The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Monday it is delaying by one month the planned cutoff of satellite data that helps forecasters track hurricanes.

Meteorologists and scientists warned of severe consequences last week when NOAA said, in the midst of this year’s hurricane season, that it would almost immediately discontinue key data collected by three weather satellites that the agency jointly runs with the Defense Department.

The Defense Meteorological Satellite Program’s microwave data gives key information that can’t be gleaned from conventional satellites. That includes three-dimensional details of a storm, what’s going on inside of it and what it is doing in the overnight hours, experts say.

The data was initially planned to be cut off on June 30 “to mitigate a significant cybersecurity risk,” NOAA’s announcement said. The agency now says it’s postponing that until July 31. Peak hurricane season is usually from mid-August to mid-October.

NOAA didn’t immediately respond to a message seeking more details about the reason for the delay. The Navy confirmed the new date and said only that the “program no longer meets our information technology modernization requirements.”

NOAA — which has been the subject of hefty Department of Government Efficiency cuts this year — said Friday the satellite program accounts for a “single dataset in a robust suite of hurricane forecasting and modeling tools” in the National Weather Service’s portfolio.

The agency’s “data sources are fully capable of providing a complete suite of cutting-edge data and models that ensure the gold-standard weather forecasting the American people deserve,” a spokesperson said.

But Union of Concerned Scientists science fellow Marc Alessi told The Associated Press on Friday that detecting the rapid intensification, and more accurately predicting the likely path, of storms is critical as climate change worsens the extreme weather experienced across the globe.

“Not only are we losing the ability to make better intensification forecasts, we are also losing the ability to predict accurately where a tropical cyclone could be going, if it’s in its development stages,” Alessi said. “This data is essential.

“On the seasonal forecasting front, we would see the effects,” he added, “but also on the long-term climate change front, we now are losing an essential piece to monitoring global warming.”

Reporting by Alexa St. John, Associated Press

Banner image: A water rescue boat moves in floodwaters at an apartment complex in the aftermath of Hurricane Milton, Oct. 10, 2024, in Clearwater, Fla. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart, File)

A recent study has found that just 104 companies, mostly multinational corporations from high-income countries, are involved in a fifth of the more than 3,000 environmental conflicts it analyzed.

The study examined 3,388 conflicts, involving 5,589 companies, recorded in the Global Atlas of Environmental Justice (EJAtlas) as of October 2024. The atlas is the world’s largest database of environmental conflicts documented by researchers, activists, journalists and students, and it includes records of extractive, industrial or legislative projects, including mines and oil pipelines that organized groups contest on socioecological grounds.

The study’s author, Marcel Llavero-Pasquina, an EJAtlas coordinator, found that around 2%, or 104 of the 5,500+ companies, played a part in 20% of all analyzed conflicts. Llavero-Pasquina labels these companies, involved in at least seven conflicts each, as “superconflictive” because they’re “a significant driver of environmental injustice globally.”

According to the study, nearly 90% of the superconflictive companies are multinational corporations (MNCs), largely in high-income countries and China.

“The most significant finding is that 50% of the conflicts with companies from the Global North occur in the Global South,” Llavero-Pasquina told Mongabay by email. “Conflicts with foreign companies have more impact and worse outcomes for local populations.”

Many of the Global North MNCs operate in mining, fossil fuels and agroindustry, the study found. Moreover, most conflicts with foreign MNCs affect Indigenous groups, traditional communities and racially discriminated groups. “Conflicts with foreign MNC involvement report significantly more environmental, health and socioeconomic impacts,” Llavero-Pasquina wrote.

The analysis also found that two-thirds of the 104 superconflictive companies are part of the UN Global Compact, a nonbinding agreement for companies to employ sustainable and socially responsible policies.

Richard Pearshouse of Human Rights Watch, who wasn’t part of the study, told Mongabay by email that the findings ring true. “After working on these issues for a while, you come across the same multinationals again and again, often in remarkably similar conflicts with different communities on different continents,” he said.

Pearshouse added, “Voluntary pledges to self-regulate clearly aren’t working so we need binding laws and regulations on corporate accountability.”

Christen Dobson of the nonprofit Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, who was also not involved in the study, told Mongabay by email that by shining a light on the worst offenders, “the study reveals a significant opportunity to prevent and mitigate harm if these companies were mandated to engage in human rights and environmental due diligence.”

Both Pearshouse and Dobson said that several regulations that would ensure such due diligence in the European Union — such as the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive and possibly the EU anti-deforestation law — currently face attempts to weaken them.

“Weakening those regulations is exactly the opposite of what’s needed to address some of the issues uncovered by this study,” Pearshouse said.

Banner image of buildings in New York, U.S., by Dietmar Rabich via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Forest fires fanned by high winds and hot, dry weather damaged some holiday homes in Turkey as a lingering heat wave that has cooked much of southern Europe led authorities to raise warnings and tourists to find ways to beat the heat, A heat dome swept an arc across France, Portugal, and Spain to Turkey. Data from European forecasters suggests other countries are set to broil further in coming days — with new highs expected on Wednesday — before rain brings respite in some areas later in the week.

Reporting by Suzan Fraser and Joseph Wilson, Associated Press

Banner image: Tourists try to protect themselves from the sun as they line up to enter at the St. Mark Basilica in Venice, Italy, Friday, June 27, 2025. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)

In a world that treats foxes as either fur or folly, Mikayla Raines saw something else entirely: Sentience.

Not the cartoonish cleverness of folklore, nor the soft luxury of fashion, but the quiet, confused lives of animals bred to die or discarded as inconvenient pets. From the age of 15, when she bottle-fed her first fox, she was drawn to their wild complexity. Skittish, solitary, destructive—foxes do not make easy companions. But that was part of the point. She loved them not in spite of who they were, but because of it.

Ms. Raines founded Save a Fox Rescue in 2017, after receiving her wildlife rehabilitation license and training as a veterinary technician. Her sanctuaries in Minnesota and later Florida became unusual havens for animals trapped by human contradiction: bred in captivity but illegal to release, unsellable for fur but unfit for the wild. She saved them anyway—thousands over the years—many through painstaking work with fur farms she refused to vilify, preferring collaboration over condemnation.

This was not glamorous work. Her days were filled with paperwork, permit battles, fundraisers, and grief. She mourned every animal she couldn’t save. She was autistic, and often struggled with depression and borderline personality disorder, a combination that made the brutal unpredictability of rescue work especially difficult. But her sensitivity, her husband said, was also her gift: she could intuit distress before it was spoken, in people and in animals alike.

In the end, the burden proved too heavy. Harassment from online detractors, exhaustion from years of emotional labor, and the sheer relentlessness of care wore her down. She died by suicide on June 20th.

She is survived by her husband, Ethan, their 3-year-old daughter Freya, her mother Sandi, and the many creatures she gave a chance at life.

Header image: Mikayla Raines. Photo courtesy of Save a Fox Rescue

PORT STEPHENS, Australia (AP) — Sydney’s harbor becomes a humpback highway in winter as the whales migrate from feeding grounds in Antarctica to breeding areas off Australia’s coast. Whale watchers are spoiled for sightings during peak traffic weeks in June and July, when 40,000 creatures the size of buses will navigate the waters of New South Wales. A pod of the giant, graceful mammals even created traffic delays for humans this month when a passenger ferry had to halt its passage across the harbor because they were swimming by. The humpback population boom is a sharp reversal from the 1960s, when numbers dwindled to a few hundred.

Reporting by Charlotte Graham-McLay and Mark Baker, Associated Press 

Banner image of a humpback whale breaching in Iceland, by Giles Laurent via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Peter Seligmann, the founder of Conservation International (CI) and longtime Chair of its Board of Directors, has stepped down from the Board effective June 22, 2025, the organization announced. He will continue to support the organization in the role of Chairman Emeritus.

Seligmann co-founded Conservation International in 1987 after a decade at The Nature Conservancy, where he led its International Program. Under his leadership—first as CEO and Chair, and later as Chair alone—Conservation International has grown to be one of the world’s largest conservation organizations, with work in over 70 countries and more than 1,200 protected areas. He also helped shape the organization’s partnerships with governments, businesses, and Indigenous communities.

“As Peter transitions into this new role, we celebrate his extraordinary legacy and the enduring impact of his leadership,” said M. Sanjayan, CEO of Conservation International, in a statement. “While he is stepping back from our Board, we will always be guided by his passion, wisdom, and vision as we build on the foundation he helped create.”

“Peter Seligmann is a visionary force in conservation—a leader who understood long before many that protecting nature is not charity, it’s survival,” said Actor Harrison Ford, Vice Chair of CI’s Board. “I’m proud to have stood beside him in this fight for our planet.”

In addition to his ongoing role with CI, Seligmann serves on the boards of the Mulago Foundation and the New School’s Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility. He also co-founded Nia Tero in 2017, after stepping down as CI’s CEO, and continues to serve on its board. Nia Tero supports Indigenous guardianship of nature.

“All of humanity depends upon what happens to our Earth,” said Seligmann in the statement. ”Our work must inspire, uplift, and embrace all political parties as well as the full diversity of cultures.”

Related:

• “Securing Indigenous guardianship of vital ecosystems”: Q&A with Nia Tero CEO Peter Seligmann