‘It’s hard to fathom how a peaceful protester can receive more prison time than many of the insurrectionists’ said one researcher, of Timothy Martin’s sentence
Climate activists have condemned an 18-month jail term for a non-violent protestor who vandalized a display case at the National Gallery of Art as “grossly disproportionate” and a violation of the constitutional protected rights to free speech and peaceful protest.
Timothy Martin, along with fellow activist Joanna Smith, staged the climate protest at the Washington DC gallery in April 2023, smearing washable red and black paint on the protective glass covering Edgar Degas’s Little Dancer Aged Fourteen sculpture.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
10/30/2025 - 12:52
10/30/2025 - 09:55
Expanded climate action from cities and states could slash planet-heating pollution despite Trump working against it
Ahead of next month’s major United Nations climate talks in Brazil, Gina McCarthy, the former Environmental Protection Agency head, said US cities and states were keeping the climate fight alive despite an all-out assault from the Trump administration.
“We will not allow our country to become numb or debilitated by those who are standing in the way of progress,” she said on a press call early on Thursday.
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10/30/2025 - 09:00
Exclusive: ‘Every project developer is absolutely convinced that their project is in the national interest,’ Australian Climate and Biodiversity Foundation boss says
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The former Treasury secretary Ken Henry says “a conga line of developers” would lobby the environment minister for special carve outs unless the Albanese government clarifies the types of projects that could be granted exemptions under its new nature laws.
While welcoming the overall package of laws introduced to parliament on Thursday, Henry said the vague drafting of the “national interest” exemption and the failure to close loopholes for native forest logging and land clearing were problems that needed to be fixed.
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10/30/2025 - 08:00
The discovery that affluent neighbourhoods have more diversity of nature has implications for human wellbeing – and sheds light on the structural injustices in cities
For a long time, ecology tended to ignore people. It mostly focused on beautiful places far from large-scale human development: deep rainforest or pristine grassland. Then, in the late 1990s, in the desert city of Phoenix, Arizona, scientists shifted their gaze closer to home.
A team of ecologists went out into their own neighbourhood to map the distribution of urban plants in one of the first studies of its kind. Equipped with tape measures and clipboards, they documented trees and shrubs, sometimes getting on all fours to crawl through bushes under the curious watch of local people.
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10/30/2025 - 07:00
Exclusive: More than 98% of fish and mussels tested in English waters contain mercury above EU safety limits
Britain is facing mounting pressure to ban mercury dental fillings, one of the few countries yet to prevent the practice, as new data reveals alarming contamination levels in the nation’s fish and shellfish.
Mercury is a potent neurotoxin that can harm the nervous, digestive and immune systems, as well as the lungs, kidneys, skin and eyes, even at low levels of exposure. Its organic form, methylmercury, is particularly dangerous to unborn babies and can move through the food chain building up in insects, fish and birds.
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10/30/2025 - 05:00
October rains have been light across Somalia, a country which in recent years has found itself on the frontline of the climate crisis. The latest estimate is that 3.4 million people don’t have enough food. One of the worst affected areas is Puntland, where disappearing water sources, pasture and food supplies have forced many to abandon their way of life
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10/30/2025 - 04:45
Campaigners say problem so common that some of the UK’s most irreplaceable ancient trees in danger of being lost
When Linda Taylor Cantrill finally found her dream family home in Exmouth, Devon, it wasn’t the location, the square footage or the local amenities that finally made up her mind – it was the 200-year-old oak tree in the garden.
“The way we felt about just standing in the shade of the tree was: ‘We need this house, because look how beautiful it is,’” she told the Guardian.
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10/30/2025 - 03:49
Oil company plans to buy back shares for 16th consecutive quarter as protesters say its earnings are ‘horror show’
Profits at Shell have climbed to more than $43bn for the year so far after fossil fuel production in the Gulf of Mexico reached a 20-year high and production in Brazil set a new record.
The oil company reported better than expected earnings of $5.4bn for the third quarter, a 27% increase on the $4.3bn in the previous three-month period – but lower than the $6bn recorded over the same period a year earlier.
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10/30/2025 - 03:20
Donald Trump hails ‘amazing’ trade talks with Chinese counterpart, with ‘no roadblock at all on rare earth’
Five key takeaways from Trump-Xi meeting
Analysis: price of confrontation was too high for both sides
Donald Trump has described crucial trade talks with the Chinese president in South Korea as “amazing”, saying their dispute over the supply of rare earths had been settled and that he would visit China in April.
Xi Jinping has not commented on Thursday’s discussions but noted that the economic and trade teams from both countries had “reached a basic consensus on addressing our respective major concerns” during recent talks in Kuala Lumpur, according to Chinese state media. That had “provided the necessary conditions” for their meeting on Thursday, he added.
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10/30/2025 - 00:00
Conservationists hail ‘remarkable’ rediscovery after 40 years, at nature reserve only accessible by boat
A tiny spider thought to have vanished for ever from the UK has been rediscovered on a remote area of a nature reserve accessible only by boat.
The Aulonia albimana, a member of the wolf spider family with orange legs, was found on the Isle of Wight in a spot grazed by a flock of Hebridean sheep.
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