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NGO links major chocolate brands to Liberia deforestation #Liberia

NGO links major chocolate brands to Liberia deforestation
Some of the world's best-known chocolate, from Mars to KitKat, is likely linked to deforestation in Liberia's rainforest despite many brands' claims of sustainability, according to research published by NGO Global Witness Tuesday.

The community in Sololo, Papua New Guinea, is safeguarding their rainforest by partnering with Cool Earth to resist logging and oil palm expansion, ensuring a sustainable future and preserving vital ecosystems. https://www.coolearth.org/news/best-rainforest-protectio…

How one community is protecting 16,500 hectares of rainforest
Local people have safeguarded the Papua New Guinea rainforest for generations. With a steady income stream, communities can refuse loggers and invest in what they most need.

RE: https://mastodon.social/@burger_jaap/115355130590936308
Part 2: when European, national and local policies reinforce each other. How diesel vans disappeared from new vehicle sales in the Netherlands.

"ICE has been using “brake-checks” as pretense for detaining observers. Another observer car pulls up and my city council member steps out. He strides up to the Wagoneer, blowing his whistle. (Absolutely everyone is confronting ICE—I’ve encountered my old boss from the local cafe scuffling with agents, too.) Someone on the street starts filming and the bicyclist we know in the chat as “small fry” shouts at the agents to get out of Minneapolis."

ICE vs. Everyone | Erin West
What we’re doing now is this: The trainings have evolved into street medic workshops on protecting yourself from chemical weapons and lessons on digital security; there’s a meet-up to sew reinforced umbrellas as shields from mace and a collection spot for barricade materials. And this is what it’s like: Sometimes you’re chasing ICE off your street, maybe you’re buying groceries for a family, but a lot of the time you’re on your phone.

Meta-learning three-factor plasticity rules for structured credit assignment with sparse feedback
Dimitra Maoutsa
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.09366 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2512.09366 https://arxiv.org/html/2512.09366
arXiv:2512.09366v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Biological neural networks learn complex behaviors from sparse, delayed feedback using local synaptic plasticity, yet the mechanisms enabling structured credit assignment remain elusive. In contrast, artificial recurrent networks solving similar tasks typically rely on biologically implausible global learning rules or hand-crafted local updates. The space of local plasticity rules capable of supporting learning from delayed reinforcement remains largely unexplored. Here, we present a meta-learning framework that discovers local learning rules for structured credit assignment in recurrent networks trained with sparse feedback. Our approach interleaves local neo-Hebbian-like updates during task execution with an outer loop that optimizes plasticity parameters via \textbf{tangent-propagation through learning}. The resulting three-factor learning rules enable long-timescale credit assignment using only local information and delayed rewards, offering new insights into biologically grounded mechanisms for learning in recurrent circuits.
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Malaysian companies dominate PNG forest-clearance permits: report https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/malaysian-companies-dominate-png-forest-clearance-permits-report/

Malaysian companies dominate PNG forest-clearance permits: report
Papua New Guinea’s rainforests, which span 28.2 million hectares (69.6 million acres), are among the most biodiverse in the world, hosting an estimated 5-8% of all species. The country also has one of the world’s highest rates of communal land ownership, with around 97% of land legally recognized as being customary tenure. Despite the ecological […]

Communities in the DRC are building something remarkable: a 1-million-hectare biodiversity corridor connecting two major protected areas.
Strong Roots Congo has already secured 23 community forest concessions covering nearly 600,000 hectares. The project does double duty—allowing wildlife to move safely between habitats while supporting local livelihoods and protecting Indigenous peoples from land grabbing.

Congo’s communities are creating a 1-million-hectare biodiversity corridor
Dominique Bikaba’s family was once displaced from vibrant rainforests in the Congo Basin to make way for a sweeping national park. Today, a conservationist who also champions the protection of endangered gorillas in these forests, Bikaba is embarking on a journey to conserve this ecosystem — in a way he says is more just. His […]