Feed aggregator

How a year of intense scientific effort unravelled the secrets of a virus that shut down the world.

The pangolin is said to be the world's most trafficked mammal. The BBC reports on a rescue operation.

Farmers ‘relieved’ as country joins 10 others in allowing emergency use of chemical banned in EU

A pesticide believed to kill bees has been authorised for use in England despite an European Union-wide ban two years ago, the government has announced.

Following lobbying from the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) and British Sugar, a product containing neonicotinoid thiamethoxam was sanctioned for emergency use on sugar beet seeds this year because of the threat posed by a virus.

Continue reading...

Three Percenters and the Oath Keepers have threatened federal employees and institutions that steward public lands

When the full story of the 6 January storming of the US Capitol building is told, historians will have to make sense of what might seem an odd footnote. The two most prominent rightwing militia groups that participated in the mob onslaught on Congress – the Three Percenters, based in Idaho, and the Oath Keepers, based in Nevada – cut their teeth in obscure corners of the American west, where for close to a decade they have threatened violence against federal employees and institutions that steward the nation’s public lands.

Related: 'It was just a free-for-all': my day photographing the Capitol attack

Continue reading...

Private member’s bill seeks to ensure water firms do more to clean up their act on untreated waste

More than 100 MPs from across different parties are supporting a parliamentary bid to stop water companies discharging untreated sewage into rivers.

Philip Dunne, the Conservative chair of the environmental audit committee, is seeking in a private member’s bill to place a duty on water companies to ensure untreated sewage is not discharged into rivers and inland waterways.

Continue reading...

Three thousand days and counting: Nasa's Curiosity rover continues its extraordinary exploration of Mars.

A daily summary of our news plus bite-sized updates from around the world.

California’s snowpack remains below historic averages that could limit future low-carbon hydroelectric generation, while overall power consumption dropped slightly in December across the Golden State as Governor Gavin Newsom re-imposed measures to slow the spread of COVID-19, data shows.

Compliance entities and speculators held their California Carbon Allowance (CCA) holdings mostly firm across the first several trading sessions of 2021, according to US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) data published Friday.

EUAs advanced to a new record above €35 on Friday as cold weather continued to support carbon’s massive rally while auction supply remains paused.

Scientists say the risk of local extinctions is rising due to damaged waterways, land clearing and climate change

It is dusk beside a creek and we are instructed to look for a trail of bubbles, under which could be one of the world’s weirdest mammals.

When you’re desperate to see a platypus in the fading light, everything looks like one.

Continue reading...

Guardian environment reporter Graham Readfearn heads out in search of the elusive platypus. Researchers tracking the DNA of the egg-laying mammals believe platypuses have likely gone from Kedron Brook and four other greater Brisbane waterways: the Bremer River, Scrubby Creek, Slacks Creek and Enoggera Creek. They believe the threats to the animals' habitat are so severe that the Australian government should list the platypus as a vulnerable species

• 'Glum future for the platypus': why the elusive mammal is disappearing under our noses

Continue reading...

Norway aims to increase its national carbon tax more than threefold by the end of the decade as part of a climate roadmap released Friday that mainly aims to reduce emissions from non-ETS covered sectors.

Business Secretary Alok Sharma becomes full-time president of November's COP26 conference in Glasgow.

The UK government shuffled its climate ministers on Friday, with Business Secretary Alok Sharma stepping down from that post to focus full time on his role as president of the upcoming UN climate summit.

Report shows US was battered by punishing extreme weather on both the east and west coasts in 2020

The US was battered by a record number of weather and climate-driven disasters in 2020 as extensive wildfires scorched the west, hurricanes in quick succession pummeled the east and extreme heat swept across the heart of the country, a new federal government report has shown.

A total of 22 major disasters, defined as each causing at least $1bn in damage, swept the US last year, six more than the previous record, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa).

Continue reading...

Decision to move business secretary follows pressure from environment experts due to scale of role

Boris Johnson has moved his business secretary, Alok Sharma, to work full-time on preparations for the Cop26 climate conference in Glasgow this November, a change urged by environmental experts given the scale of the role.

For the past 11 months, Sharma has combined being Cop26 president with his job as business secretary. He will now undertake the Cop role full-time, with Kwasi Kwarteng taking the business brief.

Continue reading...

The future Democratic chair of the US Senate agriculture committee will focus on passing bipartisan legislation in the new Congress to help rural stakeholders voluntarily participate in carbon markets, according to a media report.

Elon Musk's company SpaceX is building a vehicle that could transform space travel.

Some companies covered by Germany's newly-launched national emissions trading system (nEHS) are likely to promptly launch legal challenges against the mechanism, which could introduce a degree uncertainty that could drag on for years, according to experts.