Environment

Around fifty thousand people are being evacuated as wildfires rage through parts of Israel’s third largest city, Haifa. The fires had been burning in several locations for the past three days but intensified on Thursday, fueled by unseasonably dry weather and strong winds. The wildfires tore across central and northern Israel on Thursday, with Israeli leaders blaming arsonists for some of the blazes and branding them terrorists. The BBC reports: Wildfires are also threatening homes near Jerusalem and in the West Bank.

Genetically modified mosquitoes could soon be unleashed in Florida. On November 19th, the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District to formally approved a field trial release of genetically-modified mosquitoes. Developed by UK biotechnology firm Oxitec, the engineered mosquitoes are intended to be used in the fight against dengue fever as well as the Zika virus as they carry a gene that makes their offspring die early.

Donald Trump plans to ban all climate change research conducted by Nasa as part of a no-nonsense approach to “politicized science”, his senior adviser has said. Former Rep. Bob Walker is planning to to end NASA’s research into climate change and shift their focus to “deep space” investigation. The Guardian reports: Bob Walker, a senior Trump campaign adviser, said there was no need for Nasa to do what he has previously described as “politically correct environmental monitoring”. “We see Nasa in an exploration role, in deep space research,” Walker told the Guardian.

Two days after a strong, shallow 6.9 magnitude struck Japan off the coast of Fukushima, moments ago JMA reported that another earthquake has hit Japan, once again off Fukushima, at a depth of 10 kilometers, which according to NHK reports was modestly weaker, with a preliminary measurement of 5.6 on the Richter scale according to USGS.

• EARTHQUAKE REPORTED IN JAPAN, OFF FUKUSHIMA, JMA SAYS
• JAPAN EARTHQUAKE MAGNITUDE 6.1, NHK SAYS
• 5.6 MAG. EARTHQUAKE 37KM SE OF NAMIE JAPAN :USGS

NHK reports that there is no tsunami risk.

Scientists and conspiracy theorists alike were left mystified after NASA cameras picked up a mysterious blue spherical object zooming past the Sun on November 17th Taken from NASA’s STEREO (Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory) satellites which orbits the Sun, the images show the large sphere in clear view, before going missing from other frames. In response to much online speculation about the blue sphere, NASA said while there is a coronal hole on the surface of the sun at the moment, it was not captured in the images.