




Seaweed has become a key cash crop as climate change and industrial trawling test the resilient culture of the semi-nomadic Vezo people
Along Madagascar’s south-west coast, the Vezo people, who have fished the Mozambique Channel for countless generations, are defined by a way of life sustained by the sea. Yet climate change and industrial exploitation are pushing this ocean-based culture to its limits.
Coastal villages around Toliara, a city in southern Madagascar, host tens of thousands of the semi-nomadic Vezopeople, who make a living from small-scale fishing on the ocean. For centuries, they have launched pirogues, small boats carved from single tree trunks, every day into the turquoise shallows to catch tuna, barracuda and grouper.
A boat near lines of seaweed, which has become a main source of income for Ambatomilo village as warmer seas, bleached reefs and erratic weather accelerate the decline of local fish populations
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Dursley, Gloucestershire: We have to embrace these darker months and get outside, but there’s also only so much wind and sludge I can take
Winter is tiring. The footpath is a gully of slop, and each step forwards is a little slip backwards. The north-facing slope was OK – the frost hadn’t been thawed by the sun, and crunchy ground is better than slippy ground. But the rest of Gloucestershire has turned into slurry.
It’s just as well that I enjoy it; I do this every week. For the last seven years I’ve been going out on a Friday, taking some combination of buses and trains to wherever the previous walk ended, and continuing. My Friday walk is a single tangly line stretching from Birmingham to Dorset, and the Malverns to the M25, and I go whatever the weather.
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Scientists working for government breed biological control agents in lab to take on species choking native wildlife
Crayfish, weevils and fungi are being released into the environment in order to tackle invasive species across Britain.
Scientists working for the government have been breeding species in labs to set them loose into the wild to take on Japanese knotweed, signal crayfish and Himalayan balsam, and other species that choke out native plants and wildlife.
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Met Office says temperatures are tracking ahead of 2022 after year of heatwaves and drought, though late cold spell could yet intervene
Forecasters say 2025 is “more likely than not” to break the record for the hottest year in the UK since records began, after a summer of heatwaves and drought followed by a mild autumn.
According to the Met Office, the official forecaster, the mean temperature for 2025 is tracking well ahead of the previous highest year, set in 2022. However, a colder spell expected from Christmas until the new year makes it too close to call definitively.
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U-turn lifts limit from £1m to £2.5m after protests and warnings that family farms were at risk
Ministers will increase the threshold for taxing inherited farmland from £1m to £2.5m after months of pressure from campaigners and MPs representing rural areas.
In a statement slipped out just before Christmas, the environment department announced the U-turn, which will apply from April when the tax kicks in.
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The activist and author of Here Comes the Sun discusses rapid advances in solar and wind power and how the US ceded leadership in the sector to its main rival
Bill McKibben’s book The End of Nature, published in 1989, warned early of the dangers of climate changes and he has been campaigning and writing ever since. His most recent book, Here Comes the Sun, takes a look at the soaring potential of renewable energy
Is your latest book a more optimistic take on this world?
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Mass of congealed fat, oil and grease 100 metres in length found blocking sewers in Whitechapel area of capital
A “fatberg” weighing an estimated 100 tonnes has been discovered blocking sewers in east London, officials have said.
The mass of congealed fats, oils and grease measures about 100 metres long (328ft) and weighs about a third more than the heaviest of the British army’s battle tanks. It has been called the grandchild of the 2017 Whitechapel fatberg, which weighed 130 tonnes and stretched for more than 250 metres (820ft).
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As the number of the semi-aquatic creatures soars so can tensions. But the Swiss have a tried and tested system to calm the neighbours and restore harmony
“I hate beavers,” a woman tells the beaver hotline. Forty years ago she planted an oak tree in a small town in southern Zurich – now at the frontier of beaver expansion – and it has just been felled: gnawed by the large, semi-aquatic rodents as they enter their seasonal home-improvement mode.
The caller is one of 10 new people getting in touch each week at this time of year. Beavers, nature’s great engineers, can unleash mayhem during winter as they renovate their lodges and build up their dams. For people, this can mean flooding, sinkholes appearing in roads and trees being felled. A single incident can clock up 70,000 Swiss francs (£65,000) in damages.
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Our 20 favourite pieces of in-depth reporting, essays and profiles from the year
Victor Pelevin made his name in 90s Russia with scathing satires of authoritarianism. But while his literary peers have faced censorship and fled the country, he still sells millions. Has he become a Kremlin apologist?
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Thousands of farms set to go bankrupt as grain farmers in particular hit by trade disruptions caused by price hikes
Donald Trump, having promised to “NEVER LET OUR FARMERS DOWN”, appeared to come through for them this month when he unveiled a $12bn aid package. Industry leaders say thousands of farms will still go bust this year.
While the US president has vowed to increase domestic farm production, and even claimed this formed a “big part” of his plan to lower grocery prices for Americans, many US farmers are grappling with mounting financial issues – compounded by Trump’s agenda.
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Žene koje imaju ponavljajuće pobačaje mogu patiti od metaboličkog problema koji utječe na njihovu sposobnost održavanja trudnoće, tvrdi nova studija. Naime, krvne pretrage žena koje su pretrpjele dvije ili više uzastopnih izgubljenih trudnoća pokazale su da njihova tijela mogu imati razlike u načinu na koji obrađuju vitamin B3 (niacin).
Jedan od najvećih čimbenika rizika za razvoj raka jetre je prehrana bogata mastima. Nova studija otkriva kako masna prehrana preoblikuje stanice jetre i čini ih sklonijima kancerogenim.
Rezultati japanske studije sugeriraju da doručak s granolom na bazi zobi s niskim udjelom soli može poboljšati krvni tlak, markere rizika od lipida i pokazatelje zdravlja crijeva kod osoba s umjerenom kroničnom bubrežnom bolešću
Prema rezultatima novog istraživanja, protein ACE2 može igrati zaštitnu ulogu protiv dva uobičajena stanja, visokog krvnog tlaka (hipertenzija) i dijabetesa tipa 2, koja pogađaju milijune ljudi diljem svijeta.
Australski znanstvenici otkrili su da gen TAK1 pomaže stanicama raka da prežive napad imunološkog sustava, otkrivajući mehanizam koji može ograničiti učinkovitost imunoterapijskih tretmana. Imunoterapije raka mogu vrlo dobro funkcionirati, ali u nekim slučajevima ne daju dobre rezultate zbog ugrađenih procesa preživljavanja tumora koji im pomažu da se odupru napadu imunološkog sustava.
Nova studija pokazuje da odrasli koji ostaju tjelesno aktivni tijekom cijele odrasle dobi imaju znatno nižu prevalenciju metaboličkog sindroma u dobi od 61 godine od onih čija tjelesna aktivnost u slobodno vrijeme ostaje niska. Međutim, tjelesna aktivnost u ranoj i kasnoj odrasloj dobi, posebno vježbe jačanja mišića, može ublažiti rizike povezane s ranijom neaktivnošću.
Španjolski znanstvenici identificirali su učinkovitu strategiju za smanjenje strukturnog oštećenja jetre i poboljšanje funkcije jetrenih krvnih žila kod ciroze jetre. Jednako tako, otkrili su ključni upalni mehanizam koji doprinosi oštećenju jetre i koji bi mogao biti usmjeren na razvoj novih tretmana za bolest koja je odgovorna za više od milijun smrtnih slučajeva diljem svijeta svake godine.
Djevojke koje su cijepljene protiv humanog papiloma virusa (HPV) nisu samo dobro zaštićene od raka vrata maternice, naime, one također imaju manju vjerojatnost da će razviti teške prekancerozne lezije vulve (stidnica) i vagine (rodnica), posebno ako su cijepljene prije 17. godine, pokazala je nova studija.
Žene dramatično češće od muškaraca pate od sindroma iritabilnog crijeva (IBS), kroničnog stanja koje uzrokuje bol u trbuhu, nadutost i probavne smetnje. Sada su američki znanstvenici otkrili da hormon estrogen aktivira prethodno nepoznate putove u debelom crijevu koji mogu izazvati bol i učiniti ženska crijeva osjetljivijima na određenu hranu i njihove produkte razgradnje.
Eksperimentalni lijek razvijen na Northwestern University pokazao je obećavajuće rezultate kao rana intervencija za Alzheimerovu bolest. Jednako tako, znanstvenici su uspjeli identificirat prethodno nepoznatu visoko toksičnu podvrstu beta-amiloidnih oligomera - toksične klastere peptida - koji, čini se, pokreću nekoliko najranijih promjena u mozgu, uključujući neuronsku disfunkciju, upalu i aktivaciju imunoloških stanica.