Study of 56m-year-old leaves counters claims from Trump administration members of ‘benefits’ of fossil fuel pollution

Adding huge quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is set to cause the Earth’s forests to wither and die rather than flourish, according to a new study that counters erroneous claims that fossil fuel pollution will green the planet.

An analysis of fossilized leaf cells from a period known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (or PETM), which occurred about 56 million years ago, has helped reconstruct how the world’s forests responded when planet-heating gases were previously being released at a rapid rate.

South American fish with razor-toothed jaws was probably released by someone who owned it as a pet, officials say

An eight-year-old boy fishing for bass in Pennsylvania was stunned to catch something more associated with the Amazon – and countless horror movies – than the rolling landscape of the eastern US.

Seamus Coffey, who was fishing with his father Michael in a lake near Philadelphia, hauled in a large red-bellied piranha, complete with the razor-toothed jaws that the fearsome breed is so famous for.

State is US’s largest user of pesticide that is virtually proven to cause Parkinson’s disease

California is banning paraquat, a highly toxic, controversial herbicide used across millions of acres of American cropland.

Public health advocates characterize it as a deadly substance that is virtually proven to cause Parkinson’s disease. It is already outlawed in more than 70 countries, including China, the UK and the EU. Yet in the US, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reapproved it for use in 2021 and 2024.

Indiana faced most outages at 267,000, about 8% of its customers, with severe thunderstorms and wind ahead

Power supply was cut on Thursday ⁠to about 540,000 homes and businesses across the US midwest as severe storms battered the region, data ⁠from PowerOutage.us showed.

Indiana ⁠was the ​hardest-hit state, with more than 267,000 outages, representing about 8% of its roughly 3.3 million customers, the data ⁠showed.

The dangers of AI become clearer every day. Why are we still acting as if we have no choice about our future?

Rather than producing jobs, the US economy actually lost 23,000 jobs in July, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data released on Friday. In addition, May and June’s job numbers were revised downward, showing a combined 103,000 fewer jobs than previously reported.

As if this weren’t bad enough, wage growth has also slowed. Average hourly earnings rose by just 0.1% from June.