As international tensions mount and hackers grow more sophisticated and audacious, the Nordic Maritime Cyber Resilience Centre is constantly monitoring the global threat of war, terror and piracy
Ships being taken over remotely by hackers and made to crash is a scenario made in Hollywood. But in a security operations room in Oslo, just a few metres from the sparkling fjord and its tourist boats, floating saunas and plucky bathers, maritime cyber experts say not only is it technically possible, but they are poised for it to happen.
“We are pretty sure that it will happen sooner or later, so that is what we are looking for,” says Øystein Brekke-Sanderud, a senior analyst at the Nordic Maritime Cyber Resilience Centre (Norma Cyber). On the wall behind him is a live map of the ships they monitor and screens full of graphs and code. Two little rubber ducks watch over proceedings from above.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
06/18/2025 - 01:00
06/17/2025 - 19:27
Activism comes in many forms. I hope, in some small way, my writing is part of it
Time, it seems, is moving in strange ways for many of us. A colleague recently said, “mourning, reckoning and activism all seem to require different speeds,” and I’m grateful to her for that. I’ve often thought that the “gear-shift” between my paid work and the unpaid beautiful work of mothering feels like a rusty old manual car that I don’t quite understand how to drive. Lurch. Clunk. Add to that combination of work and parenting the imminent collapse of the world one was raised in, and there is a lot more grit than just clunky gears.
The thing is, the world isn’t changing: our illusions about “the west” are finally being pulled down, and with it, our perceptions of time.
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06/17/2025 - 18:01
Gas companies can be sent multimillion pound fees to generate electricity when wind and solar power is in short supply
More UK gas plants will be in line for windfall payments to help keep the lights on this winter after generators received multimillion-pound payouts last winter.
Britain’s energy system operator expects the UK’s winter power supplies to reach their highest level in five years, in part due to a rising number of gas plants willing to generate electricity during the colder months.
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06/17/2025 - 18:01
Study suggests role of male parents may be under-appreciated in some primate species
If male baboons were subject to the same kind of cultural commentary as humans, the phrase “deadbeat dads” might be called for, such is the primate’s relatively limited involvement in raising their young.
But a study suggests that even their little effort might go a long way, with female baboons who experience a stronger relationship with their fathers when young tending to live longer as adults.
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06/17/2025 - 18:00
Solar panels on defunct surface mines could put land to productive use for renewable generation, report says
Turning recently closed coalmines into solar energy plants could add almost 300GW of renewable energy by 2030, converting derelict wastelands to productive use, according to a new report.
In a first of its kind analysis, researchers from Global Energy Monitor (GEM) identified 312 surface coalmines closed since 2020 around the world, and 134 likely to close by the end of the decade, together covering 5,820 sq km (2,250 sq miles) – a land area nearly the size of Palestine.
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06/17/2025 - 12:44
Half of foreign-born workers in green jobs would not have been allowed in under new rules, thinktank says
Tough rules announced in the government’s immigration white paper could jeopardise the UK’s net zero mission by causing labour shortages, a report has warned.
Labour’s white paper released last month included plans to raise the minimum qualification for skilled worker visas from A-level equivalent to degree and to maintain the higher salary threshold of £38,700 introduced by the outgoing Conservative government last year.
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06/17/2025 - 10:50
The energy secretary was speaking at the launch of a £1bn investment scheme to bolster jobs in offshore wind
Ed Miliband has said the government will “win this fight” against critics of Britain’s net zero plan, in part by creating more offshore wind jobs in the country’s former industrial heartlands.
The energy secretary appeared to take aim at his political opponents in the Conservative and Reform UK parties as he launched a £1bn investment scheme to bolster job opportunities in the offshore wind supply chain.
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06/17/2025 - 10:06
Planning permission quashed by high court after officials failed to consider impact of spreading manure on land
Planning permission for a poultry megafarm in Shropshire has been overturned in a ruling that campaigners have welcomed as a win for cleaner rivers.
The judgment on Tuesday upheld a judicial review by Dr Alison Caffyn, who argued that Shropshire council had failed to take into account all the environmental impacts of an industrial chicken unit containing 230,000 birds at any one time when it granted planning permission.
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06/17/2025 - 08:02
The popularity of ‘healing’ through psychedelics is fueling exploitation of Indigenous peoples and threatening biodiversity in Ecuador
In the world of the Ecuadorian Amazon, humans, plants and animals are relatives, and ancient stories reflect real ecological relationships and Indigenous knowledge rooted in profound connections to the land. But one of those connections – ceremonial medicine known as hayakwaska – is now marketed as a mystical shortcut to healing and enlightenment. Behind the scenes of these “healing retreats” lies a deeper story of cultural erasure, linguistic distortion and ongoing colonisation masked as wellness.
The global popularity of “ayahuasca” has given rise to a new form of spiritual tourism that romanticises and distorts Indigenous cultures. This growing industry fuels the exoticisation of Indigenous peoples, turning our languages, practices and identities into consumable fantasies for outsiders. Sacred rituals are stripped of context, spiritual roles are commercialised, and even the names of the plants are misused, reducing complex cultural systems into simplified, marketable experiences.
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06/17/2025 - 07:51
The plant medicine hayakwaska (ayahuasca), marketed as a mystical shortcut to healing and enlightenment, is an example of what the Indigenous storyteller Nina Gualinga, sees as commodification and extractivism in the Amazon. Nina is from the Kichwa people of Sarayaku, Ecuador, and she speaks with the memory of her shaman grandfather about the ongoing cultural appropriation, environmental destruction and marginalisation of her people, questioning our very relationship to the Earth and the quest for healing
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