UK foreign secretary says urgent pressure needed to get strait of Hormuz reopened and fertiliser and fuel moving
Global fertiliser supplies must be freed up within weeks to avoid disaster, with harvests suffering and food prices rising, the UK’s foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, has said.
The war in Iran has frozen shipments of fertiliser through the strait of Hormuz, creating a supply crunch that has already damaged farming in the UK, Europe and the US and is having its worst impacts in the developing world, where farmers cannot afford the higher prices now being charged.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
05/18/2026 - 18:01
05/18/2026 - 15:19
EPA outlines effort to kill Biden-era rules as critics condemn RFK Jr and Lee Zeldin’s ‘hocus pocus’
The Trump administration has announced a plan to kill Biden-era drinking water limits on four Pfas “forever chemicals”, and to delay the implementation of standards for two other compounds.
The Environmental Protection Agency is proposing two separate rules to delay and rescind the limits. The rules must go through an approval process that can take several years, and almost certainly will be challenged in court.
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05/18/2026 - 09:01
Never documented archaeologically before, evidence points to First Nations people caring for and nursing the animal
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The discovery of a millennium-old dingo burial site in western New South Wales, including evidence of a “feeding” ritual never before documented archaeologically, has shed new light on the longstanding relationship between the canines and First Nations people.
The dingo was buried along the Baaka, or Darling River, in Kinchega national park near the Menindee Lakes.
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05/18/2026 - 07:00
Use of AI is a valuable tool for weather prediction but only when it’s trained with ample data, experts say
As the US prepares for hurricane season and a summer of record-breaking heat, experts fear the Trump administration’s cuts to climate and weather data programming could make the federal government’s weather forecasts less reliable when they are needed most.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) late last year launched a suite of artificial intelligence-powered global weather forecast models which it said would improve “speed, efficiency, and accuracy”. In March, an agency official said those models were being trained with centuries of weather data.
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05/18/2026 - 05:00
Rising demand for exotic pets is pushing many gibbon species to extinction, with their strong family bonds making them especially vulnerable to the brutal trade
It is a cool morning in Thailand’s hilly north, and a wildlife officer sits on the veranda of Omkoi wildlife sanctuary’s office. On her lap is a wide-eyed infant primate dressed in baby clothes. Not unlike a human baby, he kicks and waves excitedly. Most of his dark skin is covered in dense white fur, except for his face and the palms of his hands.
“We call him Chokdee,” the officer says. “It means ‘good luck’.”
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05/18/2026 - 05:00
Energy security comes from using local, renewable resources to power, heat and cool communities, as Ukraine is doing
Donald Trump’s unjustified war on Iran and the resulting global fuel crisis is a continuing reminder that true energy security and independence will continue to elude us so long as we remain dependent on fossil fuels.
Whether it’s wars over oil and gas resource access or attacks on fossil fuel power plants and energy grids, this reliance on finite resources only worsens a country’s threat profile. News this month of Russia’s deadly attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, Russian drones swarming Ukrainian power stations and Kyiv running out of time to prepare for another winter of attacks on its energy grid illustrates this urgency.
The US representative Lloyd Doggett serves Texas’s 37th district in the House of Representatives and is a member of the Ukraine caucus and the House sustainable energy and environment coalition. Michael Shank PhD is adjunct faculty at New York University’s Center for Global Affairs, and at George Mason University’s Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution
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05/17/2026 - 23:00
Requests for gas connections by operators amount to more than 15 terawatt hours per year, endangering climate targets
More than 100 new datacentres in the UK plan to burn gas to generate electricity, some potentially doing so permanently.
British officials say this is an inevitable consequence of a years-long wait to connect to the National Grid, and raises an “interesting question” about the UK’s climate targets.
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05/17/2026 - 23:00
npj Ocean Sustainability, Published online: 18 May 2026; doi:10.1038/s44183-026-00199-w
Sizing blue carbon risks and benefits from bivalve aquaculture
05/17/2026 - 21:24
One must ask why Labor is so comfortable continuing to ignore the wishes of the vast majority of voters
Anthony Albanese’s government swept to power in 2022 and, among many promises made to voters, it firmly committed to end a decade of environmental neglect. Four years later, the federal budget – as well as the newly passed national environmental law reforms – make it abundantly clear that it is failing to deliver on that promise.
This failure is more than just political; it is existential for this country’s remarkable, unique and increasingly imperilled wildlife and ecosystems.
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05/17/2026 - 16:10
Tim Walz, the state’s governor, calls blazes ‘unpredictable and fast-moving’ as dry, windy weather fuels them
Minnesota’s national guard has been activated to help battle wildfires burning in the northern part of the state after the department of natural resources requested additional support.
Governor Tim Walz authorized the deployment by issuing an executive order that declared a peacetime emergency.
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