The Welsh valleys road with some of the UK's worst air pollution
Heavy traffic sees A472 at Crumlin record highest nitrogen dioxide outside London – and residents fear for children’s health The rush hour is not a good time to be out and about on the A472 as lorry after lorry climbs out of the south Wales valley town of Crumlin and heads up and over towards […]
Direct Action funds 'spent on projects that would have happened anyway'
Payments to greenhouse gas emitters more likely to go to reduction schemes that would have taken place without government funding, says economist The government’s $2.55bn emissions reduction fund, which pays greenhouse gas emitters to pollute less, will inevitably pay for reductions that would have happened anyway, for the same reason that secondhand car markets are […]
Herdwick ewes come home for lambing
Borrowdale, Lake District Ever the good shepherd, he recognises the snow-white faces of many of his Herdwicks like he does people Jostling each other, bleating the while, 400 pregnant Herdwick ewes make their way along the bottle-neck road from Stonethwaite in Borrowdale. Their destination? Nook Farm, hidden behind the huddle of slate-roofed cottages in Rosthwaite, […]
April breaks global temperature record, marking seven months of new highs
Latest monthly figures add to string of recent temperature records and all but assure 2016 will be hottest year on record April 2016 was the hottest April on record globally – and the seventh month in a row to have broken global temperature records. The latest figures smashed the previous record for April by the […]
100 years ago: Abundant signs of summer bird life
Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 15 May 1916 Garden warbler and blackcap were singing side by side in the wood, where the thick foliage now makes it difficult to see the songsters; these two, in these northern counties, where the nightingale is so rare, are undoubtedly our sweetest singers. In the dense vegetation […]
Natalie Bennett to step down as Green party leader
‘I’m not a lifelong politician,’ says Bennett, as speculation begins over successor, with Caroline Lucas a likely strong contender Natalie Bennett is to step down as leader of the Greens this summer, after saying she believed she had established her party as a national force while acknowledging that she was not a “spin-trained, lifelong politician”. […]
Florida woman taken to hospital with shark attached to her arm
23-year-old bitten by 2ft nurse shark which refuses to let go Ocean Rescue captain: ‘I have never seen anything like it’ News reports on Sunday said a 23-year-old woman was bitten by a small nurse shark in Boca Raton. The South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported that the woman was taken to the hospital by ambulance with […]
Return of the lamprey – ancient, ugly and swimming up British rivers
The sea lamprey, Petromyzon marinus, is most likely to be seen in British rivers at this time of year as the adults swim upstream to spawn. They are remarkable creatures but good looks are not one of their attributes. They resemble an eel and have a permanently open mouth with a great number of teeth. […]
California town swarmed by angry bees safe again, says expert
Two dogs were killed and several people stung in Concord ‘They were all over my hair – I had to shake it out,’ says resident A bee expert says a northern California neighborhood overtaken by a swarm of aggressive bees, which are suspected of killing two dogs and stinging several people, is considerably safer after […]
Obama delivers commencement speech at Rutgers: 'Ignorance is not a virtue'
President’s wide-ranging graduation address defends factual knowledge and attacks isolationism as he targets Trump’s border wall plan Barack Obama delivered a stinging rebuke to a culture of isolationism and falsehood, and an adamant defense of facts and science, in his commencement address to the Rutgers University graduating class of 2016 on Sunday. In a wide-ranging […]