Conservationists fear more nests may have been destroyed during work on Jarrow houses by council-appointed contractor
Swift chicks are feared to have been thrown into a skip during house renovations in South Tyneside, despite rules that should stop the destruction of nests.
The Northern Swifts Group (NSG) was alerted to the destruction of at least one nest on Tuesday, in a street in Jarrow where houses were being renovated by South Tyneside council.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
07/10/2026 - 03:00
07/10/2026 - 02:00
This week’s best wildlife photographs from around the world
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07/10/2026 - 01:28
While I have no influence on the Guardian committee, I know who this year’s winner of the Invertebrate of the Year competition should be
Nominate your Invertebrate of the Year now! You have until midnight on Monday 13 July to submit your response
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07/10/2026 - 00:00
Western Europe has been scorched by its hottest June on record, scientists have said, as the UK enters its third heatwave of the year and wildfires ravage France and Spain
Western Europe records hottest-ever June as heatwaves intensify
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07/09/2026 - 19:40
Plans to build a NZ$3.5bn datacentre in Makarewa in the country’s south has drawn concern about electricity and water use, and potential noise pollution
People living near the site of New Zealand’s first planned AI datacentre are calling for more transparency about the project, especially about how the centre’s huge electricity and water use and potential noise pollution could affect them.
Singapore-based company Datagrid has secured approval to build a NZ$3.5bn (US$2bn) AI datacentre on a 49-hectare site in Makarewa, just north of New Zealand’s southern-most city, Invercargill. Construction is due to begin this year, with the centre becoming operational by 2028.
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07/09/2026 - 16:06
Models show overwhelming chance that this year’s El Niño to rank among largest going back to 1950
El Niño is strengthening and the risks of a historic event with the power to supercharge extreme weather around the world are rising, according to the latest analysis from the US National Weather Service.
Models show there is now an 81% chance that a very strong El Niño “that would rank among the largest El Niño events in the historical record going back to 1950” will develop before the end of this year, forecasters said in an advisory released Thursday. There is almost near certainty – a 97% probability – that the conditions will persist through spring 2027.
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07/09/2026 - 12:39
Britain expands heat alerts while estimates suggest June’s death toll could surpass 20,000 across continent
The UK is sweltering through the peak of its third heatwave of the year as countries around Europe struggle to recover from an early onslaught of baking summer heat.
Punishing temperatures pushed higher by fossil fuel pollution have broken records across the continent in recent weeks. Western Europe experienced its hottest June on record, scientists confirmed on Thursday, accompanied by high global ocean temperatures that could cause “mass-mortality events” for some species.
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07/09/2026 - 10:54
State says companies hid environmental and health risks of Pfas for decades even as they began phasing them out
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New York sued 3M, DuPont and other companies on Thursday for causing a public nuisance by selling “forever chemicals” that they knew were toxic for use in consumer products.
The state’s attorney general, Letitia James, accused the companies of hiding the chemicals’ environmental and health risks from consumers for decades, even as they began phasing out some of the chemicals, which are known as Pfas.
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07/09/2026 - 10:00
A brown huntsman is the quickest of more than 250 species analysed by scientists in the UK and Germany
If arachnophobes were not frightened enough by the horrific ability of Australia’s huntsman spiders to drag dead mice up the sides of fridges, they now have another reason.
They might be the fastest spiders on the planet.
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07/09/2026 - 10:00
Brown huntsman spiders were filmed to measure their speed. The 2021 research has been included in new analysis of the speeds of more than 250 spider species by scientists in the UK and Germany, which concludes the brown huntsman, Heteropoda jugulans, has a top speed of 3.59 m/s, making it the fastest of all spiders measured. The study includes research supervised by Dr Christofer Clemente, an evolutionary biomechanist at the University of the Sunshine Coast in Queensland
• This huge hairy-legged Australian arachnid may be the fastest spider on the planet
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