A plan to build the world’s first octopus farm has raised deep concerns among scientists over the welfare of the famously intelligent creatures. The farm in Spain’s Canary Islands would raise about a million octopuses annually for food, according to confidential documents seen by the BBC. They have never been intensively farmed and some scientists call the proposed icy water slaughtering method “cruel.” The Spanish multinational behind the plans denies the octopuses will suffer. The confidential planning proposal documents from the company, Nueva Pescanova, were given to the BBC by the campaign organisation Eurogroup for Animals. Nueva Pescanova sent the proposal to the Canary Islands’ General Directorate of Fishing, which has not responded to a BBC request for comment. Octopuses caught in the wild using pots, lines and traps are eaten all over the world, including in the Mediterranean and in Asia and Latin America.

Global cocaine production has reached record levels as demand rebounds following Covid lockdowns, a new report has found. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime said coca cultivation rose by 35% between 2020 and 2021 to record levels. Findings suggest new hubs for trafficking have emerged in West and Central Africa. The report also said traffickers were using international postal services more often to get drugs to consumers. “Globally, the use of parcel and courier services increased significantly during the Covid-related lockdown due to restrictions on passenger flights,” the Global Report on Cocaine report said. It noted a rise in West African countries in the use of “well established, globally operating postal services as well as smaller shopping companies” used to smuggle quantities of cocaine to Europe and beyond. Overall, the the report found Europe and North America are the largest markets for cocaine, followed by South and Central America and the Caribbean.(BBC)…[+]

Two and a half tonnes of uranium have gone missing from a site in Libya, the UN’s nuclear watchdog has said. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) sounded the alarm after a visit by its inspectors to the undisclosed site earlier this week. They found that 10 drums containing uranium ore had disappeared, the IAEA said.

Inspectors fear the uranium could pose a radiological risk, and also have concerns over nuclear security. The IAEA said that the site where the uranium was stored was not in government-controlled territory. In a statement, the organisation said it would conduct further activities “to clarify the circumstances of the removal of the nuclear material and its current location”. It is unclear when the uranium went missing or who could have taken it. It was removed from a very remote location in southern Libya, where there were “lots of ungoverned areas”, according to Scott Roecker from the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a global security organisation working on nuclear issues.(BBC)…[+]