Exclusive: Public comments show that a crackdown on signs ‘disparaging’ Americans is not popular
As part of his administration’s war on “woke”, Donald Trump has asked the American public to report anything “negative” about Americans in US national parks. But the public has largely refused to support a world view without inconvenient historical facts, comments submitted from national parks and seen by the Guardian show.
Notices have been erected at every National Park Service (NPS) site, which spans 433 national parks, monuments and battlefields, following an order from May entitled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History”, issued by Trump’s department of the interior. The president had demanded a crackdown on any material that “inappropriately disparages Americans”.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
08/18/2025 - 07:00
08/18/2025 - 06:27
Extreme temperatures exacerbated by carbon pollution fuel fires in southern Europe as green policies are rolled back
Europe live – latest updates
Europe scorched by wildfires – pictures from space
Relentless heat and raging wildfires continue to ravage southern Europe, with one-quarter of weather stations in Spain recording 40C temperatures, as the prime minister urged people to “leave the climate emergency outside of partisan struggles”.
The Spanish weather agency Aemet recorded a high of 45.8C in Cádiz on Sunday, while one in eight weather stations nationwide hit peaks of at least 42C (108F) . The agency warned of “very high or extreme fire danger” in most of the country in a post on social media on Monday.
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08/18/2025 - 05:00
We can save water and help the environment just by clearing out our inboxes – so what am I doing with all these old takeaway receipts?
Our worst water-wasting habit might not even feel slightly damp: we’re now being told to save water by clearing out our inboxes. “Deleting emails, unbelievably, makes a difference to the amount of water the country uses,” Helen Wakeham, the Environment Agency director of water, told the World at One last week. Hoarding decades’ worth of “Your Amazon order is out for delivery” notifications in datacentres consumes not just energy but water for cooling, and tech companies are building those datacentres in some of the most water-scarce places in the world.
Wakeham called an email cull “something really tangible people might not think of that can make a difference”, and I do want to make a difference. I don’t use water-gobbling ChatGPT, I comply with the hosepipe ban (albeit swearing at Yorkshire Water as I slop washing-up water into my shoes transporting it to my dying plants) and my showers are so short they’re basically pointless. So I checked my inbox: 39,674 emails dating back to 2009. Ugh.
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08/18/2025 - 04:00
The country’s coastal communities have long lived with flooding but as climate change accelerates rising sea levels and reclamation projects reshape Manila Bay, residents now see their homes under water more often• Photographs by Ezra Acayan for Getty Images
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08/18/2025 - 00:00
There’s been fury in Spain over the tragic death of a street cleaner. It’s not hard to imagine something similar playing out in the UK
Montse Aguilar was only 51 when she died. She lived in the El Poble-sec area of Barcelona – it translates from Catalan as “the dry village” – where she cared for her 85-year-old mother and sang in a local choir. For three years, she had worked as a city street cleaner for an outsourcing company, wearing a lime-green uniform – made, her family later said, from “100% polyester … a material used to make coats”.
On 28 June, her shift in the city’s Gothic Quarter began at 2.30pm and ended seven hours later. The temperature that day had reached more than 35C, which left workers like her exposed: Spain has a clearer system of regulations covering heat and work than a lot of other countries, but it is still full of gaps.
John Harris is a Guardian columnist
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08/13/2025 - 23:00
npj Ocean Sustainability, Published online: 14 August 2025; doi:10.1038/s44183-025-00144-3
COVID-19 anthropause affects coral reef ecosystems through biophysical changes
08/12/2025 - 23:00
npj Ocean Sustainability, Published online: 13 August 2025; doi:10.1038/s44183-025-00137-2
Controlled electrochemical nutrient delivery to enhance marine primary productivity
World Ocean Explorer Wins Gold Medal Serious Simulation Award from Serious Play Annual International Competition
10/26/2023 - 14:35
For Immediate Release October 19, 2023
Sedgwick, Maine USA World Ocean Explorer, a 3D virtual aquarium and educational simulation, was recently cited for excellence, winning a Gold Medal Award in the 2023 International Serious Play Awards Program.
World Ocean Explorer is an innovative 3D virtual aquarium designed for educational exploration of the world’s oceans. With interactive exhibits and a lobby space, visitors can immerse themselves in realistic marine environments, including a DEEP SEA exhibit funded by Schmidt Ocean Institute, showcasing unprecedented deep-sea discoveries off Australia. Targeted at 3rd graders and beyond, this immersive experience offers a range of perspectives on the ocean environment and can be explored through guided tours or user-controlled interfaces. Visit DEEP SEA at worldoceanexplorer.org/deep-sea-aquarium.html.
Serious Play Conference brings together professionals who are exploring the use of game-based learning, sharing their experience, and working together to shape the future of training and education. For more information on Serious Play Award Program visit seriousplayconf.com/international-serious-play-award-programs.
World Ocean Explorer is a transformative virtual aquarium designed to deepen understanding of the world ocean and amplify connection for young people worldwide. Organized around the principles of Ocean Literacy and the Next Gen Science Standards, World Ocean Explorer brings the wonder and knowledge of ocean species and systems to students in formal and informal classrooms, absolutely free to anyone with a good Internet connection. As an advocate for the ocean through communications, World Ocean Observatory believes there is no better investment in the future of the sustainable ocean than through a new approach to educational engagement that excites, informs, and motivates students to explore the wonders of our marine world and to understand the pervasive connection and implication for our future, inherent in the protection and conservation of all aspects of our ocean world.
World Ocean Explorer presents an astonishing 3-dimensional simulated aquarium visit, organized to reveal the wonders of undersea life, with layers of detailed data and information to augment the emotional connection made to the astonishing beauty and complexity of the dynamic ocean. Within each of the virtual exhibits, students visit exemplary theme-based sites with myriad opportunities to understand the larger perspectives of scientific knowledge as organized and visualized to dramatize the impact and change on ocean life as a result of natural and human-generated events. Through immersion among displays, mixed media and 3D models, the experience of an aquarium visit will be brought into classrooms or home school environments as a free, accessible, always available opportunity for teaching and learning. All of this will be available to a world audience without physical limitation or cost. World Ocean Explorer, a project of the World Ocean Observatory, receives support from the Seth Sprague Educational and Charitable Foundation, Visual Solutions Lab, the Climate Change Institute, the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation, and The Fram Museum Oslo. To learn more about the current and future exhibits of World Ocean Explorer, visit worldoceanexplorer.org.
media contact
Trisha Badger, Managing Director, World Ocean Observatory | [email protected] +12077011069
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