Breaking Waves: Ocean News

Bureau of Meteorology says showers and storms a regular feature of Australian summer but warm and dry periods still to come Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast Showers are expected to continue for Sydney and Brisbane throughout much of the coming week but summer isn’t over yet, according to the Bureau of Meteorology. In fact, the senior meteorologist Miriam Bradbury said showers and storm activity were a regular feature of the Australian summer, especially for northern Australia, as well as south-east Queensland and eastern New South Wales. Sign up for Guardian Australia’s breaking news email Continue reading...

Cities cancel flights and school in anticipation as Dallas, Texas, is expected to get a year’s worth of snow Parts of Texas and the US south are getting hit with yet another winter storm. The winter storm will hit central and northern Texas with 1-6in (3-15cm) of snow, according to the latest update from AccuWeather. Pockets of snowfall from 6-12in are expected to hit north of Dallas, Texas; to Arkansas, Tennessee and eastern North Carolina through Friday. Continue reading...

Environment secretary Steve Reed urged to bring in ‘full and swift ban’ to protect health of people, wildlife and pets Wildlife charities have called on the government to ban the sale and use of lead in ammunition used for outdoor shooting. The Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust (WWT), RSPB, Wildlife and Countryside Link, Chem Trust and Wild Justice have sent an open letter to the environment secretary, Steve Reed, asking for a 18-month transition period for a ban on lead in ammunition sales. Continue reading...

A failure of justice, and draconian Tory law, put Gaie Delap in prison. A failure of government is keeping her there Gaie Delap will turn 78 on Friday, in Eastwood Park prison, Gloucestershire. Sentenced to 20 months last August for climbing a gantry over the M25 for Just Stop Oil, she was released in November to serve the rest of her sentence on a home detention curfew. But the electronic tag that she was required to wear couldn’t go round her ankle because she has deep-vein thrombosis and it might have risked causing her a stroke. It couldn’t go round her wrist because they couldn’t find a tag small enough, which people keep saying is because she’s frail. Delap hates being called frail. Her wrist is a perfectly reasonable size, 14-and-a-half centimetres. It’s the wrist-tag design that’s wanting. The topsy-turvy world where a government contractor, Serco, can fail and fail again, while a citizen with a social purpose gets called back to prison five days before Christmas to atone for that failure, isn’t even the most absurd thing about this story. Delap was engaged in direct action to raise awareness about the climate emergency, and the day citizens stop doing that is the day that progressive politics might as well give up and go home. Whatever pretzel twists Labour ministers have to perform to sound as if they’re on the side of the decent, honest commuter, while simultaneously signalling that they understand the scale of the climate crisis, they must surely remember this: the trade union movement, the peace movement, the suffragette movement, the civil rights movement, the climate justice movement; every known movement of change has relied on non-violent action to disrupt the status quo. Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...