Breaking Waves: Ocean News

Hay festival drops main sponsor after boycotts over Israel and fossil fuel links

admin — Fri, 24 May 2024 16:07:15 +0000

Literary event ‘suspends’ arrangement with Baillie Gifford after Charlotte Church and Nish Kumar joined performers pulling out

Middle East crisis – live updates

The Hay literary festival has dropped its principal sponsor after boycotts from speakers and performers over the firm’s links to Israel and fossil fuel companies.

‘Kitty cat’ storms hitting US heartland are growing threat to home insurance

admin — Fri, 24 May 2024 14:00:59 +0000

Smaller secondary systems that create hailstorms and tornadoes pack a punch that is causing billions of dollars in damages

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration

Scientists transplant soil fungi in race to save world’s threatened orchids

admin — Fri, 24 May 2024 11:02:48 +0000

Display at Chelsea flower show highlights work in UK and US to bring orchid habitats back to health

Scientists are racing against the clock to save the world’s orchids by discovering the soil fungi they need to thrive, breeding them and then, in a first for conservation, transplanting them into orchid habitats.

Among the showy blooms at Chelsea flower show this week was a moss-covered exhibit, sprouting from which were the types of rare, native flowers one does not normally see at horticultural exhibits.

North Yorkshire town has UK’s highest concentration of ‘forever chemicals’

admin — Fri, 24 May 2024 07:30:10 +0000

PFAS contamination recorded in groundwater on Angus Fire site in Bentham, and includes chemicals with known health impacts

A small North Yorkshire town has been found to have the highest concentration of “forever chemicals” in the UK, it can be revealed.

The market town of Bentham, which is home to 3,000 people and set on the banks of the River Wenning, is also home to the Angus International Safety Group – locally known as Angus Fire – which, since the 1970s, has been producing firefighting foams containing PFAS at a factory near the town centre.

Week in wildlife – in pictures: dormouse gets a checkup, a lucky kingfisher and a waving seal pup

admin — Fri, 24 May 2024 07:00:11 +0000

The best of this week’s wildlife photographs from around the world

Australian student helps discover potentially habitable planet the size of Earth – video

admin — Fri, 24 May 2024 06:02:37 +0000

Shishir Dholakia of the University of Southern Queensland's Centre for Astrophsics has identified Gliese 12b, a possibly temperate Earth-sized planet just 40 light years away. The student has been co-leading an international team that published the discovery in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

UK ministers to be challenged in human rights court over protest injunctions

admin — Fri, 24 May 2024 06:00:09 +0000

Friends of the Earth will argue private companies are allowed to create their own public order laws that stifle demonstrations

The government is to be challenged at the European court of human rights over its use of “confusing and opaque” anti-protest injunctions.

The environmental group Friends of the Earth (FoE) is to argue such injunctions allow private companies to create bespoke public order laws that stifle peaceful protest.

Environment Agency chief admits regulator buries freedom of information requests

admin — Fri, 24 May 2024 05:00:08 +0000

Speaking at the UK River Summit, Philip Duffy said officials do not want to reveal the true ‘embarrassing’ environmental picture

The head of the Environment Agency has admitted that freedom of information requests have been buried by the regulator because the truth about the environment in England is “embarrassing”.

Philip Duffy, the body’s chief executive, told an audience at the UK River Summit in Morden, south London, this week that his officials were “worried about revealing the true state of what is going on” with regards to the state of the environment.

Senate Democrats to investigate Trump’s reported big oil ‘deal’

admin — Thu, 23 May 2024 19:24:37 +0000

Two committees inquiring after reports of ex-president’s offer to roll back dozens of regulations for $1bn campaign donations

Powerful Senate Democrats have launched an investigation into an alleged quid pro quo offer from Donald Trump to fossil fuel executives.

‘Above normal’ hurricane season could bring summer of natural disasters to US

admin — Thu, 23 May 2024 19:00:38 +0000

Factors including ‘near-record warm ocean temperatures in Atlantic’ lead to stark prediction from Noaa for June to November

The 2024 Atlantic hurricane season will be “above normal” amid very warm ocean temperatures, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has predicted, prompting some scientists to warn of a summer of natural disasters caused by the powerful storms.