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Campaign network calls on government to prioritise smaller cars and introduce higher charges for SUV owners
More than 1m cars too big to fit in parking spaces are being sold in the UK each year, and numbers are growing, research has found.
A trend for cars bigger than the average urban parking space means new vehicles are outgrowing towns and cities.
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Nests on Amsterdam canals provide archive of plastic waste and show how the material ‘is really here to stay’
One day in 1996, someone ate a McDonald’s McChicken burger in Amsterdam.
Perhaps it was a quick bite after work? A leisurely stroll down the canals? A family outing? These details are lost to time, but others are hard to erase completely.
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Authorities race to complete clean-up operation after devastation from gales and heaviest rainfall in 20 years
People on the Aegean islands, more used in April to the sight and scent of spring’s blossoms, have been left reeling from flash floods spurred by typhoon-strength gales, with authorities calling a state of emergency in some of Greece’s most popular destinations less than three weeks before Easter.
“It’s a total catastrophe and it happened in just two hours,” said Costas Bizas, the mayor of Paros, the island worst hit by weather not seen in decades. “We need all the help we can get.”
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The best of this week’s wildlife photographs from around the world
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Indore in Madhya Pradesh, India, was once dotted with fetid waste dumps but after a huge campaign is now virtually spotless
This is what happens usually in India: a politician wakes up and launches a cleanliness “drive” with fanfare. They ostentatiously start sweeping a street and speak solemnly about civic duty while the media take photos. The next day it’s over and things go back to how they were before.
But not in Indore in Madhya Pradesh. From 2017, when it won the prize for being the cleanest city in the country, it kept winning for eight straight years, until last year.
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Badenoch, Cairngorms: As we pause above the river, a sudden flash catches our eyes – a red squirrelis rippling along the branches below
It’s early morning and the sky is a billowing parachute of blue, bursting its seams with sunshine and the fluffiest white clouds. A cool wind blows up Loch Insh, roughening the water and bearing the scent of spring. From the island, a song thrush pours out all the trills, beeps and chirps of its bravura performance, oystercatchers pipe and a woodpecker hammers, the sound echoing around the hills.
In the forest, the birch trees carry no hint of leaves but are shaggy with moss and lichen, their twigs falling in soft fronds, wine-coloured and beaded. The trunks are irregular, pitched at wild angles, curving and bent, sometimes two or three growing from the same base. In contrast, the pale aspens grow up as straight as telephone poles, sharpening to a point at the top. All their branches rise in upturned spikes, bare but for the tiny ink strokes of twigs. At the centre of the woods is a stand of oaks, vast and spreading, last year’s dry leaves still spilling across the moss and the crushed bracken.
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Only a fraction gets resold on the domestic secondhand market, but there are ways consumers can help reduce waste
Every year, Australians donate the equivalent of 250m pairs of jeans to charity (around 200,000 tonnes of textiles) and send another 200,000 tonnes to landfill.
But only a fraction of donated clothes get resold in Australia. So what happens to your old jeans when you donate them? And how can consumers play their part to minimise waste in the process?
Get Guardian Australia environment editor Adam Morton’s Clear Air column as an email
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Wildlife groups claim the resourceful miniature sausage dog was sighted again this week. But not everyone is on Team Valerie
There’s a roo carcass on the side of the road, near the turnoff to one of Kangaroo Island’s many excellent cellar doors. Black ravens lift sullenly from their feast as cars speed past.
Some think this sort of roadkill is how Valerie, the miniature dachshund that has been missing for more than 500 days, has survived since running away from her owners. It’s hard to picture the 4kg, adorable, goofy-eared, big-eyed sausage dog choosing this particular meal, but that’s a prevailing theory.
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In outback Queensland, an area four times the size of the UK has been inundated with torrential rain, leaving many cut off or forced to abandon homes
The extent of flood waters that have engulfed Queensland over the past fortnight is so widespread it has covered an area more than four times the size of the United Kingdom. The inundation is larger than France and Germany combined – and is even bigger than Texas.
The seemingly endless plains of outback Queensland are so vast and remote as to boggle any attempts to visualise the scale of what is being described as one of the most devastating floods in living memory.
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With air pollution causing a fifth of deaths in Nepal, growing EV use could add nearly three years to Kathmandu residents’ lives
In a rundown hangar in the heart of Kathmandu, the remains of a dozen electric trolley buses stand abandoned and corroding. Caked in dust and bird-droppings and lined with rubbish, they are a reminder of a bold experiment, launched 50 years ago, to electrify the city’s public transport system. Down the side of one is written, “Keep me alive”.
Today, that plea is being heard. More than 70% of four-wheeled passenger vehicles – largely cars and minibuses – imported into Nepal last year were electric, one of the highest rates in the world. The figure reflects a remarkable growth in the use of electric vehicles (EVs), which saw the country import more than 13,000 between July 2023 and 2024, up from about 250 in 2020-21.
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