A nearly 12-foot-long alligator took the life of a 71-year-old senior as he innocently fished along the shore of a lake in Florida near Orlando Friday afternoon.
The post Monstrous Alligator Fatally Attacks Senior Fishing Along Lake Shoreline in Central Florida appeared first on Breitbart.
Agency changes wording on website as Texas-based firm continues manufacture of plastic container barriers
The Environmental Protection Agency has quietly backtracked on a claim that the US has phased out two of the most dangerous Pfas compounds – Pfoa and Pfos.
The EPA has found that virtually no level of exposure to either in drinking water is safe, and the International Agency for Research on Cancer classifies Pfoa as “carcinogenic to humans” and Pfos as “possibly carcinogenic”. Still, the EPA is allowing Houston-based Inhance to produce containers from which Pfoa has been found to leach at high levels into the containers’ contents. The company makes up to 200m barriers annually for plastic containers used across the US economy.
This article was amended on 18 October 2026 to correct Patricia van Ee’s title, and the story previously stated that Inhance manufactures plastic containers. They make the containers’ barriers.
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© Photograph: Rohane Hamilton/Alamy
© Photograph: Rohane Hamilton/Alamy
© Photograph: Rohane Hamilton/Alamy
America's interminable war with Iran has killed thousands, disrupted commerce that flows through the Strait of Hormuz, and raised prices on the home front.
But there may be one silver lining. In an attempt to lower gas prices that spiked because of the war, the Trump administration has repeatedly issued waivers of the Jones Act, a century-old law that requires all goods moved between American ports to be carried on American-built, American-crewed ships.
With the law (temporarily) not being enforced, commerce has exploded.
Just look at how much propane has been shipped from the mainland United States to Puerto Rico, says Colin Grabow, a trade policy analyst at the Cato Institute and perhaps the nation's foremost advocate for abolishing the Jones Act.
Since March, when the first waiver was issued, Puerto Rico has imported more than 800,000 barrels of propane from the mainland. That's more than twice the amount of American propane shipped to Puerto Rico in the last 22 years combined.
America is one of the world's leading producers and exporters of propane, but the lack of Jones Act–compliant ships capable of carrying gas means that it has been nearly impossible to ship propane from the mainland to outlying parts of the country. In the past, Puerto Rico has imported gas from Nigeria, Chile, and elsewhere because those deliveries don't have to comply with the Jones Act.
For years, libertarians have argued that the Jones Act unfairly impoverishes American consumers and businesses that want to buy and sell things within the same country in order to artificially inflate the price of moving those things across water. Waiving the law seems to have proven that point: There are plenty of ships capable of moving gas and oil around the country as long as the government gets out of the way.
"The instant the Jones Act no longer applied to energy shipments, mainland propane displaced foreign imports, suggesting it had been the cheapest option all along," says Grabow.
Puerto Rico is hardly the only winner.
The Jones Act waivers are offering a glimpse into a world where the law doesn't exist. From March through mid-August, there had been 210 voyages completed that otherwise would have been deemed unlawful without the waivers, according to an analysis of Maritime Administration data by the Institute for Energy Research.
It's a world where American oil and natural gas can be more easily shipped from the Gulf Coast to New England, which had previously been importing energy from Russia and Europe. Another big winner is California, which had been importing gasoline from as far away as the Bahamas because it was nearly impossible to legally ship gas from Texas or Alaska to the West Coast.
President Donald Trump reupped the Jones Act waiver in mid-May. Another extension, issued in August, will last for 90 days but applies only to ships carrying energy products such as gas and oil. Before that waiver expires in November, lawmakers ought to kill the Jones Act permanently.
There is some irony in the fact that one of Trump's most successful policy maneuvers has paused a protectionist law that limited commerce, when so much else of his economic policy has been focused on erecting barriers to trade. It's also amusing that it was a war in the Middle East—something Trump pledged to avoid—that triggered this change.
Still, the proof is in the shipping. The free traders were right all along.
The post Trump's War With Iran Pushed Him To Waive a Century-Old Shipping Law. Commerce Boomed. appeared first on Reason Magazine.
Move comes after Trump administration announced restrictions that could slash water supplies
Arizona has joined Nevada in its legal battle against the Trump administration’s proposed cuts to their shares of the shrinking Colorado River.
The move comes after the interior department announced restrictions this summer that could slash the water supplied to lower basin states – Arizona, California and Nevada – over the next two years depending on the river’s condition.
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© Photograph: George Frey/Getty Images
© Photograph: George Frey/Getty Images
© Photograph: George Frey/Getty Images
Exclusive: Research confirms official advice about high-risk properties and warns worsening conditions will make more homes unsafe
Almost every home destroyed in New South Wales during the black summer bushfires of 2019-20 was inside the 100 metre buffer zone used to identify properties most at risk, new research has found.
The findings are an endorsement of the risk maps used by authorities, but the research warns that as global heating generates ever-worsening fire conditions, firefighters may have to extend the recommended distances between homes and vegetation to keep properties safe.
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© Photograph: Christine Tondorf/The Guardian
© Photograph: Christine Tondorf/The Guardian
© Photograph: Christine Tondorf/The Guardian
As Mark Cocker approaches a landmark for the world’s oldest column in an English-language newspaper, he is still inspired by powerful encounters with nature
In the autumn of 1987, Mark Cocker sat in a field near Norwich and watched a jay burying acorns for the long winter ahead. He described the scene in his first country diary for the Guardian. Thirty-nine years on, some of those jay-planted acorns will be mature oaks now, and Cocker is completing his 1,000th diary for the world’s oldest column in an English-language newspaper.
In his next diary, he will reflect on the changing birdlife around Flint Clough, in the Peak District, where he first marvelled at rare birds aged 12 after devouring bird books in his bedroom. As a boy, he would find cuckoo, golden plover, ring ouzel and twite, a once-common bird which is now virtually extinct in England.
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© Photograph: Fabio de Paola/The Guardian
© Photograph: Fabio de Paola/The Guardian
© Photograph: Fabio de Paola/The Guardian
European Union leaders have resisted demands for another postponement of carbon pricing for road transport and building fuels, exposing deep disagreements over climate policy, industrial competitiveness and the burden of energy costs on European households.
At the European Council summit in Brussels on 15–16 October, the Visegrad countries — Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic — pressed for the second European Emissions Trading System, known as ETS2, to be delayed until 2030. Italy and Greece joined calls for greater flexibility over carbon costs, although Rome also sought a national exemption from aspects of the energy-price regime rather than simply a uniform delay. No further postponement was agreed.
The European Council conclusions call on the European Commission to update its assessment of ETS2, particularly its design and safeguards. Leaders also demanded action to reduce volatility in the existing carbon market and limit the effect of carbon prices on electricity costs.
The outcome stops short of the further postponement sought by several governments, but demonstrates how far energy affordability has moved towards the centre of European climate negotiations.
ETS2 is designed to extend the principle of carbon pricing to fuels used for heating buildings, road transport and certain smaller industrial activities. Unlike the existing Emissions Trading System, which covers large industrial installations and power generation, the new mechanism reaches sectors closely connected to everyday household expenditure.
Under the scheme, fuel suppliers must purchase allowances corresponding to the emissions associated with the fuels they sell. Households and motorists will not buy allowances themselves, but suppliers may pass those additional costs through to customers.
That distinction is fundamental. A policy designed to encourage investment in cleaner heating systems and vehicles may initially appear to consumers as an increase in petrol, diesel and domestic heating bills.
The current legislative timetable provides for ETS2 to become operational in 2028, following an earlier one-year postponement. The latest demands from several Central European governments would push that date back to 2030.
Their argument is that consumers and smaller businesses cannot reasonably be expected to absorb another source of energy-price pressure while European economies continue to contend with geopolitical uncertainty, expensive fuel and comparatively weak industrial competitiveness.
Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš has been particularly outspoken in his criticism, arguing that carbon pricing risks weakening Europe’s industrial base and making everyday life more expensive.
Italy has supported calls for greater flexibility, with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni presenting the discussion as part of a wider attempt to restore competitiveness and make the transition more affordable.
The initiative encountered resistance from governments concerned that repeatedly postponing established climate legislation would weaken investment certainty and reduce confidence in European policy.
The Nordic member states have been particularly reluctant to reopen the timetable. Their position reflects a broader concern that businesses investing in clean technologies need credible long-term rules, rather than legislation liable to be revised whenever political opposition intensifies.
Carbon pricing is intended to change economic incentives gradually. Higher costs for carbon-intensive fuels are supposed to make alternatives such as better-insulated buildings, electric vehicles and cleaner heating more financially attractive.
Critics of further postponement argue that delaying implementation would also delay those incentives, potentially increasing the eventual cost of reaching the Union’s emissions-reduction targets.
Yet the opposition has exposed a weakness in that argument: consumers cannot always respond quickly to price signals. A household relying on an older heating system or a worker with no practical alternative to driving may face higher costs long before affordable low-carbon options become available.
That issue has been central to earlier discussions over ETS2. EU Today reported on stronger carbon-price safeguards in June, when European institutions moved to provide additional market intervention if allowance prices rose sharply.
Rather than endorsing a new delay, European leaders have asked the Commission to review ETS2’s economic impact and safeguards.
The summit also urged faster progress on adjustments to the Market Stability Reserve, the mechanism intended to help manage the supply of carbon allowances and prevent excessive price volatility.
Under the existing scheme, market interventions can increase or reduce allowance availability in response to defined conditions. For ETS2, safeguards are especially politically sensitive because the cost of carbon allowances may ultimately be reflected in household transport and heating expenditure.
The European Commission’s updated auction arrangements already envisage auctions of ETS2 allowances beginning in 2027, ahead of the system’s operational launch in 2028.
That timetable gives governments a relatively narrow window to settle the remaining political disputes and put protective measures into effect.
A central part of the response is the Social Climate Fund, intended to support vulnerable households, transport users and small businesses through investments in energy efficiency, cleaner heating, improved transport and temporary financial assistance.
EU Today previously examined the European Investment Bank’s €3 billion advance financing initiative, which aims to accelerate support for households before the new carbon market becomes fully operational.
The central practical question is whether such assistance reaches consumers quickly enough to offset rising costs, particularly in member states where incomes are lower and households remain heavily dependent on fossil fuels.
The ETS2 dispute is connected to a broader argument over Europe’s existing carbon market and its effects on energy-intensive industries.
Manufacturers already face substantial costs arising from electricity, fuel, regulatory requirements and international competition. Governments concerned about deindustrialisation argue that European climate policy must account more directly for these pressures.
The summit conclusions acknowledged those concerns by demanding a predictable carbon market that limits price volatility and protects industry against the relocation of production to jurisdictions with less demanding environmental rules.
At the same time, leaders reaffirmed the importance of maintaining carbon pricing as an incentive for investment and emissions reduction.
For the governments seeking a postponement, the Commission’s new assessment offers an opportunity to maintain pressure for further concessions. For governments defending the existing timetable, it provides an alternative to another politically damaging delay.
The immediate result is therefore a compromise over scrutiny rather than a change in law. ETS2 remains scheduled for 2028, while Brussels must demonstrate that its safeguards can withstand both market volatility and political opposition.
The next phase will be determined less by arguments about long-term emissions targets than by the ability of EU institutions and national governments to show households and businesses how the transition can be financed without placing disproportionate costs on those least able to adjust.
Forest clearance at smallest total since records began in 1988 in success for Lula ahead of presidential run-off
Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has fallen to its lowest level since records began, new government data shows.
But whether this globally important success is maintained or reversed is on a knife edge ahead of a presidential election run-off on 25 October between two candidates with sharply different visions for the future of the rainforest and how that affects relations with the US under Donald Trump.
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© Photograph: Edmar Barros/AP
© Photograph: Edmar Barros/AP
© Photograph: Edmar Barros/AP
Landslide blocks river and triggers downstream flooding, while summer temperatures persist in Portugal
Flash floods have swept through Nepal’s central Gorkha district after a pre-dawn landslide on 11 October blocked the Budhi Gandaki River, triggering severe downstream flooding. Two villages in the worst-affected Chumanubri rural municipality were reportedly destroyed, with homes, roads and bridges washed away. Part of a hydropower station was also damaged.
After river levels surged from 2 metres to nearly 8.5 metres within hours, the national disaster risk reduction and management authority reported that 204 homes were damaged, and more than 650 people had been affected. More than 100 foreign trekkers were stranded in the popular hiking region. The floods come just two months after catastrophic flooding and landslides devastated parts of the country on the border with Tibet, leaving thousands dead or missing.
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© Photograph: Nepal Army/EPA
© Photograph: Nepal Army/EPA
© Photograph: Nepal Army/EPA
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