English news for Saturday, September 5, 2026

The Krakatau volcano in Indonesia had a big eruption^*1 on September 5. It happened at about 2:50 in the morning, Japan time.

The Japan Meteorological Agency^*2 announced the news on the same day. This is the office of the Japanese government that watches the weather, earthquakes, and volcanoes. It got the information from the Darwin Volcanic Ash^*3 Advisory Center, a center that watches ash from volcanoes.

The cloud of ash from the volcano rose to about 15,000 meters. That is about 50,000 feet.

The agency is still checking whether a tsunami^*4 will reach Japan. At 8:30 in the morning on September 5, measuring stations^*5 in Japan and in other countries had not seen any big change in the height of the sea. If the agency decides there is no danger of a tsunami, it will say so in a separate notice.

This was the agency's second report about the eruption. If nothing big changes, it will not send more reports.

1. *1 eruption: when a volcano breaks open and throws out hot rock, smoke, and ash
2. *2 agency: a government office that does one kind of work
3. *3 ash: the gray powder that comes out of a volcano
4. *4 tsunami: a very big and dangerous sea wave, often caused by an earthquake or a volcano
5. *5 measuring stations: places with machines that watch and record the height of the sea

Scientists in Japan have found a new kind of ammonite^*1. The fossil^*2 came from rock layers in Tomamae and Haboro. These are two towns in the northwest of Hokkaido, a large island in the north of Japan. The rock layers are about 86.3 million to 83.6 million years old.

The Fukada Geological Institute, a research institute^*3 in Japan, announced the discovery on August 31, 2026. Daisuke Aiba, a researcher at the institute, studied the fossil. The ammonite had a shell with an unusual shape. It was a new genus^*4 and a new species^*5. Aiba gave it the name Heterocarinella japonica^*6.

Aiba used a CT scan^*7 to look inside the shell. The scan showed that the new ammonite belongs to a family called Turrilitidae^*8. People have studied fossils in Japan for about 150 years. In all that time, no one had found a new genus of this family in Japan before.

The discovery also changes what scientists know about this family. They thought that the Turrilitidae died out about 93.9 million years ago. But this fossil shows that some of them lived about 10 million years longer. They lived near the place that is now Hokkaido. There were far fewer kinds of them than before. Aiba says the area around Hokkaido may have been a safe place for ammonites at that time.

Aiba wrote a paper about the fossil. It appeared in the journal^*9 Paleontological Research on August 29, 2026.

1. *1 ammonite: a sea animal with a shell that lived millions of years ago
2. *2 fossil: the hard remains of an animal or plant from long ago, kept in rock
3. *3 research institute: a place where scientists work and study things
4. *4 genus: a group of closely related species
5. *5 species: one kind of animal or plant
6. *6 Heterocarinella japonica: the science name of the new ammonite
7. *7 CT scan: a way to take pictures of the inside of something with a special X-ray machine
8. *8 Turrilitidae: the name of a family of ammonites
9. *9 journal: a magazine where scientists print their studies

A glacier^*1 in Greenland has lost 5.4 meters of ice in 13 years. Scientists in Japan said this on September 1. Greenland is a very large, cold island in the far north. The glacier is called Qaanaaq Glacier, and it is in the northwest of Greenland.

The study was led by Takuro Imazu, a graduate student^*2, and Professor Shin Sugiyama. They work at Hokkaido University, a university in northern Japan. Scientists from Nagoya University and the National Institute of Polar Research also worked on the study.

The scientists wrote about their work in a paper^*3. The paper was published^*4 online in the Journal of Glaciology on June 18. Money for the research came from Japanese research programs called GRENE and ArCS, and from JSPS, a Japanese group that gives money for science.

The team has been measuring the ice since July 2012. They measure it at six places on the glacier. These places are between 243 and 984 meters above the sea.

In 13 years, the glacier became 5.4 meters thinner. That is about 0.4 meters a year on average^*5. But the amount changed from year to year. In some years, the glacier lost only 0.23 meters. In other years, it lost 1.02 meters.

The team also studied why the ice is disappearing. Warmer air makes the ice disappear much faster. It matters about five times more than snowfall^*6 does. The scientists predict^*7 that the ice will disappear twice as fast if the air becomes 1 degree Celsius^*8 warmer.

The village of Qaanaaq is near the glacier. About 600 people live there. They use water from a river for their daily lives. The river comes from the glacier. In recent years, more ice has melted, and floods^*9 have damaged the village.

1. *1 glacier: a very large river of ice that moves very slowly down a mountain
2. *2 graduate student: a student who has finished university and is studying for a higher degree
3. *3 paper: a written report of a scientific study
4. *4 published: printed or put out so that people can read it
5. *5 on average: the usual amount when you add all the years together and share it out equally
6. *6 snowfall: the snow that falls in a place
7. *7 predict: say what will happen in the future
8. *8 Celsius: a scale for measuring temperature; water freezes at 0 degrees and boils at 100 degrees
9. *9 floods: times when a lot of water covers land that is usually dry

On many world maps, Africa looks smaller than it really is. On September 4, the United Nations, where almost every country in the world meets, voted for a resolution^*1 to change this. The resolution asks countries to use maps that show the real size of each continent^*2.

The resolution is called "Correct the map." It says that the most common world map, the Mercator map, makes places near the equator^*3 look too small. Africa is one of these places, so people see it wrongly. The resolution asks for maps that show true sizes, especially the Equal Earth map, when people compare continents.

Togo, a country in Africa, proposed the resolution for the African countries. Togo's representative^*4 said that wrong maps affect schools, how people understand the world, and how they see the size of Africa. The representative also said, "A fair map does not change the world's geography^*5. It changes how we see the world."

In the vote, 164 countries said yes. One country, the United States, said no. Six countries did not vote yes or no: Estonia, Georgia, Lithuania, Moldova, Serbia and Ukraine.

Russia voted yes. It said the resolution helps fix a problem left over from colonialism^*6. Ukraine did not vote yes or no. It said the map shows a part of Ukraine that Russia now holds in a way that Ukraine cannot accept. The United States voted no. Its representative said the resolution hurts trust in the United Nations and pushes for "reparations^*7." Ireland spoke for the European Union, a group of European countries. Ireland said it supports the goal of the resolution, but the resolution should only be about schools and teaching people geography.

The resolution passed. It now asks countries around the world to use maps that show real sizes more often.

1. *1 resolution: a written decision that a group of countries votes on
2. *2 continent: one of the world's very big areas of land, like Africa or Asia
3. *3 equator: the line around the middle of the Earth, halfway between the North Pole and the South Pole
4. *4 representative: a person who speaks for a country at a meeting
5. *5 geography: the study of the world's land, seas, countries and where things are
6. *6 colonialism: when a strong country takes control of another land and rules its people
7. *7 reparations: money or help given to make up for harm done in the past