Breaking Waves: Ocean News

Labour is constantly torn between its self-image as a party of radical change and its fear of alienating voters with the wrong kind of radicalism When Keir Starmer became Labour leader he was unpractised in politics. For advice, he naturally turned to someone who had done his job before and with whom he had a good personal rapport: Ed Miliband. As Starmer grew in confidence he stayed friendly with Miliband, deferential to his status as a veteran of government and appreciative of his sincere enthusiasm for the energy and climate brief. But the new leader was also ruthlessly focused on winning power, and increasingly alert to toxicities in the Labour brand. He was persuaded that the journey to Downing Street could be completed only by jettisoning policy baggage and paying less heed to people associated with past failure. Continue reading...

Protesters will gather outside court of appeal in support of activists, who say judges defied decades of precedent Sixteen environmental activists jailed in the past year will appear at the high court on Wednesday to ask England’s most senior judge to quash their “unduly harsh” sentences. The appellants, from four separate cases, will appear before a bench of judges led by Lady Carr, the Lady Chief Justice, in a full session of the court of appeal in which they will argue that judges defied decades of precedent to hand them long jail terms for nonviolent protests. Continue reading...

Cold weather causes leak at Johnstown Flood Museum, which commemorates 1889 catastrophe that killed 2,209 A museum dedicated to commemorating the victims of a 19th-century flood in Pennsylvania has temporarily closed due to flooding – caused on the inside of the facility by a water leak stemming from recent, extremely cold weather, officials said on Monday. Fortunately for its patrons, the Johnstown Flood Museum said on its social media accounts that “nothing of historic significance was affected” by the interior inundation. Continue reading...

Research provides more evidence that food is a potentially overlooked exposure route to toxic ‘forever chemicals’ Produce grown in home gardens around a North Carolina PFAS plant contain dangerous levels of the chemicals, new research has found, providing more evidence that food is a potentially overlooked exposure route to the compounds, especially when grown near polluters. The study’s authors say findings point to much of the contamination resulting from air emissions, which research increasingly suggests is an underestimated source of PFAS pollution. Continue reading...