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Many now concerned about ability to make living in fast-changing climate after one of worst grain harvests recorded
Record heat and drought cost Britain’s arable farmers more than £800m in lost production in 2025 in one of the worst harvests recorded, analysis has estimated.
Three of the five worst harvests on record have now occurred since 2020, leaving some farmers asking whether the growing impacts of the climate crisis are making it too financially risky to sow their crops. Farmers are already facing heavy financial pressure as the costs of fertilisers and other inputs have risen faster than prices.
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Reports of escaped wallabies are on the rise, especially in southern England. But how easy is it to spot these strange and charismatic marsupials – and why would a quintessentially Australian creature settle here?
It was about 9.30 or 10 on a dark, late November night; Molly Laird was driving her pink Mini home along country lanes to her Warwickshire cottage. Suddenly, the headlights’ beam picked up an animal sitting in the road. “I thought it was a deer at first,” Molly tells me. “But when it moved, its tail wasn’t right, and it was hopping. It took me a while to realise, but I thought: that’s a kangaroo!”
Molly’s next thought was: “I’m going insane,” closely followed by, “No one’s going to believe me.” So she got out her phone and filmed it. Later, she posted the video on social media, where she was told it was likely to be not a kangaroo, but its smaller cousin, the red-necked wallaby.
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Residents report homes shaking from quake with epicentre near the village of Silverdale in Lancashire
Residents were shaken by what felt like an “underground explosion” after England’s biggest earthquake in two years affected towns and villages across Lancashire and Cumbria.
A 3.3-magnitude earthquake was felt as far as 12 miles from the epicentre near the coastal village of Silverdale in Lancashire shortly after 11.23pm on Wednesday.
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Abbotsbury, Dorset: Long ago this was the place to come and wish for a husband. It is empty today, but still so full of presence
Two ascending buzzards dazzle against the sun as I climb to St Catherine’s Chapel alone on its hill above the sea. It is the saint’s own feast day (25 November), when women once came to recite a charm for getting married. The traditional wording was blunt: “A husband, St Catherine, a handsome one, St Catherine, a rich one, St Catherine, a nice one, St Catherine, and soon, St Catherine.” Impatient supplicants added in dialect: “arn‑a‑one’s better than narn-a-one” (anyone’s better than no one).
Today, I am the only person there. The lichened walls of golden sandstone are pitted and worn by gales and salt, the east window so eroded that it has been boarded over for renovation. Inside it is quite bare, long ago stripped of its medieval stained glass and fittings, nothing but pale stone and sunlight printing shadows on the walls.
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Study reveals US earmarked billions to stockpile critical minerals for military use, including precision-guided weaponry and AI-driven warfare
The accelerating global arms race is hindering climate action as critical minerals that are key to a sustainable future are being diverted to make the latest military hardware, according to a report
The study from the Transition Security Project – a joint US and UK venture – reveals how the Pentagon is stockpiling huge stores of critical minerals that are needed for a range of climate technologies including solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles and battery storage.
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Nootka lupins, introduced in the 1940s to repair damaged soil, are rampaging across the island, threatening its native species
It was only when huge areas of Iceland started turning purple that authorities realised they had made a mistake. By then, it was too late. The Nootka lupin, native to Alaska, had coated the sides of fjords, sent tendrils across mountain tops and covered lava fields, grasslands and protected areas.
Since it arrived in the 1940s, it has become an accidental national symbol. Hordes of tourists and local people pose for photos in the ever-expanding fields in June and July, entranced by the delicate cones of flowers that cover the north Atlantic island.
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Pesticide Action Network Europe study finds average concentrations 100 times higher than in tap water
High levels of a toxic “forever chemical” have been found in cereal products across Europe because of its presence in pesticides.
The most contaminated food is breakfast cereal, according to a study by Pesticide Action Network Europe (PAN), with average concentrations 100 times higher than in tap water.
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Even tiny ponds can create biodiversity hotspots, as well as helping out during heatwaves and heavy rain
A few years ago I created a little pond in my back garden. It’s barely bigger than a paving slab, but since the pond has been in place we have had a garden teeming with frogs, hedgehogs have taken up residence and bird life has abounded.
Not only do humble ponds like this give nature a boost; they also help to buffer climate extremes. In recent decades, Britain’s ponds have been disappearing, with research revealing that more than half of our dense network of ponds has been lost since the 1900s. Lucy Clarke and colleagues found that 58% of ponds in the Severn Vale region of the UK had been lost since the 1900s, with the average distance between ponds increasing by 25 metres over that time. Similar trends can be seen worldwide, with intensive agriculture and urbanisation obliterating these seemingly insignificant bodies of water.
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It borders Brazil, but French Guiana is now a remote outpost of the EU. It is home to Europe’s only spaceport, some of the most biodiverse forest on the planet and a military mission that is testing the limits of western power
Above me, a ceiling of rough wooden branches and tarp. To my right, an officer in the French Foreign Legion types up the daily situation report. In front of me a French gendarme named David is standing in front of a table full of large assault rifles, pointing out locations on a paper map. A generator hums. All around us, splotches of forest dot the hundreds of islands that make up the archipelago of Petit-Saut, a watery ecosystem three times the size of Paris.
Except Paris is 7,000 kilometres away from where I am, in Guyane, or French Guiana,a department of France in South America, just north of the equator.
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Amid concerns over greenhouse gas emissions, the Trump administration has abolished climate-friendly farming incentives
This article was produced in partnershipwith Floodlight
For decades, corn has reigned over American agriculture. It sprawls across 90m acres – about the size of Montana – and goes into everything from livestock feed and processed foods to the ethanol blended into most of the nation’s gasoline.
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