBC News
Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library is expanding to provide free monthly books to 157,000 more children, amid concerns over declining early childhood reading. The programme has already distributed more than 330 million books to more than million children worldwide since it began in 1995.
Source: Fast Company
