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Farmers battle to salvage what they can of their crops as heatwave set to continue
Britain could face shortages of certain foods after punishing drought in parts of England, the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) has warned as a heatwave was forecast to continue into next week.
The UK’s Health Security Agency (UKHSA) has issued heat health alerts for eight regions of England, with temperatures set to rise above 30C in parts of the country. UKHSA said rising temperatures may increase health risks, particularly for vulnerable groups.
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Fire department says two-person crew of one aircraft killed in incident during gale-force winds to west of capital
Two firefighting helicopters have collided west of Athens, killing the two-person crew of one of the aircraft, as efforts to control a massive wildfire barrelling towards the outskirts of the Greek capital intensified.
Footage showed one of the helicopters losing control in the face of gale-force winds that have pushed flames towards settlements on Athens’ western fringes.
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Volunteers painstakingly gather plastic pellets washing up on beaches after ship collision on 19 July
‘You’ve got a local community that really cares about the coastline,” said Alice Laverty, reflecting on the huge army of volunteers who had taken to crisis-hit beaches in north-east England with passion and only the most basic tools. “They’ve all got a dustpan, a brush, a bucket, a kitchen sieve.”
On beaches from Cambois in Northumberland to Seaburn on Wearside, up to 2,000 dedicated volunteers have been painstakingly sifting through sand to find tiny, lentil-sized pellets of plastic.
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Garrigill, Cumbria: The abandoned Tynebottom mine is alive with vivid orange, raspberry-ripple pink and sulphurous yellow. But it’s the cave pearls that captivate me most
At first I can’t believe that there’s a way in, the entrance is so hidden by downy willow, ferns and field rush. Just a trickle of rusty water hints at the opening to an abandoned mine. That we have to push through scrub to enter the underground world only adds to the excitement.
A long adit stretches before us, lit by our helmet torches, its arched stonework streaked and stained by minerals. We marvel at the precision and detail of the masonry, breathe in smells of damp earth and wood. Led by two miners from nearby Nenthead mines, we’re a small group of potters and artists working towards an exhibition inspired by lead mining in the North Pennines.
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Council leaders say crumbling infrastructure and lack of water are jeopardising government’s plans for new homes
The government’s housebuilding agenda is hitting the stark reality of a lack of water and crumbling infrastructure across the east and south-east of England.
Half the country was declared to be in serious drought this week, for the second consecutive year, with the Environment Agency warning of dire consequences for the economy, environment and wildlife.
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Farms and rooftop panels contribute 14.4% to the grid – and figures reveal a surge in new installations
Solar energy supplied more power to Great Britain’s grid in July than in any previous month as households turned to rooftop panels to cut their energy bills.
Solar farms and rooftop panels provided 14.4% of the country’s electricity after some parts of the UK recorded almost twice the average sunshine hours for the time of year.
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Visible impact of warming climate is impossible to ignore across landscapes that have been starved of rainfall
Half of England and the whole of Wales are officially in drought and July is set to be the driest month on record as extreme heat intensified by the climate crisis continues to grip the UK and Europe this summer.
The announcements this week by England’s Environment Agency and Natural Resources Wales mark the third such event over the past five years, and come in the wake of four record-breaking heatwaves since May which have fuelled huge wildfires and left farmers, wildlife and protected habitats running out of water.
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Experts say new power to bypass conservation and planning regulations are incredibly broad and could let the state effectively fast-track any project it wants
Matt Wood gives Neville a pat behind his ear – as if the one-tonne Droughtmaster bull were an oversized labrador puppy – while his wife, Caitlin, watches hundreds of pasture-fed hens scratch beneath old macadamia trees her dad planted.
Their talk is of building their regenerative agricultural operation amid the rainforests at the top of Springbrook mountain: adding goats to control fireweed and maremma to protect their chooks from wedge-tailed eagles and letting wild trees grow.
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In the 1990s, scientists in Australia began searching for the origins of a new disease showing up in places hundreds of kilometres apart. They discovered the origin: bats. And found a way to reduce the risk of bat disease spillovers
The virus could have appeared in many places on the east coast, but it is a strange coincidence, in the light of later scientific discoveries, that it first became known in the Brisbane suburb of Hendra. The high school is named Aviation High, and the streets are bordered by the international airport and aerospace buildings to the east.
Hendra today is a booming suburb just off the M1 motorway, but for much of the 20th century the neat rows of houses enjoyed pastoral space on the outskirts of the city. When the Eagle Farm racecourse was built, Hendra became the horse-racing hub of south-east Queensland. It was common to see horse floats parked out the front of the houses and trainers walking their horses down the streets before daybreak.
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PM has long history of speaking out on realities of global heating but political opponents remain unnmoved
Just over four years ago, Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, visited a small town in the south-western region of Extremadura that had been affected by one of the wildfires devouring tens of thousands of hectares of land across the country.
That summer’s blazes had left two people dead in the northern region of Castilla y León and another man there fatally burned after the excavator he was using to try to dig a firebreak to protect his town was swallowed up by the flames. A street-sweeper in Madrid had collapsed and died from heatstroke while on shift in soaring temperatures that summer. The paramedics who tried to save him noted that his body temperature was 41.6C (107F).
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