Breaking Waves: Ocean News

Exclusive: Power outages in major cities would help build opposition to climate policies, Colin Boyce tells podcast Election 2025 live updates: Australia federal election campaign Polls tracker; election guide; full federal election coverage Anywhere but Canberra; interactive electorates guide Listen to the first episode of our new narrative podcast series: Gina Get our afternoon election email, free app or daily news podcast The Coalition MP Colin Boyce says he believes the way to turn voters against renewable energy is to “let Rome burn for a while” and allow power blackouts to occur in major cities. Guardian Australia reported on Wednesday that Boyce had described blackouts as a “big political opportunity” at a meeting of climate science deniers in late 2023. Sign up for the Afternoon Update: Election 2025 email newsletter Continue reading...

In one Nepali village, the resident rhinos are a conservation success story and attract thousands of visitors, but attacks on humans are on the rise “I can’t talk now, I’m in hospital,” Ram Kumar Aryal says when he picks up the phone. “Someone has been attacked by one of the rhinos.” Every few months, Aryal – who is one of the architects of Nepal’s celebrated rhino conservation programme – ends up in one of the hospitals around Chitwan national park to respond to a rhino attack. This time, three women had been injured earlier that afternoon by a female rhino outside Laukhani village in the park’s buffer zone. The hospital had bandaged up their fractured legs and ribs and treated the bites on their hips and knees. “Normally rhinos are vegetarian, but they use their incisors for attacks,” says Aryal. Those incisors can grow to three inches long. Continue reading...

Seeds can germinate having been buried in sediments of ‘ghost ponds’ for thousands of years Ghosts of the ice age are being resurrected in Norfolk. When the ice sheets retreated at the end of the last ice age, mounds of ice called pingos remained underground until they thawed and the soil slumped, leaving behind shallow hollows that filled with water. These turned into swampy wetland habitats rich in plants and wildlife and Breckland, in Norfolk, became pocked with hundreds of these pingo pools, although many of them were later filled in for farmland and became lost. Continue reading...

The sector, which had been set a target to reduce spillages by 40%, needs ‘radical reform’, campaigners say Water companies have missed their targets to reduce pollution with 2,487 incidents recorded in 2024 – twice the limit set by the Environment Agency. Data revealed under freedom of information law shows the companies were collectively set an Environment Agency target of a 40% reduction in pollution incidents, but instead recorded a 30% increase. Continue reading...