World

Robert Moses at the placing of final steel, Fire Island Inlet Bridge 1962. A powerful nor’easter hit the eastern coast of the United States in March 1962. The storm destroyed dunes, swept nearly 100 homes into the Atlantic Ocean, and cut through the narrow barrier island off Long Island’s south shore. The storm, known as…

Black rat eradication restored Midway Atoll’s ecosystem, helping Bonin petrels rebound from fewer than 5,000 to over 135,000 breeding pairs The successful removal of invasive black rats from Midway Atoll led to an extraordinary recovery of the local Bonin petrel population, which grew from fewer than 5,000 nesting pairs to more than 135,000 pairs. According…

An aggressive campaign to eradicate 5,036 feral pigs from Santa Cruz Island triggered the fastest successful recovery of an endangered mammal in the history of the United States Endangered Species Act. According to official press releases from the US Fish and Wildlife Service and historical records from the National Park Service, the eradication program began…

In 1979, about 30 mongooses were released on Japan’s Amami Oshima to control habu snakes Japan has officially declared the successful eradication of the invasive small Indian mongoose on Amami Oshima, ending a decades-long ecological crisis on the UNESCO World Heritage-listed island. According to an official announcement from Japan’s ministry of the environment, expert panels…

Clair Birch says her £170,000 annexe was designed around her disabled daughter’s needs, but planning officials have rejected her appeal. (Photo: SWNS) A mother who spent £170,000 building a two-storey annexe for her disabled daughter could now be forced to demolish it after losing a planning appeal. Clair Birch, 59, built the one-bedroom annexe in…

In 1972, Howard Solomon set out to build a quiet retirement home in rural Florida, but the land he chose was far from ordinary. Instead of a conventional building site, he found a swamp, yet the challenging terrain did little to discourage him. Solomon adapted his plans and began constructing upwards, slowly transforming the property…

FILE – Prince Harry, and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, arrive for an event, during a visit to Bondi Beach, Australia, April 17, 2026. (Jonathan Brady/Pool Photo via AP, File) Netflix deals come and go. The British monarchy is forever. Probably.Five years ago, Patrick Freyne wrote a piece in The Irish Times whose…

In December 1986, the United States federal government completed a deal to buy Santa Rosa Island for $29.5 million. The 53,000-acre island, located 26.5 miles off the coast of Santa Barbara, California, was bought by the National Park Service from its longtime private owners, the Vail & Vickers ranching partnership. Under the deal, the ranching…

Theodore Roosevelt’s famous “man in the arena” passage remains one of his most enduring reflections on courage, effort and failure. In his 1910 speech “Citizenship in a Republic”, delivered at the Sorbonne in Paris, Roosevelt said: “The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and…

Priscilla Chan’s journey from the daughter of Vietnamese refugees to a Harvard graduate, paediatrician and major science philanthropist is rooted in a family story shaped by war and migration. Her grandparents put her parents, who were teenagers at the time, on boats to flee Vietnam during the war. Chan grew up in Massachusetts, where her…