Up to five areas could enter drought status and more hosepipe bans expected after three heatwaves and lack of rain
As many as five areas of England are expected to go into drought this summer after the hottest June since records began in 1884.
Three heatwaves, which tend to increase water consumption, combined with a lack of rain means that large swathes of England are heading towards drought status and the damage to the environment that entails.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
07/14/2025 - 10:05
07/14/2025 - 10:05
Customs officials at Cologne Bonn airport tipped off by ‘noticeable smell’ that did not resemble confectionary
Arachnophobes beware: customs officials have released photos from a seizure of roughly 1,500 young tarantulas found inside plastic containers that were hidden in chocolate sponge cake boxes shipped to an airport in western Germany.
Customs officials said on Monday they had found the shipment at Cologne Bonn airport in a package that had arrived from Vietnam. A Cologne customs office spokesperson, Jens Ahland, said they had been tipped off by a “noticeable smell” that did not resemble the expected aroma of the 7kg (about 15lb) of the confectionery treats.
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07/14/2025 - 09:00
Household energy bills in some Republican-leaning states could rise by more than $600 every year, analysis of the so-called ‘big, beautiful bill’ finds
The cost of electricity is poised to surge across the US in the wake of Republican legislation that takes an axe to cheap renewable energy, with people in states who voted for Donald Trump last year to be hardest hit by the increase in bills.
As air conditioners crank up across the US during another sweltering summer amid an unfolding climate crisis, rising energy costs will become even more severe for households due to the reconciliation spending bill passed by Republicans in Congress and signed by Trump, who called it the “big, beautiful bill”, on 4 July.
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07/14/2025 - 06:49
Jane McCarthy, who has terminal cancer, withheld payments for three years in protest at Buckinghamshire council’s fossil fuel investments
A woman who withheld council tax payments for three years in protest at her local authority’s continued investment in fossil fuels fears losing her home.
Jane McCarthy, 74, said she decided on the protest after becoming increasingly fearful about the impact of climate breakdown on future generations, particularly when she learned about climate tipping points at a local meeting.
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07/14/2025 - 06:40
Restrictions to come into effect in Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, Berkshire and Wiltshire from 22 July
Thames Water has announced a hosepipe ban as a record dry spring and summer has severely reduced water supplies.
Households in Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, Berkshire and Wiltshire will be banned from using hosepipes to wash cars or water gardens from Tuesday 22 July.
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07/14/2025 - 06:00
The Fourth of July tragedy was described as something no one could have seen coming. But in ‘flash flood alley’, an eerily similar event 40 years ago holds important lessons
The rain was pouring down in Texas in the early morning hours of 17 July 1987. James Moore, a reporter for a local NBC news station, was stationed in Austin when his editors called and told him to grab his camera operator and head to Kerrville, a Hill Country town about 100 miles (160km) away. They had heard reports of flash flooding on the Guadalupe River.
“We just jumped in the car when it was still dark … we knew there were going to be problems based on how much rain there was,” Moore said. En route, he got another call over the radio that told him to head instead for the small hamlet of Comfort, just 15 miles from Kerrville.
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07/14/2025 - 00:47
In today’s newsletter: Amid at least 129 deaths and billions of dollars of damage, there has been little reckoning about the part global heating and cuts to public services may have played in the disaster
Good morning. The death toll from the catastrophic floods in Texas has climbed to 129, including at least 27 children and counsellors at Camp Mystic in Kerr County.
With more than 160 people still missing, authorities warn that the number of casualties is likely to rise. On Sunday morning, some search operations were cancelled as heavy rain and strong winds battered the state once again.
Israel-Gaza | An Israeli airstrike has killed at least 10 people, including six children, who were waiting to collect water in Gaza, Palestinian health officials have said. Dozens of others were killed in Gaza over the weekend in a separate strike near a food aid distribution site. Meanwhile, former Israeli PM Ehud Olmert has said that a proposed “humanitarian city” would be a concentration camp for Palestinians.
Health | Health officials have urged people to come forward for the measles vaccine if they are not up to date with their shots after a child at Alder Hey children’s hospital in Liverpool died from the disease.
UK news | Charlotte Church, veteran peace campaigners, Trade unionists, activists and politicians, are among hundreds who have signed a letter describing the move to ban the group Palestine Action as “a major assault on our freedoms”.
Spain | Several people were hurt in a second night of anti-migrant unrest in the town of Torre Pacheco in south-east Spain after a pensioner was beaten up, authorities said.
NHS | Health secretory Wes Streeting will meet representatives from the British Medical Association this week as he looks to avert five days of strikes by resident doctors.
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07/14/2025 - 00:00
Researchers in Europe found everyday plastics, especially farmers’ baler twine, being used by the birds as a building material and entangling their young. It is a problem that affects other species too, say experts in the US, UK and Argentina
On a late spring morning in the farmlands of southern Portugal, Dr Marta Acácio set her ladder against a tree and began to climb. Four metres up, she reached the giant white stork nest that was her goal. She knew from telescopic camera shots there was a healthy looking chick inside – and now she wanted to ring it.
But when Acácio, an ecologist from University of Montpellier in France, tried to scoop up the chick, it would not come away: it was tethered to the nest by a piece of plastic baler twine. She turned the chick over and recoiled: its belly was a mass of maggots.
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07/14/2025 - 00:00
Increasing frequency of heatwaves and flooding raises fears over health, infrastructure and how society functions
Ed Miliband to tell MPs who reject net zero policies they are betraying future generations
Record-breaking extreme weather is the new norm in the UK, scientists have said, showing that the country is firmly in the grip of the climate crisis.
The hottest days people endure have dramatically increased in frequency and severity, and periods of intense rain have also ramped up, data from hundreds of weather stations shows. Heatwaves and floods leading to deaths and costly damage are of “profound concern” for health, infrastructure and the functioning of society, the scientists said.
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07/14/2025 - 00:00
Exclusive: Energy secretary’s ‘radical truth-telling’ comes as Reform plans net zero bonfire and Tories also ditch targets
‘Profound concern’ as scientists say extreme heat ‘now the norm’ in UK
Ed Miliband is to explicitly call out politicians who reject net zero policies for betraying future generations in an unprecedented update to parliament about the state of the climate crisis, which he is calling “an exercise in radical truth-telling”.
With Reform UK proposing to scrap all net zero measures and even questioning the science behind climate change, and the Conservatives ditching environmental targets, Miliband hopes to regain the initiative with a stark warning to MPs.
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