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Saudi Arabia Celebrates World Environment Day Under the Banner 'Our Land Our Future'

Over 150 nations participated in the celebration- SPA
Over 150 nations participated in the celebration- SPA
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Saudi Arabia Celebrates World Environment Day Under the Banner 'Our Land Our Future'

Over 150 nations participated in the celebration- SPA
Over 150 nations participated in the celebration- SPA

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) celebrated World Environment Day 2024 under the theme "Our land. Our future." Over 150 nations participated in the celebration, highlighting the vital importance of land as a fundamental pillar of life on Earth.
During his speech, the Minister of Environment, Water, and Agriculture, Eng. Abdulrahman Abdulmohsen AlFadley, emphasized Saudi Arabia's significant efforts to preserve land and reduce degradation both regionally and globally. The Middle East Green Initiative aims to enhance cooperation to mitigate land degradation while fostering vegetation cover, biodiversity, food and water security, and adapting to climate change to enhance quality of life, SPA reported.

On the global stage, during Saudi Arabia's G20 Presidency in 2020, the Coral Research & Development Accelerator Platform and the G20 Land Initiative were launched. Additionally, the recent announcement of the Global Water Organization underscores efforts to enhance international water conservation and sustainability. AlFadley mentioned that national initiatives like the Saudi Green Initiative and the National Environment Strategy aim to increase vegetation cover and achieve land degradation neutrality by 2030.
AlFadley also highlighted that in December, Saudi Arabia will host the sixteenth session of the Conference of the Parties (COP16) of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). Saudi Arabia will seek to leverage this event to bring significant shifts in this international convention and bolster global action to combat land degradation and the impacts of drought, which affects over three billion people worldwide. Additionally, he announced projects for the environmental sector in Saudi Arabia, such as the Environmental Grants & Incentives Program and the National Academy of the Environment.
In her address, the Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme, Ms. Inger Andersen, stated that land degradation around the world is harming livelihoods and food security. She emphasized the importance of land restoration, combating desertification, and building resilience to drought as major strategies to address these issues and tackle the planet's most pressing crises: climate change, nature and land loss, and pollution and waste.
Andersen added that celebrating World Environment Day is an important event to intensify efforts and bring about positive change to address the challenges of water scarcity and the loss of arable land due to unsustainable human activities and climate change, which impacts human health and quality of life. She stressed that confronting these challenges requires collective responsibility and regional and international cooperation to enhance strategies to combat desertification and implement sustainable agricultural systems globally.
This year's World Environment Day was marked by over 4,000 environmental activities worldwide. World Environment Day on June 5 is one of the biggest international days for the environment. Led by UNEP and held annually since 1973, the event has grown to be the largest global platform for environmental outreach, with millions of people from across the world engaging to protect the planet.

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Spending More Time Close to Cats Improves Mood, Study Finds

Owners' positive feelings seem to be most strongly associated with how much time they spend close to their cats in everyday life. (Colorado State University)
Owners' positive feelings seem to be most strongly associated with how much time they spend close to their cats in everyday life. (Colorado State University)
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Spending More Time Close to Cats Improves Mood, Study Finds

Owners' positive feelings seem to be most strongly associated with how much time they spend close to their cats in everyday life. (Colorado State University)
Owners' positive feelings seem to be most strongly associated with how much time they spend close to their cats in everyday life. (Colorado State University)

Owners who spent more time physically close to their cats tended to report more positive moods, according to a new study by a Kyoto University-led team.

The study, published in the journal iScience, came amid a common claim that caring for a feline friend has positive effects on human health and well-being while other studies reporting possible negative effects of cat ownership.

This led a team of researchers at Kyoto University to question the idea that simply owning a cat provides intrinsic health benefits. Instead, they wondered whether any benefits or drawbacks to keeping a cat come from the quality of the relationship between the human and cat, particularly how owners interact with their cats in everyday life.

To investigate, the team conducted a one-month study of the daily lives of a group of 29 cats and their 19 owners, recruited through flyers and social media.

In each household, the researchers conducted hormonal analysis through urine samples, attached small Bluetooth Low Energy beacons to the cats' collars to measure daily physical proximity, assessed the owners' moods through questionnaires and observed the cats' behavior toward their owners and unfamiliar people.

The results revealed a hormonal connection between cats and their owners involving oxytocin and cortisol, hormones that are associated with social relationships and stress, respectively.

The team observed a positive correlation between the urinary concentrations of oxytocin in cats and their owners, with higher oxytocin levels in cats linked to lower cortisol levels and fewer negative feelings in their owners.

In fact, the cats' oxytocin levels were more closely associated with their owners' negative mood states than the owners' own oxytocin levels were.

Ultimately, the researchers observed that positive mood states in owners were not connected to how long they had had their cats, but rather to the overall physical proximity between owners and their cats. In other words, owners' positive feelings seem to be most strongly associated with how much time they spend close to their cats in everyday life.

“I think many cat owners are familiar with the sense of comfort and peace they feel when their cat climbs onto their lap seeking affection, they start to pet it, and the cat begins purring contentedly,” said the study’s corresponding author Saho Takagi.

“Our findings suggest that this feeling may be partly reflected in the hormonal connection between cats and their owners, particularly through oxytocin, a hormone involved in the formation of parent-child bonds and social relationships,” he added.

This study helps to explain why previous inquiries into the health benefits of cat ownership have produced inconsistent results by demonstrating that the quality of the relationship between human and cat matters more than simply owning a cat.

However, these findings show only associations, so any causation is still unclear. In the future, the team hopes to explore more deeply how cats and humans influence each other through their everyday interactions.

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Smaller Pumpkins Expected This Halloween After Drought in England

Pumpkins lay on a field near the Dannstadt region in Germany (EPA) 
Pumpkins lay on a field near the Dannstadt region in Germany (EPA) 
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Smaller Pumpkins Expected This Halloween After Drought in England

Pumpkins lay on a field near the Dannstadt region in Germany (EPA) 
Pumpkins lay on a field near the Dannstadt region in Germany (EPA) 

In the lead-up to Halloween, front porches across the country feature fat, proudly carved pumpkins, lit from within by tea lights.

But this year there is likely to be a shortage due to drought, experts have warned, with the squashes much smaller than usual, according to The Guardian.

Mini pumpkins will have to be used, and some have suggested that those celebrating the spooky festival draw faces on vegetables instead of carving them.

England has faced a punishing drought for most of this year, which has dramatically affected harvests.

Data has found that this year could be the worst harvest on record as farmers struggled to irrigate their crops.

Pumpkins are 90% water, and need a lot of it to grow. The vegetables are native to the Americas and were brought over in the Tudor period, during the 16th century.

Guy Singh-Watson, the founder of organic veg box company Riverford, said: “After such an extraordinarily hot, dry summer, it’s not surprising that Halloween pumpkins are smaller than usual as they are mostly water. But perhaps it’s time we questioned our obsession with giant carving pumpkins in the first place.”

Shunning pumpkins would go some way to bringing the carving of vegetables tradition back to its roots.

The custom began in 17th-century Britain while marking the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, which was when spirits were thought to roam the Earth.

Rather than pumpkins, root vegetables such as celeriac, turnips and mangelwurzels were carved into grotesque faces, and some believed they could ward off evil spirits.

Guy Barter, the chief horticulturalist at the Royal Horticultural Society, said: “Pumpkins are on the small side this year unless heavily watered. Such drought makes watering sufficiently very difficult to accomplish in practice.”

He said pumpkins are relatively drought-tolerant but this year the weather stretched their tolerance to the limit.

“The heat later and some drought stress caused fruits to ripen earlier than usual,” Barter noted. “Their dry matter content and rind hardness are both excellent so the crop should store well, although commercial pumpkins become worthless the day after Halloween. That’s a pity as they make lovely soups until the new year when the much tastier winter squashes take over.”

Varieties

Dozens of Orangutans Saved from Indonesia Blazes

A 20-year-old orangutan tries to escape as members of the BKSDA (Natural Resources Conservation Agency), the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation (BOSF) and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Indonesia evacuate it due to forest and land fire, in Hampangen Village, Katingan Regency, Central Kalimantan, on October 17, 2026. (Photo by REINA / AFP)
A 20-year-old orangutan tries to escape as members of the BKSDA (Natural Resources Conservation Agency), the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation (BOSF) and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Indonesia evacuate it due to forest and land fire, in Hampangen Village, Katingan Regency, Central Kalimantan, on October 17, 2026. (Photo by REINA / AFP)
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Dozens of Orangutans Saved from Indonesia Blazes

A 20-year-old orangutan tries to escape as members of the BKSDA (Natural Resources Conservation Agency), the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation (BOSF) and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Indonesia evacuate it due to forest and land fire, in Hampangen Village, Katingan Regency, Central Kalimantan, on October 17, 2026. (Photo by REINA / AFP)
A 20-year-old orangutan tries to escape as members of the BKSDA (Natural Resources Conservation Agency), the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation (BOSF) and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Indonesia evacuate it due to forest and land fire, in Hampangen Village, Katingan Regency, Central Kalimantan, on October 17, 2026. (Photo by REINA / AFP)

Dozens of critically endangered orangutans have been rescued in recent weeks from rampant wildfires burning across Indonesia, conservation groups said.

The fires have triggered a months-long pollution spell that has closed schools, fueled a surge in respiratory conditions both among humans and animals, and restricted outdoor activities in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and East Timor.

Pollution levels again ranged from unhealthy to very unhealthy across the region on Sunday, cloaking many areas across southern Southeast Asia in toxic haze.

Swiss-based air quality monitor IQAir again ranked Singapore and Kuala Lumpur among the world's top five most polluted major cities as fires on Borneo and Sumatra islands, intensified by a turbo-charged El Nino weather phenomenon, keep emitting smoke.

In Indonesia, groups are working to save wildlife from the fires, including orangutans.

On Saturday, the West Kalimantan conservation agency and Indonesian non-profit YIARI said a team evacuated 51 orangutans from locations in the province from August 6 to October 19.

And figures from Indonesia's forestry ministry suggested this week that the number rescued over recent months in Kalimantan could be as high as 96.

Officials could not be immediately reached to clarify the number, according to AFP.

Members of the BKSDA (Natural Resources Conservation Agency), the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation (BOSF) and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Indonesia evacuate a 20-year-old orangutan due to forest and land fire, in Hampangen Village, Katingan Regency, Central Kalimantan, on October 17, 2026. (Photo by REINA / AFP)

The latest rescue came on Saturday, when three conservation agencies rescued a 20-year-old male orangutan in Hampangen village in Central Kalimantan, on Borneo island.

"The evacuation process was carried out with great caution," the agencies said.

"After the orangutan was sedated, the medical team immediately conducted a health examination before taking the animal to the... rehabilitation center," it said.

Indonesia's transport ministry also said around 2,400 flights across the country have been affected by the haze since mid-August.

"Haze reduces visibility around airports, which can lead to delays, disruptions, and even flight cancellations. Every operational decision is made with safety as the top priority," the ministry said.