Jesse Eisenberg and Chuck Schumer also star – could 2,500-year-old play teach US something about the climate crisis?
When Anthony Fauci put on a pair of sunglasses, the hall erupted in cheers and applause. “Ah, how terrible it is to know when, in the end, knowing gains you nothing,” Fauci said. “I knew this once, but must have somehow forgotten, or else I never would have come.”
At the age of 85, the scientist, doctor and public servant who rose to prominence during the Covid-19 pandemic was making his debut as an actor. Fauci played Tiresias, the blind prophet (hence the sunglasses), in a dramatic reading of Sophocles’s Oedipus the King at Georgetown University in Washington on Tuesday night.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
04/22/2026 - 10:28
04/22/2026 - 10:00
NSW and Queensland governments ‘severely underdelivered’ on promised infrastructure to improve water flows, independent review finds
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Two state governments have drastically underdelivered more than $160m in infrastructure measures to improve river health in the northern Murray-Darling basin eight years since they were promised, a major independent review has found.
This includes failure by the New South Wales government to secure any of the private land access needed to improve water flows over floodplains in the state’s Gwydir region, where scientists had to scramble to rescue turtles in dried up wetlands last week.
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04/22/2026 - 09:47
Donald Trump’s conflict with Iran could speed the EU’s green revolution – if panicking governments can hold their nerve on clean energy
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A surge in demand for electric vehicles across Europe may be evidence of what George Monbiot greeted as the silver lining of the Iran war. Sales of electric cars in continental Europe rose by 51% in March.
The International Energy Agency has called the disruption in the strait of Hormuz the “biggest energy crisis in history”, but it appears, on one level, to be accelerating Europe’s green revolution. Yet, even if car-owners are rushing to the EV showrooms, some European governments, facing a groundswell of anger over soaring petrol and gas prices, are at risk of sending the clean energy transition into reverse.
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04/22/2026 - 06:00
Unwanted vessels left to decay release fibreglass shards into the water, harming marine life. Steve Green – with his trusty van Cecil – is determined to clean things up
Steve Green, a boat engineer from Cornwall, was pulled over by the police just before Christmas. He was driving a decrepit-looking VW campervan and towing an even more dilapidated yacht up to Truro. He hadn’t broken any laws, but he admits that Cecil the campervan, which runs on donated chip oil from local pubs and has a crane and a winch on the front, “wasn’t quite what VW intended”.
Green (and Cecil) are on a mission to rid the beautiful hidden creeks of Cornwall’s Helford and Fal rivers of 166 abandoned fibreglass yachts, which are leaking plastic and toxins into the predominantly marine waters. Marine biologists have likened the thousands of shards of fibreglass they have found embedded in the flesh of sea-creatures in areas with wrecks such as these to asbestos, a substance known to have a noxious effect on humans.
Green uses a detachable crane system at the front of his van to move around bags of plastic after they have been weighed. Cecil is upholstered in recycled denim
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04/22/2026 - 05:00
American Lung Association report comes amid Trump EPA’s expansive rollback of environmental protections
Nearly half of children in the United States are breathing dangerous levels of air pollution, according to a new report, as experts warned Donald Trump’s expansive rollback of protections will make the situation worse.
The 27th annual air quality report from the American Lung Association (ALA) released on Wednesday evaluates pollution across the country by grading levels of ground-level ozone – also known as smog – as well as year-round and short-term spikes in particle pollution, commonly referred to as soot. The report analyzed quality-assured data collected between 2022 and 2024.
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04/22/2026 - 05:00
It’s crucial to understanding how gender is affecting our ability to rally behind a shared ecological vision
Feminist influencer Liz Plank opens her groundbreaking book For the Love of Men with a bold statement: “There is no greater threat to humankind than our current definitions of masculinity.” She means it at several levels, from the most intimate: how male partners are the leading cause of death for pregnant women in the US; to the most macro: how associating “eco-conscious behaviors with femininity and a repudiation of masculinity” is literally killing the planet. This Earth Day, it’s worth reflecting on why this is so and what can be done about it.
While it won’t come as news to most that, compared with women, men litter more, recycle less, and leave a bigger carbon footprint There’s something more extreme than simple thoughtlessness causing young men, in a form of anti-environmental protest known as “rolling coal”, to modify the diesel engines on their pickup trucks to deliberately belch large amounts of grey-black exhaust, and then run Priuses and bicyclists off the road.
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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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