Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Endangered giants face potentially fatal encounters with the 1,000 daily fishing vessels moving through main feeding area off Chile, scientists warn
The largest mammal ever to live on the Earth, the blue whale, is under threat from boat collisions as one of its main feeding grounds in Chilean Patagonia is overrun with vessels, a new study has revealed.
The endangered whales must contend with up to 1,000 boats moving daily through an important feeding area in the eastern South Pacific, according to research published in the scientific journal Nature.
The mealworm market is expected to boom after the EU ruled them safe to eat. Insects are a popular food in most countries, so can Europeans get over the yuck factor?
It’s a bit … well, mealy. Dry (because it’s been dried), a little crunchy, not strongly flavoured, neither pleasant nor unpleasant. Salt would probably help, or chilli, lime – something, anything, to spice it up a bit. And definitely a beer, if I was going to consume much more, to help wash it down.
I’m eating mealworms. Dried yellow mealworms, the larvae of the beetle Tenebrio molitor. Why? Because they are nutritious, made up mainly of protein, fat and fibre. Because there are potentially environmental and economic benefits, as they require less feed and produce less waste and carbon dioxide than other sources of animal protein. And because Efsa, the EU food safety agency, has just declared them safe to eat.
Kaja Kallas, 43, took power on Tuesday after the previous coalition collapsed due to a corruption scandal
Estonia’s first female prime minister has promised to implement changes in both style and substance in the governance of the Baltic nation, as she takes charge after two years in which a far-right party was in the ruling coalition.
The activists have been in the tunnel close to Euston station since Tuesday to raise awareness of the climate emergency and to try to halt work on the HS2 project which is under way in the Euston area. They argue that many ancient woodlands will be destroyed by the project. HS2 says it is planting 7m new trees.
Billions of unwanted male chicks are slaughtered by the farming industry. Now a startup claims to have found a surprising solution to the problem
The eggs we eat have a hidden cost. About 7bn male chicks are killed worldwide every year to produce them. Farmers need to replenish their supply of egg-laying hens but, by nature, half the chicks that hatch are male and growing them for meat is uneconomic – that industry uses faster growing breeds. In many countries they are tossed into shredding machines, although in the UK they are gassed.
But what if those male chicks could instead hatch out as functional females, able to grow into egg-laying birds? That’s the vision of Israeli startup Soos Technology. Founded in 2017, the company, which has received $3.3m in investment and prize winnings, wants to make commercial hatcheries kinder and more economic by changing the effective sex of poultry embryos as they develop.
More electric vehicles, renewable energy and forests are among the steps recommended to help meet Paris accords
New Zealand needs to urgently increase its efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions if it is to meet its obligations under the Paris climate accords.
The country’s climate change commission – an independent body – has delivered its draft advice to the prime minister, on the vital steps that must be taken if it wants to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions and tackle climate change.
Woniya Thibeault, the runner up on Netflix’sAlone, is offering an eight-week survival course, teaching more than how to skin a deer and tie a knot
Left to fend for herself on Arctic land, with only 10 pieces of gear – among them a sleeping bag, a pot, and a bow and arrows – Woniya Thibeault didn’t just want to survive. She wanted to find joy in the process of surviving.
Scattered miles apart in the same rugged wilderness were nine other contestants looking to outlast one another and win big on the History Channel’s popular survival reality series Alone. In it,contestants compete to stick it out in the wilderness for the longest time with limited resources – all have the option to tap out if it gets too much. The prize money – $500,000 – would have changed Thibeault’s life, but winning wasn’t her top priority. She was there for the experience.
‘Escalator to extinction’ means aggressive species will eventually take over, threatening the entire mountain ecosystem
Alpine flowers could go extinct after glaciers disappear as more competitive species colonise terrain higher up the mountain, new research has warned.
Glaciers are retreating at historically unprecedented rates, exposing new land for plants to grow, which benefits delicate alpine species in the short term. However, these early pioneers – some of which are endemic – soon become endangered as more aggressive species take over, driving them out of their remaining habitat and decreasing overall biodiversity, according to the paper published in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution.
HS2 protesters describe how they built tunnel, as officials warn of danger from gas and water pipes
Environmental activists have held out for their second night in the Euston tunnel, but eviction officers have said the tunnel is close to gas and water pipes and that the activists are putting their own lives at risk.
The tunnellers described how they constructed what is thought to be one of the largest tunnel networks to be occupied by protesters in one of the busiest parts of London without being detected.
Dozens of villagers, including children, claim they suffered severe burns and sickness after contact with contaminated water
The UK government has accepted a human rights complaint against mining and commodities giant Glencore regarding a toxic wastewater spill in Chad, where dozens of villagers – among them children – claim they suffered severe burns, skin lesions and sickness after contact with contaminated water.
The complaint, brought by three human rights groups on behalf of affected communities, alleges environmental abuses and social engagement failures by the FTSE-100 company in relation to two spillages, the wastewater spill and an alleged oil spill, both in 2018.
Rangers are investigating mystery deaths at Djoudj bird sanctuary, a migratory pitstop for hundreds of bird species
Seven hundred and fifty pelicans have been found dead in a Unesco world heritage site in northern Senegal that provides refuge for millions of migratory birds, the country’s parks director has said.
Rangers found the pelicans on Saturday in the Djoudj bird sanctuary, a remote pocket of wetland near the border with Mauritania and a resting place for birds that cross the Sahara into west Africa each year.
In a sharp 180-degree turn from the Trump administration, Joe Biden signed a series of executive orders to address the 'existential threat' of the climate crisis. Biden insisted his climate plan would create millions of new 'clean' jobs to replace those lost in the coal and oil industries
‘We need to be bold,’ Biden says, signing orders to halt fossil fuel activity on public lands and transform the government’s fleet of cars into electric vehicles
Joe Biden has warned the climate crisis poses an “existential threat” to the world as he unveiled a radical change in direction from the Trump era by halting fossil fuel activity on public lands and directing the US government to start a full-frontal effort to lower planet-heating emissions.
While we’re waiting for a Covid-19 briefing, it’s worth remembering just how many people have gone through a year of pandemic without health insurance: likely at least 28.9 million.
The number of people who lacked health insurance rose through the Trump presidency, and grew by experts millions were added to the ranks of uninsured as the pandemic drove unprecedented job losses. A plurality of Americans rely on private health insurance through an employer.
WASHINGTON (AP) Fulfilling a campaign promise, President Joe Biden plans to reopen the HealthCare.gov insurance markets for a special sign-up opportunity geared to people needing coverage in the coronavirus pandemic.
Biden is expected to sign an executive order Thursday, said two people familiar with the plan, whose details were still being finalized. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the pending order ahead of a formal announcement.
Hello – this is Jessica Glenza taking over from Martin Belam. Among the most high profile events happening in Washington DC today is the first Covid-19 briefing, which the Biden administration promised will be a regular feature of his administration.
At 11am ET, we’re expecting Biden’s first Covid-19 briefing. Here’s a closer look at what is expected:
(AP) - For nearly a year it was the Trump show. Now President Joe Biden is calling up the nation’s top scientists and public health experts to regularly brief the American public about the pandemic that has claimed more than 425,000 US lives.
Beginning Wednesday, administration experts will host briefings three times a week on the state of the outbreak, efforts to control it and the race to deliver vaccines and therapeutics to end it.
Scientists say decline in calves born in past 15 years due to diminishing herring stocks in warming north Atlantic
Humpback whales could be struggling to breed due to rapid environmental change in the ocean caused by the climate crisis, a study suggests.
Scientists have confirmed a significant decline in the number of calves born to female humpbacks over the past 15 years in the Gulf of St Lawrence, Canada, an important summer feeding ground for migrating whales. They said the climate crisis has led to rapid sea temperature and sea level rise in this area of the north Atlantic, with knock-on effects for the ecosystem that include decreasing numbers of herring, a vital food source for humpback whales.
Environmental groups in Canada applaud decision, but country’s western provinces left in disbelief
Joe Biden’s move to cancel a controversial pipeline project has hit Canada like “like a gut punch”, according to one political leader, and left the country to weigh the future prospects of its ailing oil and gas industry.
On 20 January, one of the US president’s first executive orders was to reverse approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, making good on a campaign promise to kill the project as part of a broader strategy to address the climate crisis.
Biggest ever survey finds two-thirds of people think climate change is a global emergency
The biggest ever opinion poll on climate change has found two-thirds of people think it is a “global emergency”.
The survey shows people across the world support climate action and gives politicians a clear mandate to take the major action needed, according to the UN organisation that carried out the poll.
Since 2019, Lucienne Rickard has been drawing detailed sketches of lost species in a Hobart gallery. On Sunday she erased the final one
The Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery in Hobart is filled with people waiting for the swift parrot to disappear.
Hobart artist Lucienne Rickard has spent five weeksdrawing a large-scale pencil sketch of the critically endangered bird. Picking up her eraser, she tells her audience, “If we don’t do something soon, this is what will happen.”
Our fashion editor on a year in which sweatpants soared, masks went designer, Topshop tumbled – and a pause fuelled hopes of a reset
I was on the Eurostar, somewhere between St Pancras and Paris, when a senior member of the Guardian team called and suggested that it might be a good idea for me to turn around at Gare du Nord and return to London.
It was 3 March 2020. This was not the plan. The plan had been to go to the Chanel show and report for the news pages. Instead, it was the beginning of all plans – work and otherwise – disintegrating.
Human populations are set to decline in countries from Asia to Europe – and an unusual form of rewilding is taking place
For many years it seemed that overpopulation was the looming crisis of our age. Back in 1968, the Stanford biologists Paul and Anne Ehrlich infamously predicted that millions would soon starve to death in their bestselling, doom-saying book The Population Bomb; since then, neo-Malthusian rumblings of imminent disaster have been a continual refrain in certain sections of the environmental movement – fears that were recently given voice on David Attenborough’s documentary Life on our Planet.
At the time the Ehrlichs were publishing their dark prophecies, the world was at its peak of population growth, which at that point was increasing at a rate of 2.1% a year. Since then, the global population has ballooned from 3.5 billion to 7.67 billion.