Chinese fast fashion retailer penalised month after €40m fine from French regulator in July
The Italian authorities have fined Shein €1m (£870,000) for making “misleading or omissive” environmental claims about its products, the second time in as many months the Chinese fashion retailer has been targeted by European regulators.
Environmental sustainability and social responsibility messages on Shein’s website were in some cases “vague, generic, and/or overly emphatic” and in others were “misleading or omissive”, said Italy’s competition authority, AGCM.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
08/05/2025 - 00:00
08/04/2025 - 23:00
Professor Richard Thompson, a marine litter expert, says delegates must act decisively to ‘look next generation in the eye’
Delegates at the UN plastic pollution treaty talks in Geneva must secure an ambitious global agreement so they can look future generations in the eye, one of the world’s leading marine litter experts has said.
Prof Richard Thompson, who was named one of Time’s 100 most influential people this year for his groundbreaking work on plastic pollution, said decisive action was needed to protect human health and the planet.
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08/04/2025 - 23:00
Wular Lake once supported 5,000 people who harvested the plant’s edible roots, until the lake silted up after floods. Now the lotuses are back
“We threw seeds into the lake hundreds of times, but nothing grew. It’s only now, after the silt was cleared, that we see the flowers again after nearly 33 years,” says Bashir Ahmad, a 65-year-old who fishes in Kashmir’s Wular Lake for his livelihood.
Wular was once among Asia’s largest freshwater lakes. It lies in the Kashmir valley, about 18 miles (30km) north-west of Srinagar, at the foot of the Pir Panjal and Himalayan mountain ranges. It was renowned for its high-quality lotus plants, and sustained the livelihoods of more than 5,000 people who harvested and sold nadru – the edible lotus stem cherished as a delicacy in Kashmiri households and which features in wazwan, the region’s traditional multi-course celebratory meals.
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08/04/2025 - 14:20
At least three people injured and over 450 structures under threat by Gifford blaze, with only 3% of perimeter contained
A huge wildfire in central California has threatened hundreds of homes, with blazes churning through the brush-covered hillsides in Los Padres national forest.
At least three people were reported injured, and more than 450 structures were under threat by the Gifford fire, officials said on Monday.
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08/04/2025 - 12:55
More than 700 active wildfires burning across Canada and about two-thirds are currently out-of-control
Billowing smoke from hundreds of out-of-control wildfires – most of which are in the Canadian Prairies – have caused severe air quality alerts across Canada and the United States.
Detroit, Michigan, and the Canadian cities of Montreal and Toronto, recorded some of the worst air quality in the world on Monday, according to a ranking by IQAir, a Swiss air quality technology company.
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08/04/2025 - 10:00
Glacial retreat on pristine world heritage-listed island as temperatures warm could endanger unique plant life
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Glaciers on a remote Australian subantarctic island are shrinking rapidly, losing almost a quarter of their size in just 70 years, with researchers fearing glaciers on a neighbouring peninsula may have already disappeared.
Analysis of aerial photographs and maps going back to 1947 were combined with satellite data to track melting on 29 glaciers on the uninhabited wilderness of Heard Island, 4,100km south-west of Perth and 1,500km north of Antarctica.
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08/04/2025 - 08:00
Governors Island, a 172-acre island in New York Harbor only accessible by ferry, attracts nearly a million visitors each year. More recently, it has evolved into an educational hub and incubator for solutions to facing the city’s climate and environmental challenges
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08/04/2025 - 06:00
A licence to dig in the Cajas region has been welcomed by some as an answer to economic woes. Yet many fear it will devastate a fragile ecosystem and set the tone for further projects in the country
Golden grasses, mossy hummocks and scattered lakes unfurl across the highlands of Macizo del Cajas, Azuay province. The vastness of this high-altitude Ecuadorian moorland combines with its near-silence to create an empty, alien atmosphere.
But this unique landscape teems with life. The páramo – a high-altitude tropical ecosystem that stretches across the northern Andes – is a living sponge, quietly drawing moisture from the clouds that drift at more than 3,000 metres (9,800ft) above sea level.
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08/04/2025 - 04:01
Company to carry out more tests on its Santos basin find as it continues shift from renewables back to fossil fuels
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BP has made its largest oil and gas discovery of the past 25 years off the coast of Brazil as it continues to shift its focus away from renewables and back to fossil fuels.
The Santos basin oil and gas discovery, which is located in deep waters, is the company’s 10th oil discovery of the year and could be its largest since its discovery at the Shah Deniz gasfield in Azerbaijan in 1999.
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08/03/2025 - 23:36
Visitors to pay up to NZ$40 to access certain attractions in coming years amid overhaul of conservation laws
New Zealand plans to start charging international tourists fees to enter its famous natural sites and will make it easier for businesses to operate on conservation land as part of a controversial proposal to “unleash” growth on ecologically and culturally protected areas.
The government plans to start charging foreign visitors NZ$20-40 ($12-24) per person to access some sites. Initially, those would probably include Cathedral Cove/Te Whanganui-a-Hei, Tongariro Crossing, Milford Sound and Aoraki Mount Cook. The fees are likely to be imposed from 2027.
This story was amended on 5 August 2025 to reflect new information provided by the government that fees will apply to Milford Sound, not Milford Track.
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