HONOLULU  – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., is shooting back at critics who questioned why she was vacationing over the holidays in Hawaii amid a government shutdown. Pelosi told NBC’s Savannah Guthrie that she observed Christmas in the islands, but that she and other Democrats in the U.S. House “stood ready” to reconvene if a […]

A controversial plan to capture trash in the Pacific isn’t panning out as planned Cleaning up ocean pollution is no simple task, as an effort to fish plastic out of the Pacific Ocean is revealing. In September, scientists launched a 600-meter-long boom meant to herd plastic debris from the great Pacific garbage patch into a net (SN […]

Today’s babies will live on a planet without an Arctic. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recently announced there is only a dozen years left before the Earth’s temperature rises a few degrees, after which the risks of drought, floods, extreme heat and poverty for hundreds of millions of people will significantly worsen. The range […]

While there is no silver-bullet solution to the toxic tide of plastic surging into our oceans, recycling must form part of the answer. The problem, many experts say, is that current processes are not fit for purpose. The world produces around 300 million tonnes of plastic waste each year. To date, only 9 per cent of the plastic […]

A thought need to be spared for the good old Christmas tree — a tree that is loved and decorated as the central feature of many households for almost a whole month … and come January it is  stripped of all the lights and decorations and dumped. But don’t feel too bad for the trees […]

A Dutch project to clear plastic waste out of the Pacific ocean has had a second setback in a month – this time, one of the end parts of the boom used to catch rubbish has broken off. This ‘structural malfunctioning of the cleanup system’ means the team is returning to port earlier than planned, […]

Hawaii is sending avocados to the mainland after a 25-year ban. Weekly shipments are arriving at two Seattle companies. Hawaiian-grown avocados are headed to the mainland for the first time in 25 years after concerns over fruit flies stopped the shipments in 1992. Now the U.S. Department of Agriculture is allowing Hawaii to ship Sharwil […]

The hugely celebrated campaign, Palau Pledge, has not brought in more arrivals to Palau, which is also being hit by a China ban. Nobody should expect it to. Here’s why. There is something sexy about the idea of a tiny nation standing up for itself. Palau, an archipelago in the western Pacific Ocean with a […]

HONOLULU  – A fast-moving blaze tore through a Palolo home on Thursday afternoon, sending one person to the hospital in serious condition. Authorities said 9th Avenue is closed in the area as firefighters remain on scene. First responders were called to the home about 1:05 p.m., and the fire was extinguished by 2:21 p.m. A […]

When the Fourth National Climate Assessment was released on Black Friday, it presented a pretty grim outlook on the economic impacts of climate change. With the future bringing everything from longer, more intense droughts to more frequent and severe hurricanes, the report suggested that climate change could ultimately cost different sectors of the economy hundreds of […]