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Weeks of fires amid warm and dry spell have decimated ecosystems and threatened endangered species, say experts
Britain’s national parks have warned of a “catastrophic” risk from wildfires this Easter after one of the driest early spring seasons on record.
Park rangers from the South Downs to the Highlands said the prolonged warm weather and breezy conditions had left large areas extremely dry despite recent rain.
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Fears produce could be permanently devalued by price war, as it ‘creates unrealistic expectations about costs’
Supermarkets have been criticised for using vegetables as the latest weapon in their burgeoning price war, charging as little as 8p for a 2kg bag of potatoes in an attempt to lure shoppers over Easter.
Growers said they feared the massive discounts, which are also deployed at Christmas, could permanently devalue their produce.
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City residents are working out how to fill their streets with trees as evidence grows of their benefits
“I wanted to do something that would benefit as many people from the community as possible,” says Chloe Straw, pointing at a small but promising sapling visible through the window of her local cafe.
In 2023, Chloe began chatting to her neighbours in Haringey, north London, about trees. “I thought it’d be really nice to raise some money for trees on the main road. Everyone uses West Green Road, regardless of whether you have a lot of money or not, regardless of your background.”
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Dolphin-watching tour witnesses four adult bottlenose dolphins kill a common dolphin calf in Cardigan Bay
They had been hoping for a nice day out on the bay. Instead, dolphin-watching tourists in Wales were confronted with the shocking and grisly sight of four adult bottlenose dolphins pursuing and killing a common dolphin calf.
The trip, in Cardigan Bay, was operated by Dolphin Spotting Boat Trips and the Sea Watch Foundation (SWF), a charity that monitors the dolphins in the bay to inform and advise on their conservation status and protection.
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Prof Shane Ahyong discovered ‘brutish’ mantis shrimp so unusual it needed its own new genus
When Prof Shane Ahyong was seven, his mum came home with a bag of prawns from the fish shop – but one of those things was not like the others.
“It just looked different,” said Ahyong.
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Langstone, Hampshire: She’s brought in clematis, moss and cat fur to build the nest. Soon, surely, the egg-laying will begin
For the past three years, blue tits have nested in a box on the wall beneath my bedroom window, and we’ve become curtain-twitchers, peering covertly out to watch the adults come and go and listen to the peeping chicks. But what goes on inside the cavity? Curiosity piqued, we installed a new box with a solar-powered camera over the winter.
On 19 March, a female blue tit staked her claim, roosting in the box overnight. Nest building commenced early the following morning. I’d assumed she would pick up fallen twigs to form a framework. Instead, she snapped off thin, flexible side shoots from the Clematis montana which smothers our fence. Each piece was repositioned several times before she prostrated herself, wings splayed for balance, and spun around, pedalling her legs to press the material into place.
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Thousands go to hospital with respiratory problems after massive dust cloud blows in from Saudi Arabia
Iraq was hit by its most severe sandstorm of 2025 this week, turning skies from blue to an orange haze. Visibility dropped to less than half a mile, causing travel disruptions, with two major airports halting flights, and streets in Basra, the largest city in southern Iraq, deserted. Respiratory problems sent thousands to hospital. The storm also affected Kuwait, where wind gusts exceeded 50mph, and visibility in some areas was diminished to zero.
This massive dust cloud originated in Saudi Arabia before being blown into Iraq. While dust storms are common in Iraq, the climate crisis is expected to intensify them across the region in the future, fuelled by desertification in Saudi Arabia and Syria.
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Researchers analyse energy performance certificate data to identify areas with potentially high particle pollution
Burning wood at home adds more particle pollution to the UK’s air than the exhausts of all of the vehicles on its roads, but there is very little information on where this burning takes place and who is most affected.
To address this knowledge gap, researchers have produced the first high-resolution map of wood burning in England and Wales.
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Campaigners say authorities should be doing more to clean up waters around city of nearly 5 million people
On a clear summer’s day in Cape Town, the Milnerton Lagoon was serene, reflecting the bright blue sky and Table Mountain. But there was an unmistakable stench, and up close, the water was murky.
A few hundred metres away, adults and children played in the water as it flowed into Table Bay. On the boardwalk, a sign read: “Polluted water: for health reasons, swimming and recreational activities are at your own risk.”
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Liberals in the US make up about 15% of the prepping scene and their numbers are growing. Their fears differ from their better-known rightwing counterparts – as do their methods
One afternoon in February, hoping to survive the apocalypse or at least avoid finding myself among its earliest victims, I logged on to an online course entitled Ruggedize Your Life: The Basics.
Some of my classmates had activated their cameras. I scrolled through the little windows, noting the alarmed faces, downcast in cold laptop light. There were dozens of us on the call, including a geophysicist, an actor, a retired financial adviser and a civil engineer. We all looked worried, and rightly so. The issue formerly known as climate change was now a polycrisiscalled climate collapse. H1N1 was busily jumping from birds to cows to people. And with each passing day, as Donald Trump went about gleefully dismantling state capacity, the promise of a competent government response to the next hurricane, wildfire, flood, pandemic, drought, mudslide, heatwave, financial meltdown, hailstorm or other calamity receded further from view.
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