The Guardian

Shale gas firm halts work near Blackpool after 17th quake is first over 0.5 magnitude limit

Cuadrilla has been forced to stop fracking after its operations at a well near Blackpool triggered an earthquake that breached the official threshold.

The company said it had paused work for 18 hours after the tremor on Friday morning. It was the 17th quake in the area since fracking began 11 days ago, but the first to be powerful enough to pass a regulatory threshold that requires fracking to stop.

Claire Perry failed to record meeting with Cuadrilla and others on transparency register

The government wants Britain to export its approach to fracking around the world, the energy minister Claire Perry has told the shale gas industry.

Details of Perry having a private meeting with fracking firms have emerged, as the 13th minor earthquake was recorded since the shale company Cuadrilla began fracking near Blackpool earlier this month.

Argentina’s Gran Chaco forest is being razed for soya, ending up in Europe as animal feed, and on our plates. It’s the backbone of Argentina’s fragile economy, but has come at a price for the indigenous people who live there

The extent of the destruction is painful to see. Flying over the area around the El Corralito indigenous community in a single-propeller plane, only thin strips of green are left between vast fields of pale, newly uncovered earth, pencilled in with parallel white lines of the ashes of bulldozed trees.

Only a few years ago, this stretch of land in Argentina’s northern province of Salta was still forest – home to the Wichí people, and part of the gigantic Gran Chaco forest that spreads across northern Argentina and its neighbouring countries Bolivia, Paraguay and Brazil. Second only to the Amazon in South America for its size and biodiversity, the Gran Chaco covers 250,000 sq miles of dry forest, which is being cut down faster than scientists can study it.

By rebating the revenue to households, disposable income rises, which can be a boon for the Canadian economy

Last week, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that under the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act, Canada will implement a revenue-neutral carbon tax starting in 2019, fulfilling a campaign pledge he made in 2015.

Starting next spring, it’ll no longer be free to pollute in Canada. We’re putting a price on pollution in provinces that don’t yet have a plan to fight climate change. More on our plan to cut pollution, grow the economy & create jobs: https://t.co/VjCNOOKLVB
#EnvironmentEconomy pic.twitter.com/b4wFc17Qte

Third of coastline cannot be affordably protected, government climate change advisers say, with current plans ‘not fit for purpose’

Rising sea levels will claim homes, roads and fields around the coast of England, the government’s official advisers have warned, and many people are unaware of the risks they face.

The new report from the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) said existing government plans to “hold the line” in many places – building defences to keep shores in their current position – were unaffordable for a third of the country’s coast. Instead, the CCC said, discussions about the “hard choices” needed must be started with communities that will have to move inland.

US oceanographic agency forecasts 60% chance of extreme heat stress and bleaching

Mass bleaching and coral death could be likely along the entire Great Barrier Reef this summer, according to a long-range forecast that coral experts say is “a wake-up call” for the Australian government.

The US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) has forecast a 60% chance that the entire Great Barrier Reef will reach alert level one, which signals extreme heat stress and bleaching are likely.

First in network of chargers three times faster than current models installed near Paris

Shell has stepped up its move into electric vehicle infrastructure with the installation of its first ultrafast charging points in western Europe – but they are so powerful that no car currently on sale today would be able to fully exploit them.

The chargers at a motorway service station outside Paris are one of 80 European locations the Anglo-Dutch firm is planning for swift charging by 2020, including as many as eight in the UK.

Union’s president says bill’s current wording could lead to a lowering of standards

The National Farmers’ Union has told Theresa May she must treat the food industry as being of equal importance as the car sector, with special protections enshrined in new laws covering standards and production.

The NFU president, Minette Batters, said she had raised concerns in a phone call to the prime minister that food production was not at the heart of a new agriculture bill, the first major overhaul of legislation in the sector since the second world war.

New Caledonian crows have been filmed extracting a piece of food from a puzzle box by piecing together two separate rods. The birds were able to display highly flexible abilities to solve a complex problem without prior training. Until now, the ability to assemble different components had only been seen in great apes and humans

Burning coal is the single largest contributor to global climate breakdown. Human rights violations at the sites of fossil fuel extraction are often hidden.

The connections between County Clare, Ireland and La Guajira, Colombia may not be entirely obvious at first glance. Yet the regions are linked through a shared commodity: coal. Extracted in one region and burned in the other.

Coal extraction in La Guajira has a dirty secret, which I’ve witnessed first-hand: it is connected to a system of production entrenched in violence, bloodshed and environmental destruction.

More than 2,000 GP surgeries and hospitals in UK are in areas that breach WHO air pollution guidelines, study says

Hundreds of thousands of patients who visit more than 2,000 hospitals and GP practices across the UK are breathing poisonous air that breaches World Health Organization guidelines, according to a new report.

The study found that a third of GP surgeries and a quarter of hospitals – including some of the biggest children’s centres – are in areas that breach limits for the most dangerous particulates: PM2.5.

Program that protects and restores environmentally sensitive land on private property stretched to breaking point, report warns

Queensland’s 4.4m hectare network of nature refuges is “stretched to breaking point” and badly under-resourced, a new report commissioned by an alliance of conservation groups warns.

The refuges are designed to protect and restore environmentally sensitive land on private property across Queensland. Landholders agree to dedicate part of their property as a private protected area, and in turn receive government support.

Evidence is ‘compelling’ that organophosphates increase risk of reduced IQs, memory and attention deficits, and autism for prenatal children

Evidence that an entire class of pesticides threatens the health of children and pregnant women is now so arresting that the substances should be banned, an expert panel of toxicologists has said.

Exposure to organophosphates (OPs) increases the risk of reduced IQs, memory and attention deficits, and autism for prenatal children, according to the paper, published in Plos Medicine.

Proposal passes 571-53, with Labour MEPs demanding UK mirror EU action after Brexit

The European parliament has overwhelmingly backed a wide-ranging ban on single-use plastics in an effort to tackle pollution in seas, fields and waterways.

Under the proposed directive, items such as plastic straws, cotton swabs, disposable plastic plates and cutlery would be banned by 2021, and 90% of plastic bottle recycled by 2025.

A contagious, untreatable and often fatal virus is sweeping the global pig population – and future mutations could affect humans

ASF is a highly contagious viral pig disease. The most common symptoms of the virus in its acute form are a high temperature and loss of appetite; other symptoms include vomiting, diarrhoea, and difficulty with breathing and standing. There is no treatment for the disease, some versions can have a 100% mortality rate in certain circumstances. It is not the same as swine flu.

Iran is tackling the potential water supply crisis exacerbated by climate change

On climate change, countries that may not be thought of as climate leaders are emerging at the front-lines on responding to climate change.

One great example is Iran.  I have the fortune of performing water-use research with a number of scientists in Iran.  And I can assure you they are thinking about, planning, and taking action to reduce the impacts of climate change and ecological destruction.

Federal opposition calls it ‘an extraordinary waste of taxpayers’ money’ and issues warning to energy sector

The shadow climate change minister, Mark Butler, has issued a clear warning to Australia’s energy sector that Labor does not support the government indemnifying new coal plants against the future risk of a carbon price – noting the cost to taxpayers could run into billions.

While the ALP federally has a policy of not repudiating contracts, Butler told Guardian Australia on Wednesday: “Investors need to understand very clearly that we do not support that. That would be an extraordinary waste of taxpayers’ money.”

Magnitude 0.4 tremor follows several others recorded since Cuadrilla restarted drilling

Fracking operations in Lancashire have been shut down after seismic activity was detected. The move came a little more than a week after the process was restarted in the UK for the first time since it was banned in 2011.

Cuadrilla Resources, which is carrying out the operations at its Preston New Road site, confirmed it paused work early on Tuesday as a precaution because of the microseismic event, which was measured at a magnitude of 0.4 and within the limit allowed by UK authorities.

Since 2015, Canadian companies have provided $2.4 billion in combat vehicles, weapons, surveillance technology, pilot training relied on by the oil-rich Saudis

Each time she learns Saudi bombs are falling on Yemen, Shireen Al-Adeimi rushes to her cell-phone.

Living an ocean-away in the United States, the Yemeni-Canadian anxiously scrolls through her WhatsApp chats to make sure her friends and family back home are safe.

Our picture editors round up their favourite photos from the past 24 hours