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If the news of a major hurricane tearing for the coast of Ireland seems odd, as was the case for Hurricane Ophelia, that’s because the phenomenon of hurricanes surviving as organized storms that far east in the Atlantic Ocean is extremely rare. As it is, Ophelia now holds the record for the easternmost major hurricane in the Atlantic, and if it had maintained its strength it would have been only the third known tropical storm to make landfall in Europe, following 2005’s Hurricane Vince, making landfall in Spain, and Hurricane Debbie, brushing the west coast of Ireland in 1961.
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The control systems for the US Air Force’s Predator and Reaper drones at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada have been infected by a persistent computer virus, one that appears to resist being removed. The virus appears to be a simple keylogger virus — a program that records the keystrokes of the person using the infected computer — so it doesn’t interfere with the actual flight operations of the pilots, but multiple attempts to remove the infection have proved to be fruitless — and the origin of the invasive program also remains unknown.

"We keep wiping it off, and it keeps coming back," according to a source familiar with the situation. "We think it’s benign. But we just don’t know."
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California Governor Jerry Brown has signed a formal agreement between his state and the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec, linking the three regions’ carbon-emission markets. The deal, going into effect on January 1, creates the largest carbon market in North America: Ontario and Quebec are Canada’s largest provinces, with Ontario being the country’s most populous, and California itself represents the world’s sixth largest economy.
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A new study published in the journal Nature Geoscience has found that the goal of the Paris climate accord of keeping global warming levels below 2ºC (3.6ºF) may be easier to achieve than originally anticipated, allowing humanity a much larger carbon budget to work with. One of the major reasons certain parties have rejected the Paris Accord was the perceived difficulty in attaining that goal, but this new finding, if correct, should help encourage more action in regards to what we need to do to curtail global warming.
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