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Coastal Erosion Forces Cancellation of California Music Festival

MALIBU, CALIFORNIA - SEPTEMBER 10: People gather near erosion damage along a beach access road to Point Dume, which remains closed due to the erosion from powerful surf and high tides earlier this summer, on September 10, 2026 in Malibu, California. Mario Tama/Getty Images/AFP
MALIBU, CALIFORNIA - SEPTEMBER 10: People gather near erosion damage along a beach access road to Point Dume, which remains closed due to the erosion from powerful surf and high tides earlier this summer, on September 10, 2026 in Malibu, California. Mario Tama/Getty Images/AFP
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Coastal Erosion Forces Cancellation of California Music Festival

MALIBU, CALIFORNIA - SEPTEMBER 10: People gather near erosion damage along a beach access road to Point Dume, which remains closed due to the erosion from powerful surf and high tides earlier this summer, on September 10, 2026 in Malibu, California. Mario Tama/Getty Images/AFP
MALIBU, CALIFORNIA - SEPTEMBER 10: People gather near erosion damage along a beach access road to Point Dume, which remains closed due to the erosion from powerful surf and high tides earlier this summer, on September 10, 2026 in Malibu, California. Mario Tama/Getty Images/AFP

A music festival set to feature The Killers, Olivia Dean and Jack White was cancelled Friday because the California beach where it was to be held has been eaten away by coastal erosion.

The two-day Ocean Way Festival had been planned for later this month in Santa Monica, but waves up to 15 feet (4.5 meters) and storm runoff has left the beach in the city near Los Angeles badly degraded, forcing local officials to pull the plug.

"Storm surf generated by Hurricane Marie and runoff from a storm drain outfall eroded a large portion of the festival site," AFP quoted a statement from the city of Santa Monica as saying.

The storm, which churned the waters of the Pacific over the last week, stripped sand off the beach, making it no longer safe to hold the festival there, the city said.

"The surf took the beach we planned this on, and we cannot put tens of thousands of festival-goers on that sand until it's safe," said Mayor Caroline Torosis.

The coastal city of Santa Monica -- the official end point of Route 66 -- has a wide stretch of golden sand and a large wooden pier that features frequently in American television shows and movies.

News of the festival cancellation came days after the pounding surf opened a huge sinkhole on the driveway of a beachfront home belonging to Oscar-winning US actor Nicolas Cage.

Officials in Malibu, which sits just north of Santa Monica, have ordered the evacuation of 31 homes because of the danger posed by the hole.

Further south, at least seven homes in Dana Point were declared uninhabitable after the coast on which they sit rapidly eroded, with one house collapsing into the sea.

A similar problem has occurred in nearby Laguna Beach.

The waters of the Pacific Ocean have been unsettled in recent weeks by a series of tropical storms, with some of them developing into hurricanes.

Scientists say a near-record strength El Nino climate episode is warming the ocean's waters and creating extra volatility.

While the phenomenon is part of a natural cycle, human-caused climate change is thought to be super-charging the heating and exacerbating its effects.

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Varieties

An Affinity for Warm Climes has Helped Crocs Thrive for Eons

A critically endangered Philippine crocodile, considered the rarest in the world, looks out from its newly opened enclosure at the zoo in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, Monday, Oct. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner)
A critically endangered Philippine crocodile, considered the rarest in the world, looks out from its newly opened enclosure at the zoo in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, Monday, Oct. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner)
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An Affinity for Warm Climes has Helped Crocs Thrive for Eons

A critically endangered Philippine crocodile, considered the rarest in the world, looks out from its newly opened enclosure at the zoo in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, Monday, Oct. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner)
A critically endangered Philippine crocodile, considered the rarest in the world, looks out from its newly opened enclosure at the zoo in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, Monday, Oct. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner)

Crocodilians — today's crocodiles, alligators, caimans and gharials and their many extinct relatives — have been a roaring success since debuting more than 240 million years ago. And new research identifies one important factor in their success — stubbornly keeping to warm climates throughout their history.

In fact, the researchers said, this trait may help explain why crocs as a group survived the asteroid strike 66 million years ago that doomed the dinosaurs, along with certain physiological characteristics that make them one tough bunch of reptiles.

The crocodilian evolutionary lineage, called Pseudosuchia, arose during the Triassic Period in the aftermath of Earth's worst mass extinction event at the end of the Permian, appearing on the scene millions of years before the first dinosaurs and mammals.

The researchers tracked the geographic range for crocs during their entire history, guided by an evolutionary tree of more than 400 extinct and living species. They used data from more than 7,000 fossils and geographic records of modern crocs such as the alligators of Florida, saltwater crocodiles of Australia, gharials of India, caimans of Brazil and more.

They combined this information with 52 ⁠global palaeoclimate reconstructions to ⁠determine the climatic conditions under which crocs lived over time. While other groups such as dinosaurs and mammals conquered a variety of climates, the study showed that crocs consistently kept to warm climes.

"Rather than continually adapting to new climatic conditions, they largely tracked suitable environments as these shifted geographically, expanding towards the poles during warmer periods and retreating towards the equator during cooler ones," said University College London vertebrate paleontologist Alfio Alessandro Chiarenza, lead author of the research published in the journal Science Advances.

For example, during an exceptionally warm moment in Earth's history around 50 million years ago, Chiarenza said, crocs inhabited high-latitude regions of North America, Europe and even Antarctica.

"One of the most striking patterns is the repeated ⁠expansion and contraction of suitable habitat in response to global temperature changes," Reuters quoted Chiarenza as saying.

While living crocs are primarily semiaquatic ambush predators, their extinct relatives included a broad diversity of forms, University College London paleontologist and study co-author Philip Mannion said.

"They have occupied almost every conceivable ecological role," Chiarenza said.

There were fully land-dwelling apex predators like 30-foot-long (9-meter-long) Fasolasuchus, pug-snouted herbivores like Simosuchus, armored plant-eaters like Aetosaurus, mollusk-eaters like Kuttanacaiman, filter-feeders like Mourasuchus and ocean-going types like Metriorhynchus. During the age of dinosaurs, there also were semiaquatic crocs like Deinosuchus up to 40 feet (12 meters) long that may have rivaled Tyrannosaurus in mass.

"Modern crocodilians are only the surviving remnants of a once extraordinarily diverse evolutionary group," Chiarenza said.

The asteroid strike at a site called Chicxulub off the coast of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula at the end of the Cretaceous unleashed a global environmental cataclysm. Three-quarters of Earth's species including the dinosaurs, aside from their bird descendants, vanished. The crocs survived.

"The Chicxulub impact caused a dramatic reduction in incoming sunlight, producing an impact winter and widespread environmental disruption.

However, our climate simulations suggest that this cooling did ⁠not affect the availability of suitable ⁠climatic conditions equally for all groups," Chiarenza said.

"Under all but the most extreme impact scenario we tested, tropical and subtropical regions retained climatic conditions suitable" for the crocs, Chiarenza said.

This suggests that the longstanding association of crocs with warm and low-latitude environments may have placed some surviving populations in geographic refuges near the equator and in the subtropics where climatic conditions remained within their tolerances, Chiarenza said.

For dinosaurs, there was a collapse of suitable habitat under these impact conditions.

Crocs also possess physiological traits beneficial for times of environmental stress. They can enter states of dormancy to cope with harsh conditions — aestivation to survive extreme heat or drought, and brumation to withstand extreme cold. Crocs today, for instance, may dig burrows or encase themselves in hardened mud during severe droughts, slowing their heartbeat and breathing.

"Following the Chicxulub impact, when sunlight was dramatically reduced and terrestrial primary productivity collapsed, the ability to reduce energy expenditure and survive periods of limited food availability could have been extremely advantageous," Chiarenza said.

Crocs also are cold-blooded, while recent research points to at least some dinosaurs including Tyrannosaurus as warm-blooded. Baseline metabolic requirements for cold-blooded animals are much lower than for comparably sized warm-blooded animals.

"That can become a significant advantage when food becomes scarce. Crocodilians can survive extended periods without feeding," Chiarenza said.

"But even if an animal can survive prolonged starvation, it still needs environmental conditions that remain within its physiological limits."

Varieties

AstraZeneca Says FDA Approves Drug for Rare Kidney Disease in Adults

AstraZeneca Says FDA Approves Drug for Rare Kidney Disease in Adults
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AstraZeneca Says FDA Approves Drug for Rare Kidney Disease in Adults

AstraZeneca Says FDA Approves Drug for Rare Kidney Disease in Adults

AstraZeneca said on Wednesday the US Food and Drug Administration granted accelerated approval for its treatment for adults with immunoglobulin A nephropathy, a rare kidney disease that can lead to renal failure.

Here are more details:

* AstraZeneca said the treatment Ultomiris reduced proteinuria — excess protein in the urine — by 43.4% compared with placebo after 34 ⁠weeks in an ⁠interim analysis of the late-stage trial

* The drugmaker said the FDA granted the approval under its accelerated pathway, and that the ongoing trial will continue through 106 weeks ⁠to determine whether Ultomiris slows loss of kidney function to support traditional approval

* The company also said the drug was the first and only approved C5 inhibitor for the disease, targeting an immune-system pathway linked to kidney inflammation

* AstraZeneca said more than 200,000 people in the ⁠United States ⁠have the condition, and about half of those with elevated urine protein levels or reduced kidney function are at high risk of kidney failure within 10 years

* The company said no new safety concerns were identified in the study and applications are also under review in Japan and other countries

Varieties

Prized Wild Pepper at Risk in Madagascar’s Shrinking Forests

A woman holds handful of fresh Tsiperifery (wild pepper) on display at the Analakely market, on September 21, 2026. (AFP)
A woman holds handful of fresh Tsiperifery (wild pepper) on display at the Analakely market, on September 21, 2026. (AFP)
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Prized Wild Pepper at Risk in Madagascar’s Shrinking Forests

A woman holds handful of fresh Tsiperifery (wild pepper) on display at the Analakely market, on September 21, 2026. (AFP)
A woman holds handful of fresh Tsiperifery (wild pepper) on display at the Analakely market, on September 21, 2026. (AFP)

A rare wild pepper endemic to Madagascar and prized by international chefs is facing an uncertain future, victim of its own success and the destruction of its forest habitat.

With its subtle, aromatic flavor, Voatsiperifery pepper grows on vines that reach into the canopy of the island's natural forests, which shrank 27 percent between 1990 and 2025, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.

To reach the peppercorns without having to climb, harvesters often tear down the vine and, in many cases, the trees supporting them, contributing to the relentless retreat of Madagascar's forests.

"At times, I tell myself I should never have made it known," acclaimed French chef Olivier Roellinger, who first encountered the spice 30 years ago, told AFP.

"This pepper blew me away right from the start with that piperine punch that brings out a note of peat, resin, even citrus; it's incomparable," he said. "On a fruit salad, it's absolutely delicious."

Madagascar pepper sells for 150 to 200 euros ($169 to $225) per kilogram in France, its main export market.

Roellinger, the founder of the Epices Roellinger spice boutique, is collaborating with efforts to certify authentic pepper based on strictly regulated harvesting zones in Madagascar.

But he was "under no illusions" about the risk these rules could be circumvented, he said.

- Bush fires -

The village of Ambongamarina, northeast of the capital Antananarivo, was at the center of a rush two decades ago for the pepper, which has a characteristic woody tail, a remnant of its stem.

From a ridge on which the village sits, farmer Maminiaina Rabearison pointed into the distance.

"Until 2010-2012, it was still covered in natural forest," he told AFP.

"People used to go into the forest and, for 10 to 20 weeks a year, at least 100 kilograms were sold every week at the market to a trader," the 45-year-old said.

That trader has not visited in a long time. Harvests have dropped as the forest has been consumed by bush fires, charcoal production and slash-and-burn agriculture, or torched in protests against the distant central government.

The destruction of the vines has also forced harvesters to go deeper into the forest to find the plant, which in Malagasy is called tsiperifery, meaning "that makes wounds not exist", a reference to its medicinal use for generations.

Now, "you have to walk almost a full day to find pepper in the forest," said 51-year-old Herinaina Randrianarimanga, another farmer from the village, which is only 120 kilometers (75 miles) from the capital but takes five hours to reach in a four-by-four vehicle.

- 'A real boon' -

There is no national system to track the distribution, harvesting and export of this precious pepper, said Mima Chateauneuf, co-founder of bulk export company Jacarandas.

"Today, we have no idea whether the resource is becoming scarce," she said, calling for "traceability" to determine export volumes.

In the absence of a regulatory framework, Jacarandas is turning towards organic pepper, which has grown to make up one-third of its exports. "For organic products, traceability is mandatory," Chateauneuf said.

As research into the Voatsiperifery plant advances, French-Malagasy entrepreneur Olivier Ramaherison has been experimenting with domestic cultivation on land inherited from his father.

Between 500 and 1,000 vines -- the result of thousands of trials -- grew in terraces carved into the Mandraka forest, 60 kilometers east of the capital.

There are no support trees here: the plants, laden with fruit just a few weeks from maturity, cluster close to the ground.

"The idea was to try to find a solution to make it easier to pick," said Ramaherison, head of Essentialys, a company that produces aromatic plants, essential oils, coffee and pepper.

By chance, his team discovered that cuttings taken from the horizontal branches of the vine no longer tried to climb.

"If, like at the Piper nigrum (black pepper) plantations in Vietnam or Brazil, we manage to produce hundreds of tons of wild pepper, it would be a real economic boon for the country," he said.