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Monkey business is closed
Two weeks ago, Patrick covered news of several lab monkeys that escaped from an overturned truck in Mississippi that were allegedly diseased and dangerous. On Friday night, we finally got news that the last of these monkeys has been tracked down, following a report from a resident whose dog alerted her to its presence.
Five of the escaped rhesus macaques were sadly killed by police, yet authorities say that this monkey was “successfully recovered.”
Good COP, bad COP
Good morning, science fans! Ben here, back for another round of updates on the latest science updates from around the world.
While we’re speaking of the pale blue dot that we call home, it’s in a spot of trouble due to human-caused climate change, as it speeds toward near-certain overshoot of climatic guard-rails set by 2015’s Paris Agreement. That’s why delegations from 194 countries are meeting in Brazil for the UN’s COP30 conference, making yet another attempt to forge better plans to stay within the agreement’s limits and phase out fossil fuels.
This year’s conference promises to be particularly contentious, with many leaders being no-shows and the Trump administration having exited the process entirely.
Where that leaves this conference is entirely unclear: Brazil insists that this year’s conference will be one of “implementation”, whereby countries focus on what they can contribute to real-world impacts instead of striving toward a longwinded, often defanged, consensus. Whether that means some countries can get away with contributing very little, and what can be done to counteract this, remains unclear.
Ben Turner