More than 50 people injured as 54 fires burn across country amid hot, dry and windy weather
Seven people have been killed and more than 50 injured in wildfires ravaging central and northern Portugal, authorities have said, after three firefighters died on Tuesday when their vehicle was trapped in flames.
Portugal’s civil protection service said 54 wildfires were burning nationwide, mainly in the north, with 5,300 firefighters mobilised. France, Greece, Italy and Spain sent eight water-bombing planes through the EU’s mutual assistance mechanism.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
09/17/2024 - 09:39
09/17/2024 - 07:39
Nordic country, paradoxically a major oil producer, has set target for all new cars sold to be zero emission
Electric cars now outnumber petrol cars in Norway for the first time, an industry organisation has said, a world first that puts the country on track towards taking fossil fuel vehicles off the road.
Of the 2.8m private cars registered in the Nordic country, 754,303 are all-electric, against 753,905 that run on petrol, the Norwegian road federation (OFV) said in a statement.
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09/17/2024 - 06:42
Lib Dem leader speaks about importance of care and carers as he addresses final day of party conference. This live blog is closed
Ed Davey urges ‘faster and bolder’ action on NHS and social care
The number of migrants who have crossed the English Channel since Labour won the general election has passed 10,000, according to provisional figures from the Home Office. As PA Media reports, some 65 migrants were detected crossing the Channel on Monday, taking the cumulative number of arrivals since July 4 to 10,024. PA says:
The cumulative total for the year so far now stands at 23,598.
This is 1% lower than the equivalent figure at this point last year, which was 23,940, and 21% lower than the total at this stage in 2022, which was 29,783.
The home secretary announced the package of up to £75m, which redirects funds originally allocated to the previous government’s Illegal Migration Act. It will unlock sophisticated new technology and extra capabilities for the NCA to bolster UK border security and disrupt the criminal people smuggling gangs. The investment is designed to build on a pattern of successful upstream disruptions announced at an operational summit, attended by the prime minister, at the NCA headquarters last week.
The truth is that in the last few years, something went badly wrong. Badly wrong, in our national debate on climate change and net zero.
Net zero became, under the Tories, a battleground. A battleground of the worst type of narrow-minded Westminster tactical warfare.
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09/17/2024 - 05:40
Deadly Storm Boris has dumped up to five times average September rainfall in four days
Storm Boris batters central Europe – in pictures
As swollen rivers continued to rise, volunteers and emergency workers in towns and cities across a swathe of central Europe were reinforcing defences against floods that have killed at least 21 people in four countries.
Storm Boris has dumped up to five times the average September rainfall on parts of Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia in four days, submerging entire neighbourhoods and forcing hundreds of thousands of people to evacuate.
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09/17/2024 - 05:30
PM says Labor’s nature-positive legislation provides ‘vital certainty’ and talks up mutual respect in an address before the Business Council of Australia
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Anthony Albanese has accused the Greens of “gesture-based climate amendments” to Labor’s environment legislation in a speech defending his government’s reform record and its relationship with big business.
In an address to the Business Council of Australia on Tuesday evening, Albanese said Labor is “pro-business and pro-worker” and sought to distinguish himself from Peter Dutton by arguing he respects their views even when he disagrees.
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09/17/2024 - 04:49
Charity says band are a perfect example of an act that rose through the grassroots circuit and their support ‘really will stop venues closing’
Coldplay are to donate 10% of the band’s proceeds from their 2025 UK dates in London and Hull to the Music Venue Trust, the UK charity that supports grassroots music venues.
Earlier this year, parliament’s culture, media and sport committee heard from promoters, artists and industry body representatives about the “crisis” facing the country’s smaller venues, nearly all of whom backed the idea of a £1 levy being placed on tickets from concert arenas to be distributed to smaller venues.
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09/17/2024 - 04:33
Energy secretary vows to take on the ‘blockers’ opposed to wind turbines, solar farms and pylons
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Ed Miliband has vowed to take on the nimbys opposed to the government’s rollout of wind turbines, solar farms and pylons across the UK as a matter of “national security” and “economic justice”.
The energy secretary used his first big public address on Tuesday to argue in favour of speedy consent for new energy infrastructure to break the UK’s reliance on fossil fuels and avoid a repeat of “a crisis of the scale we have been through, with such devastating effects”.
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09/17/2024 - 04:00
Two separate reports find policies will save Americans from pollution in coming decades and added nearly 150,000 jobs
The environmental policies of Joe Biden’s administration will save approximately 200,000 Americans’ lives from dangerous pollution in the coming decades and have spurred a surge in clean energy jobs, two independent reports outlining the stakes of the upcoming US presidential election have found.
The first full year of the Inflation Reduction Act, the sprawling climate bill passed by Democratic votes in Congress in 2022, saw nearly 150,000 clean energy jobs added, according to a new report by nonpartisan business group E2.
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09/17/2024 - 00:00
Climate summit host positioning itself as peacemaker but is accused of ethnic cleansing and imprisoning opponents
The host country of this year’s UN climate summit, Azerbaijan, has been accused of hypocrisy in calling for a global truce to coincide with the conference taking place.
Azerbaijan holds the presidency of the Cop29 summit, which will take place in its capital, Baku, from 11 November for two weeks. Heads of government from around the world are expected and more than 180 countries are likely to be represented.
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09/17/2024 - 00:00
When Rob Barrett set out to survey one of the country’s largest colonies in the 1970s there were too many birds to count. Now, his pictures and archive images show a species decline echoed around the world
In the mid-1970s, seabird researcher Rob Barrett set out in a rubber boat to survey one of Norway’s largest seabird colonies. Equipped with a camera and a pair of binoculars, he planned to photograph the Syltefjord colony, in the far north of the country, then, back on land, develop the photos and fit them together to create a panorama. After that, he would count the birds.
As the boat drew closer to the cliffs, the gulls’ chattering increased to an overwhelming level. So did the smell. The cliffs rose 100 metres above him, kittiwakes filling every nook and crevice. It continued like that for five kilometres along the coast.
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