Breaking Waves: Ocean News

Public health warnings as heatwave raises concerns about impact of climate change What you need to know about heatwaves The French prime minister François Bayrou, who attended a government crisis meeting over the heatwave, was asked about the great difficulty of French schools to handle the heatwave. More than 1,350 schools across France were fully or partially closed on Tuesday as classrooms proved dangerously hot for children and teachers, amid anger from teaching unions. Continue reading...

Forever chemicals have polluted the water supply of 60,000 people, threatening human health, wildlife and the wider ecosystem. But activists say this is just the tip of the Pfas iceberg One quiet Saturday night, Sandra Wiedemann was curled up on the sofa when a story broke on TV news: the water coming from her tap could be poisoning her. The 36-year-old, who is breastfeeding her six-month-old son Côme, lives in the quiet French commune of Buschwiller in Saint-Louis, near the Swiss city of Basel. Perched on a hill not far from the Swiss and German borders, it feels like a safe place to raise a child – spacious houses are surrounded by manicured gardens, framed by the wild Jura mountains. But as she watched the news, this safety felt threatened: Wiedemann and her family use tap water every day, for drinking, brushing her teeth, showering, cooking and washing vegetables. Now, she learned that chemicals she had never heard of were lurking in her body, on her skin, potentially harming her son. “I find it scary,” she says. “Even if we stop drinking it we will be exposed to it and we can’t really do anything.” Continue reading...

Offshore wind power boom helps push profit from land and property to more than double what it was two years ago King Charles is set to receive official annual income of £132m next year, after his portfolio of land and property made more than £1bn in profits thanks to a boom in the offshore wind sector. Profits at the crown estate – which partly funds the monarchy – were flat at £1.1bn in its financial year to the end of March but more than double their level two years ago, at £442.6m. Continue reading...

More than 170 EPA employees signed letter, with about 100 more signing anonymously out of fear of retaliation US politics live – latest updates A group of Environmental Protection Agency employees on Monday published a declaration of dissent from the agency’s policies under the Trump administration, saying they “undermine the EPA mission of protecting human health and the environment”. More than 170 EPA employees put their names to the document, with about 100 more signing anonymously out of fear of retaliation, according to Jeremy Berg, a former editor-in-chief of Science magazine who is not an EPA employee but was among non-EPA scientists or academics to also sign. The latter figure includes 20 Nobel laureates. Continue reading...