The UNESCO World Heritage Committee inscribed Jordan's Aqaba Marine Reserve on 25 July, protecting 701 hectares at the northern tip of the Red Sea. Its reefs hold more than 150 hard coral species and over 500 fish species, and have adapted to heat and salinity that kill corals elsewhere.
Julie, an African elephant who had performed with a Portuguese circus since 1988, arrived on 30 June at the new Pangea sanctuary between Vila Viçosa and Alandroal in the Alentejo. She is its first resident on 400 hectares of cork oak country, and a second elephant, Kariba, joins her later this year.
Copernicus published its assessment of European air quality on 29 June, reporting that industrial sulphur oxide emissions have fallen 59 per cent since 2015 and industrial nitrogen oxides 39 per cent. Road transport nitrogen oxides are down 40 per cent and its fine particles 34 per cent.
Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring ServiceEuropean Environment Agency
Karolinska Institutet researchers followed 1,865 dementia-free adults aged 60 and over for up to 15 years, and those eating a low-inflammatory diet carried up to 30 per cent less dementia risk. The benefit held for people whose blood already showed early Alzheimer's markers. JAMA Network Open published the work on 25 June.
Hemiscyllium dudgeonae, described in the Journal of the Ocean Science Foundation on 15 June, is the tenth walking shark known to science. Surveys in Papua New Guinea's Milne Bay province between 2023 and 2025 turned it up, freckled brown and white with a false eye spot behind the head.