The celebrations also included presentations about the history of the Weeping Cross and its significance for Vrboska on Saturday March 9th. The talks were interspersed with harmony singing by Vrboska's Klapa Kaštilac.
© Vivian Grisogono
The celebrations also included presentations about the history of the Weeping Cross and its significance for Vrboska on Saturday March 9th. The talks were interspersed with harmony singing by Vrboska's Klapa Kaštilac.
© Vivian Grisogono
Automotive body says current policy is leading to job losses and has become a ‘driver of de-industrialisation’
Fresh incentives to boost a flatlining electric car market are urgently needed, according to the UK automotive industry, whose leaders called on the government to act fast and “revisit the mandate” for zero emission vehicles (ZEV).
The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) said its research showed growth in consumer demand for EVs was lower than expected, with only one in eight new buyers planning to switch in the next three years, putting jobs at risk.
Continue reading...
Exclusive: Research shows drop in produce prices as households consume more imported and ultra-processed food
Farmers’ incomes have remained stagnant since the 1970s despite improvements in productivity and a fall in the workforce, research has found.
This has been driven by falling prices for farm produce; as the UK has become more reliant on imports, supermarkets have taken over grocery shopping, and households are eating more ultra-processed food, according to the report by the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission.
Continue reading...
DDT use nearly wiped out the raptor by the 1970s. Now peregrine numbers are collapsing again in many countries and no one is quite sure why
For the past six years, Gordon Propp, who builds sets forBritish Columbia’s film industry, has kept a close watch over 13 peregrine falcon nests in and around Vancouver, including 10 on the city’s bridges.
A self-described wildlife enthusiast and citizen scientist, Propp has had a lifelong fascination with these raptors. “To see a creature that high up the food chain adapting to an urban environment, to me, that’s quite remarkable,” says Propp.
Continue reading...
EPA takes aim at almost every major pollution rule in what environmentalists call act of ‘malice toward the planet’
Donald Trump’s administration is to reconsider the official finding that greenhouse gases are harmful to public health, a move that threatens to rip apart the foundation of the US’s climate laws, amid a stunning barrage of actions to weaken or repeal a host of pollution limits upon power plants, cars and waterways.
Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued an extraordinary cavalcade of pollution rule rollbacks on Wednesday, led by the announcement it would potentially scrap a landmark 2009 finding by the US government that planet-heating gases, such carbon dioxide, pose a threat to human health.
Continue reading...
From a high chair to the ocean floor, Can the Seas Survive Us? in Norfolk’s Sainsbury Centre explores our watery world and the climate crisis
One of the most striking things that will be on display at an exhibition in Norfolk this weekend is an oak chair. Ordinary enough, except that it is elevated high in the air. Why? Because this is where it will need to be in 2100, given rising sea levels in the Netherlands, where it was made by the artist Boris Maas.
Entitled The Urge to Sit Dry (2018), there is another like it in the office of the Dutch environment minister in The Hague, a constant reminder of the real and immediate threat posed to the country by rising sea levels.
The Dutch artist Boris Maas with his 2018 work The Urge to Sit Dry, which uses wooden blocks to lift the chair to the height it needs to be to sit above predicted sea levels
Continue reading...
Blood tests on migratory chicks fed plastics by their parents show neurodegeneration, as well as cell rupture and stomach lining decay
Ingesting plastic is leaving seabird chicks with brain damage “akin to Alzheimer’s disease”, according to a new study – adding to growing evidence of the devastating impact of plastic pollution on marine wildlife.
Analysis of young sable shearwaters, a migratory bird that travels between Australia’s Lord Howe Island and Japan, has found that plastic waste is causing damage to seabird chicks not apparent to the naked eye, including decay of the stomach lining, cell rupture and neurodegeneration.
Continue reading...
Mangroves are being destroyed and residents displaced to make way for an airport to serve president Nayib Bukele’s vision of a tax-free economic hub
When Nayib Bukele launched his presidential campaign in the eastern department of La Unión in 2018, the new outsider politician stood in a street packed with supporters and promised a new airport. La Unión and the rest of El Salvador’s eastern region have historically been neglected by governments, with few infrastructure projects and widespread poverty.
Just a month later, Bukele travelled to Germany to lobby for his project. “Munich airport is interested in operating our new airport that we will build in La Unión,” he said.
Continue reading...
However, you will most likely have to venture to the polar tundra to see this striking wader at its black-bellied best
Any bird with “grey” in its name is not likely to make the average birder quiver with excitement. And it is true that in winter, when grey plovers visit our shores from the high Arctic, they are easy to overlook, especially among the spectacular flocks of lapwings, golden plovers and avocets on my Somerset coastal patch.
Stout and unassuming, grey plovers usually lurk on the edge of the mud beneath the sea wall, patiently picking off shellfish and marine worms with their short bills. Only when they take to the wing do they reveal a dark black “armpit”, contrasting with their pale underwings – a useful field mark that helps distinguish them from their close relative the golden plover.
Continue reading...
The Guardianas del Conchalito ignored chants of ‘get back to your kitchens’, determined to protect the environment and create a sustainable shellfish operation
Ahead of the small boat, as it bobs on the waters near La Paz in the Mexican state of Baja California, is a long line of old plastic bottles strung together on top of the waves. Underneath them are as many as 100,000 oysters, waiting to be sold to the upmarket hotels down the coast.
Cheli Mendez, who oversees the project, pulls a shell up from below, cuts it open with a knife, and gives me the contents to try: a plump, tasty oyster. Mendez is one of a group known as Guardianas del Conchalito, or guardians of the shells, and theirs is the first oyster-growing business in the region run entirely by women, she says.
The women dug a channel with shovels and pickaxes to allow seawater to reach the mangroves
Continue reading...
An ugly fight has ripped through Galloway in south-west Scotland, with rival campaigns complaining of dirty tricks and murky finances. How could the mere possibility of a new national park stir up so much ill will?
As soon as the green fields of Galloway, in south-west Scotland, were selected as the preferred site for Britain’s first new national park in 15 years, Denise Brownlee sprang into action. The 64-year-old retired civil servant had served two seasons as a park ranger in Loch Lomond and the Trossachs, and knew a thing or two about the chaos brought by thoughtless day-trippers and campers. “The detritus!” she says. “I’ve seen a two-man tent used as a human litter tray. You think dog poo on the pavement is bad? Try wandering up any remote little area in a national park. Your faith in humankind gets lost.”
In July, Galloway was chosen as the frontrunner from a shortlist of five areas as part of the Scottish government’s pledge to designate at least one new national park – the country’s third – by 2026. The park’s creation, however, is by no means assured. The other areas in the running had faced varying degrees of opposition (especially Lochaber in the west Highlands), but no one could have predicted the ugly fight that was to tear through one of Scotland’s most picturesque regions, rip apart friendships and turn neighbours against each other.
Continue reading...The prime minister says the move will cut duplication and free up money for frontline services.
There are three main reasons body is going - money, bureaucracy and control, says Nick Triggle
As part of Your Voice, Your BBC, we answer questions from you on government plans to scrap NHS England.
She says husband Doug Barrowman and her are targets of a "politically motivated witch hunt".
Cheshire Police expands its investigation into what happened at the Countess of Chester Hospital.
It can be taken at home on a daily basis, but it is only patients for who have tried all other options.
Children under five constituted more than 40% of the cases reported in Europe and Central Asia last year.
Healthcare Improvement Scotland is concerned about treatment at parties organised with unregulated providers.
Up to 6,500 jobs could go as health secretary looks to bring NHS England closer to the government.
A genetic testing service based in Devon is praised by a woman with a rare skin condition.
The Amazon rainforest faced another difficult year. Despite bright spots, humanity is still asking too much of the forest. One company says it has an answer.
When you think of “wildlife trafficking,” you probably don’t think of succulents. Yet these unique plant species have been at the center of a growing poaching problem.
Indigenous leaders on the island of Palawan recently signed a landmark deal to establish the country’s first locally owned forest carbon project. The project aims to halt deforestation through the sale of carbon credits
Recent news provides a grim affirmation of Conservation International research — and underscores what must happen next.
One of the world’s most important places for nature is a small strip of mountainous forest no more than about 40 miles wide. And for want of a relatively small amount of money, its long-term health is in doubt.
Conservation International science fuels effort to help island countries manage a deep shift in their waters.
In Kenya, competition for food leads to conflict between livestock and wildlife. A new study offers a simple approach to avoiding it.
An interview highlights a spate of new roles for the Hollywood actor — and one old one, characterized by his trademark steadfastness.
The Indonesian government has granted six species of threatened “walking sharks” the highest level of protection — a move experts hope will lead to the conservation of other sharks, whose numbers have plummeted due largely to the shark fin trade.
The catastrophic impacts of climate breakdown may soon outpace humanity’s ability to adapt to it, according to a new report.