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Faltering governments will be blamed for famine and conflict abroad, and face stagnation and inflation at home, says climate chief at start of Cop30
Governments failing to shift to a low-carbon economy will be blamed for famine and conflict abroad, and will face stagnation and rising inflation at home, the UN’s climate chief warned on Monday at the start of the Cop30 climate talks.
Simon Stiell, the executive secretary of the UN framework convention on climate change, addressed the gathering of ministers and high-ranking officials from nearly 200 countries, in a stark portrayal of the price of failure on the climate crisis.
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Ari loved his community and set up a volunteer group to fight wildfires. One day his brother Bilal received the phone call he had long dreaded. This is Bilal’s story
LocationHalabja, Iraq
DisasterWildfires, 2025
Bilal Mukhtar is a teacher living in Halabja, in the Hawraman region of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region. Wildfires are breaking out here with increasing frequency, caused by natural events and compounded by hotter and drier weather. Iraq is experiencing its worst drought in nearly a century. Climate change makesdrought and wildfire in Iraq more likely.
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Resulting pollution on Camber Sands beach poses threat to wildlife including dolphins and seals
Southern Water has taken responsibility for the catastrophic spill of plastic biobeads that polluted the Sussex coastline.
Local charities reported a huge spill of millions of biobeads over the weekend, washing up on beaches including Camber Sands. Andy Dinsdale, the founder of the plastic pollution campaign group Strandliners, said it was the worst pollution event he had seen.
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Allendale, Northumberland: It’s not too late to set the trap for some wonderful species – not least the remarkable angle shades moth
Last night was forecast to be wet, but I set the moth trap anyway, hoping a temperature of 10C would encourage species that are active in November. Some moths can fly in the rain, thanks to the super-hydrophobicity of their wings, which are angled like sloping roofs, their microscopic scales the overlapping tiles so that water droplets simply roll off. Wind may be a problem for them, but rain isn’t.
First I check the wall next to the trap and am delighted to find my first December moth of the season. Despite its name, I’m more likely to find the handsome Poecilocampa populi in November. I can tell this is a male from its resplendent antennae, comb‑shaped to increase the surface area with which to detect female pheromones at a great distance. A furry head like a Cossack hat, wings cloaked in charcoal grey and russet with cream cross lines, it is well insulated against the cold. My garden being close to woodland and, with their larvae feeding on broad-leaved trees, I’ve recorded December moths every winter since I’ve been sending data to the Garden Moth Scheme.
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Marcus Decker is supported by climate experts, religious leaders and celebrities as he fights being first person in UK to be ‘deported for peaceful protest’
A climate activist who is appealing against his deportation after serving one of the longest prison sentences in modern British history for peaceful protest has criticised his “crazy double punishment”.
Marcus Decker was jailed for two years and seven months for a protest in which he climbed the Queen Elizabeth Bridge over the Dartford Crossing and unveiled a Just Stop Oil banner in October 2022.
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Two decades ago, the city’s council chose to prioritise playgrounds and youth clubs to help its poorer families – and the benefits are plain to see
• Read more: Last youth centre in one of England’s most deprived coastal areas faces closure
Three schoolboys in black sweatshirts dart from a wooden fort across a sandpit, weaving and jostling past prams, scooters and bystanders, after a pink football. A pony-tailed girl launches herself on to a moving roundabout, while a young man wrestles a half-naked toddler into a pair of training pants before she scampers off back to the sandpit in the autumn sunshine.
This is Buckland adventure playground in Portsmouth, surrounded by trees and a mix of two-storey flats, terrace houses and tower blocks, mostly social housing built to replace the city’s demolished slums.
Buckland adventure playground has now had three generations of children enjoying its facilities
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Destructive winds and rainfall hit archipelago, while a cold spell in Florida prompts fears of falling iguanas
Typhoon Fung-Wong, locally known as Uwan, is the second in a week to affect the Philippines after making landfall on Sunday evening. The weather system prompted warnings for heavy rainfall and life-threatening storm surges across much of the country, with sustained winds of 115mph (185km/h) and gusts of about 140mph recorded on Sunday by the national meteorological agency.
By the time Fung-Wong moves past the Philippines early this week, more than 200mm of rainfall is expected to have fallen on Luzon, the country’s most populous island.
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Installing a dedicated charger is good option – so too is switching to an EV tariff and charging at night or smartly
When you buy an electric vehicle you need to think about how you will charge it at home.The two main things you will need are a charger and a smart meter.
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At 104, Betty Reid Soskin has had the most extraordinary life, from protest singing to civil rights activism to meeting the Obamas. She reflects on what it takes to stay strong and keep going
Betty Reid Soskin was 92 when she first went viral and became, in effect, a rock star of the National Park Service. She was the oldest full-time national park ranger in the US – this was back in 2013; she’d become a ranger at 85 – but she had been furloughed along with 800,000 other federal employees during the government shutdown. News channels flocked to interview her. She was aggrieved not to be working, she told them; she had a job to do.
“In a funny way, I suppose that started lots of things,” Soskin says. Her memoir, Sign My Name to Freedom, was published in 2018, and a documentary about her work, No Time to Waste, was released in 2020. Another film is in the works. Barack Obama called her “profoundly inspiring”. Annie Leibovitz photographed her. Glamour magazine named her woman of the year. Now, Reid Soskin is 104, and “all of whatever I was supposed to do, I’ve done”, she says.
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Before Peter Betts died in 2023, he wanted to pass on what he had learned over many years of negotiating at Cops – including how Paris 2015 was saved at the last bell
By Peter Betts. Read by Andrew McGregor
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