Breaking Waves: Ocean News

Australia news live: cost to taxpayers of Assange’s freedom flight revealed; urgent health warning for offshore detainees

admin — Thu, 18 Jul 2024 21:52:58 +0000

Penny Wong confirms that German freedom of information advocacy non-profit Wau Holland Foundation will be invoiced for the charter flight portion of the bill. Follow today’s news headlines live

Spoonbills return to E for first time since 17th century

admin — Thu, 18 Jul 2024 16:04:58 +0000

Driven out by hunting and habitat loss, the birds are now nesting and breeding in a few pockets in England

With their long, spoon-shaped beaks, it is perhaps little surprise that the RSPB has nicknamed the offspring of a spoonbill a “teaspoon”.

It has been a bumper year for the snow-white wading birds, which have been found nesting and breeding in Cambridgeshire for the first time since the 17th century.

‘It is devastating’: unprecedented floods in US strain small businesses

admin — Thu, 18 Jul 2024 16:00:15 +0000

As the climate crisis causes heavier and more frequent floods across the US, one in four small businesses are one disaster away from shutting down

Alejandra Palma lives in perpetual fear of the next storm.

“We are constantly checking the weather,” said Palma, who co-owns Root Hill Cafe in Brooklyn’s low-lying Gowanus neighborhood. “If we see that there’s a hurricane in Florida, it’s like, oh my God, please let it not come here.”

Labour has left farmers facing agriculture budget ‘cliff edge’, says NFU

admin — Thu, 18 Jul 2024 15:29:49 +0000

Union says members being ‘kept up at night’ over failure to commit to continue payments at current rate

Farmers are facing a “cliff edge” as the Labour government refuses to commit to maintaining the agriculture budget for England, the president of the National Farmers’ Union has said.

The issue is one of the first pressures Labour is facing over its tight fiscal rules, along with a rebellion on the party’s refusal to remove the two-child benefit cap.

Colombia gives assurances over UN biodiversity summit after rebels’ threat

admin — Thu, 18 Jul 2024 14:55:58 +0000

Organisers working to ensure safe environment for attenders in October after guerrillas’ warning of disruption

Colombian authorities have insisted it will be safe to attend a UN biodiversity summit in Cali later this year, after a dissident rebel group threatened to disrupt the event.

This week Central General Staff (EMC), a guerrilla faction that rejected the country’s 2016 peace agreement, said the UN nature summit Cop16 would “fail”, in a post on X addressed to the Colombian president, Gustavo Petro.

Five Just Stop Oil activists receive record sentences for planning to block M25

admin — Thu, 18 Jul 2024 14:37:32 +0000

Campaigners receive longest ever sentences for non-violent protest after being convicted of conspiracy to cause public nuisance

Five supporters of the Just Stop Oil climate campaign who conspired to cause gridlock on London’s orbital motorway have been sentenced to lengthy jail terms by a judge who told them they had “crossed the line from concerned campaigner to fanatic”.

US oil company ran 1977 article predicting climate crisis could cause starvation

admin — Thu, 18 Jul 2024 12:00:34 +0000

Marathon Petroleum predecessor warned of potential for ‘social and economic calamities’ in decades-old publication

The corporate predecessor to America’s largest refiner of oil, Marathon Petroleum, explained in a company periodical nearly 50 years ago that global temperature rise potentially linked to “industrial expansion” could one day cause “widespread starvation and other social and economic calamities”.

What links Lady Gaga, Obama and Hitler? How famous people can give new species a bad name

admin — Thu, 18 Jul 2024 11:00:33 +0000

Some scientists want to stop naming new species after public figures, especially as it can threaten an animal’s survival, but others say it can be a helpful conservation tool

When Lady Gaga held a Q&A on Reddit for a 2014 album release, there was one question that took the botany world by storm: what’s it like to have a genus of ferns named after you? “Pretty cool,” she responded, “especially since it’s an asexual fern.”

How to solve a mass stranding: what caused 77 healthy whales to die on a Scottish beach?

admin — Thu, 18 Jul 2024 06:00:26 +0000

A team of scientists are trying to find the cause of what is becoming an increasingly common event – and the answer may be hidden deep in the whales’ skulls

A mass stranding last week that led to the deaths of 77 pilot whales on the Orkney island of Sanday was the largest ever recorded of the species on British shores. Initially, 12 of the animals at Tresness beach were still alive – but sadly did not survive.

‘People think they’ll smell but they don’t’: building homes from mushroom waste and weeds

admin — Thu, 18 Jul 2024 05:00:26 +0000

A sustainable project aims to repurpose encroacher bush to create building blocks to solve Namibia’s housing crisis

“People think the house would smell because the blocks are made of all-natural products, but it doesn’t smell,” says Kristine Haukongo. “Sometimes, there is a small touch of wood, but otherwise it’s completely odourless.”