Breaking Waves: Ocean News

Highest temperatures of 2026 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland as Kew Gardens in London reaches 32.3C England, Wales and Northern Ireland recorded their highest temperatures of 2026 on Sunday, which was also the UK’s hottest May day for at least 79 years. Kew Gardens in west London recorded 32.3C (90.1F), Cardiff 27.4C and Armagh 23.4C. Continue reading...

Department for Transport is understood to back reducing levy, which critics have called a ‘pavement tax’ Business live – latest updates Government officials considered cutting the VAT charged on electricity used at public EV chargers from 20% to 5% at the last budget, but the Treasury under chancellor Rachel Reeves rejected the proposal amid disagreement between departments. Officials in the Department for Transport encouraged electric car charge point operators to write to the Treasury explaining how they would respond to a VAT cut, according to three industry sources. The charger companies said that they would pass the tax cut on to consumers. Continue reading...

This blog is now closed. Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast Climate activists say they have blocked two coal ships from entering Newcastle port Climate activists say they have stopped two coal ships from entering the Port of Newcastle this morning after kayakers and a small boat entered the channel. I grew up in the best years economically in Australia’s history, and I can’t sleep at night thinking about my 5 great-grandkids trying to live on a dead planet if we keep mining coal. I want to see more people my age standing up for what’s right. There’s plenty of conversations going on all the time. I think there’s so many people in politics for the right reasons and, when you’re in there, you want to say, well, how do we actually ensure that people can elect people that are going to come here and really deal with the root causes of the problems that we’re facing, because we haven’t seen that. How do you be part of changing our country for the better? For me at the moment, that is serving people in the ACT, engaging on each issue, bringing solutions, using whatever power I have in the Senate to actually work on behalf of the people that have sent me there. As to what that looks like in the future, who knows? Continue reading...

Firefighters are racing to douse flames on California’s Santa Rosa Island as experts express concern for unique habitat On the south-eastern corner of Santa Rosa Island lies a grove of a few thousand Torrey pine trees, some of them more than 250 years old. The only other place on earth where these gnarled pines exist is in San Diego county, but biologists classify the two groves as different subspecies. So when a rare wildfire broke out on Santa Rosa Island late last week, firefighters raced to keep it from spreading into the grove, where it threatened to consign the island’s Torrey pines to extinction. So far, they appear to be succeeding – even as the 18,000-acre fire has torched nearly one-third of the island’s surface. But biologists who have studied Santa Rosa Island’s unique ecology are watching anxiously as the fire continues to burn a part of the island that is home to six plants found nowhere else on the planet. Continue reading...