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‘Everybody loses’ if production supercharged in country with largest known oil reserves, critics say
Donald Trump, by dramatically seizing Nicolás Maduro and claiming dominion over Venezuela’s vast oil reserves, has taken his “drill, baby, drill” mantra global. Achieving the president’s dream of supercharging the country’s oil production would be financially challenging – and if fulfilled, would be “terrible for the climate”, experts say.
Trump has aggressively sought to boost oil and gas production within the US. Now, following the capture and arrest of Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, he is seeking to orchestrate a ramp-up of drilling in Venezuela, which has the largest known reserves of oil in the world – equivalent to some 300bn barrels, according to research firm the Energy Institute.
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Every year a Chinese-dominated flotilla big enough to be seen from space pillages the rich marine life on Mile 201, a largely ungoverned part of the South Atlantic off Argentina
In a monitoring room in Buenos Aires, a dozen members of the Argentinian coast guard watch giant industrial-fishing ships moving in real time across a set of screens. “Every year, for five or six months, the foreign fleet comes from across the Indian Ocean, from Asian countries, and from the North Atlantic,” says Cdr Mauricio López, of the monitoring department. “It’s creating a serious environmental problem.”
Just beyond Argentina’s maritime frontier, hundreds of foreign vessels – known as the distant-water fishing fleet – are descending on Mile 201, a largely ungoverned strip of the high seas in the South Atlantic, to plunder its rich marine life. The fleet regularly becomes so big it can be seen from space, looking like a city floating on the sea.
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Problem at water treatment centre left 24,000 Tunbridge Wells homes without drinking water for two weeks
A failure at a water treatment centre that left tens of thousands of Kent households without water was foreseen weeks before it happened and could have been stopped, the regulator has said.
Twenty-four thousand homes in the Tunbridge Wells area were without drinking water for two weeks from 30 November last year due to a failure at the Pembury water treatment centre.
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Behind the west’s huge appetite for the fruit lies the dark reality of environmental destruction and Indigenous exploitation in Mexico
I grew up in San Andrés Tziróndaro, a Purépecha community on the shores of Lake Pátzcuaro in the Mexican state of Michoacán. My childhood was shaped by water, forests and music. The lake fed us. The forest protected us. In the afternoons, people gathered in the local square while bands passed through playing pirekua, our traditional music.
That way of life is now under threat as our land is extracted for profit.
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Exclusive: From solar subsidies to meat taxes, minority rightwing voices appear to drown out the consensus
“There may have been a silent majority in favour of windfarms and higher petrol taxes, but if there was, these people were mighty quiet. Essentially, all I ever heard from was people objecting to them.” That was the view of a former UK MP who took part in new research that reveals how significantly British and Belgian politicians underestimate the public’s support for climate action.
From solar power and energy efficiency to meat taxes and frequent flyer levies, the politicians consistently failed to appreciate people’s appetite for policies that tackle global heating. The misapprehension has real world consequences: those politicians were less willing to vote for or speak up for those policies, according to the study.
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Inkpen, Berkshire: The felted mouse choir, the sleeping fawn … a lot of it has meaning to us. At least the greenery goes up in a blaze of glory
By the time you read this, we’ll be taking down the Christmas decorations. I don’t like to let them go. I love the mischief of the days and nights over Christmastide. They sit outside ordinary time, disappearing and extending of their own accord. I enjoy the historical ambiguity over when Twelfth Night falls: the 5th, or this night? I don’t want to be pressed by traditions or superstitions, making up my own ways to say goodbye to the festive period – yet still, I’m wary of them.
We used to cut our tree from the estate we lived on, but in recent years we’ve chosen one from Willis Farm, high on the downs, where they’re grown sustainably, with wildlife in mind. Ours is a colourful tree. Each bauble has meaning and I’m sorry to see them go. Some are from childhood; a treasured wooden goose, and a beaver nestled in a walnut shell, came from a Christmas shop in Banff, Alberta, bought on a day off from ranching in 1989.
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Exclusive: data reveals hundreds of UK nests have been raided in the past decade amid growing appetite to own prized birds for racing and breeding
In the echoing exhibition halls of Abu Dhabi’s International Hunting and Equestrian Exhibition, hundreds of falcons sit on perches under bright lights. Decorated hoods fit snugly over their heads, blocking their vision to keep them calm.
In a small glass room marked Elite Falcons Hall, four young birds belonging to an undisclosed Emirati sheikh are displayed like expensive jewels. Entry to the room, with its polished glass, controlled lighting and plush seating, is restricted to authorised visitors only.
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Twenty-five years after I revealed the practices of the industrial food giants, the profits – and dangers – of mass producing meat and milk have only grown
Cats have long been kept at American dairy farms to kill rats, mice and other rodents. In March 2024, a number of barn cats at dairies in the Texas panhandle started to behave strangely. It was like the opening scene of a horror movie. The cats began to walk in circles obsessively. They became listless and depressed, lost their balance, staggered, had seizures, suffered paralysis and died within a few days of becoming ill. At one dairy in north Texas, two dozen cats developed these odd symptoms; more than half were soon dead. Their bodies showed no unusual signs of injury or disease.
Dr Barb Petersen, a veterinarian in Amarillo, heard stories about the sick cats. “I went to one of my dairies last week, and all their cats were missing,” a colleague told her. “I couldn’t figure it out – the cats usually come to my vet truck.” For about a month, Petersen had been investigating a mysterious illness among dairy cattle in Texas. Cows were developing a fever, producing less milk, losing weight. The milk they did produce was thick and yellow. The illness was rarely fatal but could last for weeks, and the decline in milk production was hurting local dairy farmers. Petersen sent fluid samples from sick cows to a diagnostic lab at Iowa State University, yet all the tests came back negative for diseases known to infect cattle. She wondered if there might be a connection between the unexplained illnesses of the cats and the cows. She sent the bodies of two dead barn cats to the lab at Iowa State, where their brains were dissected.
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Flooding across the state’s north and west blocks roads and cuts off towns at a time of year when so many are on holidays
Over the weekend, Narelle Hetherington got a call from a couple planning a more than 1,000km trip across Queensland. The drive would see them pass through Winton, where Hetherington runs a motel – the couple wanted a room.
“I’m like, ‘mate, the roads are all cut off out here’,” Hetherington says.
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Pacific Grove is known as ‘Butterfly Town USA’ for its role as an overwintering spot. As the insect’s population plummets, residents are coming to its rescue
In the tiny seaside village of Pacific Grove, California, there’s no escaping the monarch butterfly.
Here, butterfly murals abound: one splashes across the side of a hotel, another adorns a school. As for local businesses, there’s the Monarch Pub, the Butterfly Grove Inn, even Monarch Knitting (a local yarn shop). And every fall, the small city hosts a butterfly parade, where local elementary school children dress up in butterfly costumes. The city’s municipal code even declares it an unlawful act to “molest or interfere” with monarchs in any way, with a possible fine of $1,000.
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