Dry and sunny Friday forecast gives residents and SES volunteers chance to assess damage after vigorous coastal low wreaks havoc on east coast
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After days of torrential rain and damaging winds, a break in the wild weather has provided a much-needed reprieve for residents of New South Wales.
A “vigorous coastal low” wreaked havoc on Australia’s east coast this week, drenching catchments, leaving thousands without power, causing flight cancellations and fuelling dangerous ocean swells with waves as high as 13 metres.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
07/03/2025 - 03:15
07/03/2025 - 02:48
Wildfires have been reported in Greece, Turkey, Spain and Germany as Europe’s heatwave continues
Meanwhile, French air traffic controllers began a two-day strike demanding better working conditions, causing disruption to air travel as the summer season gets under way, Reuters reported.
Ryanair said it had to cancel 170 flights disrupting 30,000 passengers, with a secondary effect on flights flying over France to other destinations. “EU skies cannot be repeatedly closed just because French Air Traffic Controllers are going on recreational strikes,” the airline said.
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07/03/2025 - 01:00
Last year, a single female was recorded returning to one tributary of a river usually celebrated for its fish. Now a plan is in place to change things – but it’s proving controversial
On an unusually hot May day in Aberdeenshire, Edwin Third stands on the bank of the River Muick, a tributary of the UK’s highest river, the Dee, talking us through the rising threats to one of Scotland’s most celebrated species, the Atlantic salmon. Against the hills of the Cairngorms national park, a herd of stags on the moorland bask in the sun.
It is a spectacular landscape, attracting hikers, mountain-bikers and salmon fishers, the latter contributing an estimated £15m to Aberdeenshire’s economy.
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07/03/2025 - 00:00
Amendments to children’s wellbeing and schools bill call for ban on Pfas and synthetic fibres over health concerns
The volume of microplastics and potentially harmful “forever chemicals” in school uniforms should be restricted, experts have said, as they urge peers to back two amendments to a crucial bill.
The children’s wellbeing and schools bill, which applies mainly to England and Wales and is at committee stage in the House of Lords, is poised to introduce new regulation on the cost of school uniform items, as well as the number of branded uniform items schools can require pupils to wear.
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07/03/2025 - 00:00
FoI requests also reveal that since 2019 less than 3% of those held under law in London were prosecuted
Police in London have been accused of abusing their powers to curb protest after research found that less than 3% of arrests for conspiracy to cause a public nuisance in the past five years resulted in a prosecution.
The research also found an almost tenfold rise in the number of arrests in the capital for the offence, most commonly used to target activists, since 2019 when Extinction Rebellion set off a wave of climate activism.
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07/02/2025 - 10:00
Research finds that the higher the levels of air pollution in a region, the more cancer-promoting mutations are present
Air pollution has been linked to a swathe of lung cancer-driving DNA mutations, in a study of people diagnosed with the disease despite never having smoked tobacco.
The findings from an investigation into cancer patients around the world helps explain why those who have never smoked make up a rising proportion of people developing the cancer, a trend the researchers called an “urgent and growing global problem”.
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07/02/2025 - 09:12
Special soil spray is used to increase amount of water grass can absorb to prevent courts from drying out
A special chemical is being used at Wimbledon to make “water wetter” to try to reduce water bills and tackle rising temperatures.
As the championship welcomed rain on Wednesday after opening with scorching temperatures, Neil Stubley, Wimbledon’s head of courts and horticulture, said the tournament uses a soil spray to adjust the amount of water a plant root system can absorb.
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07/02/2025 - 09:00
The event of the oligarchical season showcased the carelessness of a couple who claim to care about the climate
If last week was the best of times for Zohran Mamdani and the working people of New York City, it was the worst of times for the billionaires who spent a small fortune trying to stop him from securing the city’s Democratic mayoral nomination. The media mogul Barry Diller, to name just one, donated a cool $250,000 to Andrew Cuomo’s campaign, only to see the disgraced former governor lose by a decisive margin.
But Diller would soon be able to drown his disappointment in Great Gatsby-themed cocktails as he joined Tom Brady, Ivanka Trump and at least three Kardashians for the cheeriest event on this season’s oligarchic social calendar: the Venetian wedding of the former TV journalist Lauren Sánchez and the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
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07/02/2025 - 08:58
French far-right leader’s ‘grand plan’ to expand AC comes under attack, while Germany braces for possible record heat
The European heatwave has moved east, threatening record temperatures in Germany, as a political row broke out in France over air conditioning.
The French far-right leader Marine Le Pen seized a canvassing opportunity before the 2027 presidential election, announcing she would launch a “grand plan for air conditioning” for the nation if she won power.
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07/02/2025 - 07:30
Water shortages hitting crops, energy and health as crisis gathers pace amid climate breakdown
Drought is pushing tens of millions of people to the edge of starvation around the world, in a foretaste of a global crisis that is rapidly deepening with climate breakdown.
More than 90 million people in eastern and southern Africa are facing extreme hunger after record-breaking drought across many areas, ensuing widespread crop failures and the death of livestock. In Somalia, a quarter of the population is now edging towards starvation, and at least a million people have been displaced.
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