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A rise in the number of remarriages and a baby boom in the years since 2004 gave hope to survivors and helped them cope with the tragedy
It was Mahyuddin’s mother who had pestered him to go out on Sunday morning, 20 years ago. Dozens of relatives were visiting their small coastal village in Indonesia for a wedding party, but a powerful earthquake had struck just before 8am. Buildings in some areas had collapsed. He should go and check on his employer’s office to see if they needed help, his mother said.
As he drove into town, he found chaos and panic. The road was heavy with traffic: cars, motorbikes, trucks, all rushing in the same direction. People were running, shouting that water was coming.
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Campaigners jubilant after government heeded warning 2031 cutoff would mean loss of precious footpaths
A deadline for registering historic rights of way is to be scrapped after a warning that the looming cutoff date could result in the loss of thousands of miles of footpaths.
The last government set a deadline of 2031 for all rights of way in England to be added to an official map, after abandoning a previous commitment to scrap the policy.
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Caring for God’s Acre mapped out 20,000 cemeteries and recorded 10,000 species
Churchyards are vital havens for rare wildlife including dormice, bats and beetles, according to an extensive audit of burial grounds around the UK.
The conservation charity Caring for God’s Acre mapped out 20,325 cemeteries, with 800,000 wildlife records submitted and more than 10,800 species recorded.
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Rising temperatures are pushing these Arctic mammals ever farther into Greenland’s north. But eventually there will be nowhere left for them to go
Built like a small bison, weighing as much as a grand piano and covered in thick, shaggy coat, the musk ox is one of the most distinctive species in the high Arctic. But from a hill on Greenland’s tundra, they seem impossible to find.
Each bush, rock and clump of grass resembles a mass of wool and horns in the blustery chill on the edge of the island’s enormous polar ice cap. Scanning the shimmering landscape with binoculars, Chris Sørensen looks for signs of movement.
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In a little understood quirk of nature foresters have been putting the aspen tree under duress to promote flowering
On a nature reserve deep in the Scottish Highlands there is a polytunnel which houses a small forest of slender grey aspen trees. It is known as the “torture chamber”.
The aspen is one of the UK’s scarcest but most valuable trees. And to produce the tiny, delicate aspen seeds being harvested by the charity Trees for Life, these 104 specimens are deliberately made to suffer.
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Campaigners say consumption such as travel, gifts and food are destroying planet and the meaning of Christmas
Whether out of poverty or virtue, many of us spend much of the year reining in our appetites to save our pennies and our health. But at Christmas many of us put our worries aside and go wild in an orgy of lavish gifting, extensive travel and a gluttonous feeding frenzy.
This carnival of consumption has a cost: not just to our wallets and our waistlines, but also to the climate.
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Subsidence affecting many new builds, raising questions about sustainability of skyscrapers in coastal areas
Miami’s oceanfront skyscrapers are sinking. In 2021 the devastating collapse of the Champlain Towers South condominium in Miami’s Surfside resulted in the loss of 98 lives, and prompted closer inspection of the city’s high-rise shoreline. Now a study has identified unexpected levels of subsidence among many of Miami’s high-rise buildings, including prominent luxury properties such as the Porsche Design Tower, Trump Tower III and Trump International Beach Resort.
Using satellite data gathered between 2016 and 2023, researchers observed between 2cm and 8cm of sinking of buildings along Miami’s beachfront area. One beachfront – Sunny Isles Beach – recorded continuous subsidence in more than 70% of its new builds. The findings, published in Earth and Space Science, show the majority of affected buildings were recently constructed high-rises. Which means it is possible the subsidence is a consequence of their own construction. The combination of hefty high-rise buildings, vibration from construction, groundwater movement and tidal flows are potentially triggering the subsidence, with the worst-affected areas being those with a sandy layered limestone underlying them.
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With restrictions due next month, food vendors are still using such plastics and some traders have not heard of ban
Labake Ajiboye-Richard, the founder of a Lagos-based sustainability consultancy, was driving in Nigeria’s most populous city earlier this month when she saw someone throwing rubbish out of their car window.
“I was so shocked to see that in 2024,” she said. “If you’re throwing something on the road, what are you doing in your home? What are you doing in your community?”
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While some residents take to building houses in trees, officials recognise need for national response to climate disasters
Every summer, Dongting Hu, China’s second-largest freshwater lake, swells in size as flood water from the Yangtze River flows into its borders. Dams and dikes are erected around the lake’s edges to protect against flooding. But this year, not for the first time, they were overwhelmed.
For three days in early July, more than 800 rescue workers in Hunan province scrambled to block the breaches. One rupture alone took 100,000 cubic metres of rock to seal, according to Zhang Yingchun, a Hunan official. At least 7,000 people had to be evacuated. It was one of a series of disasters to hit China as the country grappled with a summer of extreme weather. By August, there had been 25 large floods, the biggest number since records began in 1998, reported state media.
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The death of Tanaru, the last member of an uncontacted group in the Amazon, raises questions about ethnic cleansing of Indigenous people, justice and the future of ancestral lands
For at least 26 years a man known as Tanaru lived alone in a small forest in the south-western Brazilian Amazon, moving around his territory, building several houses, planting crops and hunting. He also dug large, mysterious holes inside his homes.
When a team from the National Indigenous Peoples Foundation (Funai) came across him in 1996, he resisted contact, aiming an arrow at them through a gap in his palm shelter, a scene captured in the 2009 documentary Corumbiara. In 2007, Funai officials made another attempt at contact. Again Tanaru repelled it, leaving one man with a bad arrow wound.
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