Yellow health alert in place until 9am on Tuesday as temperatures soar across much of country
Temperatures in the UK have surged to their highest point of the year so far with 34.8C recorded in Cambridge on Monday, the Met Office said.
The previous highest UK temperature in 2024 was 32C, recorded at Heathrow and Kew Gardens, south-west London, on 29 July.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
08/12/2024 - 10:21
Thirty mothers take turns with their babies in front of Mujur, 19, to try to encourage her to bond with newborn
When staff at Dublin zoo discovered an orangutan named Mujur was pregnant they decided to stage maternal workshops.
The 19-year-old female had not sufficiently bonded with either of her previous infants, who died in 2019 and 2022, so when she became pregnant earlier this year the zoo enlisted breastfeeding human mothers to try to show her how it was done.
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08/12/2024 - 10:00
Continent is warming at much faster rate than other parts of world, leading to fires, drought and health problems
Hot weather inflamed by carbon pollution killed nearly 50,000 people in Europe last year, with the continent warming at a much faster rate than other parts of the world, research has found.
The findings come as wildfires tore through forests outside Athens, as France issued excessive heat warnings for large swathes of the country, and the UK baked through what the Met Office expects will be its hottest day of the year.
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08/12/2024 - 08:20
Number of people seeking emergency care for heat-related illnesses is up in cities including Rome, Florence and Venice
The number of people accessing emergency care for heat-related illnesses has risen sharply in some of Italy’s most popular tourist cities, as the country experiences an intense heatwave that is failing to deter visitors.
Italy has been engulfed in consecutive heatwaves since around the middle of June. Some central and southern areas are expected to record temperatures above 40C in the coming days.
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08/12/2024 - 06:29
EPA says Tucson’s drinking water is contaminated but air force claims agency lacks authority to order cleanup
The US air force is refusing to comply with an order to clean drinking water it polluted in Tucson, Arizona, claiming federal regulators lack authority after the conservative-dominated US supreme court overturned the “Chevron doctrine”. Air force bases contaminated the water with toxic PFAS “forever chemicals” and other dangerous compounds.
Though former US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) officials and legal experts who reviewed the air force’s claim say the Chevron doctrine ruling probably would not apply to the order, the military’s claim that it would represents an early indication of how polluters will wield the controversial court decision to evade responsibility.
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08/12/2024 - 03:14
Eighty-eight soldiers had been seconded in the battle to contain blazes with firefighting efforts
AFP reports from Penteli:
Thick smoke from burning trees filled a small square in Penteli where local resident Mariana Papathanasi said they could only pray that their houses would be saved.
“There is still a strong fire. Some houses were burned after midnight and we are trying to protect our local restaurant,” the 49-year-old supermarket employee told AFP.
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08/12/2024 - 01:00
Hidrovia project to dredge Paraguay River and build ports may destroy vast biodiversity and refuge of jaguars, giant otters and armadillos – and an age-old riverine way of life
Pantanal waterway project would destroy a ‘paradise on Earth’, scientists warn
As the evening sky turns violet, the animals of the Pantanal gather near the water. Capybaras swim in tight formation, roseate spoonbills add smudges of pink to the riverbanks, the rumble of a jaguar pulsates from the forest.
This tropical wetland is the largest on Earth, stretching across Brazil, Paraguay and Bolivia, and playing host to some of the greatest gatherings of animals anywhere.
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08/12/2024 - 01:00
The South American wetland, which falls within Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay, would be vulnerable to biome loss and increased wildfires
‘Losing Noah’s Ark’: Brazil’s plan to turn the Pantanal into waterway threatens world’s biggest wetland
Dozens of scientists are sounding the alarm that carving a commercial waterway through the world’s largest wetlands could spell the “end of an entire biome”, and leave hundreds of thousands of hectares of land to be devastated by wildfires.
The Pantanal wetland – which falls within Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay, covering an area almost half the size of Germany – is facing the proposed construction of a commercial waterway, as well as the expansion of industrial farming and spread of intense wildfires. A cohort of 40 scientists say the waterway development represents an existential threat to the ecosystem: reducing the floodplain, increasing the risk of fires and transforming the area into a landscape that could more easily be farmed.
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08/12/2024 - 00:00
Weather-related claims hit £144m in second quarter of 2024 and total payouts rose by 5% to £1.4bn
Britain’s largest insurance firms have warned that the climate crisis has contributed to driving up insurance payouts to the highest level in seven years, after a sharp rise in damage to households and businesses from weather events.
Figures from the Association of British Insurers (ABI) show that the amount paid out in the three months to the end of June hit £1.4bn, a 5% increase on the first quarter of the year and the highest figure of any quarter since it started collecting the data in 2017.
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08/12/2024 - 00:00
A Thousand Thorns is a project by photographer Deepti Asthana documenting women’s changing aspirations in rural India through the story of two young female forest guards in Rajasthan’s Thar desert. Theirs is a scenario playing out in millions of homes – of the fight for equality and independence in a deeply patriarchal society
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