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Dublin, Helsinki, Stockholm and Tallinn among port cities more choked by sulphur oxides from ferries, analysis shows
Fume-belching ferries spew more sulphur pollution than cars in several EU capitals, analysis has found.
Dublin, Helsinki, Stockholm and Tallinn are among 13 of Europe’s 15 biggest port cities choked more by sulphur oxides (SOx) from ferries than road vehicles, data shared exclusively with the Guardian shows.
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Exclusive: Schemes worth hundreds of millions of pounds to protect biodiversity and oceans likely to be substantially reduced
UK programmes to protect nature and the climate in developing countries are suffering swingeing budget cuts despite ministers’ promises, the Guardian has learned.
The cuts belie the government’s claims to be fulfilling international obligations on climate finance and are veiled behind a system that experts have criticised as opaque.
The cutting and partial closure of the £100m Biodiverse Landscapes Fund, intended to protect nature in vital ecosystems in poor regions overseas. Six regions were originally targeted, in Africa, South America and Asia, but this has been reduced to two.
Coast – a project for Climate and Ocean Adaptation and Sustainable Transition – and Pact (Prepare and Accelerate Climate Transitions) are having substantial cuts.
The future of the £500m Blue Planet Fund has been thrown into doubt despite its successful operation.
Other schemes have been reduced in scope, for instance by allowing only one year’s funding where years were expected.
Requests for data under the Freedom of Information Act have revealed spending has been slashed among the departments responsible for international climate finance (ICF).
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South Australia saw most of the season’s wildest swings with January heatwaves followed by February floods
This summer ricocheted from extremely hot to intensely wet across parts of the country, according to the Bureau of Meteorology, with South Australia experiencing some of the season’s most acute swings.
Nationwide, the 2025-26 season was the wettest in nearly a decade, with rainfall 32% higher than average across the country, according to the bureau’s summary, the rainiest since 2016-17.
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Storeton Wood, Wirral: Two centuries ago, this area teemed with workmen busying building Liverpool; more than 200m years ago very different creatures roamed here
At last, the sun shone after weeks of rain. While the distant Welsh hills were draped in snow, here on the Wirral it was dry and bright. Storeton Wood is a secondary woodland of oak, beech and silver birch, and formerly a quarry. Below, a cuprous layer of leaf has protected the soil from the recent assault of raindrops. Fallen limbs were a feast of fungi; in places, creamy white Storeton sandstone peeked through like discarded vertebrae. Great spotted woodpeckers drummed.
Standing by the remnant of George Stephenson’s quarry track, I envisaged the 1838 scene: workmen busy extracting sandstone, sudden shouts of discovery and confusion, handprints in the rock. They thought they were the signs of people perished in Noah’s flood. Victorian scientists later confirmed that they were footprints of a crocodile-like creature named Chirotherium storetonense (Chirotherium meaning “hand beast”) dating from Triassic times, 240m summers ago.
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Insect taxonomist Art Borkent has described and named more than 300 species of midges but fears his field of science is dying out, despite millions of insects, fungi and other organisms waiting to be discovered
Once Art Borkent starts speaking about biting midges, he rarely pauses for breath. Holding up a picture of a gnat trapped in amber from the time of the dinosaurs, the 72-year-old taxonomist explains that there are more than 6,000 ceratopogonidae species known to science. He has described and named more than 300 midges, mostly from his favourite family of flies. Some specialise in sucking blood from mammals, reptiles, other insects and even fish, often using the CO2 from their host’s breath to locate their target, he says. Tens of thousands remain a mystery to science, waiting to be discovered.
But to Borkent’s knowledge, nobody will continue his life’s work of identifying and studying this group of flies once he has gone.
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Warmth was result of high pressure developing across central Europe, which brought southerly winds
The end of winter brought unseasonably high temperatures across much of Europe but particularly so in northern Spain and south-west France as numerous February temperatures records were broken.
Cities across Nouvelle-Aquitaine and the Basque Country, including Bordeaux, Bilbao and San Sebastián, matched or exceeded their long-term February records, with temperatures of 27.1C and 27.6C recorded in Bilbao and San Sebastián on Wednesday, more than 13C above average for the time of year.
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Tebay, Cumbria: At this in-between moment where it’s both winter and spring, I’m reminded that nothing is permanent in farming
To make our new hedgerows as diverse as possible, we are planting a fruit tree every 200 metres in them, and last winter we planted a new apple and damson orchard at Low Park, our abandoned farm. This morning, I am popping some additional fruit trees into the hedges and checking on the orchard. The trees have been sourced from damson growers in the Lyth Valley and the apple trees from a local orchard group.
When I arrive at Low Park, which is nearby in the Lune gorge, I am cheered to see that some primroses are already flowering in the orchard as it is so sheltered. Elsewhere, winter still has us in its grip, with snow earlier in the week on the fells. As well as the primroses, my eye is drawn to some almost fluorescent orange fungi on some deadwood, which I believe is witches’ butter.
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A new survey shows 80% of gen Zs believe strong environmental values are as important as physical attraction when it comes to finding a partner (so you might want to start reusing your coffee cups)
Name: Green flags.
Age: This is a thing for younger people, so listen up, boomers.
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For months it has been adding to my mother’s distress when all she wanted was feed-in tariff payments go into her account
When my father died last year, nearly all thecompanies we had to notify were kind and empathetic, but notScottishPower.
It had been paying feed-in tariff (Fit) payments for electricity produced from my parents’ solar panels into his account. My parents hadbought the panels jointly in 2011, and my mother is named on the certification and was ScottishPower’s main point of contact, so she thought it would be a simple matter for the payments to be switched to her bank account. It was not.
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There is no end in sight to the pollution caused by a ‘broken’ system. Experts say it could even be getting worse
Sarah Lambert took her usual morning swim for 40 minutes off Exmouth town beach before her volunteer shift helping disabled people get access to the water.
A wheelchair user herself, Lambert’s regular sea swims twice a week between the lifeboat station and HeyDays restaurant were the perfect form of exercise for her disability.
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