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Exclusive: Pensthorpe was believed to be home to just one individual but pair have been filmed grooming each other
No one knows where they came from or how they ended up in Norfolk. But one thing is certain: now, there are two of them.
Until last week, experts believed there was only one wild beaver living in Pensthorpe nature reserve, about 20 miles outside Norwich. But just in time for Valentine’s Day, two were caught on camera going for a late-night swim together and grooming each other by the riverbank.
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Figures from Aviva also show number of homes being built in risky areas is rising
One in nine new homes in England built between 2022 and 2024 were constructed in areas that could now be at risk of flooding, according to new data.
The figures show the number of homes being built in risky areas is on the rise – a previous analysis showed that between 2013 and 2022, one in 13 new homes were in potential flooding zones.
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In 1999, Heather Preen contracted E coli on a Devon beach. Two weeks later she died. Now, as a new Channel 4 show dramatises the scandal, her mother, Julie Maughan, explains why she is still looking for someone to take responsibility
When Julie Maughan was invited to help with a factual drama that would focus on the illegal dumping of raw sewage by water companies, she had to think hard. In some ways, it felt 25 years too late. In 1999, Maughan’s eight-year-old daughter, Heather Preen, had contracted the pathogen E coli O157 on a Devon beach and died within a fortnight. Maughan’s marriage hadn’t survived the grief – she separated from Heather’s father, Mark Preen, a builder, who later took his own life. “I’ve always said it was like a bomb had gone off under our family,” says Maughan. “This little girl, just playing, doing her nutty stuff on an English beach. And that was the price.” Yet there had been no outrage, few questions raised and no clear answers. “Why weren’t people looking into this? It felt as if Heather didn’t matter. Over time, it felt as if she’d been forgotten.” All these years later, Maughan wasn’t sure if she could revisit it. “I didn’t know if I could go back into that world,” she says. “But I’m glad I have.”
The result, Dirty Business, a three-part Channel 4 factual drama, is aiming to spark the same anger over pollution that ITV’s Mr Bates Vs the Post Office did for the Horizon scandal. Jumping between timelines, using actors as well as “real people” and with actual footage of scummy rivers and beaches dotted with toilet paper, sanitary towels and dead fish, it shows how raw sewage dumps have become standard policy for England’s water companies. Jason Watkins and David Thewlis play “sewage sleuths” Peter Hammond and Ash Smith, Cotswolds neighbours who, over time, watched their local river turn from clear and teeming with nature to dense grey and devoid of life. Hammond is a retired professor of computational biology, Smith a retired detective, and together, they used hidden cameras, freedom of information requests and AI models to uncover sewage dumps on an industrial scale.
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Five countries responsible for 75% of world’s coffee supply record average of 57 extra days of coffee-harming heat a year
In Ethiopia, the birthplace of coffee, more than 4m households rely on coffee as their primary source of income. It contributes almost a third of the country’s export earnings, but for how much longer is uncertain.
“Coffee farmers in Ethiopia are already seeing the impact of extreme heat,” said Dejene Dadi, the general manager of Oromia Coffee Farmers Cooperatives Union (OCFCU), a smallholder cooperative.
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Lawsuit from health and environmental justice groups challenges the EPA’s rollback of the ‘endangerment finding’
More than a dozen health and environmental justice non-profits have sued the Environmental Protection Agency over its revocation of the legal determination that underpins US federal climate regulations.
Filed in Washington DC circuit court, the lawsuit challenges the EPA’s rollback of the “endangerment finding”, which states that the buildup of heat-trapping pollution in the atmosphere endangers public health and welfare and has allowed the EPA to limit those emissions from vehicles, power plants and other industrial sources since 2009. The rollback was widely seen as a major setback to US efforts to combat the climate crisis.
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Less than a decade ago, the Balkan country had just one breeding pair of the eastern imperial species of raptor left. Now things are changing, thanks to the dogged work of conservationists
At the start of every spring, before the trees in northern Serbia begin to leaf out, ornithologists drive across the plains of Vojvodina. They check old nesting sites of eastern imperial eagles, scan solitary trees along field margins, and search for signs of new nests.
For years, the work of the Bird Protection and Study Society of Serbia (BPSSS) has been getting more demanding – and more rewarding. In 2017, Serbia was down to a single breeding pair. Last year, BPSSS recorded 19 breeding pairs, 10 of which successfully raised young.
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Hitchin, Hertfordshire: It’s not quick, it’s not graceful, but these early nesters are hard at work in preparation for egg-laying in a few weeks
Is it too early to whisper the S word? If so, I blame the magpies. Every day for the past two weeks, while enjoying my morning cuppa in bed, I’ve been watching a pair nest-building in a Norway maple across the road. But though the arrival of spring advances each year at a faster pace than any other season, the magpies’ calendar is not out of kilter. Like their corvid cousins the rooks and ravens, they usually start nesting in winter, occasionally as early as December.
Now, a fortnight in, they’re shoring up the bowl-shaped platform in a fork between three upper branches. The movement of their swinging tails as they manoeuvre twigs into place looks graceful, even balletic.
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Government takes its first serious steps to crack down on dangerous driving but progress is slow
The first time Lucian Mîndruță crashed his car, he swerved to avoid a village dog and hit another vehicle. The second time, he missed a right-of-way sign and was struck by a car at a junction. The third time, ice sent him skidding off the road and into two trees. Crashes four to eight, he said, were bumper-scratches in traffic too minor to mention.
That Mîndruță escaped those collisions with his life – and without having taken anyone else’s – is not a given in Romania. Home to the deadliest roads in the EU, its poor infrastructure, weak law enforcement and aggressive driving culture led to 78 people per million dying in traffic in 2024. Almost half of the 1,500 annual fatalities are vulnerable road users such as pedestrians and cyclists.
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With Trump blocking Venezuelan oil imports and old power plants breaking down, the island – with Chinese help – is turning to solar and wind to bolster its fragile energy system
Intense heat hangs over the sugarcane fields near Cuba’s eastern coast. In the village of Herradura, a blond-maned horse rests under a palm tree after spending all Saturday in the fields with its owner, Roberto, who cultivates maize and beans.
Roberto was among those worst affected by Hurricane Melissa, which hit eastern Cuba – the country’s poorest region – late last year. The storm affected 3.5 million people, damaging or destroying 90,000 homes and 100,000 hectares of crops.
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From high-end boutiques to housing in disaster zones with beer-crate foundations, the Japanese architect creates with things people throw away. What will his distillery in whisky’s holy land look like?
‘I don’t like waste,” says Shigeru Ban. It’s a simple statement – yet it encapsulates everything about the Japanese architect’s work. He takes materials others might overlook or discard – from cardboard tubes to beer crates, styrofoam to shipping containers – and subjects them to a kind of alchemy, refining rough edges and transforming fragility into sturdiness.
The outcome is a perpetually ingenious and curiously poetic scavenger architecture that finds beauty and purpose in the everyday. From high-end boutiques to housing for refugees, Ban’s buildings blur the lines between eastern and western design traditions, between the luxurious and the ordinary, and between what constitutes a temporary building and permanent one.
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