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Trio argued orange powder protest day before 2024 solstice was justified because of focus on climate emergency
Three Just Stop Oil protesters have been cleared over a protest at Stonehenge during which orange powder was sprayed on to the prehistoric circle.
Rajan Naidu, 74, Niamh Lynch, 23, and Luke Watson, 36, targeted Stonehenge the day before last year’s summer solstice.
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Category 5 storm is most powerful to strike Jamaica and has caused death and destruction in Cuba and Haiti
Hurricane Melissa has wreaked havoc across parts of the Caribbean in recent days, after first making landfall in Jamaica on Tuesday night as a category 5 storm – the highest strength. This was the most powerful storm to strike the island nation, packing winds of up to 185mph at its peak.
Western parts of Jamaica were worst hit, with 90% of homes in the town of Black River losing their roof or being destroyed entirely. Roughly three-quarters of the country lost electricity, with at least 19 people known to have lost their lives at the time of publication. The cleanup operation was hampered by thunderstorms even after Melissa cleared to the north. The hurricane continued northwards, but was a slightly weakened category 3 storm by the time it made landfall in Cuba. Nonetheless, the storm continued to bring winds of up to 120mph and torrential rains.
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Miteni factory closed after water pollution scandal but machinery and patents were bought and rebuilt by Indian company
The thick green jungle and rust-red hills of Lote, on India’s west coast, give way to a small hill where a factory looms against the sky.
The factory is almost brand new, but its machinery is not: it comes from the former Miteni factory in Vicenza, Italy. Miteni closed down in 2018 after one of the worst environmental scandals in the country’s recent history: after decades of producing Pfas forever chemicals, the company’s management was brought to trial for contaminating water resources in an area where 350,000 people live. In June, its former executives were found guilty at the Vicenza court of assizes of causing environmental pollution and other charges and given prison sentences, which they are expected to appeal against.
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Indiana Jones star calls US president one of history’s greatest criminals for attacks on science and boosting of fossil fuels
Harrison Ford has said that Donald Trump’s assault upon measures to address the climate crisis “scares the shit out of me” and makes the US president among the worst criminals in history.
In a blistering attack upon the president, Ford told the Guardian that Trump “doesn’t have any policies, he has whims. It scares the shit out of me. The ignorance, the hubris, the lies, the perfidy. [Trump] knows better, but he’s an instrument of the status quo and he’s making money, hand over fist, while the world goes to hell in a handbasket.”
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Sydney researchers commercialising a product they say can cool indoor spaces and will cost little more than standard premium paints
Australian scientists have developed roof coatings that can passively cool surfaces up to 6C below ambient temperature, as well as extract water from the atmosphere, which they say could reduce indoor temperatures during extreme heat events.
Heatwaves are becoming more intense, more frequent and more deadly due to human-caused global heating.
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Research by marine scientists in Thailand is revealing how shipwrecks can benefit the undersea environment
Sitting at the bottom of the Gulf of Thailand about 20 metres below the ocean surface is the HTMS Hanhak Sattru. Snappers, yellowtail fusiliers and bannerfish swim through the ship’s corridors,while barnacles, algae and young coral cling to the iron ladders and machine-gun on deck. Nearby is another wreck, the HTMS SuphairinBoth were intentionally submerged by the Royal Thai Navy in 2023 to create artificial reefs and dive sites. Their planned scuttling have enabled marine scientists to produce some of the first research on how much shipwrecks change the marine environment.
There is already plenty of existing research that shows that shipwrecks create a new ecosystem. But whether they pull fish from natural reefs or promote production of new fish (known as the attraction-pollution hypothesis) has historically been hard to say.
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In this week’s newsletter: As settlements expand across northern Kenya, people and elephants are increasingly clashing over land, food and water
It is remarkably hard to see an elephant in the wild. In Oldonyiro, northern Kenya, they pass through the settlement almost every night. Piles of dung appear metres from the primary school and local church each morning, where smooth circles have been padded into the earth by the enormous beasts shuffling past in the dark.
But when I went looking for them in September, they were nowhere to be found.
More after this week’s most important reads.
How a radical experiment to bring a forest into a preschool transformed children’s health
‘White-knuckled wolf spider’ thought lost is rediscovered on Isle of Wight
Carnivorous ‘death ball’ sponge among new species found in depths of Southern Ocean
Can communities living side by side with wildlife beat Africa’s national parks at conservation?
Nairobi’s lions are almost encircled by the city. A Maasai community offers a key corridor out
World’s landscapes may soon be ‘devoid of wild animals’, says nature photographer
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The discovery that affluent neighbourhoods have more diversity of nature has implications for human wellbeing – and sheds light on the structural injustices in cities
Read more: The nature extinction crisis is mirrored by one in our own bodies. Both have huge implications for health
For a long time, ecology tended to ignore people. It mostly focused on beautiful places far from large-scale human development: deep rainforest or pristine grassland. Then, in the late 1990s, in the desert city of Phoenix, Arizona, scientists shifted their gaze closer to home.
A team of ecologists went out into their own neighbourhood to map the distribution of urban plants in one of the first studies of its kind. Equipped with tape measures and clipboards, they documented trees and shrubs, sometimes getting on all fours to crawl through bushes under the curious watch of local people.
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Both are cyclones, or circular storms, but they form in distinct places and vary in terms of scale and impact
Cyclones are circular storms. Those that form in the Atlantic are called hurricanes while those in the Pacific are typhoons. They are essentially similar, but the difference between the areas where they form makes them different in scale and impact.
Typhoons tend to be larger because of the vast size of the Pacific. The two have similar wind speeds but are reported differently. Hurricanes are rated on the Saffir Simpson scale, with a five indicating sustained winds of more than 157 mph (253 km/h). There is no equivalent international scale for Pacific cyclones, but various scales exist with categories such as “typhoon” for wind speeds of 74-114 mph and “super typhoon” for those with winds above 115 mph.
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In Finland, kindergartens are exposing children to more mud, wild plants and moss - and finding changes to their health that show how crucial biodiversity is to wellbeing
Read more: The nature extinction crisis is mirrored by one in our own bodies. Both have huge implications for health
Aurora Nikula, 5, is having a normal day at her nursery. She is making a cake out of sand and mud, adding in make-believe carrots, potatoes and meat. “It’s overcooked,” she says as she splashes water in, then adds another dollop of sand. “More sugar, it tastes better,” she says. A handful of mud goes in, and the dish evolves into a chocolate cake.
Aki Sinkkonen, a principal scientist with the Natural Resources Institute Finland, is watching. He’s also very interested in Aurora’s cake, but for different reasons. “Perfect,” he says, admiring the way she is mixing soil, sand and leaves and then putting it on her face. “She’s really getting her hands in it.”
Aki Sinkkonen (left) and Marja Roslund from the Natural Resources Institute Finland in the Humpula garden
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