Tourists can’t resist a keepsake, despite a public information campaign and fines of up to €3,000
What irritated the local mayor most was the audacity of the tourists who tried to conceal their crime on the white-sanded Sinis beach along the west coast of Sardinia.
On a morning in late July, the visitors – a couple with a child, from mainland Italy – were spotted by a fellow beachgoer filling a plastic bottle with sand. The witness to the act immediately called the police.
Continue reading...The actor and painter explains why the world needs to see Minimata, the new film about the mercury poisoning scandal that W Eugene Smith helped expose
Like Cher or Madonna, Minami is a one-name wonder. “I have my French and Japanese family names,” the 34-year-old actor says over video call from a pink hotel room in Tokyo. “But ‘Minami’ is simpler.” She gives a single, decisive nod. “Just write ‘Minami.’” She chose the mononym at 13 when she featured in her first film, Battle Royale, a gory cult thriller about schoolchildren fighting to the death on an uninhabited island. “When I went back to school, everyone said: ‘Your arms are all bruised, you have scratches, what’s going on?’ They thought my parents were beating me.”
Even when telling a story like this with dark undertones, her manner is insistently perky, as though she doesn’t want the listener to misread her as dour. When I ask about her Battle Royale audition, for instance, she blithely recalls “walking into the room and there were 10 men, and they asked me if I could do a handstand, and two of the men held my legs against the wall to help me …” I must be grimacing because she breaks off from the anecdote to reprimand me lightheartedly: “Don’t make that face! It was all fine.”
Continue reading...Heavy rains have triggered severe floods and mudslides in northern Turkey, killing at least one person and leaving others missing or injured. Turkey has been grappling with drought and a rapid succession of natural disasters that scientists believe are becoming more frequent and violent because of the climate crisis. The floods hit the Black Sea coastal provinces of Bartin, Kastamonu, Sinop and Samsun
Continue reading...Academics warn ‘fugitive’ emissions from producing hydrogen could be 20% worse for climate than using gas
The government’s plan to replace fossil gas with “blue” hydrogen to help meet its climate targets could backfire after US academics found that it may lead to more emissions than using gas.
In some cases blue hydrogen, which is made from fossil gas, could be up to 20% worse for the climate than using gas in homes and heavy industry, owing to the emissions that escape when gas is extracted from the ground and split to produce hydrogen.
Continue reading...Scores of fires blaze across 17 provinces as calls made for aid convoys and Morocco and France offer help
Algeria’s president, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, has declared three days of national mourning amid the death toll from raging wildfires in the north of the country rising to 69.
The state-run news agency APS said the rash of more than 50 fires which broke out on Tuesday had claimed four more lives, bringing the total to 69, including 28 soldiers deployed to help the emergency services.
Continue reading...Ocean plastic has created a unique home for specialised organisms, from animals that travel on it to bacteria that ‘eat’ it
Plastic bottles dominate waste in the ocean, with an estimated 1m of them reaching the sea every minute. The biggest culprit is polyethylene terephthalate (Pet) bottles.
Last month, a study found two bacteria capable of breaking down Pet – or, as the headlines put it, “eating plastic”. Known as Thioclava sp. BHET1 and Bacillus sp. BHET2, the bacteria were isolated in a laboratory – but they were discovered in the ocean.
Continue reading...Prime minister says request made for help internationally as forest blazes erupt in Kabyle region and elsewhere
More than 40 people, including 25 soldiers, have died in wildfires that erupted east of the Algerian capital, the country’s prime minister, Ayman Benabderrahmane, said.
Benabderrahmane also told state television that the government had asked for help from the international community and was in talks with partners to hire planes to extinguish fires. So far, 42 deaths have been reported.
Continue reading...Politicians around world continue to respond to report from Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
Food production around the world will suffer as global heating reaches 1.5C, with serious effects on the food supply in the next two decades, scientists have warned, following the biggest scientific report yet on the climate crisis.
Rising temperatures will mean there will be more times of year when temperatures exceed what crops can stand, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in its sixth assessment report published on Monday.
Continue reading...About 1.35m Americans a year fall ill from the bacteria. Why are there still so many infections?
In my kitchen, I treat raw chicken as if it’s crawling with bacteria that could make me and my family sick. I use separate cutting boards for meats and produce; I wash my hands and disinfect everything that comes close to the bird, then cook it to 74C (165F). A little paranoid, but with good reason.
Chickens, turkeys and other fowl commonly harbour salmonella bacteria that are harmless to the birds but not to humans.
Continue reading...The US president may have only one chance to pass legislation to confront the crisis: ‘We can’t wait’
A stark UN report on how humanity has caused unprecedented, and in some cases “irreversible”, changes to the world’s climate has heaped further pressure on Joe Biden to deliver upon what may be his sole chance to pass significant legislation to confront the climate crisis and break a decade of American political inertia.
The US president said the release on Monday of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report showed that “we can’t wait to tackle the climate crisis. The signs are unmistakable. The science is undeniable. And the cost of inaction keeps mounting.”
Continue reading...Five-month-old Mia suffered critical injuries after her mother fell while trying to avoid the bird
The devastated aunts of a baby who died after her mother tried to protect her from a swooping magpie have described the feelings of torture the parents have been left with.
Mia was in her mother’s arms when a magpie swooped at them at a Brisbane park on Sunday.
Continue reading...The ‘no-plough’ regenerative methods adopted in small vineyards have spread to olive groves and leading wine producers – boosting biodiversity and profits
They call it the sea of olives, 70 million olive trees that stretch to the horizon in every direction in the province of Jaén in southern Spain. It’s a spectacular landscape and yet, olives aside, the land is virtually dead, with scarcely a flower, bird or butterfly to be seen.
All this could be about to change following the remarkable success of a project that is raising new life from the dust of Andalucía.
Continue reading...Week of blazes forces evacuations and brings devastating scale of destruction to large areas of southern Europe
The devastating scale of destruction from a week of wildfires in Greece and Italy was being assessed as the EU mounted one of its largest firefighting operations ever and smoke from forest fires in Siberia reached the north pole.
As UN experts on Monday said global warming was advancing faster than feared and that humanity was “unequivocally” to blame, firefighters and local residents battled massive blazes on the island of Evia, east of Athens, for a seventh straight day.
Continue reading...IPCC’s landmark report will be most comprehensive assessment yet as governments prepare for pivotal UN talks in November
The fires, floods and extreme weather seen around the world in recent months are just a foretaste of what can be expected if global heating takes hold, scientists say, as the world’s leading authority on climate change prepares to warn of an imminent and dire risk to the global climate system.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will on Monday publish a landmark report, the most comprehensive assessment yet, less than three months before vital UN talks that will determine the future course of life on Earth.
Continue reading...Specialists including Defra bovine tuberculosis expert say positive tests indicate danger to public health
The row over his fate has captured the public’s imagination – with a petition to save him gathering nearly 100,000 signatures and his friendly, furry face splashing newspaper front pages. But vets have cautioned that the law is clear: Geronimo the alpaca must be put down.
The six-year-old animal is facing a death sentence after twice testing positive for bovine tuberculosis (bTB), a deadly respiratory disease that has blighted the countryside for decades.
Continue reading...Environment secretary says bovine tuberculosis test used on animal ‘over 99% accurate’
Environment secretary George Eustice said it is an “arduous but necessary endeavour” to cull animals that test positive for bovine tuberculosis (bTB), as he defended the decision to put down Geronimo the alpaca.
Helen Macdonald’s animal has been ordered for destruction after twice testing positive for the disease, but she has repeatedly questioned the tests used to condemn him.
Continue reading...The city is surrounded by flames. On the ground, there are tales of heroism – and fear for the future
Little had prepared any of us on the Athens-bound flight for the sight of the great fire-induced clouds that swept either side of the plane as it made its descent on Friday.
News of the extreme heat engulfing Greece had spread beyond its borders all week, packaged in increasingly desperate language. Temperatures were breaking records few had ever imagined. If Monday was bad, then Tuesday was worse. In some parts of the country, the mercury had hit 47C (117F), with thermal cameras on drones recording the ground temperature in downtown Athens at 55C.
Continue reading...Cop26 meeting is last chance, says Alok Sharma as he backs UK’s plan for new oil and gas fields
The world will soon face “catastrophe” from climate breakdown if urgent action is not taken, the British president of vital UN climate talks has warned.
Alok Sharma, the UK minister in charge of the Cop26 talks to be held in Glasgow this November, told the Observer that the consequences of failure would be “catastrophic”: “I don’t think there’s any other word for it. You’re seeing on a daily basis what is happening across the world. Last year was the hottest on record, the last decade the hottest decade on record.”
Continue reading...Thousands of people were forced to flee Thrakomakedones, a suburb of the Greek capital, after strong winds spread wildfires that burned down homes.
More than 50 wildfires are burning across Greece as the worst heatwave in more than 30 years has hit the country.
Tens of thousands of acres of forestland, homes and buildings have been destroyed and the prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, has promised a radical shift in the country's approach to the climate emergency.
Continue reading...The birds exist in a pest-control grey area, with no agency taking the lead, allowing the population to boom
They are aggressive, territorial, noisy and excrete more than a kilogram of faeces a day. Now huge flocks of Canada geese have made parts of rural New Zealand their home, bringing havoc in their wake.
The introduced birds are polluting waterways, damaging pasture and are so numerous in some places that they pose a threat to aircrafts, but little is being done to curb the problem.
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