Breaking Waves: Ocean News

The Guardian view on animal welfare: a timely reminder that cruelty is wrong | Editorial

admin — Tue, 23 Dec 2025 18:25:48 +0000

New protections for hares, and more humane conditions on farms, should be welcomed by all

Shropshire canal breach caused by collapse of artificial embankment

admin — Tue, 23 Dec 2025 16:07:05 +0000

Work under way to refloat boats on emptied waterway after earthwork more than 200 years old fails

The dramatic breach of a canal in the early hours of Monday, which sent two narrowboats tumbling into a hole and left others stranded, was caused by the collapse of an artificial embankment that had stood for more than 200 years.

Ministers raise inheritance tax threshold for farms after backlash

admin — Tue, 23 Dec 2025 12:53:48 +0000

U-turn lifts limit from £1m to £2.5m after protests and warnings that family farms were at risk

Ministers will increase the threshold for taxing inherited farmland from £1m to £2.5m after months of pressure from campaigners and MPs representing rural areas.

In a statement slipped out just before Christmas, the environment department announced the U-turn, which will apply from April when the tax kicks in.

Deputy leader Lucy Powell says Labour must ‘stick to manifesto’ over EU customs union, in implicit rebuke to Streeting – as it happened

admin — Tue, 23 Dec 2025 12:12:46 +0000

No 10 has largely played down health secretary’s comments

The Treasury has published this explainer setting out in detail how the inheritance tax rules will apply to farms after today’s announcement.

When the government first announced its plan to extend inheritance tax to farms, it said that this would raise around £520m a year from 2028-29.

Something gnawed your oak tree? Sink hole in your road? How Zurich’s beaver hotline is reassuring residents

admin — Tue, 23 Dec 2025 09:00:52 +0000

As the number of the semi-aquatic creatures soars so can tensions. But the Swiss have a tried and tested system to calm the neighbours and restore harmony

“I hate beavers,” a woman tells the beaver hotline. Forty years ago she planted an oak tree in a small town in southern Zurich – now at the frontier of beaver expansion – and it has just been felled: gnawed by the large, semi-aquatic rodents as they enter their seasonal home-improvement mode.

Forecasters say 2025 ‘more likely than not’ to be UK’s hottest year on record

admin — Tue, 23 Dec 2025 06:00:49 +0000

Met Office says temperatures are tracking ahead of 2022 after year of heatwaves and drought, though late cold spell could yet intervene

Forecasters say 2025 is “more likely than not” to break the record for the hottest year in the UK since records began, after a summer of heatwaves and drought followed by a mild autumn.

According to the Met Office, the official forecaster, the mean temperature for 2025 is tracking well ahead of the previous highest year, set in 2022. However, a colder spell expected from Christmas until the new year makes it too close to call definitively.

Victoria to get first publicly owned windfarm with 33-turbine Latrobe valley project

admin — Tue, 23 Dec 2025 02:53:19 +0000

Advocates say State Electricity Commission’s $650m Delburn windfarm will be a ‘new chapter’ for region previously home to Hazelwood coal power station

Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates

Pink platypus spotted in Gippsland far from a monochrome monotreme

admin — Mon, 22 Dec 2025 23:11:57 +0000

Biologist says specimen filmed by a Victorian fisher is ‘unusual’, but not a rare albino as some had wondered

Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates

Yellowstone hot spring spews forth spectacular muddy plumes

admin — Mon, 22 Dec 2025 18:49:59 +0000

Black Diamond Pool eruption provides dramatic footage after being captured on official camera

A hot spring in Yellowstone national park that erupts sporadically was captured on an official camera exploding in spectacular muddy plumes at the weekend.

Volcanic experts at the US Geological Survey described the eruption as simply “Kablooey!”

Trump officials halt offshore wind-farm projects over ‘national security risks’

admin — Mon, 22 Dec 2025 16:16:03 +0000

Interior department move affects five projects under construction in latest blow to industry targeted by Trump

The Trump administration has said it is immediately pausing all leases for offshore wind farms already under construction, in the heaviest blow yet to an industry that the administration has relentlessly targeted throughout the year.