That it was Saudi Arabia’s King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud and not his son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who called President Trump speaks to how seriously the kingdom is treating Friday’s shooting at a US military base that involved a Saudi national. Compared to Saudi Arabia’s often glacial standards, the 83-year-old monarch moved with…

Most Christmas sweaters are made of plastic and are likely to contribute to plastic pollution in the world’s oceans, an environmental charity has warned. Hubbub, a UK charity, found that 95% of the 108 sweaters it analyzed — taken from 11 high-street and online retailers — were fully or partially made from plastic materials. Acrylic…

Dozens of polar bears have “invaded” a village in Russia’s far north in search for food, prompting “bear patrols” around the village and halting public activities, officials said. Environmentalists say climate change might be to blame. The number of polar bears that have descended on Ryrkaypiy, in Russia’s Chukotka region, has grown over the last…

At the center of the US impeachment imbroglio is a clash between two giants, each carving their name in history. On one end of Pennsylvania Avenue is the highest-ranking woman in the history of American politics: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, standing as the guardian of the US Constitution. At the other is the world’s most…

More than half a million hermit crabs have been killed after becoming trapped by plastic pollution on two remote islands, a new study from the University of Tasmania found. Research teams estimated that about 508,000 of the crustaceans have been killed in the Cocos (Keeling) Islands in the Indian Ocean and about 61,000 on Henderson…

MIT scientists are putting wind beneath policy makers’ wings, suggesting ways to modify airplane emissions, which worsen air quality and contribute to thousands of deaths annually. As this week’s COP25 climate change conference gains momentum, their findings could provide lift to the effort to avoid the disastrous global impacts of heat-trapping gases forecast by the…

Stars live violent lives, and the planets around them don’t always survive their brutal phases. But for the first time, astronomers have found evidence of a planet that survived a star’s transition to death. In what researchers called “one of those chance discoveries,” they found an ice giant exoplanet — a planet outside of our…

What may have been the world’s tallest waterfall briefly formed on Greenland’s ice sheet last year, draining a meltwater lake of 5 million cubic meters of water — equivalent to 2,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools — in just five hours. Scientists from the University of Cambridge in the UK recorded the extraordinary phenomenon through the use…

Donald Trump is doing what he does best: Transforming a serious trip into a rolling pageant of can’t believe-your-eyes, made-for-TV moments. The reality show host-turned US President ran through his full repertoire of flattery, threats and weapons-grade disinformation at a meeting of NATO leaders in London on Tuesday. In televised scenes lasting 52, 39 and…

A New Zealand newspaper has apologized for publishing a cartoon that mocked the measles outbreak in Samoa that has killed more than 50 people. The Otago Daily Times, based in the city of Dunedin, ran a cartoon that depicted two women exiting a travel agency. One of them says, “I asked, ‘What are the least…