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Slow-moving giant makes landfall and will linger over the island before slamming into Cuba
Hurricane Melissa has made landfall in Jamaica as a catastrophic category 5 storm, the strongest to lash the island since record-keeping began in 1851.
The slow-moving giant hit the island on Tuesday afternoon and is expected to linger, moving diagonally through it until heading on to slam into Cuba, with impacts also expected in Haiti and the Bahamas.
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Exclusive: ‘Devastating consequences’ now inevitable but emissions cuts still vital, says António Guterres in sole interview before Cop30
Humanity has failed to limit global heating to 1.5C and must change course immediately, the secretary general of the UN has warned.
In his only interview before next month’s Cop30 climate summit, António Guterres acknowledged it is now “inevitable” that humanity will overshoot the target in the Paris climate agreement, with “devastating consequences” for the world.
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As rising tides eat away at the Saint-Pierre and Miquelon archipelago off Canada, plans to move the historic village to higher ground have divided residents
Franck Detcheverry, Miquelon’s 41-year-old mayor, trudges up a grassy hill. “The view isn’t too bad, huh?” he jokes. The ocean sparkles 40 metres below the empty mound. The sound of a man playing the bagpipes, as if serenading the sea, floats up from the shoreline. This hill will be the location of his new home and those of all his fellow villagers.
In the distance, about half a mile away, you can see the outline of the 400 or so buildings in the village of Miquelon. It sits only 2 metres above sea level on the archipelago of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon. Situated off the Canadian coast to the south of Newfoundland, it is an “overseas collectivity” of France, and the country’s last foothold in North America.
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Claimants seek compensation from RWE and Heidelberg Materials after extreme flooding destroyed harvests
A group of Pakistani farmers whose livelihoods were devastated by floods three years ago has fired the starting shot in legal action against two of Germany’s most polluting companies.
Lawyers acting for 43 men and women from the Sindh region sent the energy firm RWE and the cement producer Heidelberg formal letters before action on Tuesday warning of their intention to sue later this year.
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Reduction comes from energy generated from windfarms and lower cost of gas owing to lower demand
Wind power has cut at least £104bn from energy costs in the UK since 2010, a study has found.
Users of gas have been among the biggest beneficiaries, the research suggested.
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Long Dean, Cotswolds: On the farm, we’re firmly on the path towards winter – though the fields have a spring-like greenness
Last week, we ran the neighbouring farm’s mixed beef herd back to their winter shed from some outlying fields almost two miles away. This happens twice yearly – going out and coming in – and it was all hands on deck.
Gateways, driveways, entrances to lanes all needed to be blocked, as did the B-road winding through Upper Castle Combe that the herd crosses on an awkward bend. It was quite a spectacle – a “stop the traffic” event in every sense.
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Climate crisis drives near-total collapse of staghorn and elkhorn corals that formed backbone to state’s reefs
Two of the most important coral species that made up Florida’s reef are now functionally extinct after a withering ocean heatwave caused catastrophic losses, scientists have found.
The near-total collapse of the corals that once formed the backbone of reefs in Florida and the Caribbean means they can no longer play their previously crucial role in building and sustaining reef ecosystems that host a variety of marine life.
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US groups aim to represent country at UN climate summit even as Trump administration declines to send a delegation
Despite historic environmental rollbacks under a president who pulled the US from a key international climate treaty – and recently called global warming “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world” – US civil society groups say they are gearing up to push for bold international climate action at a major UN conference next month.
“This is a really important moment to illustrate that Trump does not represent the entirety, or even anywhere near a majority, of us,” said Collin Rees, US program manager at the environmental non-profit Oil Change International, who will attend the annual UN climate conference, known as Cop30.
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Survivors in Valencia call for consequences, particularly for regional president, after country’s worst natural disaster this century
The endless, sticky mud that coated the streets of Valencia, sucking at the boots of survivors and residents, is gone now. As are the jumbles of wrecked cars and the mountains of sodden, ruined belongings that had begun to stink in the humid coastal air.
But one year on, lingering evidence of the worst natural disaster to befall Spain this century is everywhere. Walk through the gaping, still-doorless entrance to a block of flats in the Benetússer neighbourhood, on the southern outskirts of the city, and there is a small sign on the wall, positioned 2.5 metres (8ft) above the floor. It reads: “The flood waters rose this high on 29 October 2024.”
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A young journalist reflects on the UN leader’s responses, and hopes his messages – about human violence on an increasingly hostile planet – resonated before Cop30
There we were at the edge of the forest. The computer screen had been up for a long time, everything arranged so that nothing would go wrong; that the internet wouldn’t go down, that the computer battery wouldn’t die, and a glass of water and ice in front of me so I wouldn’t be left without words. Silence filled the other side of the camera until a figure appeared, and there he was: António Guterres, the man who speaks for the world, the secretary general of the United Nations.
A few weeks earlier, I had received an invitation from Jonathan Watts of the Guardian newspaper, asking me to interview Guterres with him. I accepted. It would be my first time speaking to someone with that level of authority. But what would I ask him?
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