U-turn lifts limit from £1m to £2.5m after protests and warnings that family farms were at risk
Ministers will increase the threshold for taxing inherited farmland from £1m to £2.5m after months of pressure from campaigners and MPs representing rural areas.
In a statement slipped out just before Christmas, the environment department announced the U-turn, which will apply from April when the tax kicks in.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
12/23/2025 - 07:12
Previous policy would have led to inheritance tax being levied on farms valued at over £1m
The Treasury has published this explainer setting out in detail how the inheritance tax rules will apply to farms after today’s announcement.
When the government first announced its plan to extend inheritance tax to farms, it said that this would raise around £520m a year from 2028-29.
The changes we are implementing reflects the concerns that have been raised while preserving the majority of the revenue from reform to help cut debt and borrowing and fund public services. The costings for today’s announcement will be incorporated into the next OBR forecast.
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12/23/2025 - 04:00
As the number of the semi-aquatic creatures soars so can tensions. But the Swiss have a tried and tested system to calm the neighbours and restore harmony
“I hate beavers,” a woman tells the beaver hotline. Forty years ago she planted an oak tree in a small town in southern Zurich – now at the frontier of beaver expansion – and it has just been felled: gnawed by the large, semi-aquatic rodents as they enter their seasonal home-improvement mode.
The caller is one of 10 new people getting in touch each week at this time of year. Beavers, nature’s great engineers, can unleash mayhem during winter as they renovate their lodges and build up their dams. For people, this can mean flooding, sinkholes appearing in roads and trees being felled. A single incident can clock up 70,000 Swiss francs (£65,000) in damages.
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12/23/2025 - 01:00
Met Office says temperatures are tracking ahead of 2022 after year of heatwaves and drought, though late cold spell could yet intervene
Forecasters say 2025 is “more likely than not” to break the record for the hottest year in the UK since records began, after a summer of heatwaves and drought followed by a mild autumn.
According to the Met Office, the official forecaster, the mean temperature for 2025 is tracking well ahead of the previous highest year, set in 2022. However, a colder spell expected from Christmas until the new year makes it too close to call definitively.
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12/22/2025 - 21:53
Advocates say State Electricity Commission’s $650m Delburn windfarm will be a ‘new chapter’ for region previously home to Hazelwood coal power station
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Victoria will have its first publicly owned windfarm after the government’s electricity commission spent $650m on a 33-turbine project in the Latrobe valley.
Construction of the Delburn windfarm is due to start in early 2026 and climate advocates said the purchase of the project by the State Electricity Commission marked a key turning point for a region known for its privately owned coal plants.
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12/22/2025 - 18:11
Biologist says specimen filmed by a Victorian fisher is ‘unusual’, but not a rare albino as some had wondered
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Cody Stylianou thought he saw a huge trout. But, skimming just below the surface, it was moving differently than a fish would.
The creature surfaced and, amazed, the Victorian fisher reached for his phone. Swimming in front of him was a pink platypus.
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12/22/2025 - 13:49
Black Diamond Pool eruption provides dramatic footage after being captured on official camera
A hot spring in Yellowstone national park that erupts sporadically was captured on an official camera exploding in spectacular muddy plumes at the weekend.
Volcanic experts at the US Geological Survey described the eruption as simply “Kablooey!”
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12/22/2025 - 11:16
Interior department move affects five projects under construction in latest blow to industry targeted by Trump
The Trump administration has said it is immediately pausing all leases for offshore wind farms already under construction, in the heaviest blow yet to an industry that the administration has relentlessly targeted throughout the year.
Trump’s Department of the Interior said that it was halting the building of five wind projects due to “national security risks”. The department said it would work with the US Department of Defense to mitigate the risk of the wind turbine towers creating radar interference called “clutter” that could in some way hamper the US military.
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12/22/2025 - 10:45
Video shared by the US Geological Survey on social media shows mud spraying up and out from the Black Diamond Pool in Yellowstone national park. Other recent eruptions have mostly been audible but not visible because they happened either at night or when the camera was obscured by ice. The agency said the Black Diamond Pool was previously the site of a hydrothermal explosion, in July 2024, that sent rocks and mud flying hundreds of feet into the air and damaged a boardwalk. It prompted the closure of the area to visitors due to the damage and potential for additional hazardous activity
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12/22/2025 - 10:33
Mass of congealed fat, oil and grease 100 metres in length found blocking sewers in Whitechapel area of capital
A “fatberg” weighing an estimated 100 tonnes has been discovered blocking sewers in east London, officials have said.
The mass of congealed fats, oils and grease measures about 100 metres long (328ft) and weighs about a third more than the heaviest of the British army’s battle tanks. It has been called the grandchild of the 2017 Whitechapel fatberg, which weighed 130 tonnes and stretched for more than 250 metres (820ft).
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