# data[].attributes.headline
Is organic really better ? Healthy food or trendy scam ?                         CO https://youtu.be/8PmM6SUn7Es

# data[].attributes.subject
Is organic really better ? Healthy food or trendy scam ?                         CO https://youtu.be/8PmM6SUn7Es

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Connexion Pour accéder à la bibliothèque, vous devez vous connecter à votre ENT

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Connexion Pour accéder à la bibliothèque, vous devez vous connecter à votre ENT

# data[].attributes.body
CO + Questions + CORRIGE

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Connexion Pour accéder à la bibliothèque, vous devez vous connecter à votre ENT

# data[].attributes.body
CO + Quiz

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
One Minute English Video #1471 What do you think about Black Friday?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
One Minute English - Students can watch a video and take a quiz. These lessons take just a minute to do and are designed for ESL students.

# data[].attributes.body
CO + Quizz + vocabulary

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Aimee: OK, so hey Todd, so I have a question. I've noticed recently in the U.K. that this holiday called Black Friday has appeared, and this is a new thing for us. I don't really know why it has appeared. I think it is American. Shops just give super discounts in November and people are going crazy for like TVs and stuff. Do you have experience with this?

Todd: Yeah, unfortunately, I think it is one of our worst exports. Like I am not a fan of Black Friday. We've had it now probably for like ten or twenty years. I can't remember but it started where the department stores would have these massive sales on Friday which is the day after Thanksgiving, which is always on a Thursday in November.

Aimee: Ah, that's the connection. OK, after Thanksgiving.

Todd: Right, and I think it was called Black Friday because that was the day that the stores could show that they had a profit for the year, or something like that.

Aimee: OK, so it's blatantly all about money?

Todd: Oh, totally and originally, what they would do is they would entice people with really good bargains, but then they kept ratcheting up the bargain, so now they have these really, really low teaser products, like they only offer ten TVs or something like that for like twenty bucks.

Aimee: Oh, so it's like a limited, a really limited supply of really good deals?

Todd: Yeah, and so then what you do is you get these huge crowds that converge on these stores, and then they open the doors and people rush in and literally it's a free-for-all. You have fights and it's so crazy.

Aimee: I've seen that. I've seen videos and clips, and it started happening in the U.K. now

Todd: Oh, no!

Aimee: And I can't believe it that people can be so greedy.

Todd: And especially what's bothersome is that you're with your family on a holiday. You're having a good time, and then you go to war practically. You know what I mean?

Aimee: Yeah, with strangers

Todd: Yeah.

Aimee: Or your neighbor even. It doesn't matter who it is, just fighting over a cheap TV.

Todd: I mean, I'm proud to say I've never been to a Black Friday.

Aimee: Me neither. Me neither.

Todd: So I guess that's hypocritical for me to say that because you know, since I've never been to a Black Friday. I've only seen it, but I just don't like going to shopping malls and to, like, department stores very much - big box stores. I'm just not a shopper.

Aimee: So you prefer online shopping?

Todd: I just prefer not shopping at all. Like I don't care like what I dress or how I dress. So, like, I buy my clothes at a supermarket. You know. I know, I'm not the most fashionable person, but as for Black Friday, you know, I think a lot of times, parents what to get stuff for their kids, you know, they want to get that special gift. Maybe I think that's what attracts a lot of the crowds.

Aimee: Yeah, it is, you know, once Thanksgiving is over then it's the build-up to Christmas, so of course there's the stress of preparing everything in time for that. It's hard to resist really good bargains, I guess if you're trying to be careful with your money. You're trying to be sensible or there's those gifts that, you know your child really wants, so I can understand people feel a lot of pressure to do that.

Todd: I mean, some of the stores, look like they've been through a hurricane after the crowds go through it. It's crazy.

Aimee: It does sound awful. Doesn't sound like my idea of a good time.

Todd: No. Now there is one option though if you don't want to face the crowds and all the hysteria, you can do what's called Cyber Monday.

Aimee: OK.

Todd: Do you have Cyber Monday?

Aimee: No, I'm not familiar with it.

Todd: So Cyber Monday - I think it's the Monday after Black Friday - and you just get all the deals online over a 24 hour period.

Aimee: OK, is like this remainder, leftover stock? Or is this like a new ...?

Todd: No, this is just the online stuff, so I think it's just, you know, the Amazons and all the online stores, that they want to have their deals that people can buy.

Aimee: They wanted a piece of the action, basically.

Todd: Yeah, yeah. Exactly so they can make it super, super ...

Aimee: It's too much!

Todd: Yeah.

Aimee: It is all too much.

Todd: I know, we should have like a, you know, I don't know, a cut back on spending. But if you cut back on spending, then you're hurting the economy, right, so ...

Aimee: I know. It's true.

Todd: Yeah!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Aimee: OK, so hey Todd, so I have a question. I've noticed recently in the U.K. that this holiday called Black Friday has appeared, and this is a new thing for us. I don't really know why it has appeared. I think it is American.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Sometimes a health headline will focus on a study done in mice, or done with only 2 people, or done by forcing people to run hundreds of miles a day. The farther the study is from who you are and how you act in your real life, the less likely the results will translate directly to you. For example, the Physicians Health Study is a well-known study that was conducted in the 1980s that demonstrated that aspirin reduced the risk of having a heart attack. The observed effect was very strong and lead to headlines such as: "Health; Doctors Confirm Benefits of Aspirin", however this study was only conducted among men, and since it has been demonstrated that the effect may not be the same for women. Does this mean the original study was wrong? Of course not! The researchers were explicit in saying their conclusions could only be drawn among men. This leads to an important question to ask when evaluating whether a study's result will be interesting for me: Who was included in the study? Could I fit in that population?

In our videos, we briefly discuss the design of a study, for example paying attention to whether there is a control group. There are many types of studies but two big types are randomized, controlled trials (RCTs) and observational studies. RCTs are the gold standard, because they let us prove that an exposure, like taking a drug or changing a diet, causes a change in your health. Observational studies can support the hypothesis that the drug or diet causes the change, but you usually need a lot more information. Hill's criteria are a set of extra bits of information that might lend more credibility to an observational study (see Lucy's fun blog post on this for more).

In addition to the design of the study, it is important to notice the sample size.Bigger studies usually let us measure results more accurately, especially when the result is likely to be noisy or hard to get a good handle on. To demonstrate this, a science journalist, John Bohannon, conducted a study that found that eating chocolate lead to weight loss. The problem? This study was only conducted on only 16 participants and John purposefully looked at many different outcomes before he found a significant one. (Check out John's write up of this study).

If the impact of the exposure, like a drug or diet, is pretty small we call that a small effect size. The smaller the impact, the harder it is to reliably find it with a study. When small effect sizes are combined with small sample sizes it makes it really, really hard to figure out if we found something real or not in the data. Similarly, in a very large study, we may be able to detect a very small effect that is statistically significant, but not actually scientifically meaningful. For example, remember the study we discussed that examined whether a new drug prolonged the life of patients with pancreatic cancer - while the result was statistically significant,
the actual effect was only a difference of 10 days.

Finally, it is important to pay attention to the outcome being analyzed. Many times, surrogate outcomes are used. Our example is based on a real case from the medical literature. In the mid-twentieth century, researchers started publishing studies suggesting that a B-vitamin called niacin might help prevent heart disease by raising levels of beneficial cholesterol. By 2009, more than 700,000 prescriptions for niacin were being written in the U.S. every month. There was just one problem. It turns out that niacin doesn't help prevent heart disease - but it does increase the risk of serious side effects. The original niacin studies concluded that the vitamin would reduce the risk of heart disease because it raised the levels of the healthy form of cholesterol, and people with higher levels tend to have fewer heart attacks. But they didn't measure heart attack risk directly. When other scientists eventually did, it turned out that niacin's effect on cholesterol didn't actually lead to fewer heart attacks.

A great way to dig deeper is to read the research article behind the headlines. Read Jeff's blog post for tips on tracking down the original research.

We have only scratched the surface of things to think about when evaluating scientific studies. If you are interested in pursuing this area further, we have a short massive online open course (MOOC) that dives a bit deeper into these issues. The course is designed to be completed by busy students and professionals, with short lessons and quizzes that can be completed on the go. We take real examples from the medical literature and dive into the text to understand the study design, statistical methods, and results. The whole course can be completed in about four hours. We leave out the mathematical detail and focus on the conceptual ideas. Anyone can pick this course up and gain a better understanding of how data and statistics are used in the medical literature. You can find the course on Leanpub: Understanding Data and Statistics in Medical Literature.

Enjoy!

Lucy D'Agostino McGowan and Jeff Leek

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Can you spot the problem with these headlines? (Level 1) - Jeff Leek and Lucy McGowan

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In medicine, there's often a disconnect between news headlines and the scientific research they cover. While headlines are designed to catch attention, many studies produce meaningful results when they focus on a narrow, specific question. So how can you figure out what's a genuine health concern and what's less conclusive?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
With the advent of the Internet and social media, news is distributed at an incredible rate by an unprecedented number of different media outlets. How do we choose which news to consume? Damon Brown gives the inside scoop on how the opinions and facts (and sometimes non-facts) ma…

# data[].attributes.headline
New Zealand is not part of a new security pact between Australia, the UK and US, in what experts say is an illustration of the distance between the country and its traditional allies.

# data[].attributes.subject
New Zealand is not part of a new security pact between Australia, the UK and US, in what experts say is an illustration of the distance between the country and its traditional allies.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
New Zealand is not part of a new security pact between Australia, the UK and US, in what experts say is an illustration of the distance between the country and its traditional allies.

On Wednesday, the three countries announced a trilateral security partnership, Aukus, aimed at confronting China, which will include helping Australia to build nuclear-powered submarines. New Zealand and Canada were notably absent.

New Zealand's longstanding nuclear-free policy also means that Australian submarines developed under the deal are banned from New Zealand waters. "New Zealand's position in relation to the prohibition of nuclear-powered vessels in our waters remains unchanged," the prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, said on Thursday.

She said the new agreement "in no way changes our security and intelligence ties with these three countries, as well as Canada". Asked by reporters if New Zealand had been offered a place, Ardern said, "We weren't approached, nor would I expect us to be."

However, New Zealand is "conspicuous by its absence," said Geoffrey Miller, international analyst at the Democracy Project. "Canada and New Zealand are sort of being relegated here. It shows how far apart Australian and New Zealand foreign policymakers are."

Prof David Capie, director of the Centre for Strategic Studies at Victoria University in Wellington, said New Zealand was not being "sidelined", but the deal more starkly illustrated existing differences between the country and its security partners.

"It highlights that much deeper level of Australian integration into US defence and security planning and thinking about China and about the region," he said. "There's no doubt this is a big deal. But New Zealand and Australia were in a different space to begin with, and this has perhaps just made that look sharper again."

"Australia and New Zealand are culturally quite similar and geographically in similar positions, but they are poles apart in terms of the way they see the world," Miller said. "I think this alliance underlines that they're going in very different directions."

The opposition National party has been critical of New Zealand's absence from the deal, saying it looks like New Zealand was "left out of the loop".

"The government needs to come clean about what happened here. Does this new partnership affect our Five Eyes relationship? What about our relationship with Australia, the one country that we have the closest defence and economic partnership? And will this have an impact on our standing as a responsible international citizen?" defence spokesperson Gerry Brownlee asked.

"The government needs to explain why it looks as though New Zealand has been left out of the loop," Brownlee said. "Were we consulted or at the table to discuss with a group of countries that we've considered likeminded for quite some time?"

'All about China'

While the agreement does not specifically cite China, Beijing looms large in the background. The pact comes at a time of rising tensions in the Asia-pacific region, especially over Taiwan, and China's increasing presence in the South China Sea. US officials speaking to reporters before the announcement did not mention China, speaking instead about "sustaining and improving deterrence", but left little doubt which power Aukus was supposed to deter.

"This is driven overwhelmingly by concerns about China," Capie said. "Notwithstanding the fact that China is not mentioned in the statements, it's all about China."

And as Australia has adopted increasingly hawkish rhetoric on Beijing, New Zealand's milder positioning has sometimes raised eyebrows across the Tasman and in the UK.

Over the past year, foreign minister Nanaia Mahuta has repeatedly emphasised New Zealand's "independent" and "values-based" foreign policy. In April, the minister caused a minor stir with comments that New Zealand was "uncomfortable with expanding the remit of the Five Eyes," a remark that some saw as a shift away from that alliance. In China, state-run media heralded the comments as "New Zealand secure[ing] its interests by distancing from US-led clique".

New Zealand's minister of foreign affairs, Nanaia Mahuta, has emphasised her country's 'independent' foreign policy. Photograph: Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images

"To be clear, New Zealand values the Five Eyes relationship," Mahuta told the Guardian in May. "It's a security and intelligence framework from which we can work with trusted allies on those specific issues. But ... we don't need the Five Eyes to articulate where we stand on human rights issues."

The Aukus agreement illustrates some of those differences - between Australia's increasingly close alignment with the US on China issues, and New Zealand's relative distance.

The pact does not include Canada, the other Five Eyes partner, either. In recent years, Canada and New Zealand have had similarities in their orientation toward Beijing - condemning human rights breaches on specific issues in a case-by-case way, but avoiding strong statements on the country more broadly.

Miller said both countries were "trying to walk the tightrope a bit, and not trying to get into a big spat with China".

There had been "quite a lot of pressure put on New Zealand to join the western position on China," Miller said, "but New Zealand largely held firm through all those overtures. I think in the end, this is the alternative."

An uncomfortable principle

The primary focus of the Aukus agreement is supply of nuclear submarines to Australia - a development that would see parts of the Australian naval force barred from New Zealand waters.

Since the mid-1980s, New Zealand has had a strict policy keeping its territorial sea, land and airspace as nuclear-free zones. The policy, made partly in solidarity with Pacific islands suffering the fallout of nuclear testing, created a rift with the United States, which suspended its obligations to New Zealand under the Anzus treaty.

Although any nuclear-powered submarines are barred from New Zealand ports, that prohibition may be more theoretical than logistical, given Australian and US submarines likely have little reason to be in New Zealand waters. "I don't think in practical terms, it's going to create a problem," Capie said. "But the principle that some of the defence capabilities of your only ally are unable to visit your waters is an uncomfortable one."

In her statement, Ardern emphasised New Zealand's Pacific connections - in what Capie said could be read as a nod to the country's nuclear-free history. "New Zealand is first and foremost a nation of the Pacific and we view foreign policy developments through the lens of what is in the best interest of the region," Ardern said.

"We welcome the increased engagement of the UK and US in the region and reiterate our collective objective needs to be the delivery of peace and stability and the preservation of the international rules based system."

Capie said Ardern's statement reinforced the message of her other recent speeches, "that NZ prefers to focus on its immediate neighbourhood rather than on maritime Asia where that much sharper military confrontation with China is playing out," he said. "[That's] where the new Australian subs would be operating."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Aukus submarines banned from New Zealand as pact exposes divide with western allies

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
New Zealand is not part of a new security pact between Australia, the UK and US, in what experts say is an illustration of the distance between the country and its traditional allies. On Wednesday, the three countries announced a trilateral security partnership, Aukus, aimed at confronting China, which will include helping Australia to build nuclear-powered submarines.

# data[].attributes.headline
AUKUS Pact: UK, US, Australia Announce Historic Security Deal |16 sept. 2021

# data[].attributes.subject
AUKUS Pact: UK, US, Australia Announce Historic Security Deal |16 sept. 2021

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
AUKUS Pact: UK, US, Australia Announce Historic Security Deal | Around The World In 5

# data[].attributes.headline
AUKUS: Why France is furious about AUKUS pact between UK, US and Australia

# data[].attributes.subject
AUKUS: Why France is furious about AUKUS pact between UK, US and Australia

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
why france is furious about aukus pact between uk

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
CNN's Cyril Vanier reports that French officials are "furious" after the US, UK and Australia announced a trilateral security arrangement focusing on the Indo-Pacific region. Under that agreement, the US will help Australia acquire nuclear-powered submarines, costing Paris a multi-billion dollar submarine deal.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
France's historic decision to recall its ambassadors to the US and Australia is far more than a diplomatic spat, analysts have warned.

The move, in protest at Canberra's surprise decision to cancel an order for French-built submarines and its security pact with Washington and London, will affect France and Europe's role in Nato and already strained relations with the UK.

French officials have accused Australia, the US and the UK of behaving in an underhand, duplicitous manner that has betrayed and humiliated France.

A visibly angry Jean-Yves le Drian, the French foreign minister, accused the Americans and Australians of "lies and duplicity" over the Aukus deal. And he warned: "It's not finished."

Le Drian said Australia had told France that it was breaking the submarine contract and making a new deal with the US and UK just one hour before Scott Morrison, the Australian PM, announced it at a press conference.

"That is why I say there has been duplicity, contempt and lies, and when you have an ally of the stature of France, you don't treat them like that," Le Drian said.

Asked if there had been a failure of French intelligence in uncovering the secret deal, he replied: "The agreement project initiated by the US and Australia was decided by a small group and I'm not sure US and Australian ministers knew about it.

"When we see the US president with the Australian prime minister announce a new agreement, with Boris Johnson, the breach of trust is profound. In a real alliance you talk to each other, you don't hide things, you respect the other party, and that is why this is a real crisis."

Le Drian rejected suggestions that France was isolated in the European Union in its response to the Aukus deal, the foreign minister said: "I don't believe we are alone in this affair. It's not finished."

Asked why France had not recalled its ambassador to the UK, Le Drian went on to say Britain's role was "opportunistic" and described the country as "the fifth wheel on the wagon".

"The UK accompanied this operation opportunistically," a French diplomatic source told Reuters. "We do not need to consult in Paris with our ambassador to know what to think and what conclusions to draw from it."

"This is far more than just a diplomatic spat. The withdrawal of ambassadors is the tip of the iceberg," Peter Ricketts, a former permanent undersecretary at the Foreign Office and former UK ambassador to France, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

"There is a deep sense of betrayal in France because this wasn't just an arms contract, this was France setting up a strategic partnership with Australia and the Australians have now thrown that away and negotiated behind the backs of France with two Nato allies, the US and UK, to replace it with a completely different contract.

"For the French this looks like a complete failure of trust between allies and calls into doubt what is Nato for. This puts a big rift down the middle of the Nato alliance ... Britain needs a functioning Nato alliance."

Ricketts added: "I think people underestimated the impact that this would have in France and how this would seem as a humiliation and betrayal in a year President Macron is running for election in a very tight race with the far right."

The historic order to recall France's ambassadors came directly from Macron. A spokesperson for the Elysée said the "seriousness" of the situation required the president's response. "Beyond the question of the breach of a contract and its consequences, particularly in terms of jobs, there is what this decision says about the alliance strategy. [Such behaviour] is unacceptable between allies," the Elysée said.

The French are furious at Australia's decision to cancel a A$90bn (£48bn) contract that it signed with the French company Naval Group in 2016 for a fleet of 12 state-of-the-art attack class submarines. That deal became bogged down in cost overruns, delays and design changes. Naval Group said the new deal that will see Canberra acquire nuclear-powered submarines built by the US and UK, instead of those from France, was a "great disappointment".

Le Drian had already described the trilateral Aukus security pact - including the submarine deal - as a "stab in the back".

"The abandoning of the ocean-class submarine project that linked Australia and France since 2016, and the announcement of a new partnership with the United States to launch studies on possible future cooperation on nuclear-powered submarines, constitute unacceptable behaviour between allies and partners, the consequences of which affect the very conception we have of our alliances, our partnerships and the importance of the Indo-Pacific region for Europe," he added.

France is also furious at what it sees as the dishonesty of statements coming out of Australia, whose the prime minister, Scott Morrison, said Canberra wanted nuclear submarines "with more autonomy and more discreet than the conventional submarines that France proposed".

France says it altered the design of its nuclear submarines to diesel because that is what Australia wanted and ordered.

In terms of the Indo-Pacific partnership, France is a natural ally for Australia as it has overseas territories home to more than 1.6 million French citizens in the region. Paris also has a significant military presence there, with 8,000 soldiers and dozens of ships, including nuclear submarines, positioned in several bases.

Nathalie Goulet, an opposition member and vice-president of the French Sénat's foreign affairs, defence and armed forces commission, said the situation was "very disturbing". "Someone should have warned before this breach of contract ... I don't understand this couldn't have happened overnight," she said.

"It's a failure for industry, intelligence and communication and a public humiliation ... and nobody likes to be humiliated, even the French."

It is the first time France has recalled a US ambassador; the two countries have been allies since the US war of independence. France also cancelled a gala due to be held on Friday to commemorate the anniversary of the Battle of Chesapeake Bay, a decisive event in the war, which ended with the French fleet's victory over the British on 5 September 1781.

A White House official told Reuters that the US regretted the French decision and said Washington had been in close touch with Paris. The official said the US would be engaged in the coming days to resolve differences between the two countries.

The Australian foreign affairs minister, Marise Payne, in Washington, said she understood the "disappointment" in Paris and hoped to work with France to ensure it understands "the value we place on the bilateral relationship and the work that we want to continue to do together".

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Aukus: France's ambassador recall is 'tip of the iceberg', say analysts

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
France's historic decision to recall its ambassadors to the US and Australia is far more than a diplomatic spat, analysts have warned. The move, in protest at Canberra's surprise decision to cancel an order for French-built submarines and its security pact with Washington and London, will affect France and Europe's role in Nato and already strained relations with the UK.

# data[].attributes.headline
AUKUS : The new partnership between US, UK and Australia

# data[].attributes.subject
AUKUS : The new partnership between US, UK and Australia

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Australia has signed a new Indo-Pacific security partnership with the United States and Britain to share defense technologies. American President Joe Biden announced the agreement Wednesday in a joint statement with Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

Biden said the three leaders understand the importance of ensuring long term peace and security in the Indo-Pacific region. "We need to be able to address both the current strategic environment in the region and how it may evolve," he said.

The partnership is called AUKUS. The three leaders said there were several possible issues of concern that the alliance might deal with, including territorial disputes, terrorism and organized crime.

None of the leaders spoke about China in announcing the partnership. However, experts say the deal is designed to answer the possible threat China poses.

The partnership permits Australia to build nuclear-powered submarines for the first time. The government in Canberra has said the boats would not be nuclear armed.

The alliance also is to share computing technologies and cyber defenses. British leader Johnson described the three nations involved as "natural allies."

For many years, Australia has sought security through defense and intelligence partnerships. Morrison said that his country, the U.S. and Britain had "always seen through a similar lens." But he said the relationship had to be taken to a new level as the world grows more complex.

The ANZUS security treaty between the U.S., Australia and New Zealand, recently celebrated its 70th anniversary. Australia is also an active member of the Five Eyes alliance, which includes the U.S., Britain, Canada and New Zealand. The Five Eyes alliance was created to observe the Soviet Union after the Second World War.

Australian officials have said the nuclear-powered submarines would be completed and ready for service in the mid to late 2030s. Experts say the nuclear subs can take longer trips than other submarines. They say the boats will give the alliance a stronger military presence in the region.

Adam Band, the leader of Australia's Greens party, criticized the deal on social media. He said it was "dangerous" because of possible accidents with the nuclear-powered ships.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said he had called the leaders of Japan and India to explain the new alliance. Japan, India, Australia and the U.S. already have an alliance known as "the Quad." Biden is planning to welcome the Quad leaders to the White House next week.
China calls deal 'irresponsible'
China said the alliance would severely damage regional peace and security, as well as efforts to halt the spread of nuclear weapons. It said it was "highly irresponsible" for the U.S. and Britain to export the nuclear technology. It blamed Australia for a breakdown in that country's relations with China.

China has been unhappy with the Biden administration's criticism of human rights abuses in the Xianjing region, attacks on democracy activists in Hong Kong, and cybersecurity violations. Biden spoke by phone with China's President Xi Jinping last week. After the call, the official Xinhua News Agency reported that Xi expressed concerns that U.S. government policy toward China has caused "serious difficulties" in relations.
New Zealand is not part of the alliance
Australia's neighbor New Zealand is not part of the new alliance. It has long had a nuclear-free policy that includes a ban on nuclear-powered ships entering its ports. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said New Zealand was not asked to be part of the alliance and would not have expected an invitation. Still, it leaves New Zealand out of a deal to share information including artificial intelligence, cyber and underwater defense capabilities.

I'm Jill Robbins.
The story is based on reports from Nick Perry for the Associated Press and Phil Mercer for VOA News. Jill Robbins adapted it for Learning English. Caty Weaver was the editor.
________________________________________________

Words in This Story

strategic -​ adj. of or relating to a general plan that is created to achieve a goal in war, politics, etc., usually over a long period of time

evolve -​ v. to change or develop slowly often into a better, more complex, or more advanced state : to develop by a process of evolution​

pose - v. to be or create (a possible threat, danger, problem, etc.)

submarine - n. a ship that can operate underwater

lens - n. a clear curved piece of glass or plastic that is used in eyeglasses, cameras, telescopes, etc., to make things look clearer, smaller, or bigger; figurative: a way of looking at something

artificial intelligence -​ n. an area of computer science that deals with giving machines the ability to seem like they have human intelligence​

cyber-​ adj. relating to computers
What do you think of the agreement between the U.S., Australia and Britain? We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
U.S., Britain and Australia Announce New Security Partnership

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Australia has signed a new Indo-Pacific security partnership with the United States and Britain to share defense technologies. American President Joe Biden announced the agreement Wednesday in a joint statement with Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

# data[].attributes.headline
Making paper of sargassum seaweed:        Making paper of sargassum seaweed as part of the Golden Tide project in Curaçao, 2019. Golden Tide was a project about the influx of the sargassum seaweed in the Caribbean sea, which kills local fauna and destroys natural habitats. The sargassum paper was used to paint images of the skeletal remains of species that died as a consequence of the seaweed. Scientists believe that the sudden growth of the algae is linked to the fertilizer run-off from the amazon river in addition to rising ocean temperatures due to climate change. In order to support the ongoing struggle against the largest seaweed bloom in the world, the paintings were sold as souvenirs on the tourist market in Curaçao. The proceeds of the sale were donated to Amazon Watch, an environmental organization that supports indigenous communities in their fight against the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest. 

# data[].attributes.subject
Making paper of sargassum seaweed:        Making paper of sargassum seaweed as part of the Golden Tide project in Curaçao, 2019. Golden Tide was a project about the influx of the sargassum seaweed in the Caribbean sea, which kills local fauna and destroys natural habitats. The sargassum paper was used to paint images of the skeletal remains of species that died as a consequence of the seaweed. Scientists believe that the sudden growth of the algae is linked to the fertilizer run-off from the amazon river in addition to rising ocean temperatures due to climate change. In order to support the ongoing struggle against the largest seaweed bloom in the world, the paintings were sold as souvenirs on the tourist market in Curaçao. The proceeds of the sale were donated to Amazon Watch, an environmental organization that supports indigenous communities in their fight against the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest. 

# data[].attributes.headline
In BioPlaster Research we have fabricated 100% biodegradable bioplastic made from sargassum algae. 

# data[].attributes.subject
In BioPlaster Research we have fabricated 100% biodegradable bioplastic made from sargassum algae. 

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
Daytona Beach News-Journal, July 19 2019

# data[].attributes.headline
SARGASSUM: What's causing the explosive growth of sargassum seaweed?

# data[].attributes.subject
SARGASSUM: What's causing the explosive growth of sargassum seaweed?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
What's causing the explosive growth of sargassum seaweed?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Sargassum algae piles up along Mexico's Punta Piedra beach.

From The Atlantic by Ed Yong

Since 2011, blooms of Sargassum have wreaked havoc on tropical shores.
A new study explains why this is likely a new normal.

In 2018, as seaweed piled up on beaches throughout the Caribbean, it began to rot.
Already stinking and sulfurous, the thick layers began to attract insects and repel tourists.
The seaweed-a type of brown algae called sargassum-had grown in the ocean and washed ashore in unprecedented quantities.
It prevented fishers from getting into the water, and entangled their nets and propellers.
It entangled sea turtles and dolphins, too, fatally preventing them from surfacing for air.
It died and sank offshore, smothering seagrass meadows and coral reefs.
Barbados declared a national emergency.

Sargassum seaweed off the coast of Guadeloupe.

Photograph: Helene Valenzuela/AFP

In normal years, sargassum is a blessing rather than a curse.
Mats of it drift around the ocean, held afloat by gas-filled bladders that look like grapes.
They accumulate in the North Atlantic, forming the Sargasso Sea-a region that the explorer Sylvia Earle has described as a " golden floating rainforest." The fronds are a breeding site for American eels, a sanctuary for turtle hatchlings, and a haven for hundreds of other species, some of which live nowhere else.
The Sargassum fish, for example, is a small, frog-faced predator whose body has adapted to perfectly mimic the seaweed.

The Caribbean would usually experience a few small mats of sargassum washing ashore in a given year, until 2011, when the seaweed first began arriving in unexpectedly large waves.
Similar pileups have occurred almost every year since; 2015 and 2018 saw especially bad blooms.
Some countries have set up nets to block the incoming algae, or hired people to clear affected beaches with rakes and backhoes.
And still the sargassum comes.

Nasa's satellite data confirms that the record-breaking seaweed belt forms in the summer months, with 2015 and 2018 having the biggest blooms.

Photograph: USF College of Marine Science

The seaweed does have one very convenient trait: The chlorophyll pigment within it reflects infrared light more strongly than the surrounding seawater does.
To satellites that detect infrared, sargassum blazes like a bonfire.
Six years ago, Jim Gower from Fisheries and Oceans Canada used satellite images to show that the 2011 bloom had an unusual origin.
In April, sargassum had begun growing off the coast of Brazil and near the mouth of the Amazon River, in an area far south of its normal range.
By July, it had spread across the entire Atlantic.

Now Mengqiu Wang, from the University of South Florida, and her colleagues have shown that this ocean-spanning bloom, which they've dubbed the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt, is now an annual feature.
By analyzing 19 years of satellite images, they showed that the belt first appeared in 2011, and has reappeared almost every summer since (except for 2013).
Last June, when the belt was at its thickest, it contained more than 22 million tons of seaweed, and stretched fully across the Atlantic's waters, from the Gulf of Mexico to the western coast of Africa.

That figure is likely to be an underestimate: With a spatial resolution of one kilometer, the satellite data doesn't capture small chunks of Sargassum.
"It highlights the most aggregated areas rather than describing the entirety of what is present," says Deb Goodwin, an oceanographer at the Sea Education Association.

The Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt is a loose collection of seaweed scattered over a very large area, not a continuous bridge.
It's also not produced by the Sargasso Sea, which lies further north; Wang's team confirmed that by simulating how particles of seaweed would move in the Atlantic's currents.
They concluded that the belt likely develops from local patches of sargassum that occur naturally in the tropics.
But such patches have always existed.
Why have they only recently started to form sprawling blooms?

Wang's team thinks that the new growth was connected to two factors on opposite sides of the Atlantic: the water discharged by the Amazon and upwelling currents rising off West Africa.
These two phenomena pump nutrients into the tropical Atlantic.
When they're unusually strong, as they apparently were in 2009, they effectively flood the ocean with fertilizer, allowing sargassum to run amok.

But why, then, did the seaweed not bloom in 2010? Wang's team thinks that it was delayed by low salinity (due to the influx of Amazon freshwater) and abnormally high temperatures-conditions that suppress the growth of sargassum.
Only in 2011, when temperatures returned to normal, could the seaweed make use of the influx of nutrients from previous years, and go wild.

And the bigger the blooms in the summer, the more likely they are to leave behind patches that survive through the winter.
If the conditions are right the following year, these "seed populations" can restart another bloom.
"Each successive bloom makes it difficult to imagine an end to this self-reinforcing cycle," says Amy Siuda, an ecologist and oceanographer at Eckerd College.
"This is likely the new normal."

So, a quartet of factors-strong Amazon discharge, strong West African upwelling, moderate temperatures, and the presence of a seed population-could potentially explain the Sargassum Belt, including why it appears every summer, and why it was especially thick in 2015 and 2018.
But such factors "have impacted the central Atlantic Ocean for decades, if not centuries," says Siuda "Why are we only seeing sargassum bloom in this region now? What tipped the balance? There is clearly still more to learn."

Chuanmin Hu, who led the study, agrees.
"I have to emphasize that we have no direct evidence to prove any of this," he says.
"These are our speculations, some educated and some hand-waving."
They've been forced into that because many of the factors they identified aren't regularly measured.
For example, they could only find data on the nutrients in the Amazon for two years: 2010 and 2018.
The latter levels were much higher, which might explain why sargassum blooms were so big that year.
Or it might not.
The river might have more nutrients due to increased fertilizer use, and stronger runoffs due to deforestation.
Or it might not.
"I don't think there's enough data," Hu says.
"It takes a huge amount of money to go there and take measurements."

A spectacular sargassum mat in an ocean eddy.
The new detection service by CLS_Group with ESA_EO Sentinel-3 satellite data and CMEMS_EU oceancurrents has tracked this mat since May 8 and can forecast its landing.

Of the four factors that the team identified, only sea surface temperatures are regularly measured.
And while many scientists have suggested that hot water could speed the growth of sargassum, "we found the opposite," Hu says.
That's not to say climate change is irrelevant, he cautions: Changing patterns of rain and wind could, for example, influence the strength of the West African upwelling.
Nor should the Caribbean count on rising temperatures to solve its sargassum woes, because the pace of change is likely too slow to make a difference in the near future.

Hu adds that other factors could be behind the rise of the Sargassum Belt, including nutrient-rich dust blowing in from the Sahara and changes in ocean currents.
And several aspects of the blooms still don't make sense.
"If I were you, I would ask: If you have so much nitrogen and phosphorus, why do other [algae] in the ocean not grow as fast?" he says.
"I can't answer that."

Goodwin adds that "scientific understanding of Sargassum growth and bloom dynamics under natural, open ocean conditions is extremely limited," since scientists have only addressed these questions in lab experiments.
And the sargassum itself is changing, too.
Siuda says that the recent blooms have included "a previously rare and genetically distinct form of sargassum" that comes from the south, differs from those in the Sargasso Sea, and harbors a slightly different community of organisms.

Sargassum Seaweed Bermuda June 2019

Little is known about this strain, or how the bloom is affecting the ecology around it, which makes it hard to predict how it will react to future conditions.
And since it likely evolved in relative isolation from its northerly relatives, its northward expansion suggests that "environmental conditions and ocean circulation patterns in the central Atlantic may have been shifting, undetected, for longer than the time interval examined by [Wang and her colleagues]," says Goodwin.
"A critical larger question emerges: What drove such an ecological transformation at unprecedented scale?"

In the absence of such knowledge, it is very hard to predict when and where future blooms will occur.
"Like hurricanes or nor'easters, we will likely be able to predict the severity of the upcoming season, but we won't be able to predict exactly where the inundations will come ashore," Siuda adds.

As Molwyn Joseph, Antigua's environment minister, said last summer, "We have made the assumption that this is going to be an annual thing, and the same way we prepare for hurricanes we have to prepare for Sargassum."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Why waves of seaweed have been smothering Caribbean beaches

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Sargassum algae piles up along Mexico's Punta Piedra beach. From The Atlantic by Ed Yong Since 2011, blooms of Sargassum have wreaked havoc on tropical shores. A new study explains why this is likely a new normal. In 2018, as seaweed piled up on beaches throughout the Caribbean, it began to rot.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Sargassum, a stringy brown seaweed, has been wreaking havoc on the shores of the Eastern Caribbean for the last decade. While the seaweed itself plays a vital role in the biosphere, the abundance of Sargassum mats has begun to affect marine and terrestrial livelihoods adversely.

What is Sargassum?

Sargassum is a genus of large brown seaweed (a type of algae) that floats in island-like masses and never attaches to the seafloor.

Sargassum is abundant in the ocean with many leafy appendages, branches, and round, berry-like structures that make up the plant. These "berries" are gas-filled structures, called pneumatocysts, which are filled mostly with oxygen. Pneumatocysts add buoyancy to the plant structure and allow it to float on the surface.

Numerous species are distributed throughout the temperate, and tropical oceans of the world, where they generally inhabit shallow water and coral reefs, and the genus is widely known for its planktonic (free-floating) species. Sargassum mats can be up to 7 meters deep.

Where does it come from?

Sargassum is sporadic across the North Atlantic Ocean, the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico. Observations suggest that seaweed accumulations favor coastal areas in the Caribbean and off Brazil during the Northern Hemisphere Summer (May through Septemeber) and near the African coast during the Northern Hemisphere Autumn (September through December).

Recent research points to two areas in the North Atlantic Ocean where concentrations of the seaweed are at its highest - the Sargasso Sea in the North Atlantic and the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt, stretching from Western Africa to the northern coasts of South America.
The Sargasso Sea
The sea is bounded on the west by the Gulf Stream, on the north by the North Atlantic Current, on the east by the Canary Current, and on the south by the North Atlantic Equatorial Current, a clockwise-circulating system of ocean currents termed the North Atlantic Gyre. Since boundary currents define this area, its borders are dynamic, correlating roughly with the Azores High-Pressure Center for any particular season.

It lies between 70° and 40° W, and 20° to 35° N, and is approximately 1,100 kilometers wide by 3,200 kilometers long. It is believed that the highest concentration of the seaweed accumulates in the Sargasso Sea, named after the algae.

This area of seaweed seems to get nutrients and seedlings from the Gulf Stream, which traverse the Caribbean Sea into the Gulf of Mexico then returning to the Atlantic.
The Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt
By analyzing 19 years of satellite images, researchers from the Univerity of South Florida showed that a new cluster of Sargassum developed, now dubbed the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt, first appearing in 2011, and has reappeared almost every summer since (except for 2013). It's also not produced by the Sargasso Sea, which lies further north.

June 2018, when the belt was at its thickest, it contained more than 22 million tons of seaweed, and stretched entirely across the Atlantic's waters, from the Gulf of Mexico to the western coast of Africa. However, these figures are likely underestimated as the satellite data does not capture small chunks of the seaweed.

In this area, strong freshwater and nutrient discharge from the Amazon River, and stronger than usual upwelling currents near the coasts of Western Africa effectively flood the Atlantic Ocean with fertilizer for Sargassum. With moderate temperatures and the presence of a seed population that's now become ever-present, researchers now speculate that this may be the primary source for the Eastern Caribbean's severe Sargassum events.

Another factor that comes into play - increased nutrient content in the Amazon River, and the Orinoco River enters the Atlantic Ocean when the northern half of South America experiences higher rainfall and stronger runoff due to deforestation. One other source of nutrients - Saharan Dust.

Much of the research into Sargassum have remained limited due to a lack of data, with a number of conclusions remaining speculative. More on this has been reported by The Atlantic.

Sargassum Detection & Forecasting

The short term early warning detection for Trinidad and Tobago comes from East Coast Offshore in situ observations from platforms and ship reports, pilot reports directed to Air Traffic Control, the Trinidad and Tobago Meteorological Service, village councils and residents in coastal areas and emergency management agencies (TEMA, ODPM).

For further offshore detection, the chlorophyll pigment within Sargassum reflects infrared light more strongly than the surrounding seawater does. To satellites that detect infrared, sargassum appears quite distinctly.

Hence, remote sensing and geographical information systems scientists can use optical satellite imagery such as Landsat, VIIRS, and MODIS to detect Sargassum mats and use ocean current modeling to forecast landfall.

Presently, researchers at the University of South Florida (Sargassum Watch System - SaWs) and Texas A&M University (Sargassum Early Advisory System - SEAS) utilize this methodology.

The SaWs produce daily detection products, with monthly and quarterly outlook bulletins. NOAA also provides a weekly Sargassum Inundation Report. The SEAS program produces forecasts that extend as far as eight days.

However, there are limitations on data as well as mats that are difficult to detect during rough sea conditions.

Sargassum in T&T

Sargassum is a year-round visitor to Trinidad and Tobago's coastlines, predominantly affecting our Atlantic-exposed coasts on both islands.

T&T has experienced some severe sargassum events in the past, namely in 2011, 2015, and 2018.

During 2011, massive quantities of drifting Sargassum washed up throughout the Caribbean, from The Bahamas, throughout the Greater and Lesser Antilles, and Trinidad and Tobago.

2015 Sargassum Crisis

The "unprecedented" event started with a few clumps of brownish colored seaweed washing ashore along the Mayaro coastline in early April. However, this quickly transformed into large floating mats of seaweed, which changed the southeastern and Manzanilla beaches' shoreline into a virtual brown carpet bringing the fishing industry in the areas to a standstill.

It also drifted to coastal villages along the southwestern peninsula, blanketing the coastline of the rural fishing villages of Cedros and Icacos with mounds of seaweed that was described as, "an ecological disaster on par with an oil spill."

In Tobago, the event was treated as a natural disaster, with nearly TTD 4 million spent on clean up efforts by the Tobago House of Assembly. In Speyside, 1,983 truckloads with approximately 12,000 cubic feet of the seaweed were removed. Mats of Sargassum also moved in on Lambeau, Rockley Bay, Bacolet, John Dial, Hope, Argyle, and Roxborough. Several hotel bookings were canceled, and events postponed due to the seaweed event.

Mats up to two feet thick washed ashore at Pinfold Bay, King's Bay, Hope Beach, Kilgwyn, and Little Rockly Bay. In Trinidad, east coast beaches from Cumana to Guayaguayare were affected.

2017
Aerial photos of Sargassum affecting Tobago's coastlines. Photos: TEMA
Sargassum returned across Tobago by mid-2017, affecting both the Atlantic (Windward) and Leeward coasts of the island. These included Lambeau, Rockly Bay, Bacolet, John Dial, Hope, Argyle, Roxborough, and Speyside.

2018

Sargassum began to pile up across Trinidad's Mayaro coastline starting by mid-February 2018, with the seaweed observed on stretches of beach including such popular areas as Plaisance Road, Church Road, and Indian Bay.

Mounds of Sargassum were piled as high as 3 feet on the Mayaro shoreline. The seaweed adversely affected the local tourism and fishing industry due to the inaccessible beaches and foul smell of the decaying Sargassum.

By April 2018, the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Management (ODPM) said: "significant quantities" of the seaweed had been observed off the east-southeast coast, mainly in the Point Radix, Manzanilla and Mayaro areas.

Sargassum began to affect coasts of Tobago by June through July 2018, with accumulations occurring in Speyside, Roxborough, and Lambeau.

Effects & Hazards
Marine Ecology The camouflaged sargassum fish (bottom left) has adapted to live among drifting Sargassum seaweed. It is usually a small fish (top). Some other small fish, such as this juvenile puffer (bottom right), are also found in sargassum.
Sargassum, a floating habitat, provides food, refuge, and breeding grounds for an array of animals such as fishes, sea turtles, marine birds, crabs, shrimp, and more. Some animals, like the sargassum fish (in the frogfish family), live their whole lives only in this habitat.

Sargassum serves as a primary nursery area for a variety of commercially important fishes such as mahi-mahi, jacks, and amberjacks.

When Sargassum loses its buoyancy, it sinks to the seafloor, providing energy in the form of carbon to fishes and invertebrates in the deep sea, thus serving as a potentially important addition to the deep-sea food web.

Because of its ecological importance, in 2003, Sargassum, within U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone off the southern Atlantic states, was designated as Essential Fish Habitat, which affords these areas special protection.

Sargassum mats are home to more than 11 phyla and over 100 different species. There is also a total of 81 fish species (36 families represented) that reside in the Sargassum or utilize it for parts of their life cycles. Other marine organisms, such as young sea turtles, will use the Sargassum as shelter and a resource for food until they reach a size at which they can survive elsewhere.

In St Lucia, one entrepreneur is turning it into a plant tonic, while in Barbados, a fertilizer project is underway. Sargassum has a nutrient content of about 1- 1.5% nitrogen, 0.5 - 1.5% phosphorous, and 1- 2% potassium. Composting can alleviate the usage of synthetic fertilizers. Sargassum seaweeds have essential nutrients that plants need; this can also help to mitigate some of the synthetic fertilizers that are used.

During the 2015 Sargassum Crisis in Trinidad and Tobago, a local cocoa estate began using the seaweed as fertilizer.

There is also talk of bio-gas in Barbados depends on a regular supply of biomass and affordable collection costs. Tests have found some sargassum is high in arsenic, which rules out use as animal feed.

The seaweed has also been used to create paper products, cosmetics, and skincare products, cocktail drinks, and bricks for home construction.

Hazards
Disruption to Tourism
When Sargassum is present in nearshore areas (bays, beaches), venturing into the water can become dangerous and is not recommended.

When Sargassum piles up onshore, the decomposition produces hydrogen sulfide, giving off the scent of rotting eggs that repel beachgoers and tourists. In particularly severe situations, this can disrupt economies dependent on tourism.
Disruption to Fishing
Sargassum mats can stretch for kilometers across the ocean. This can prevent boats from getting into the water in nearshore areas. The seaweed itself can become entangled in fisherfolks' nets, lines, and boat propellers.
Disruption of Marine Life
The seaweed can entangle ea turtles and dolphins, fatally preventing them from surfacing for air. When it dies, while still offshore, and sank, it can smother seagrass meadows and coral reefs.

In 2015, 2 mature and juvenile hawksbill, leatherback and green turtles died as they struggled to make it to and out of Barbados nesting sites, which lay under two to three feet of Sargassum seaweed.

In the case of Trinidad, piles of seaweed on the coasts have proved detrimental to nesting for the endangered leatherback turtles, making their trek to land and nesting onshore more difficult.

This seaweed can make it near impossible for turtles to dig holes in which to lay their eggs and hatchlings also struggle to walk on the seaweed en route to the sea. Many hatchlings have died after becoming tangled and trapped in the sargassum seaweed.
Health Hazards
Hydrogen Sulfide - When washed ashore, Sargassum will decompose. Decomposing Sargassum produces hydrogen sulfide gas, which smells like rotted eggs - giving the unpleasant smell.

Hydrogen sulfide can irritate the eyes, nose, and throat. People with asthma or other breathing ailments will be more sensitive to the effects of hydrogen sulfide. In severe situations, vulnerable groups may have difficulty breathing after inhalation.

This gas, in high concentrations, can also cause the discoloration of metal faucets and corrosion of wiring in any electronic items.

Skin Irritation - Sargassum itself does not cause rashes nor stings. However, tiny organisms that live in the Sargassum like larvae or jellyfish may irritate the skin when in contact.

As of 2019, CHU Martinique has seen over 200 patients for clinical symptoms potentially associated with exposure to gaseous emissions from Sargassum decomposition. The most frequent clinical signs and symptoms include:

General reddening and irritation to the skin and eyes - mucous membrane irritation.

Upper respiratory tract infection with coughing and wheezing.

Headache, moderate abdominal pain, and intestinal transit disorders.

Safety

In most cases, Sargassum mats are not hazardous to human health. Practice common sense safety if you live along the coastline or are interacting with the seaweed.

Always supervise children at the beach.

Avoid touching or swimming near seaweed to avoid stinging by organisms that live in it.

Use gloves if you must handle seaweed.

Stay away from the beach if you experience irritation or breathing problems from hydrogen sulfide-at least until symptoms go away.

Close windows and doors if you live near the beach.

Avoid or limit your time on the beach if you have asthma or other respiratory problems.

If workers are collecting and transporting Sargassum, they should wear protective clothing, such as gloves, boots, and gas filter half masks.

Frequently Asked Questions
Beyond the unpleasant smell, can Sargassum harm me?
As mentioned above, people with asthma or other breathing ailments will be more sensitive to the effects of hydrogen sulfide (the cause of the unpleasant smell). In severe situations, sensitive people may have difficulty breathing after inhalation. Sargassum can irritate the eyes, nose, and throat.

If you are exposed to hydrogen sulfide for a long time in an enclosed space with little airflow (like some work exposures), it can affect your health. However, hydrogen sulfide levels in an area like the beach, where large amounts of airflow can dilute concentrations, is not expected to harm health.
Can I consume Sargassum?
You should not use Sargassum in cooking because it may contain large amounts of heavy metals like arsenic and cadmium.
Is it a problem to leave it to rot on the beach?
Sargassum occurs naturally on beaches, in smaller quantities. It plays a role in beach nourishment and is an essential element of shoreline stability. For example, dune plants need nutrients from the sargassum, and sea birds depend on the sea life carried in the sargassum for food. During decomposition, there will inevitably be a smell and insects around. The experience in locations that have left the sargassum on the beach is that it will eventually get washed away or buried in the next storm, with the rain easing the smell. Leaving sargassum on the beach has proven to be the most straightforward approach, also avoiding potential negative impacts associated with beach cleaning.
What can we do about it?
In embracing the challenge of sargassum, good communications between agencies and the private sector, with the press, and with locals and visitors is essential to making sure that everyone knows where clean beaches can be found.

In many countries, the law does not require agencies to remove seaweed since it's not marine debris but is a natural part of the ecosystem. Where private sector capacity exists to clean beaches, coastal managers agree on balancing the importance of sargassum for natural processes and as life-giving nourishment for beaches and seabirds, with pressure to address adverse impacts on communities. The next step is to establish clear policies about where, when and how to clean beaches,

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Sargassum, a stringy brown seaweed, has been wreaking havoc on the shores of the Eastern Caribbean for the last decade. While the seaweed itself plays a vital role in the biosphere, the abundance of Sargassum mats has begun to affect marine and terrestrial livelihoods adversely.

# data[].attributes.headline
SARGASSUM: The biggest seaweed bloom in the world

# data[].attributes.subject
SARGASSUM: The biggest seaweed bloom in the world

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
A floating mass of seaweed stretching from West Africa to the Gulf of Mexico is now the biggest seaweed bloom in the world, according to satellite observations.

The algal explosion in the Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea could signify a new normal, say US scientists.

Deforestation and fertiliser use are among the factors thought to be driving the growth.

The seaweed has inundated beaches, causing an environmental nuisance.

As of June 2018, the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt, as scientists call it, extended 8,850km (5,500 miles) and was made up of over 20 million tonnes of biomass.

"The ocean's chemistry must have changed in order for the blooms to get so out of hand," said Dr Chuanmin Hu of the University of South Florida College of Marine Science, who led the study, published in Science.

The researchers used a 19-year record of satellite data to study the Sargassum, which has bloomed every year from 2011 to 2018, with the exception of 2013.

2011 appeared to be a tipping point, when the algae arrived en mass on shorelines.

'A rotten egg smell': Mexico's seaweed infestation

The seaweed deluge hitting Caribbean shores

Eel migration study tells 'romantic' tale.

"This is all ultimately related to climate change because it affects precipitation and ocean circulation and even human activities, but what we've shown is that these blooms do not occur because of increased water temperature," said Dr Hu.

"They are probably here to stay."

Some species of Sargassum - a group of seaweed - live on the ocean's surface, where they attract fish, birds and turtles.

"In the open ocean, Sargassum provides great ecological values, serving as a habitat and refuge for various marine animals," said co-researcher Dr Mengqiu Wang.

However, too much of the seaweed can smother corals and seagrasses, and end up on beaches, releasing gas that smells like rotten eggs.

Some 1,000km (621 miles) of Mexican beaches have been impacted this year. Removal is time-consuming, expensive, and not always effective.

What is sargassum?

Stringy, brown seaweed that spends its life floating

Traditionally starts life in the Gulf of Mexico and is pushed by currents out into the North Atlantic to float in the Sargasso Sea

Forms rafts that serve as vital feeding and breeding grounds for marine life

In small amounts, it can help nourish beaches.

Follow Helen on Twitter.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A floating mass of seaweed stretching from West Africa to the Gulf of Mexico is now the biggest seaweed bloom in the world, according to satellite observations. The algal explosion in the Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea could signify a new normal, say US scientists.

# data[].attributes.headline
SARGASSUM: a seaweed deluge hitting Caribbean shores

# data[].attributes.subject
SARGASSUM: a seaweed deluge hitting Caribbean shores

# data[].attributes.body
What is Sargassum?
Challenges and potential solutions

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
When waves of sargassum - a type of seaweed - washed up on Eastern Caribbean shores seven years ago, people hoped it was a one-off. Matted piles swamped coastlines from Tobago to Anguilla.

"In 2011 it was the first time we'd seen it," says Professor Hazel Oxenford, an expert in fisheries biology and management at the University of the West Indies.

"It came as a complete shock and no-one had a clue what to do with it."

Three years later the seaweed returned, in larger quantities. Over several months, it made its way through the Caribbean to southern Mexico, where its impact on Cancun's beaches made international headlines.

Now it is happening again and everything suggests 2018 could be the worst year yet.

"On satellite images the quantity that's being picked up is greater than ever before," says Prof Oxenford, who is based in Barbados.

"Certainly we've had it for longer and in huge amounts. And some of the islands are getting it for the first time."

Caribbean governments are acknowledging that the seaweed, which impacts on tourism, fisheries and wildlife, could pose a long-term threat.

"The same way we prepare for hurricanes, we have to prepare for sargassum," Antigua's environment minister said recently.

What is sargassum?

Stringy, brown seaweed that spends its life floating

Traditionally starts life in the Gulf of Mexico and is pushed by currents out into the North Atlantic to float in the Sargasso Sea

Forms rafts that serve as vital feeding and breeding grounds for marine life

Not harmful to humans and in small amounts, it can help nourish beaches

In Barbados, sargassum has been hitting southern and eastern shores since May.

"You see metres high of sargassum piled up on shore but you're also seeing it in the ocean," says Iris Monnereau, a Barbados-based fisheries expert with the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

"Sargassum mats can be up to seven metres deep."

Stinking mess

On shore, as well as blocking beaches and repelling swimmers, the sargassum stinks as it decomposes.

Removal is time-consuming, expensive and can damage the beaches. Incoming rafts smother sea grasses and coral reefs, while fishermen struggle to get in the water.

"The sargassum tangles up their motors, their engines, their nets, their lines," says Ms Monnereau.

Catches are affected - in sargassum years flying fish numbers have fallen significantly, although it is not clear why.

Dolphinfish (or mahi-mahi) are being caught much earlier in their development, prompting fears for the fishery down the line.

There is also the turtle population. Nesting sites can be blocked by sargassum or damaged by removal work - and the sea is no safe refuge.

"For us, the worst year we had for sargassum still remains 2015," says Carla Daniel of Barbados Sea Turtle Project.

"We had a large single raft come in at Long Beach with a foraging turtle population in the water. The raft came in, they became entangled and unable to surface, and over 40 turtles died."

Public perception is key

Then there is tourism. In one extreme case, a resort in Antigua was forced to close its doors until 30 September.

"The issue is that we never know what it's going to be like - we can have a week or two weeks where it's very clear and then all of a sudden overnight it washes in," says Larry Basham of Elite Island Resorts, which runs St James's Club.

"We've spent an ungodly amount of money on tractors, heavy equipment, we've tried a number of different barrier systems on the water, none of which has worked well."

The group has other resorts on the island which are not affected. In fact, many beaches and resorts are clear. The sargassum is mostly affecting southern and eastern coasts and in the Eastern Caribbean, many of the main tourist beaches face west.

A quick glance at sites like Facebook and TripAdvisor, nonetheless, shows tourists are concerned. Public perception is a factor in the impact and some international headlines "shouting that the Caribbean is consumed in rotting seaweed" have not painted an accurate picture, Prof Oxenford says.

New bloom

The reason southern and eastern shores are worst hit lies in the seaweed's source. In 2011 people initially assumed the Caribbean influx had, for some reason, drifted from its traditional home in the Sargasso Sea.

But now research indicates the sargassum is from a new source - an oval band stretching from the Brazilian coast to West Africa.

James Franks, of the University of Southern Mississippi's Gulf Coast Research Laboratory and co-author of a 2016 study on the subject, says the sargassum circulates through this band, consolidates off Brazil and then is periodically released northwards by currents into the Caribbean.

But he says it is not yet clear what has caused this huge new bloom. "We believe that it initially began as a result of shifts we observed in the climatological and meteorological indices - the waters were extremely warm in 2010; there were some shifts in the currents and winds," says Mr Franks.

He points to nutrients both from falling Saharan dust and pushed up from the sea floor as possible factors, but says more research is needed to establish exact triggers.

One major question is how long the phenomenon will continue.

Satellite images from the University of South Florida's (USF) Optical Oceanography Laboratory currently show historically high monthly levels of sargassum in the region.

"It is likely this bloom will occur until September this year," says Dr Mengqiu Wang of USF.

But it is not clear what will happen next year, or the year after. Mr Franks says prediction strategies will be very important in planning for influxes but they are in "the elementary stage of development at this point".

Lessons have been learned since 2011, however. Removal techniques have improved and experts have written management guidelines.

In Barbados, for example, the grabs used to load sugar cane onto trucks have proved good at picking up sargassum without removing sand from beaches.

A company in Guadeloupe has developed a boat which collects it using a conveyor belt.

Commercial uses of sargassum are also being explored.

In St Lucia one entrepreneur is turning it into a plant tonic, while in Barbados a fertiliser project is underway.

There is also talk of bio-gas but Prof Oxenford says this depends on a regular supply of biomass and affordable collection costs. Tests have found some sargassum is high in arsenic, which rules out use as animal feed.

There are opportunities, she says, but they take time to develop.

Meanwhile, sargassum continues to arrive. "It is definitely a very large challenge, and a challenge that goes way beyond the capacity of small island states," says Ms Monnereau of the FAO.

"They need support... they are suffering. But every year they are getting better."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Sargassum: The seaweed deluge hitting Caribbean shores

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
When waves of sargassum - a type of seaweed - washed up on Eastern Caribbean shores seven years ago, people hoped it was a one-off. Matted piles swamped coastlines from Tobago to Anguilla. "In 2011 it was the first time we'd seen it," says Professor Hazel Oxenford, an expert in fisheries biology and management at the University of the West Indies.

# data[].attributes.headline
SARGASSUM: Humans have created a new natural disaster. Barbados

# data[].attributes.subject
SARGASSUM: Humans have created a new natural disaster. Barbados

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
"Beach, eat, drink, dance, repeat." These are Rihanna's favorite things to do in Barbados. In a June 7 interview with Conde Nast Traveller, the pop star gushed over her home country, a small island nation in the middle of the Caribbean. "When I'm in Barbados, all is right with the world," she said. But not all was right with Barbados.

The same day, the local The Daily Nation newspaper reported on an "invasion of the Sargassum seaweed"-a brown, leafy algae that had washed up in thick mats on the white-sand beaches of the island's eastern shores. The next day, the country's government declared it a national emergency. Seen from afar, the bloom looked like a coppery oil spill slicking the sea. But a closer look revealed dead wildlife entangled within it.

The June Sargassum invasion in Barbados claimed the lives of three sea turtles, six dolphins, and "countless" fish and eels, The Daily Nation reported. But surely more have perished in the months since, as sheets of the bulbous-tipped seaweed-sometimes several feet deep-have become regular visitors to the country's eastern and southern shorelines.

"We've had mass mortality of sea turtles that have gotten trapped under ever-thickening piles," said Hazel Oxenford, a Barbados-based fisheries biologist at the University of the West Indies. "When the turtles try to come up for air, they drown." Because these Sargassum beachings are primarily happening during nesting season, which runs from March until the end of October, baby turtles attempting to crawl from their eggs toward the ocean are also getting caught in it.

Barbados isn't alone. In the last six months, more than 700 beaches across the Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea, and Gulf of Mexico have been hit with mass beachings. Mexico, Belize, Guadeloupe, Martinique, and the British Virgin Islands are covered in it, taking a toll on tourism and fishermen alike. "The fishermen could not go to sea for two or three days," a worker in Dominica told Hakai Magazine. "They couldn't get the boats out because it was so thick." South Florida, too, has seen an " assault." It's the worst year for Sargassum beachings ever.

T here's not a lot of history to trace, though. Sargassum algae only started becoming a real problem seven years ago. T he true origin of these mass invasions, and the cumulative impacts of them, are thus not fully known. Some experts speculate there could be positive impacts along with the negative ones . But much of the story of this new phenomenon remains a mystery.

Sargassum researchers do appear confident in two things, though. The first is that these algal blooms constitute a new type of natural disaster-one that, like hurricanes, can be expected every single year. The second is that this new risk is not entirely natural. Humans have made these blooms far more likely.

There are more than 100 different species of Sargassum in the world, but two types in particular keep popping up on Caribbean beaches: Sargassum natans and Sargassum fluitans. Unlike most other types of seaweed, which begin life attached to the ocean floor, these species reproduce vegetatively on the ocean's surface. They're also thought to originate in the Sargasso Sea in the North Atlantic, the only named sea that never touches land; it's bound only by ocean currents, leaving the sea itself relatively still.

The floating mats of Sargassum within the Sargasso Sea are so vast and thick, they often look like land masses. O ut there, that's always been a great thing. As the National Ocean Service explains, Sargassum mats provide " essential habitat for shrimp, crab, fish, and other marine species that have adapted specifically to this floating algae." Threatened and endangered eels, sharks, and dolphinfish spawn there; birds use it for food. Commercial fish like tuna also feed on the algae, making the Sargasso Sea a fisherman's dream.

Problems with Sargassum only started to arise in 2011. Seemingly out of nowhere, the seaweed began to amass in huge quantities on "beaches across the Caribbean, trapping sea turtles and filling the air with the stench of rotting egg," according to a report in the journal Science. The foul odor stems from hydrogen sulfide, which the seaweed releases when it rots on land.

The 2011 event was originally considered a freak occurrence. "We thought it was all over," Oxenford said. "But it came back in 2014, and then again in 2015 in a big way, and it spread much further." This year, the Sargassum onslaught has stretched out over more than 1,000 square miles of the Caribbean Sea alone. And it's not the only sea affected this year, according to a map of 2018 beachings.

Where did it all come from? Naturally, scientists originally assumed the Sargasso Sea. But in 2016, a team of researchers published a paper asserting it came from a huge patch of Sargassum floating in the tropical Atlantic, east of Brazil. "None of it ever tracked northward into the Sargasso Sea," University of Southern Mississippi marine biologist James Franks, who worked on the paper, told Science. He believes ocean currents are sweeping this new source of Sargassumup the Brazilian coast toward the Caribbean.

Brian LaPointe, an algal bloom expert at Florida Atlantic University, said he also believes the tropical region near Brazil is the nursery from where it all came.* His research asserts the seaweed has a "dynamic existence," continually moving from the equatorial currents toward the Caribbean and the Gulf Stream, with some eventually settling in the Sargasso Sea.

LaPointe considers all the Sargassum beaching events to be part of one big algal bloom: "T he largest harmful algal bloom on our planet," he said. And if he knows one thing about algal blooms, it's that they thrive off of two things humans keep putting into the ocean: heat and nitrogen.

More studies will be required to fully understand Sargassum's rapid spread, but a growing number of researchers feel comfortable pointing to humans as a culprit.

"This is another symptom of climate change and ocean pollution," Oxenford said, pointing to how humans have warmed the ocean. As InsideClimate explains, "More than 90 percent of the excess heat trapped by greenhouse gas emissions has been absorbed into the oceans that cover two-thirds of the planet's surface." In particular, the heat content of the ocean surface-where Sargassum grows-has increased dramatically since the 1950s. A 2017 study published in Biogeosciences cites "high anomalously unprecedented positive sea surface temperature" as a potential factor in the blooms.

Lew Gramer, a marine scientist at the University of Miami, has also described a possible "correlation" between climate change and Sargassum's spread due to changes in ocean circulation. "An unusual pattern of winds and ocean-surface circulation over the Sargasso Sea in late 2009 and early 2010 preceded the first mass beachings," he said. "And this pattern actually coincided with an anomaly in a sea-level air pressure index that is also studied by climate scientists, the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO)." Some researchers have linked changes in the NAO to global warming.

Another factor appears to be nitrogen, which humans have continuously poured into the ocean via fertilizer runoff and overflowing sewage systems. Nitrogen pollution is widely known to feed algal blooms, including Sargassum, and is a possible cause of the red tide plaguing the Gulf coast of Florida.

The main source of this pollution is still in dispute. The 2017 Biogeosciences study, for example, asserts the pollution responsible came from agricultural runoff into the Amazon River, as well as " deforestation, agroindustrial and urban activities in the Amazonian forest."

LaPointe, however, believes the Sargassum infestations are fed by all land-based nutrient pollution-from the Amazon, but also the Congo and the Mississippi, among other places. "We have greatly altered the nitrogen cycle on this planet," he said, adding that local sources of nutrient pollution near Sargassum beachings are exacerbating the issue. In places like Florida and the Caribbean, those sources are most often inadequate wastewater infrastructure. "Human sewage is creating a much bigger role than anyone wants to admit," he said.

If one thing is clear, though, it's that the people who helped cause Sargassum's spread are not all affected by Sargassum beachings. For Oxenford, that's a frustrating reality. "It's yet another man-made problem that's been thrown at the Caribbean that isn't our doing," she said. But if the Caribbean and other affected areas are to thrive, they must figure out how to fix it-or at least prevent it from causing more damage.

Nancy Jones Peterson has seen the impact of Sargassum beachings up close. Earlier this summer, as she walked the beach at Phipps Ocean Park in Palm Beach, Florida, she came across a small but thick mat of brown algae. The registered nurse took a closer look, and found three dead baby sea turtles.

"There they are," she said in a video posted to Facebook, her voice shaking. "The poor babies tried to get out to the ocean, and all these seaweed-caught up in the seaweed and they didn't make it out."

The Barbados Sea Turtle Project has been documenting similar discoveries on its Facebook page. In one video, a woman digs out an adult turtle from a pile of Sargassum even taller than she is.

This phenomenon has Oxenford particularly worried about the health of local marine environments. "As the seaweed stats to rot, the bacterial population grows enormously and you have huge oxygen demands," she said. "It starts suffocating organisms." The thickness of the seaweed mats also block sunlight from getting to sea grass and corals, threatening those organisms, too.

But Oxenford is adamant that not all is lost for local marine life or the tourism and fishing industries. Far from it. "We still have our sunshine and our clear water and beaches with no sargassum," she said.

Due to ocean currents, Sargassum beachings are also only really happening on eastern and southern parts of Caribbean islands; the western and northern shores are clear. Sea turtle populations overall should be able to survive the beachings, as many nesting sites are not on affected beaches. Some tourist towns in Mexico have installed floating barriers to keep the seaweed from washing ashore. The U.S. has sent two Sargassum boats to help with cleanup in Quintana Roo region of Mexico, which includes Cancun and Playa del Carmen.

"I see this as a solvable problem," Oxenford said. But not solvable in the sense that the Sargassum will ever go away. "It's the same way hurricanes are not solvable," she said. "But we'll learn to live with it." Living with it will require a new system where algal blooms are treated like hurricanes. Blooms will be predicted and forecasted, with different levels of alerts to denote the scale of the Sargassum event. Countries will need to implement management and response plans-and fund them appropriately. Ideally, Caribbean countries won't have to pay for all of it, since they're aren't solely or even largely to blame for it.

It's a daunting task, for sure, but Oxenford isn't alone in looking at the silver lining. On a different walk on the beach a few days later, Peterson found another sheet of Sargassum-this one containing whole nest of dead hatchlings. "Around 50 to 100, they were all in the seaweed," she said.

But this time, one was moving. There was no time to waste. Immediately, she said, she took it to the Loggerhead Marine Life Center in Juno Beach, where it she was told it would be rehabilitated and released. Her video from that day has a happy ending.

*Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly described Brian LaPointe's research on the origin of massive Sargassum blooms. He does not believe they originated in the Sargasso Sea.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Humans Have Created a New Natural Disaster

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
"Beach, eat, drink, dance, repeat." These are Rihanna's favorite things to do in Barbados. In a June 7 interview with Conde Nast Traveller, the pop star gushed over her home country, a small island nation in the middle of the Caribbean. "When I'm in Barbados, all is right with the world," she said.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
An infestation of a seaweed-like algae along some of Mexico's most visited Caribbean beaches has pitted the local community against the president, who has described the problem as a "minor issue".

In a long-running issue attributed by many researchers to climate change, sargassum has covered the popular white sandbanks, turning the pristine waters brown and leaving a strong odour as it decomposes, alarming residents, businesses and, obviously, tourists.

In recent years, hotels have placed nets to try to keep the sargassum in the water, away from the beaches, while workers and volunteers clean up the shore with shovels and barrows, collecting up to one tonne every day, according to the local government.

But removal is time-consuming and expensive and, for many, ineffective.

Some 1,000km (621 miles) of Mexican beaches have been impacted this year, including Cancún, Playa del Carmen and Tulum in Quintana Roo state, local officials say.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador irritated many when, while in Cancún on Monday, he said the seaweed was a "minor issue" and that he was not worried about it causing major damage to the tourist-dependent economies. Prior to his visit, residents wrote a letter complaining that authorities had not acknowledged the real scale of this "serious situation".

"Most months of the year our beaches have lost the crystalline colour of their waters and their shades of blue and turquoise green; sea grass and fish die because of the lack of light and oxygen, the turtles and the coral reef are also affected," they said, according to Turquesa News website (in Spanish).

"It produces an acid gas with a rotten egg smell [when it decomposes] that can be harmful to human health."

Despite downplaying the issue - which is likely to affect the region's tourism - Mr López Obrador said the government was working to address the issue and pledged "all the resources that are needed".

Rafael Ojeda, head of the Mexican Navy, said authorities would spend $2.7m (£2.1m) to build four boats designed to remove seaweed as well as new barriers to retain it.

The infestation has worsened every year since it was first reported, in 2014. Cleaning up the beaches this year will cost $36.7m, according to the Cancún-Puerto Morelos hotels association.

Last month, the Quintana Roo government declared a state of emergency over the issue, describing it an "imminent natural disaster". But the problem, which also affects other parts of the Caribbean, is unlikely to go away anytime soon.

"Because of global climate change we may have increased upwelling, increased air deposition, or increased nutrient source from rivers, so all three may have increased the recent large amounts of sargassum," Chuanmin Hu, a professor of oceanography at South Florida University's College of Marine Science, told AP news agency.

All pictures subject to copyright.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Mexico's top Caribbean beaches hit by seaweed infestation

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
An infestation of a seaweed-like algae along some of Mexico's most visited Caribbean beaches has pitted the local community against the president, who has described the problem as a "minor issue". In a long-running issue attributed by many researchers to climate change, sargassum has covered the popular white sandbanks, turning the pristine waters brown and leaving a strong odour as it decomposes, alarming residents, businesses and, obviously, tourists.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
"We've been dreaming of making ecological footwear for nine years now. It's taken four or five years of trial and error to make this patented Mexican fibre from plastic bottles, and then six-eight months ago we managed to make ecological organic footwear with sargassum," he told reporters in the Cancun holiday resort on the Caribbean coast.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
"We've been dreaming of making ecological footwear for nine years now. It's taken four or five years of trial and error to make this patented Mexican fibre from plastic bottles, and then six-eight months ago we managed to make ecological organic footwear with sargassum," he told reporters in the Cancun holiday resort on the Caribbean coast.

# data[].attributes.headline
Our solution to Sargassum seaweed pollution

# data[].attributes.subject
Our solution to Sargassum seaweed pollution

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Our floating high-tech Sargabarrier©

Certified EEC and ISO

Stops Sargassum, plastics and detritus

Fine mesh poses no risk to marine life

Resistant because it lets waves and seawater through like a strainer

Extending 3.5 ft. above the ocean, debris won't overflow

The strongest and most efficient barriers on the market; tensile rupture: 8 tons

Can be installed in any ocean, anchored on various sea beds

Fully adaptable for optimal positioning accounting for sea floor, currents, prevailing winds

Easily disassembled for maintenance and during hurricane season

Red and blue visibility colors, other colors are available

UV resistant

Secure markings for swimmers and small craft

Our Sargaboat™
and Sargatrailer™

The best adapted solution to collect algae and debris such as plastic

Stable, easy to maneuver dual motor catamaran type, light and durable

Heavy-duty conveyor with several loading speeds, robust and adjustable

Custom options available (loading crane, rails for trailers, etc.)

Sargaboat™ can harvest more than 500 MT in an 8-hour workday

Autonomous trailers equipped with an engine

Trailers can be switched in minutes, easy to use

The Sargaboat™ works with our Sargabarrier™ to collect algae

Depending on your location and opportunities based on local needs, our experts are in constant contact with researchers to determine the best derivatives. We work to find solutions for Sargassum transformation adapted to the needs and opportunities present in the countries where we operate. We specialize in drying, processing and marketing algae and transforming to reuse.

Recycled Products

Very rich compost

Fertilizer

Bio plastics

Biogas

Cosmetics

Food additives

Biostimulant products

Addressing a "natural" phenomenon means understanding its origins and developing a solution that joins with the natural rhythm of the ecosystems at play. Arguably, the recent proliferation blooms of Sargassum are not wholly a natural problem. Change has been fast and dramatic for local populations and resort and hotel operators relying on tourists across the Caribbean region. With large Sargassum outbreaks that started in 2011 and saw profusions in 2015 and 2018, gulf Sargassum weed, as it is also known, has become a recurrent problem.

Not to be confused with the Sargasso Sea, a natural phenomenon of Sargassum rafts in the Atlantic Ocean formed in the gyre created by four currents between the Azores and the Eastern United States and host to marine life and eels far from land, the recent Sargassum influx imperiling fragile ecosystems and livelihoods across the entire Caribbean region owes its vigor to climactic influences from various sources, many of which are man-made, such as nutrients from agricultural fertilizers and wastewater from cities that finds its way into the sea. Intensive human activity is in large part to blame.

However, reversing such processes takes concerted action that can be difficult to implement and requires concerted political will.

We offer tailor-made services to determine the best solutions according to the estimated algae quantities, the currents, the type of seabed, the immediate environment, the coral reefs, the laws and permits in force in each of the country. We regularly collaborate with the Mexican Navy and Mexican government authorities to develop effective solutions for Mexico.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Certified EEC and ISO Stops Sargassum, plastics and detritus Fine mesh poses no risk to marine life Resistant because it lets waves and seawater through like a strainer Extending 3.5 ft.

# data[].attributes.headline
SARGASSUM: French research project in the French Caribbean islands

# data[].attributes.subject
SARGASSUM: French research project in the French Caribbean islands

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
1. Home

2. Press Area

Floating Sargassum, Petit cul-de-sac Marin, Guadeloupe.
© P. J. Lopez

Saint-Félix, Le Gosier, Guadeloupe.
© J. Lambourdière, D. Devault, P.J. Lopez

Le Marigot, Martinique.
© F. Menez, D. Devault, P.J. Lopez

Sargassum barrier, Frégate Est, Le François, Martinique.
© F. Menez, D. Devault, P.J. Lopez

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
A research project in the French West Indies for repurposing Sargassum seaweed

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Since 2011, two species of Sargassum, Sargassum fluitans and Sargassum natans, have been proliferating in the North Atlantic, and periodically washing up in massive fashion on Caribbean coasts. While these seaweeds have always existed, the major groundings of recent years across Atlantic coasts stretching from the Caribbean to South America are entirely unprecedented.

# data[].attributes.headline
SARGASSUM: French research project in the French Caribbean islands Video

# data[].attributes.subject
SARGASSUM: French research project in the French Caribbean islands Video

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Les Sargasses - Projet de recherche aux Antilles françaises

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Invasions de sargasses sur les côtes antillaises (Guadeloupe et Martinique). ©Pascal-Jean Lopez

# data[].attributes.headline
SARGASSUM: The biggest seaweed bloom in the world

# data[].attributes.subject
SARGASSUM: The biggest seaweed bloom in the world

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
A floating mass of seaweed stretching from West Africa to the Gulf of Mexico is now the biggest seaweed bloom in the world, according to satellite observations.

The algal explosion in the Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea could signify a new normal, say US scientists.

Deforestation and fertiliser use are among the factors thought to be driving the growth.

The seaweed has inundated beaches, causing an environmental nuisance.

As of June 2018, the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt, as scientists call it, extended 8,850km (5,500 miles) and was made up of over 20 million tonnes of biomass.

"The ocean's chemistry must have changed in order for the blooms to get so out of hand," said Dr Chuanmin Hu of the University of South Florida College of Marine Science, who led the study, published in Science.

The researchers used a 19-year record of satellite data to study the Sargassum, which has bloomed every year from 2011 to 2018, with the exception of 2013.

2011 appeared to be a tipping point, when the algae arrived en mass on shorelines.

'A rotten egg smell': Mexico's seaweed infestation

The seaweed deluge hitting Caribbean shores

Eel migration study tells 'romantic' tale.

"This is all ultimately related to climate change because it affects precipitation and ocean circulation and even human activities, but what we've shown is that these blooms do not occur because of increased water temperature," said Dr Hu.

"They are probably here to stay."

Some species of Sargassum - a group of seaweed - live on the ocean's surface, where they attract fish, birds and turtles.

"In the open ocean, Sargassum provides great ecological values, serving as a habitat and refuge for various marine animals," said co-researcher Dr Mengqiu Wang.

However, too much of the seaweed can smother corals and seagrasses, and end up on beaches, releasing gas that smells like rotten eggs.

Some 1,000km (621 miles) of Mexican beaches have been impacted this year. Removal is time-consuming, expensive, and not always effective.

What is sargassum?

Stringy, brown seaweed that spends its life floating

Traditionally starts life in the Gulf of Mexico and is pushed by currents out into the North Atlantic to float in the Sargasso Sea

Forms rafts that serve as vital feeding and breeding grounds for marine life

In small amounts, it can help nourish beaches.

Follow Helen on Twitter.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A floating mass of seaweed stretching from West Africa to the Gulf of Mexico is now the biggest seaweed bloom in the world, according to satellite observations. The algal explosion in the Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea could signify a new normal, say US scientists.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Today we are at the Newseum in Washington D.C. - where the history of free expression is explained and defended.

The first printing presses arrived in the United States in the mid-1600s, marking an important step in the history of America's free press.

A free press is important in democratic society. It allows citizens to speak freely and criticize the country's leaders without fear. Some journalists have even lost their lives for that right.

But, it can also lead to news that is false. Last year, a fake news story about a Washington pizza restaurant went viral, causing a gunman to open fire at the business.

One of the most common terms we hear today is " fake news." The public and politicians use it to talk about the news reports they do not think are accurate.

While people have paid much attention to the term in recent years, the problem is not new. False news reports have been around since modern journalism started.

Today, information moves around us in many forms, every hour of every day. Even if we do not seek out news on our own, we often receive it anyway, instantly, on our phones.

So how can we manage this mountain of information so that fake news does not mislead us?

We believe this requires news literacy. News literacy is the ability to use critical thinking skills to judge news reports. Are they credible? Can you rely on the reports to be true?

We use real media examples to teach useful skills and methods to recognize journalism over other kinds of information. We examine the differences between facts and what people report in the media as truth.

The course provides tools to identify real and reliable news sources. And, it demonstrates ways to separate news from opinion.

Professors at Stony Brook University in New York created the News Literacy education program. We will share it with you in simple English on VOA Learning English.

The need for news literacy is possibly greater now than ever before. Learning this important skill can give us the power to take full control of our own search for the truth.

Because as we've seen many times before, some news presented as truth can actually turn out to be completely false.
This lesson is based on the News Literacy course at the Center for News Literacy at Stony Brook University. For more information on how to become a news literate citizen, go to The Center for News Literacy.
_________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

fake - adj. not true or real

accurate - adj. free from mistakes or errors

mislead - v. to cause someone to believe something that is not true

consumers - n. people who buy things

media - n. television, newspapers and other sources of information

reliable -adj. able to be trusted to do what is necessary

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
News Literacy Introduction: News Through Time

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Today we are at the Newseum in Washington D.C. - where the history of free expression is explained and defended. The first printing presses arrived in the United States in the mid-1600s, marking an important step in the history of America's free press. A free press is important in democratic society.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
News Literacy Lesson 1: Real News vs. Fake News

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
VOA Learning English presents news, features, audio, video and multimedia about the U.S. and the world in American English. Stories are written at the intermediate and upper-beginner level. Words are spoken one-third slower for ESL learners.

# data[].attributes.headline
News Part 2 Verification, Independence, Accountability

# data[].attributes.subject
News Part 2 Verification, Independence, Accountability

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
What is legitimate journalism? It is news that has been verified by an independent organization that is accountable for the information.

Verification, independence and accountability are the characteristics of quality journalism. Let's examine Verification. It's the process of establishing that information is truthful and accurate.

Journalists collect information with the goal of providing the most accurate version of events. They talk to sources, dig through information, and provide accurate documents to back up their stories.

In 2004, the CBS News broadcast 60 Minutes II claimed it had documents critical of the National Guard service of President George W. Bush. But CBS News failed to authenticate the documents and they were, in fact, forgeries. Several journalists, including anchorman Dan Rather, were fired.

Independence. It is a freedom from control or influence, combined with impartiality.

Independence includes objectivity, fairness and balance. But what is fairness? What is balance? And how do we determine that?

Let's take, for example the myth that the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine is the cause of autism. This claim has been completely discredited, yet several Hollywood celebrities continue to endorse it, some backing an anti-vaccine film made by pseudo-scientists. Should journalists reporting on autism give time to the position of the anti-vaccine believers? No. They are not scientists. Their "opinions" cannot be balanced against scientific knowledge and certainty. Both sides are not equal and it is misleading to treat them equally.

Accountability. The process of taking responsibility for the reporting.

News organizations should be clearly identified and journalists' contact information, easily obtainable. But most importantly, any news organization or journalist should be prepared to admit errors when they've been made.

In 2005, the New York Times asked veteran reporter Judith Miller to resign after it became clear her reporting about the Iraq war was wrong. The Times wrote an extraordinary critique of its own editorial process. That is also accountability.

Verification, Independence and Accountability. These are the three main elements of journalism and what distinguishes it from other kinds of information.

In our next lesson, we will look more closely at verification.
This lesson is based on the News Literacy class at the Center for News Literacy at Stony Brook University. For more on how to become a news literate citizen, go to The Center for News Literacy.
Words in This Story

legitimate - adj. real truthful

accountable - adj. take responsibility for

characteristic - n. a feature of something

accurate - adj. truthful, correct

forgeries - n. something that is created to falsely look real

Impartiality - n. without any interest, seeing both sides equally

myth - n. In our next lesson, we will look more closely at verification.

autism - n. a condition or disorder that begins in childhood and that causes problems in forming relationships and in communicating with other people

mislead - v. to purposely give a false idea to someone

error - n. a mistake, something incorrect

critique - n. a careful judgment about something's quality

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
News Literacy Lesson 2: Verification, Independence, Accountability

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
What is legitimate journalism? It is news that has been verified by an independent organization that is accountable for the information. Verification, independence and accountability are the characteristics of quality journalism. Let's examine Verification. It's the process of establishing that information is truthful and accurate.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Let's examine the verification process a little closer. Becoming a literate news consumer requires us to be able to identify legitimate journalism. Legitimate journalism seeks truth. But how do we define that truth?

Truthful reporting comes from using facts that can be confirmed. All the details may not be known. But a news story should include the latest version of events based on verified facts.

Truth is a journey that evolves over time. It is not possible for us to read one newspaper on one day and get a complete picture of world events. We must seek out multiple sources: newspapers, magazines, television and - yes - the internet.

In Iran recently, massive street demonstrations took place throughout the country.

When news organizations reported on these events, the evidence was clear. Images of the protests appeared on television, in newspapers and on the internet. Literate news consumers could be certain the demonstrations took place.

But not all evidence is captured on digital equipment. Sometimes evidence comes in the most unreliable form - memory. It is well known that if a police officer interviews 10 witnesses about a crime, he will receive 10 different versions of events. Yet all were witnesses. A journalist seeking the truth should interview as many witnesses as possible in search of the true story.

One of the most exciting developments in the "smart phone age" is the ability to record events as they happen.

In May of 2017 former North Charleston, South Carolina police officer Michael Slager admitted in court to shooting and killing Walter Scott. But two years earlier, Officer Slager stated that Scott, pulled over for a traffic violation, had grabbed for his gun. Many news organizations reported Slager's version of the incident. But the next day, a video emerged clearly showing that Slager was lying. He shot Scott in the back as he ran away. News organizations quickly corrected and updated their earlier reporting.

Verification is the responsibility of both news organizations and journalists. But a literate news consumer also checks often for updates or for corrections in stories because he realizes that sometimes - even journalists make mistakes.

Next, we will examine balance and fairness.
This lesson is based on the News Literacy class at the Center for News Literacy at Stony Brook University. For more on how to become a news literate citizen, go to The Center for News Literacy.
Words in This Story

verification - n. to quickly take and hold (someone or something) with your hand or arms

literate - adj. one who can read, write and understand

consumer - n. one who uses or buys things

multiple - adj. many, more than one or two

grab - v. to quickly take and hold (someone or something) with your hand or arms

emerge -v. to become known or apparent

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
News Literacy Lesson 3: Establishing the Truth

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Let's examine the verification process a little closer. Becoming a literate news consumer requires us to be able to identify legitimate journalism. Legitimate journalism seeks truth. But how do we define that truth? Truthful reporting comes from using facts that can be confirmed. All the details may not be known.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Media organizations often use words like "balance" and "fairness." They want to say that they are reporting without showing favoritism or making judgments. Balance simply means giving equal time to both sides of an issue, or not giving one side more importance.

For example, let's consider a report about abortion bills winding their way through U.S. legislatures. A balanced report will give equal time to both supporters of abortion and those opposed to the operation. However, journalists must verify the facts put forth by each side. It is not balance to allow both sides to make any statement supporting their case. This can perpetuate fake news and leaves the reader or viewer without solid information.

"Will you just shut up for a minute and let me finish? Pardon me, sir, you don't get to tell me to shut up and national television."

Shouting and arguing does not bring balance to an issue and it certainly isn't journalism.

But journalists must be careful that seeking balance doesn't lead to unfair reporting, or setting up an unfair moral equivalency or balance, between unequal sides in an argument.

Actually, objectivity means reporting the truth, it means getting everybody's truth and reporting it, but never creating a false moral equivalence. Never saying all sides are equal because that's not the truth, false. That's a cop-out, it's a lie.

Journalist Christiane Amanpour is talking about the Bosnian War, where she reported on attacks against Bosnian Muslims. Experts called it a kind of ethnic cleansing. To give equal weight to official denials of the violence she saw would have been wrong.

Fair reporting represents reality, not a simple "he said, she said." False moral equivalency is a failure of journalists to carry out their duties.

A smart news consumer must ask: is this coverage fair to the evidence? And what exactly is evidence? In lesson 5 we will explain how to evaluate news coverage in order to answer these questions.
This lesson is based on the News Literacy class at the Center for News Literacy at Stony Brook University. For more on how to become a news literate citizen, go to The Center for News Literacy.
Words in This Story

abortion - n. a medical procedure used to end a pregnancy and cause the death of the fetus

verify - v. to prove, show, find out, or state that (something) is true or correct

perpetuate - v. to cause (something that should be stopped, such as a mistaken idea or a bad situation) to continue

equivalency - n. a level of that is considered to be on the same level

Ethnic - adj. of or relating to races or large groups of people who have the same customs, religion, origin, etc.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
News Literacy Lesson 4: Balance, Fairness

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Media organizations often use words like "balance" and "fairness." They want to say that they are reporting without showing favoritism or making judgments. Balance simply means giving equal time to both sides of an issue, or not giving one side more importance. For example, let's consider a report about abortion bills winding their way through U.S.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
News Literacy Lesson 5: Quality of News Reports How to identify reliable News report

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In this lesson, we present seven steps to help you judge the quality of news reporting:

Step One: Main Points

Be able to recognize and re-state the main points of the story. An intelligent news consumer asks: What are the facts and how are they presented?

Step Two: Evidence

Examine the evidence. How has the reporter confirmed the evidence? Is there video you can trust? Is there a paper trail -- documents to prove what happened?

Step Three: Sources

Consider the sources of the story. Are they named or not identified in the story?

Step Four: Openness

What is the transparency level -- the level of openness -- in the news organization? Where did they get their information?

Step Five: Knowledge of Subject

Is there something to provide context, such as background information or history? Does the reporter have a command of the subject of the report?

Step Six: The Five "W"s

Are important pieces of information missing? Does the report answer the questions: what happened? Where, when and why did it happen? Who was involved?

Step Seven: Self Examination

Are you open to fairness? As a news consumer, you must know yourself. Do you have opinions or beliefs that could influence your judgment?

Perhaps step seven is the most important of the seven steps. Ask yourself: Are you more likely to believe a story if it confirms your pre-existing beliefs? That is called confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is a sort of blindness that leads news consumers to seek out information they WANT to be true. A smart news consumer seeks out information from multiple sources, weighing the reputation of each source, and comparing their coverage.

Using these seven steps, a reader or listener can decide the quality and truthfulness of news reports.

In our final lesson, we will consider journalistic responsibility in the age of social media.
This lesson is based on the News Literacy class at the Center for News Literacy at Stony Brook University. For more on how to become a news literate citizen, go to The Center for News Literacy.
Words in This Story

consumer -- n. one who buys or uses a product

transparency - n. the quality that makes it possible to see through something

context - n. the situation in which something happens : the group of conditions that exist where and when something happens

bias - n. a tendency to believe that some people, ideas, etc., are better than others that usually results in treating some people unfairly

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
News Literacy Lesson 5: Quality of News Reports

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In this lesson, we present seven steps to help you judge the quality of news reporting: Step One: Main Points Be able to recognize and re-state the main points of the story. An intelligent news consumer asks: What are the facts and how are they presented? Step Two: Evidence Examine the evidence.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Today anyone with a smartphone or a laptop can spread information and video around the world immediately.

This new-found power can play a vital role in our understanding of events in places that have been cut off from traditional journalism.

As in Syria where the effects of the violent civil war are captured by citizens who are often trapped behind the firing line. In this digital age, it is nearly impossible fo r tyrants to mask their cruelty and anyone can speak about oppression to a global audience.

But digitalization has a dark side. Social media, like Twitter and Facebook, often release information to the public that has not been verified, or long before a legitimate news organization would release it. So, it is possible for erroneous information to spread quickly.

Take the case of Veerender Jubbal. Several European news outlets named the Canadian Sikh as a possible suspect for the November 2015 Paris terror attack. They even published a photo of him wearing asuicide bomber vest.

But Mr. Jubbal was completely innocent. Someone had manipulated a photo on his Facebook page and posted it on social media as a joke. It quickly spread, causing Mr. Jubbal to suffer extreme damage to his reputation and a lot of emotional distress.

This is a dramatic example but think about it. How many times have you fallen for click bait -- those deceptive ads that lure you to click with gossip or untrue information? For example, those ads that imply a famous celebrity has died or suffered a terrible tragedy?

Unlike traditional journalism, social media does not have an obligation to the truth. Its users are its reporters, and they are accountable to no one.

A smart news consumer is always aware of this discrepancy between traditional media and social media.

Exercising news literacy is a skill like any other skill. It requires thoughtful concentration and consideration. A literate news consumer uses the tools we have outlined to evaluate the mounds of information we encounter every minute of every day.
This lesson is based on the News Literacy class at the Center for News Literacy at Stony Brook University. For more on how to become a news literate citizen, go to The Center for News Literacy.
Words in This Story

tyrant - n. a ruler who has complete power over a country and who is cruel and unfair

cruelty - n. a desire to cause others to suffer : the quality or state of being cruel

legitimate - adj. allowed according to rules or laws

erroneous - adj. not correct

manipulate - v. to deal with or control (someone or something) in a clever and usually unfair or selfish way

reputation - n. the common opinion that people have about someone or something

distress - n. suffering that affects the mind or body

lure - v. to cause or persuade (a person or an animal) to go somewhere or to do something by offering some pleasure or gain

gossip - n. information about the behavior and personal lives of other people

obligation - n. something that you must do because of a law, rule, promise, etc.

discrepancy - n. a difference especially between things that should be the same

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
News Literacy Lesson 6: News and Social Media

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Today anyone with a smartphone or a laptop can spread information and video around the world immediately. This new-found power can play a vital role in our understanding of events in places that have been cut off from traditional journalism.

# data[].attributes.headline
Schon : popular series in Trinidad and Tobago

# data[].attributes.subject
Schon : popular series in Trinidad and Tobago

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.authors[].name
Schon (Trinidad and Tobago, Caribbean Island)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Schon : popular series in Trinidad and Tobago - Audio Lingua - mp3 en anglais, allemand, arabe, catalan, corse, espagnol, italien, russe, occitan, portugais, chinois et français

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Schon lives in Trinidad and Tobago. He tells us about his favorite series and about what teenagers enjoy watching there.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
अपने मित्रों, परिवार और अपने परिचित लोगों से साझा करना और कनेक्ट करना शुरू करने के लिए Facebook में लॉग इन करें.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.embed_code
'The greatest propaganda machine in history': Sacha Baron Cohen launches scathing attack on social media
'The greatest propaganda machine in history': Sacha Baron Cohen launches scathing attack on social media
Posted by The Independent on Wednesday, August 25, 2021

# data[].attributes.headline
NEWSPAPERS AROUND THE WORLD          (Isabelle Richard)

# data[].attributes.subject
NEWSPAPERS AROUND THE WORLD          (Isabelle Richard)

# data[].attributes.body
WHAT HAPPENED IN 2021?

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8-HLNg-rcI&ab_channel=FRANCE24English

# data[].attributes.body
Worksheet

# data[].attributes.headline
Britain is leaving the European Union. Here's how we got here

# data[].attributes.subject
Britain is leaving the European Union. Here's how we got here

# data[].attributes.body
WORKSHEET

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Let's explain the Brexit CO and Worksheet

# data[].attributes.headline
What is the European Union? | BBC Newsbeat

# data[].attributes.subject
What is the European Union? | BBC Newsbeat

# data[].attributes.body
Feb 18, 2016

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
What is the European Union?  |  BBC Newsbeat

# data[].attributes.body
BBC News

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
EU: All you need to know in under 2 minutes - BBC News

# data[].attributes.headline
BREXIT: Why does the UK want to leave the EU?

# data[].attributes.subject
BREXIT: Why does the UK want to leave the EU?

# data[].attributes.body
Feb 9, 2016
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbEZNhFY9TA&ab_channel=NowThisWorld

# data[].attributes.headline
Britain is leaving the European Union. Here's how we got here

# data[].attributes.subject
Britain is leaving the European Union. Here's how we got here

# data[].attributes.body
CNN January 31, 2020

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Britain is leaving the European Union. Here's how we got here

# data[].attributes.headline
Brexit explained: Boris Johnson's new trade deal with the EU

# data[].attributes.subject
Brexit explained: Boris Johnson's new trade deal with the EU

# data[].attributes.body
Channel 4 News
Dec 20, 2020

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Brexit explained: Boris Johnson's new trade deal with the EU

# data[].attributes.headline
Video                                  Brexit: What is the problem with Northern Ireland?  

# data[].attributes.subject
Video                                  Brexit: What is the problem with Northern Ireland?  

# data[].attributes.body
Channel 4 News

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Brexit explained: What is the problem with the Irish border?

# data[].attributes.body
The New York Times

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
What Is Brexit? And What Happens Next? (Published 2021)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The basics of Brexit, the troubled plan for Britain to quit the European Union.

# data[].attributes.body
What is Black Friday
Video + Quiz

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Visit cloudflare.com for more information.

# data[].attributes.body
VIDEO

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
US Elections Picture video How to become president

# data[].attributes.headline
US ELECTIONS                   VIDEO How to become president

# data[].attributes.subject
US ELECTIONS                   VIDEO How to become president

# data[].attributes.body
WORKSHEET

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Video How to become President  Ex True or False CORRECTION

# data[].attributes.body
Read the following article and answer the questions

# data[].attributes.headline
Cambridge A2 KEY 2020                    Reading and Writing

# data[].attributes.subject
Cambridge A2 KEY 2020                    Reading and Writing

# data[].attributes.body
FICHE METHODE

# data[].attributes.headline
 Cambridge Test B2First Certificate for schools Listening Worksheet

# data[].attributes.subject
 Cambridge Test B2First Certificate for schools Listening Worksheet

# data[].attributes.headline
Entraînement CO                     en autonomie

# data[].attributes.subject
Entraînement CO                     en autonomie

# data[].attributes.headline
Cambridge First Certificate B2 Listening Audio

# data[].attributes.subject
Cambridge First Certificate B2 Listening Audio

# data[].attributes.headline
Lana's choice:                                          MURDER  

# data[].attributes.subject
Lana's choice:                                          MURDER  

# data[].attributes.body
Series

# data[].attributes.headline
Dimitri's choice:             Marvel's The Punisher   

# data[].attributes.subject
Dimitri's choice:             Marvel's The Punisher   

# data[].attributes.body
Series Season 1

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Marvel's The Punisher Season 1 Trailer #1 (2017) | TV Trailer | Movieclips Trailers

# data[].attributes.body
Movie

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Hidden Figures Official Trailer #1 (2017) Taraji P. Henson, Janelle Monáe Drama Movie HD

# data[].attributes.body
franglish: http://www.franglish.fr/capsules/index.html

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
CAPSULES VIDEO SUR LA GRAMMAIRE
POUR TRAVAILLER EN AUTONOMIE

# data[].attributes.headline
Alicia's choice:                  LITTLE WOMEN

# data[].attributes.subject
Alicia's choice:                  LITTLE WOMEN

# data[].attributes.body
Movie

# data[].attributes.headline
Cambridge  First Certificate B2 LISTENING 2015  WORKSHEET 

# data[].attributes.subject
Cambridge  First Certificate B2 LISTENING 2015  WORKSHEET 

# data[].attributes.headline
Marine's choice:            Thirteen reasons why      

# data[].attributes.subject
Marine's choice:            Thirteen reasons why      

# data[].attributes.headline
Cambridge B2   First Certificate for schools 

# data[].attributes.subject
Cambridge B2   First Certificate for schools 

# data[].attributes.body
LISTENING  Audio 1

# data[].attributes.headline
Cambridge B2   First Certificate for schools 

# data[].attributes.subject
Cambridge B2   First Certificate for schools 

# data[].attributes.body
LISTENING Audio 2

# data[].attributes.headline
Cambridge B2   First Certificate for schools 

# data[].attributes.subject
Cambridge B2   First Certificate for schools 

# data[].attributes.body
LISTENING Audio 3

# data[].attributes.headline
Cambridge B2   First Certificate for schools 

# data[].attributes.subject
Cambridge B2   First Certificate for schools 

# data[].attributes.body
LISTENING Audio 4

# data[].attributes.headline
Cambridge B2   First Certificate for schools

# data[].attributes.subject
Cambridge B2   First Certificate for schools

# data[].attributes.body
LISTENING Audio 5

# data[].attributes.headline
Cambridge B2   First Certificate for schools

# data[].attributes.subject
Cambridge B2   First Certificate for schools

# data[].attributes.body
Listening Audion 6

# data[].attributes.headline
Cambridge B2   First Certificate for schools

# data[].attributes.subject
Cambridge B2   First Certificate for schools

# data[].attributes.body
Listening Audio 7

# data[].attributes.headline
Cambridge B2   First Certificate for schools

# data[].attributes.subject
Cambridge B2   First Certificate for schools

# data[].attributes.body
Listening Audio 8

# data[].attributes.headline
Cambridge B2   First Certificate for schools

# data[].attributes.subject
Cambridge B2   First Certificate for schools

# data[].attributes.body
Listening Audio 9

# data[].attributes.headline
Cambridge B2   First Certificate for schools

# data[].attributes.subject
Cambridge B2   First Certificate for schools

# data[].attributes.body
Listening Audio Introduction

# data[].attributes.body
Pronunciation and phonetic writing will help you improve your pronunciation

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Hi! Got an English text and want to see how to pronounce it? This online converter of English text to IPA phonetic transcription will translate your English text into its phonetic transcription using the International Phonetic Alphabet. Paste or type your English text in the text field above and click "Show transcription" button (or use [Ctrl+Enter] shortcut from the text input area).

Features:

Choose between British and American* pronunciation. When British option is selected the [r] sound at the end of the word is only voiced if followed by a vowel, which follows British phonetic convention.

The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) symbols used.

The structure of the text and sentences in it (line breaks, punctuation marks, etc.) is preserved in phonetic transcription output making it easier to read.

An option to vary pronunciation depending on whether words are in stressed or weak position in the sentence, as in connected speech (checkbox "Show weak forms"). Weak forms are italicized in the output.

Words in CAPS are interpreted as acronyms if the word is not found in the database. Acronym transcriptions will be shown with hyphens between letters.

In addition to commonly used vocabulary the database contains a very substantial amount of place names (including names of countries, their capitals, US states, UK counties), nationalities and popular names.

You can output the text and its phonetic transcription along each other side-by-side or line-by-line to make back-reference to the original text easier. Just tick the appropriate checkbox in the input form.

Where a word has a number of different pronunciations (highlighted in blue in the output) you can select the one that agrees with the context by clicking on it. To see a popup with a list of possible pronunciations move your mouse cursor over the word.
Note that different pronunciations of one word may have different meanings or may represent variations in pronunciation with the same meaning. If unsure which pronunciation is relevant in your particular case, consult a dictionary.

The dictionary database is regularly amended with most popular missing words (shown in red in the output).

The text can be read out loud in browsers with speech synthesis support (Safari, Chrome).

*) American transcriptions are based on the open Carnegie Mellon University Pronouncing Dictionary.

We encourage students of linguistics/phonetics to do their own work during their assignments and remind them that submitting transcriptions produced by this website for academic credit is a breach of academic integrity.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Hi! Got an English text and want to see how to pronounce it? This online converter of English text to IPA phonetic transcription will translate your English text into its phonetic transcription using the International Phonetic Alphabet. Paste or type your English text in the text field above and click "Show transcription" button (or use [Ctrl+Enter] shortcut from the text input area).

# data[].attributes.headline
Text to Speech:               Natural readers

# data[].attributes.subject
Text to Speech:               Natural readers

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Free Text to Speech Online with Realistic AI Voices

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Convert text into ultra-realistic audio. Have any text read aloud with AI Voices. AI text reader for pdfs, books, documents, and webpages.

# data[].attributes.body
MAGNUM (2018)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
MAGNUM P.I. Official First Look Trailer (HD) Jay Hernandez CBS Reboot Series

# data[].attributes.headline
MAGNUM What Happened To The Original Cast Of Magnum PI

# data[].attributes.subject
MAGNUM What Happened To The Original Cast Of Magnum PI

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
MAGNUM What Happened To The Original Cast Of Magnum PI

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Ma sorciere bien aimée - Générique - 1975

# data[].attributes.body
1964

# data[].attributes.body
2005
Starring: Nicole Kidman, Will Ferrell, Shirley MacLaine
Bewitched (2005) Official Trailer 1 - Nicole Kidman Movie

Thinking he can overshadow an unknown actress in the part, an egocentric actor unknowingly gets a witch cast in an upcoming television remake of the classic sitcom Bewitched (1964).

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Bewitched (2005) Official Trailer 1 - Nicole Kidman Movie

# data[].attributes.body
http://www.studentsoftheworld.info/menu_penpals.php

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Penpal friends for Kids, teenagers, students, teachers... Make friends all over the World _ worldwide friendship

# data[].attributes.body
English Listening Lesson Library Online

http://www.elllo.org/index.htm

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
ELLLO - English Listening Lesson Library Online