"I could have written in French. If I had, my job would have been much easier in terms of being a world writer. I did not choose this because whatever language you played football on the street with as a child, whatever language you had your first love with when you were young, is your language, and that language was Turkish. For that reason, I always tell myself this, "My deepest homeland is Turkish." —Mario Levi
SUSTAINABILITY
Turkey has lost 13 percent of its agricultural lands in the last 30 years. Farmers who have given up production prefer to give their greenhouses and fields to contractors to build warehouses and flats and live on rental income. DETAIL
India's first snow leopard survey puts population at just 718. Officials set up almost 2000 camera traps covering 120,000 square kilometres to estimate the number of snow leopards in India’s mountainous regions. DETAIL
Britain has handed major oil companies the right to drill for fossil fuels in 24 new licence areas across the North Sea as part of the government’s mission to extend the life of the ageing oil and gas basin. DETAIL
Following a “groundbreaking” change to the law in Norway in January, there is now a dramatic difference in how oil and gas is approved in the North Sea, writes Tessa Khan, executive director of climate action organisation Uplift, in the Guardian. The decision by the Oslo district court now means that the government must take into account the emissions that come from burning the oil and gas reserves in addition to the impact of getting the reserves out of the ground, she writes. DETAIL
A high proportion of future extreme heat events are likely to be followed by heavy precipitation, a new paper finds, compounding the “lethal” threat that these events pose individually to human health, sustainable development and ecological security. DETAIL
A year ago, we featured Italian supermarket Italmark's new home fragrance: a reed diffuser with the scent of alpine flowers at risk of going extinct, created to highlight biodiversity loss in northern Italy. Now, Brazilian beauty behemoth O Boticário has launched a similar concept: a perfume called Extinto. As the brand points out, when a natural environment suffers degradation, its specific fragrance is one of the first things to disappear. The inaugural scent in O Boticário's Extinto line aims to replicate what Brazil's iconic Guanabara Bay smelled like before it was covered in trash and its waters grew murky — 18 thousand liters of raw sewage are discharged into the bay every second. DETAIL
People in Paris, the capital of France, will vote on the proposal that aims to reduce the number of SUV vehicles in the capital, especially in the fight against global warming, and to triple the parking fees for SUV vehicles for this purpose. DETAIL
Newly discovered documents confirm that the petroleum and automobile industries funded the early climate science of Charles David Keeling at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) from 1954 to 1956. Keeling became known for the “Keeling Curve,” which demonstrated the upward trajectory of the planet’s carbon dioxide levels. The documents show that industry leaders were aware of the potential impacts of fossil fuels on the environment from early on. DETAIL
HEALTH
Wearing a heart-rate tracker on the wrist during pregnancy may help doctors predict who is at risk of premature labour. Trackers worn by a group of women throughout their pregnancies showed distinct patterns in how their heart rate changed. In people who went into labour prematurely, heart rate variability patterns were far less consistent, which could allow doctors to spot premature births early and intervene if necessary. DETAIL
Nine people with a rare genetic condition that causes life-threatening inflammatory reactions appear to have been cured, after taking part in the first trial of a new version of a CRISPR-based gene therapy. The condition, called hereditary angioedema, causes people to have sudden episodes of tissue swelling that affects body parts such as the face or throat, similar to aspects of an allergic reaction, although they can’t be treated with anti-allergy medicines. DETAIL
The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention has linked the worst outbreak of cholera in three years to climate change, warning adverse weather is raising the risk of the disease, reports Time. DETAIL
The US is dealing with an "out-of-control" epidemic of sexually transmitted infections, according to the National Coalition of STD Directors. The warning comes after the release of an annual data report on STIs by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). "Yet again," the CDC website reads, "more than 2.5 million cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis were reported in the United States." DETAIL
DIGITAL / TECHNOLOGY / SCIENCE /AI
A study of 26 years' worth of wolf behavioral data, and an analysis of the blood of 229 wolves, has shown that infection with the parasite Toxoplasma gondii makes wolves 46 times more likely to become a pack leader. DETAIL
Researchers at the University of Science and Technology of China have allegedly built an optical clock with stability and uncertainty of under five quintillionths. The clock will lose or gain one second in the next seven billion years. It is, therefore, likely to depict accurate time throughout our lifetimes. DETAIL
HAVELSAN's MAIN GPT product was introduced at HAVELSAN's "Artificial Intelligence" conference. According to the information provided at the event; HAVELSAN created its own model by compiling open source data for MAIN. At the event, MAIN was defined as an artificial intelligence platform rather than a big language model. DETAIL
The first human patient has received an implant from brain-chip startup Neuralink on Sunday and is recovering well, the company's billionaire founder Elon Musk said. "Initial results show promising neuron spike detection," Musk said in a post on the social media platform X on Monday. DETAIL
ENERGY / TRANSPORTATION
The UK is awarding £33 million to 33 projects across all 12 regions of the UK to develop green technologies for ports and ships. The funding comes from the fourth round of the government’s Clean Maritime Demonstration Competition (CMDC4), which focuses on developing a range of clean maritime technologies including electric, hydrogen, ammonia, methanol, wind power and more. DETAIL
With the successful production of the first prismatic cells, StoreDot has announced an important step towards the commercialisation of its fast-charging silicon-dominated battery cells. The prismatic cell type offers additional mechanical protection and performance advantages over pouch cells, which is why many electric car manufacturers favour it. DETAIL
CYBERSECURITY
The White House said on Friday it was alarmed by fake online images of the pop singer Taylor Swift and said social media companies have an important role to play in enforcing their own rules to prevent the spread of such misinformation. DETAIL
Joshua Schulte was sentenced to 40 years in prison on Thursday for turning over confidential CIA documents to WikiLeaks, committing what the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York calls "the largest data breach in CIA history." DETAIL
Some voters in New Hampshire received a call from someone who sounded a lot like President Joe Biden. The call encouraged those New Hampshire residents to stay home during the primary election last week and "save your votes" for the general election in November. Of course, that makes no sense. Voters can vote in both elections. Why would Biden tell them such a thing? Well, that's because he didn't. These were AI voice-generated robocalls created to sound like Biden. DETAIL
HUMAN
The man who taped "smoking fish" to ATM machines in the USA was arrested. It was seen that the arrested person called himself "Fish Bandit" on his social media account and wrote "Live, laugh, fish in ATMs" in his bio. DETAIL