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The city had not yet decided whether to outlaw ads for organic meat

The Dutch city of Haarlem is set to become the first in the world to ban advertisements for most meat because of its impact on climate change, officials said Wednesday.

The city of 160,000 people near Amsterdam has agreed to outlaw ads for intensively farmed meat on public places like buses, shelters and screens from 2024.

The move was approved by the city council in November, but went unnoticed until last week when a councillor announced he had officially notified advertising agencies.

“It will be the first city in the Netherlands — and in fact Europe and indeed the world — to ban ‘bad’ meat ads in public places,” Ziggy Klazes, councillor for the GroenLinks (Green-Left) party who drafted the motion, told AFP.

She said it went against the city’s politics to “earn money by renting the city’s public space to products which accelerate global warming”.

The ban would target all “cheap meat from intensive farming”, Klazes said, adding, “as far as I’m concerned that includes ads from fast food chains.”

The city had not yet decided whether to outlaw ads for organic meat.

Amsterdam and The Hague have already banned ads for air travel, petrol-driven cars and fossil fuels but now Haarlem is set to add meat to that list.

The ban has been criticised by the Dutch meat industry and some political parties who see it as a form of censorship and stigmatisation of meat eaters.

“Banning ads for political reasons is nearly dictatorial,” Joey Rademaker, a Haarlem councillor for the right-wing BVNL party, said in a statement.

The Dutch meat industry body, the Centrale Organisatie voor de Vleessector, said Haarlem authorities were “going too far in telling people what’s best for them,” the Trouw newspaper said.

The sector recently launched its own campaign called “Netherlands Meatland” to promote meat-eating.

– ‘Going too far’ –

Haarlem’s ban comes at a sensitive time for the Netherlands, which has seen months of protests by farmers angry at government plans to cut nitrogen emissions to meet EU environmental targets.

The Dutch government wants to reduce the country’s herd of four million cows by nearly a third, and possibly shut some farms.

Angry farmers have blocked roads with manure and trash, set fires and held huge tractor rallies to protest — drawing support from right-wingers worldwide including former US President Donald Trump.

Meanwhile the legal status of the carnivorous crackdown is also uncertain.

A ban could be challenged as an attack on freedom of expression, administrative law professor Herman Broering of Groningen University told Trouw newspaper.

Haarlem council must still study the legal issues before the ban can come into force, added Ziggy Klazes.

“You can’t ban adverts for a business, but you can ban adverts for a group of products” for public health, she said.

“Take the example of cigarette ads.”

Agriculture contributes to deforestation, climate change and emissions of greenhouse gases, loss of biodiversity and ecosystems, and is a major user of fresh water.

The EU has suggested that people cut down on consumption of meat and dairy products.

Some 95 percent of Dutch people eat meat, including 20 percent every day, according to the Dutch central statistics office.

Other countries are banning advertising for certain types of food, including junk food, although for health reasons rather than climate.

Britain is banning television ads for foods that are high in fat, sugar and salt before 9:00 pm from 2023 to help cut child obesity.

Singapore has banned ads for the most unhealthy sugary drinks.

Researchers say the Congo Basin's rainforest sequesters more greenhouse gases than it emits

A tower bristling with sensors juts above the canopy in northern Democratic Republic of Congo, measuring carbon dioxide emitted from the world’s second-largest tropical rainforest. 

Spanning several countries in central Africa, the Congo Basin rainforest covers an immense area and is home to a dizzying array of species. 

But there are growing concerns for the future of the forest, deemed critical for sequestering CO2, as loggers and farmers push ever deeper inside.

Scientists at the Yangambi Biosphere Reserve in the DRC’s Tshopo province are studying the rainforest’s role in climate change — a subject that received scant attention until recently.

Standing 55 metres tall, the CO2-measuring flux tower came online in 2020 in the lush reserve of 250,000 hectares (620,000 acres).

Yangambi was renowned for tropical agronomy research during the Belgian colonial era. 

This week, it also hosted scientists as part of meetings in the DRC dubbed pre-COP 27, ahead of the COP27 climate summit in Egypt in November.

Thomas Sibret, who runs the CongoFlux CO2 measuring project, said that flux towers are common worldwide.

But until one was set up in Yangambi, there had been none in Congo, which had “limited our understanding of this ecosystem”, he said.

Around 30 billion tonnes of carbon are stored across the Congo Basin, researchers estimated in a study in Nature in 2016. The figure is roughly equivalent to three years’ of global emissions.

Sibret said more time is required to draw definitive conclusions from the data gathered by DRC’s flux tower, but one thing is certain: The rainforest sequesters more greenhouse gases than it emits.

– ‘No more trees’ –

Paolo Cerutti, the head of the Center for International Forestry Research’s operations in Congo, said this was good news.

In Latin America, “we’re starting to see evidence that the Amazon (rainforest) is becoming more of an emitter,” he said.

“We’re betting a lot on the Congo Basin, especially the DRC, which has 160 million hectares of forest still capable of absorbing carbon.”

But Cerutti warned that slash-and-burn agriculture poses a particular threat to the future of the rainforest, pointing out that half a million hectares of forest were lost last year.

Slash-and-burn agriculture sees villagers cultivate lands until they become depleted, then clear forests to create new lands, and repeat the cycle. 

With the DRC’s population of about 100 million people set to expand, many worry the forest is in dire threat. 

Jean-Pierre Botomoito, the head of the Yanonge area about 40 kilometres (24 miles) from Yangambi, said that he once thought the forest was inexhaustible.

But “here, there are no trees,” he said.

Villagers in his once-forested region now have to travel long distances along narrow muddy paths to find tree-dwelling caterpillars — a local delicacy. 

Charcoal used for cooking in the absence of electricity and gas is similarly hard to obtain.

There are efforts to help farmers in the remote and impoverished region to make a living while sustaining the environment.

A largely EU-financed project, for example, trains farmers to rotate cassava and groundnut crops between fast-growing acacia trees. 

Farmers can harvest the acacia trees to make charcoal after six years.

Experts also encourage the use of more efficient kilns to produce more charcoal and teach loggers how to select which trees to fell.

– Vandalism –

Jean Amis, the head of a local farmers’ organisation, was enthusiastic about the project.

“We didn’t necessarily have the right practices” before, he said.

Others are too.

Helene Fatouma, the president of a women’s association, says fishponds on the edge of the forest now yield 1,450 kilos of fish in six months, as opposed to 30 previously.

But not all residents of the surrounding area support the various schemes.

Some people believe that the flux tower is stealing oxygen, for example, or that it is a prelude to land appropriation.

Researchers often find dendrometers — devices that measure tree dimensions — vandalised, and some traditional chiefs think the forest will grow back by itself without outside interference. 

The Indonesia-based Center for International Forestry Research says that resistance to the schemes can be overcome through raising awareness. 

Dieu Merci Assumani, the director of the DRC’s National Institute for Agricultural Research, agreed.

But he said there needs to be more financing for locals, who have seen little benefit from promised funds to protect the rainforest.

Assumani pointed as an example to the $500-million deal to protect the Congo Basin rainforest, signed by President Felix Tshisekedi and then British prime minister Boris Johnson in Glasgow last year.

“Commitments are all very well, but they need to be disbursed,” he said. 

A man prepares to return home after heavy monsoon rains in Pakistan's Sindh province. Developing nations want funding from rich polluters to help them adapt to the impacts of global heating

Hundreds of environmental groups called Wednesday for the issue of loss and damage finance to be on the formal agenda of the forthcoming COP27 UN climate summit in Egypt.

Developing nations have for years called for funding from rich polluters to help them reduce emissions while growing their economies and adapt to the impacts of global heating. 

They argue that historic polluters also have a moral imperative to pay for the loss and damage — impacts already being felt that countries cannot adapt to, such as Pakistan’s devastating floods — that their emissions are accelerating.

At the last UN climate summit, COP26 in Glasgow in 2021, countries representing six out of every seven people on the planet called for the establishment of a dedicated loss and damage “facility” that at-risk nations could instantly access to help them recover from extreme events.

That was shot down by richer nations, however. A loss and damage “dialogue” was offered as an alternative ahead of COP27, which begins in November in Sharm el-Sheikh.

More than 400 aid agencies and activist groups on Wednesday signed an open letter demanding that loss and damage finance be added to the official negotiating agenda. 

They said discussions around money for impacted nations was needed “to ensure a meaningful outcome at COP27 to respond to the intensifying suffering of people facing climate and connected crises”.

Harjeet Singh, head of global political strategy at Climate Action Network International, said that the conference’s credibility was “hanging by a thread”.

“The COP27 conference will be counted as a failure, if developed nations continue to ignore the demand from developing countries to establish a loss and damage finance facility to help people recover from worsening floods, wildfires and rising seas,” he said.

Shelling around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, Europe's largest, has sparked fears of a nuclear disaster

Ukraine’s nuclear operator said Wednesday it would support the deployment of UN peacekeepers at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia plant, a day after the UN atomic watchdog called for a security zone around the site.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) released a report Tuesday saying the situation at the nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, was “untenable”. The agency sent a team to the site last week.

It called for a demilitarised security zone to be established at the plant in southern Ukraine, which the Russians took over in March.

There has been repeated shelling around the site, sparking fears of a nuclear disaster.

Ukraine’s nuclear operator Energoatom said Wednesday it would support the deployment of UN peacekeepers to the facility and called for Russian troops to leave. 

“One of the ways to create a security zone at the (plant) could be to set up a peacekeeping contingent there and withdraw Russian troops” Energoatom chief Petro Kotyn said in remarks broadcast by Ukrainian TV.

Ukraine and Russia have traded blame for shelling at the site, which continued Tuesday even as the IAEA report was released. 

The head of Ukraine’s nuclear security agency warned Wednesday that a nuclear accident at the site could affect neighbouring countries.

Damage to the active zone of the reactor would “have consequences not only in Ukraine, but also definitely beyond its borders” Oleg Korikov told reporters. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday there was “no military equipment” at the plant in southern Ukraine, adding that he “certainly trusts” the IAEA report. 

But earlier, Moscow had said it wanted “clarifications” from the IAEA. 

“There is a need to get additional clarifications because the report contains a number of issues,” Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told Interfax news agency.

“I will not list them but we requested these clarifications from the IAEA Director General.” 

– ‘Fukushima-like’ –

A 14-strong team from the IAEA visited Zaporizhzhia last week, and at least two members of the team were to remain there on a permanent basis to ensure the facility’s safety.

But on Monday, the last working reactor was disconnected from the grid after shelling caused a fire.

Karine Herviou, the head of the Institute for Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety in France, warned of the risk of a “Fukushima-type scenario”, referring to the 2011 Japanese nuclear disaster.

“We are not immune to strikes (at the plant) which, even if they do not directly affect the reactors, could lead to radioactive releases into the environment,” she told FranceInfo radio on Wednesday.

– Gas, grain –

As the war rages into its seventh month, with tens of thousands killed and millions displaced, the global cost of the crisis is unfolding. Countries are confronted with skyrocketing energy prices and serious grain shortages.

Europe in particular is bracing for a tough winter ahead, especially after Russia halted natural gas deliveries via the key Nord Stream pipeline to the continent. 

Putin on Wednesday denied Russia was using energy as a weapon, as it faces a barrage of Western sanctions over its February 24 invasion of Ukraine. 

“They say that Russia uses energy as a weapon. More nonsense! What weapon do we use? We supply as much as required according to requests” from importers, Putin told the Eastern Economic Forum in the Pacific port city of Vladivostok. 

He added that Moscow would stop delivering oil and gas supplies to countries that introduced price caps, as some Western countries are considering. 

“We will not supply anything at all if it is contrary to our interests, in this case economic (interests),” he told the forum. 

“No gas, no oil, no coal, no fuel oil, nothing.”

The invasion has also wrought havoc on grain exports from Ukraine, one of the world’s largest grain exporters, which was forced to halt almost all deliveries after the invasion, sparking a global food crisis. 

Grain exports across Black Sea ports resumed in July after Kyiv and Moscow signed a deal with the United Nations and Turkey acting as guarantors. 

But Putin on Wednesday said most of the grain had been shipped to EU countries, not developing nations. 

“With this approach, the scale of food problems in the world will only grow,” Putin said, warning that it could lead to “an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe”. 

Researchers say the Congo Basin's rainforest sequesters more greenhouse gases than it emits

A tower bristling with sensors juts above the canopy in northern Democratic Republic of Congo, measuring carbon dioxide emitted from the world’s second-largest tropical rainforest. 

Spanning several countries in central Africa, the Congo Basin rainforest covers an immense area and is home to a dizzying array of species. 

But there are growing concerns for the future of the forest, deemed critical for sequestering CO2, as loggers and farmers push ever deeper inside.

Scientists at the Yangambi Biosphere Reserve in the DRC’s Tshopo province are studying the rainforest’s role in climate change — a subject that received scant attention until recently.

Standing 55 metres tall, the CO2-measuring flux tower came online in 2020 in the lush reserve of 250,000 hectares (620,000 acres).

Yangambi was renowned for tropical agronomy research during the Belgian colonial era. 

This week, it also hosted scientists as part of meetings in the DRC dubbed pre-COP 27, ahead of the COP27 climate summit in Egypt in November.

Thomas Sibret, who runs the CongoFlux CO2 measuring project, said that flux towers are common worldwide.

But until one was set up in Yangambi, there had been none in Congo, which had “limited our understanding of this ecosystem”, he said.

Around 30 billion tonnes of carbon are stored across the Congo Basin, researchers estimated in a study in Nature in 2016. The figure is roughly equivalent to three years’ of global emissions.

Sibret said more time is required to draw definitive conclusions from the data gathered by DRC’s flux tower, but one thing is certain: The rainforest sequesters more greenhouse gases than it emits.

– ‘No more trees’ –

Paolo Cerutti, the head of the Center for International Forestry Research’s operations in Congo, said this was good news.

In Latin America, “we’re starting to see evidence that the Amazon (rainforest) is becoming more of an emitter,” he said.

“We’re betting a lot on the Congo Basin, especially the DRC, which has 160 million hectares of forest still capable of absorbing carbon.”

But Cerutti warned that slash-and-burn agriculture poses a particular threat to the future of the rainforest, pointing out that half a million hectares of forest were lost last year.

Slash-and-burn agriculture sees villagers cultivate lands until they become depleted, then clear forests to create new lands, and repeat the cycle. 

With the DRC’s population of about 100 million people set to expand, many worry the forest is in dire threat. 

Jean-Pierre Botomoito, the head of the Yanonge area about 40 kilometres (24 miles) from Yangambi, said that he once thought the forest was inexhaustible.

But “here, there are no trees,” he said.

Villagers in his once-forested region now have to travel long distances along narrow muddy paths to find tree-dwelling caterpillars — a local delicacy. 

Charcoal used for cooking in the absence of electricity and gas is similarly hard to obtain.

There are efforts to help farmers in the remote and impoverished region to make a living while sustaining the environment.

A largely EU-financed project, for example, trains farmers to rotate cassava and groundnut crops between fast-growing acacia trees. 

Farmers can harvest the acacia trees to make charcoal after six years.

Experts also encourage the use of more efficient kilns to produce more charcoal and teach loggers how to select which trees to fell.

– Vandalism –

Jean Amis, the head of a local farmers’ organisation, was enthusiastic about the project.

“We didn’t necessarily have the right practices” before, he said.

Others are too.

Helene Fatouma, the president of a women’s association, says fishponds on the edge of the forest now yield 1,450 kilos of fish in six months, as opposed to 30 previously.

But not all residents of the surrounding area support the various schemes.

Some people believe that the flux tower is stealing oxygen, for example, or that it is a prelude to land appropriation.

Researchers often find dendrometers — devices that measure tree dimensions — vandalised, and some traditional chiefs think the forest will grow back by itself without outside interference. 

The Indonesia-based Center for International Forestry Research says that resistance to the schemes can be overcome through raising awareness. 

Dieu Merci Assumani, the director of the DRC’s National Institute for Agricultural Research, agreed.

But he said there needs to be more financing for locals, who have seen little benefit from promised funds to protect the rainforest.

Assumani pointed as an example to the $500-million deal to protect the Congo Basin rainforest, signed by President Felix Tshisekedi and then British prime minister Boris Johnson in Glasgow last year.

“Commitments are all very well, but they need to be disbursed,” he said. 

Rescue efforts are continuing after a magnitude 6.6 quake hit about 43 kilometres (26 miles) southeast of the city of Kangding in Sichuan province

The death toll from a strong earthquake that struck southwest China has risen to 74, state media reported Wednesday, as thousands were evacuated into temporary shelters and heavy rains threatened to cause more landslides.

The magnitude 6.6 quake hit about 43 kilometres (26 miles) southeast of the city of Kangding in Sichuan province at a depth of 10 kilometres on Monday, according to the US Geological Survey.

The state-run People’s Daily said that 34 people died in Sichuan’s Ya’an city, while 40 deaths were reported in neighbouring Ganzi prefecture.

More than 21,000 people have been evacuated from areas prone to landslides or building collapse, state broadcaster CCTV said.

Rescuers are still scouring remote villages in the country’s mountainous southwest in a race to find survivors of the earthquake, with dozens of people believed stranded or missing.

“My head was stuck between the two columns, and my legs were sandwiched between the tables,” one woman who was trapped for nearly five hours under a collapsed hotel in the town of Moxi, one of the worst-affected areas, told state-run Red Star News.

“I could only lie in one position, resigned to my fate. I don’t know who saved me,” she added, saying she had worried for her children and whether their school building had collapsed.

“I could only think about whether the children were crying for their mother.”

Dramatic footage aired by state broadcaster CCTV showed kindergarten teachers waking up napping children and rushing them out when the quake hit.

The quake also rocked buildings in the provincial capital of Chengdu — where millions are confined to their homes under a strict Covid-19 lockdown — and in the nearby megacity of Chongqing, residents told AFP.

At least 13 aftershocks of magnitude 3.0 and above had been detected as of 7 am local time (2300 GMT) on Tuesday, the China Earthquake Networks Center said.

The provincial grid operator yesterday said power had been restored to over 22,000 households and that 12 emergency shelters in Ya’an were connected to a temporary power supply after the quake knocked out electricity across swathes of countryside. 

Beijing’s cabinet on Monday said it had dispatched a special team to lead the efforts, with CCTV reporting more than 6,500 people had been sent as part of the emergency rescue response. 

But the China Meteorological Administration warned that quake-stricken areas would experience “significant rainfall” until Thursday and that landslides could hamper rescue work.

A blistering heat wave is baking the western United States, the latest to blast the northern hemisphere in a summer that has brought extreme temperatures across Europe, Asia and North America

More frequent and intense heatwaves and wildfires driven by climate change are expected to worsen the quality of the air we breathe, harming human health and ecosystems, the UN warned Wednesday.

A new report from the UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) cautioned that the interaction between pollution and climate change would impact hundreds of millions of people over the coming century, and urged action to rein in the harm.

The WMO’s annual Air Quality and Climate Bulletin examined the impacts of large wildfires across Siberia and western North America in 2021, finding that they produced widespread increases in health hazards, with concentrations in eastern Siberia reaching “levels not observed before”.

Tiny particles with a diameter of less than 2.5 micrometres (PM2.5) are considered particularly harmful since they can penetrate deep into the lungs or cardiovascular system.

“As the globe warms, wildfires and associated air pollution are expected to increase, even under a low emissions scenario,” WMO chief Petteri Taalas said in a statement.

“In addition to human health impacts, this will also affect ecosystems as air pollutants settle from the atmosphere to Earth’s surface.”

– ‘Foretaste of the future’ –

At the global scale, there has been a reduction over the past two decades in the total burned area, as a result of decreasing numbers of fires in savannas and grasslands.

But WMO said that some regions like western North America, the Amazon and Australia were seeing far more fires.

Even beyond wildfires, a hotter climate can drive up pollution and worsen air quality.

Taalas pointed out that severe heatwaves in Europe and China this year, coupled with stable high atmospheric conditions, sunlight and low wind speeds, had been “conducive to high pollution levels,” warning that “this is a foretaste of the future.”

“We expect a further increase in the frequency, intensity and duration of heatwaves, which could lead to even worse air quality,” he said.

This phenomenon is known as the “climate penalty”, which refers to how climate change amplifies ground-level ozone production, which negatively impacts air quality. 

In the stratosphere, ozone provides important protection from cancer-causing ultraviolet rays, but closer to the ground it is very hazardous for human health.

If emission levels remain high, this climate penalty is expected to account for “a fifth of all surface ozone concentration increase,” WMO scientific officer Lorenzo Labrador told reporters.

He warned that most of that increase will happen over Asia, “and there you have about one quarter of the entire world population.”

The WMO called for action, stressing that “a worldwide carbon neutrality emissions scenario would limit the future occurrence of extreme ozone air pollution episodes.”

The report points out that air quality and climate are interconnected, since chemicals that worsen air quality are normally co-emitted with greenhouse gases.

“Changes in one inevitably cause changes in the other,” it said.

With nearly year-round sunshine and little rain in Israel's Negev desert, David Pinto has adopted a micro-irrigation system at his vineyard

In Israel’s Negev desert, winemakers are sharing their knowledge of growing vines in the blistering heat with European producers also facing fierce temperatures this summer.

Walking between rows of ripe grapes growing from the scorched land, David Pinto enthuses about how his vineyard has come of age in the past three years.

“We’re masters of the conditions, without depending on the whims of the weather,” said Pinto, whose estate near the town of Yeruham carries his name.

With nearly year-round sunshine and little rain in the barren Negev, Pinto has adopted a micro-irrigation system to conserve resources and drip water slowly onto the vines.

Such techniques may soon need to be used across the Mediterranean region, with winemakers in France forced to start picking earlier than usual due to an exceptionally dry and hot summer.

“Winemakers from Bordeaux came to visit us following the heatwave in France,” said Pinto, who advised his guests on ways to adapt to climate changes.

“Now we share the same challenges, with the extreme climate and the dryness that harms the grapes,” he added, while workers plucked grapes in the early morning light.

Israel’s greener north has long been the centre of its viniculture, but more pioneering winemakers are discovering its sun-baked south.

Pinto, whose wines sell for 89 shekels ($26), is one of more than 25 wineries now dotted across the desert landscape.

They include Ramat Negev, adjacent to the Egyptian border, and Nana, located near the vast crater-like formation of Makhtesh Ramon.

– Enduring extreme heat –

Ilan Abitbol, who advises various Israeli winemakers, is busy creating a variety of blends on a small plot of land.

“The temperature of the Negev gives a particular identity to the region’s wines: more dry, stronger in alcohol,” he said.

Pinto’s Malbec, for example, brings a weighty 14.5 percent alcohol volume to the table.

“We’re used to extreme temperatures, whereas in Europe, the climatic changes have an impact on the vines, because they’re not used to these temperatures,” said Abitbol.

For Yaakov Oriya, Pinto’s winemaker, there are unique opportunities in a desert region, where wine has been produced for centuries since Byzantine times.

“When you’re faced with a different land like this, you can create different wines,” he said, including dessert and sparkling varieties.

“We’re not the first to make wine in this region but making the desert bloom remains a wonderful objective,” said Oriya.

On the Pinto estate, where sturdy olive and argan trees also grow, the family is expecting to produce 55,000 bottles this season.

Beyond their own commercial gains, Jimmy Pinto, David’s father, said the wine industry can boost the wider economy in the sparsely-populated desert.

“Creating a winery here in Yeruham contributes to our efforts to develop the region,” he said.

Jimmy Pinto likened the years-long work in the fields to an educational network he has developed for children in remote areas.

“It’s a great challenge, but in the same way that we think that the children of this region can be better, we want to produce a wine that will be the best,” he said.

“And in these two areas, it takes time before you see the fruits of your investment.”

Flames consume an area of the Brasilia National Park in the Brazilian capital September 5, 2022

Firefighters raced Tuesday to contain a massive blaze devastating a national park in the Brazilian capital, which is suffering from a heat wave and more than four months of drought.

The fire, which hit the park Monday, has burned through around 2,000 hectares (nearly 5,000 acres) of the 42,000 hectare reserve in Brasilia, according to the national parks service, ICMBio.

Forty firefighters from ICMBio and the Brasilia fire department managed to control one of the fire’s two fronts Monday night.

The blaze is concentrated in an area around 30 kilometers (19 miles) from the presidential offices, the Planalto Palace.

“Severe conditions,” including temperatures of more than 30 degrees Celsius (86 Fahrenheit) and critically low humidity of around 30 percent, have exacerbated the already flammable situation left by the drought, ICMBio said.

The Brazilian capital has not had rain in 122 days.

Officials said they did not yet know what caused the fire.

Brasilia National Park was established in 1961, the year after the ultra-modernist capital was inaugurated in Brazil’s central-west — a region with a prolonged dry season that typically runs from May to September.

The Brasilia blaze comes as officials report an alarming surge in fires in the Brazilian Amazon.

Last month was the worst August in 12 years, with 33,116 fires detected in Brazil’s share of the world’s biggest rainforest, according to satellite monitoring by the national space agency, INPE.

President Jair Bolsonaro, who is up for reelection in October, has faced international outcry over a surge of fires and destruction in the Amazon, whose billions of carbon-absorbing trees are a key buffer against global warming.

Officially known as 30 Doradus, the region of space is characterized by its dusty filaments that resemble the legs of a hairy spider, and has long been a favorite for astronomers interested in star formation

A stellar nursery nicknamed the Tarantula Nebula has been captured in crisp detail by NASA’s Webb telescope, revealing hitherto unseen features that deepen scientific understanding, the agency said Tuesday.

Officially known as 30 Doradus, the region of space is characterized by its dusty filaments that resemble the legs of a hairy spider, and has long been a favorite for astronomers interested in star formation.

Thousands of young stars, distant background galaxies, and the detailed structure of the nebula’s gas and dust structures were viewable for the first time thanks to Webb’s high resolution infrared instruments.

Webb operates primarily in the infrared spectrum, because light from objects in the distant cosmos has been stretched into this wavelength over the course of the universe’s expansion.

The telescope’s primary imager, Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), found the cavity in the center of the nebula was hollowed out by radiation carried on stellar winds emanating from a cluster of massive young stars, which appear as pale blue dots.

Webb’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec), which analyzes light patterns to determine the composition of objects, caught one young star in the act of shedding a cloud of dust from around itself. 

The same star was previously thought to be at a later stage of formation, already well on the way to clearing its dusty bubble.

The region was also imaged using the Mid-infrared Instrument (MIRI), which uses longer wavelengths of infrared to pierce through dust grains that absorb or scatter shorter wavelengths. 

This faded the hot stars and clarified the cooler regions, revealing never-before-seen points of light within the stellar nursery, which indicate protostars that are still gaining mass.

Astronomic interest in the Tarantula Nebula stems from its similar chemical composition to gigantic star-forming regions observed a few billion years after the Big Bang, a period called the “cosmic noon” when star formation peaked.

At just 161,000 light-years away, Tarantula is a readily viewable example of this flourishing period of cosmic creation. 

Webb should also provide scientists the opportunity to gaze at distant galaxies from the actual era of cosmic noon, and compare it to observations of Tarantula, to understand similarities and differences.

Operational since July, Webb is the most powerful space telescope ever built, with astronomers confident it will herald a new era of discovery.