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This satellite image shows hurricane Milton churning over the Gulf of Mexico on October 7, 2024. Photo: NOAA / RAMMB / AFP By Daniel Trotta and David Alire Garcia, Reuters Hurricane Milton strengthened into a Category 5 storm on Monday (US time), posing an immediate threat to Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula on its way to Florida, where the state ordered mass evacuations while still recovering from the devastation of Hurricane Helene. With maximum sustained winds of 285km/h, Milton was categorised as the strongest level storm on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale. Milton was classified as a tropical storm on Sunday afternoon but in less than 24 hours it "explosively" morphed into a Category 5 storm - the third-fastest intensifying storm on record in the Atlantic Ocean, according to the US Nat...

By Niklas Pollard, Ludwig Burger, Jonathan Allen, Reuters Nobel prize for medicine winners Victor Ambros (left) and Gary Ruvkun (right). Photo: AFP/JOSEPH PREZIOSO US scientists Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun have won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Medicine for the discovery of microRNA and its crucial role in how multicellular organisms grow and live. Their work helped explain how cells specialise and develop into different types, such as muscle and nerve cells, even though all the cells in an individual contain the same set of genes and instructions for growing and staying alive. "The Nobel's, you know, there's a word we use for Major League Baseball, it's called 'The Show'. Which means it's not any show, it's THE show," Ruvkun told Reuters, describing what it was like being thrust into th...

By Brendan O'Brien, Reuters Residents board up a store in St. Petersburg ahead of Hurricane Milton's expected landfall in the middle of this week in Florida. Photo: BRYAN R. SMITH/AFP As Hurricane Milton strengthened to a Category 5 storm, Floridians scrambled to prepare for its arrival this week near Tampa, where it may bring blistering winds, life-threatening storm surge and torrential rains to the Gulf Coast for the second time in two weeks. Milton strengthened to the most powerful category of storms as it churned through the southwest Gulf of Mexico, about 1183km from Tampa. It was packing sustained winds of up to 257kph, the National Hurricane Center said. The storm was expected to turn northeast on Wednesday (NZT) and head toward the populous Tampa-St. Petersburg area, making l...

Earth sits in dried cracked mud before metropolis Photo: Bruce Rolff Three of New Zealand's Pacific neighbours have asked the International Criminal Court to consider "ecocide" an international crime. In September, Vanuatu, Fiji and Samoa made a formal submission to the world's highest court, asking it to put the worst environmental destruction by humans on a par with genocide and crimes against humanity. It follows a push in recent years to make ecocide a globally punishable offence and moves by some countries - particularly in Europe - to include it in their own statutes. So what kind of destruction would "ecocide" apply to? And what's the process the ICC has to follow? Stop Ecocide International chief executive Jojo Mehta told Nine to Noon host Kathryn Ryan the term was coined in th...