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Illegal shark haul in the Galapagos A ship patrolling the Galapagos National Park in Ecuador seized roughly 300tonnes of sharks and other fish from a Chinese vessel found inside the park boundaries on 13 August. The haul consisted mostly of sharks and included some hammerheads that are listed as endangered on the Red List of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, Ecuadors environment ministry said on 15August. Authorities detained all 20 crew members of the Fu Yuan Yu Leng 999, who could face up to 3years in prison if convicted of environmental crimes. It is illegal to catch, trade or transport sharks through the marine reserves waters.

Ecuador Ministry of Environment/EPA

Cosmic rays probed On 16 August, a NASA instrument to examine cosmic rays was delivered to the International Space Station (ISS). The equipment, called CREAM (Cosmic Ray Energetics and Mass investigation), was carried aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule that took off from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The instrument, which has already flown on several long-duration balloon flights launched from Antarctica, will now be renamed ISS-CREAM. To complete the theme, NASAs cargo also contained real ice cream for the astronauts on board the space station.

Weapons warning More than 100 specialists in artificial intelligence and robotics have signed an open letter asking the United Nations to ban lethal autonomous weapons, such as robots that decide for themselves which targets to attack. Such technology is on the cusp of development and could usher in a third revolution in warfare, says the letter, released on 20 August. It follows an almost identical call in 2015 by a similar group. Last year, the UNs Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons set up a group of experts to discuss lethal autonomous-weapons systems; it will meet in November.

Foundation head Kathy Hudson, a former deputy director of the US National Institutes of Health, will head the People-Centered Research Foundation (PCRF). The 16August announcement also acted as an official launch of the PCRF, a spin-off from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI). PCORI is an independent non-profit organization set up by the US government in 2010 to fund clinical research based on analyses of medical-records data from US facilities. Its authorization expires in 2019, but it provided US$25million in seed money for the PCRF. The non-profit foundation will continue to support the 20studies currently under way at PCORI, which draw from the medical records of more than 40million people to compare the effectiveness of various therapies.

Moon challenge Companies vying to win the Google Lunar XPRIZE an international competition to operate the first privately funded rover on the Moon have been given a three-month extension. The new deadline of 31 March 2018 was announced on 16 August. Five teams are competing for the US$20-million grand prize, which requires a robot to land on the Moon, travel 500 metres and beam back high-definition images and video by the deadline. All of the teams have already arranged launch contracts. XPRIZE also announced two milestone prizes that will reward partial success. Teams that complete one orbit around the Moon or enter into a direct descent to the surface will split $1.75million; those that can prove they landed their craft without serious damage will share $3million. If they go on to win the grand or second prizes, this money will be deducted from the final award.

Child clinical trials Companies developing drugs that may be relevant in childhood tumours must now include children in their testing before the treatments can be approved for sale in the United States. On 18August, President Donald Trump signed a bill to reauthorize the US Food and Drug Administration, which contained the provision about child clinical trials. Drugmakers rarely include children in trials, meaning that promising treatments cannot be used in young people with cancer.

Climate committee US President Donald Trumps administration has disbanded a government advisory committee that was intended to help the country prepare for a changing climate. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration established the committee in 2015 to help businesses and state and local governments make use of the next national climate assessment, which is due in 2018. The legally mandated report will lay out the latest climate-change science and describe how global warming is likely to affect the United States. The advisory groups charter expired on 20 August, and Trump-administration officials informed members late last week that it would not be renewed.

Rule rollback US President Donald Trump signed an executive order on 15 August repealing environmental rules put in place by his predecessor, Barack Obama, to minimize the impacts of climate change on new infrastructure. The order includes measures intended to streamline federal regulations and hasten infrastructure projects such as roads and bridges. But it also includes a controversial provision revoking requirements that the federal government account for flood risks posed by global warming during the planning and review phases of such projects. The order requires federal agencies to make decisions on permits within 90 days, and sets a goal of completing environmental reviews within 2 years.

Aizar Raldes/AFP/Getty

Amazon road A highway that would slice through a biodiversity hotspot in the Amazon rainforest got the green light last week. Bolivian President Evo Morales approved the 300-kilometre road, which will cut through Isiboro Scure National Park and Indigenous Territory. The decision removed protections placed on the park in 2011 after thousands marched to defend the area, which is home to 14,000 people, most from indigenous communities. Protests against the highway have continued in recent years (pictured). A 2011 report (see go.nature.com/2wolcby) predicted that construction of the road would lead to a loss of 64% of the parks trees within 15years, because it would open up access to illegal logging.

Oldest ice ever Scientists have recovered 2.7-million-year-old ice the oldest ever found from a core drilled in Antarctica. The ice was extracted from a relatively short core at a depth of less than 150metres in a coastal part of East Antarctica, researchers announced on 15August at a conference in Paris. It exceeds the previous record-holder, drilled in 2004, by almost 2million years. The scientists extracted the latest ancient ice in 2015 in the Allan Hills region, where glacial flow brings deep ice from the continents interior close to the surface. The core might offer clues as to what triggered climate fluctuations throughout the Pleistocene epoch, or Ice Age, which stretched from 2.6 million to 11,700 years ago.

Crash-site data Australian science agencies have released information on the possible crash site of missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370. Geoscience Australia, a government research agency, re-examined satellite images taken two weeks after the aeroplane went missing over the Indian Ocean in 2014; it found at least 12objects that were probably synthetic. Drift analysis of the objects by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation suggests that they are likely to have originated from a region northeast of the area searched in 2015. The reports were released on 16August to the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, which coordinated the search until it was suspended in January this year.

Anti-poaching death A prominent wildlife conservationist who worked to stop animal poaching was gunned down in Dar es Salaam in Tanzania on 16August. Wayne Lotter was the director and co-founder of the PAMS Foundation, a Tanzania-based non-profit organization that helps African countries with conservation and anti-poaching efforts. Police in the country are investigating the murder.

Cholera is wreaking havoc in war-torn Yemen as sanitation, water and health systems collapse. Last week, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported that, since April, there have been 500,000suspected cholera cases and about 2,000people have died due to dehydration from vomiting and diarrhoea. An estimated 5,000people are being infected each day. On 14August, WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus emphasized the urgent need for supplies and health workers in the nation.

Source: WHO/http://go.nature.com/2JTHK6A

Censorship row A UK publisher last week blocked access to some of its articles in China and then swiftly reversed its decision. On 18August, Cambridge University Press (CUP) confirmed that it had blocked access for Chinese readers to 315politically sensitive articles on the website of one of its journals, The China Quarterly, at the request of its Chinese importer. The publisher said that it wanted to avoid its other journals being blocked in China. More than 1,000people many of them academics signed an online petition that threatened to boycott the publisher if it did not refuse the censorship request. On 21August, the CUP said that it would reinstate the articles.

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Oldest ice, censorship row and Yemen's cholera emergency - Nature.com