Official reports are likely to overlook heat’s role in a death. As US temperatures rise, experts say the true toll needs to be counted
Among the autopsy reports that made my heart skip a beat was Hannah Rose Moody.
One morning last May, the 31-year-old set out on a favourite desert hike near her home in Scottsdale, Arizona. It was already 91F (33C) when she set off. On Instagram, she told her 50,000 followers: “Conquering this trail as a last hurrah before summer hits ☀️… I have like 5 gallons of water with me don’t worry .”
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
10/09/2025 - 10:00
10/09/2025 - 07:05
Exclusive: Government failure to close loophole allows 600,000 tonnes to be shipped abroad each year
A plastic recycling industry potentially worth £2bn and 5,000 jobs is dying in the UK because of government failure to close a loophole that allows 600,000 tonnes of plastic waste to be exported each year.
The Guardian can reveal that in the past two years 21 plastic recycling and processing factories across the UK have shut down due to the scale of exports, the cheap price of virgin plastic and an influx of cheap plastic from Asia, according to data gathered by industry insiders.
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10/09/2025 - 06:00
Study shows high-magnitude temblor in north-west could set off another in California, causing unrivaled disaster
Warnings about the looming threat of “the big one” – a catastrophic earthquake that could devastate cities – have stoked fears across the US west coast for decades. But according to a new study, a high-magnitude earthquake in the Pacific north-west could set off a secondary one on California’s San Andreas fault, causing an unrivaled catastrophe.
“The bigger one” would have the potential to wreak havoc up and down the coast at once, researchers say.
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10/09/2025 - 06:00
Struggling fishers in Hastings say the industry is dying after a deal giving away access to its waters made a tough job impossible
A small flotilla of gaily coloured fishing boats line the shingle beach at Hastings, East Sussex. Behind them are the bulldozers that shunt them into the waves and beyond, in neat rows, are black wooden fishermen’s huts and fish stalls, where on a good day teenage daughters, wives and retired skippers sell some of the day’s catch.
This is the Stade, a Saxon word for “landing place” from where wooden boats have set off since before William the Conqueror arrived in 1066.
Peter White outside his shed. He has been fishing for 52 years
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10/09/2025 - 03:06
Labor backbencher is calling for drastic intervention to secure supplies for the east coast
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The Labor backbencher Ed Husic is demanding an intervention to combat Japanese gas companies re-selling Australian exports to other markets, breaking ranks from the government and risking diplomatic blowback from Tokyo.
The former industry minister said the government must send a “powerful signal” to overseas multinationals, in particular in Japan, to stop “playing us off as mugs” by profiting off the resale of Australian gas while households and industry on the east coast face high prices and potential supply shortages.
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10/09/2025 - 03:00
If we really want to grasp what animals are ‘saying’, we need to understand their communication on their terms, not ours
Another day, another cute story about how dogs can grasp elements of human language and use them to communicate with us.
First, there was Mr Waffles, the Yorkshire terrier that“talks” to his owners by pressing electronic buttons that have been pre-programmed with words and phrases. In one of his videos, viewed more than half a million times, the pint-sized pooch stares defiantly at the camera and responds to an empty packet of treats by pressing the “I don’t give a damn” button. Followed by the “bitch” button. Bad dog, Mr Waffles.
Helen Pilcher is a science writer and the author of Bring Back the King: The New Science of De-Extinction. To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
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10/09/2025 - 01:49
Competition watchdog agrees to requests from Anglian, Northumbrian, South East, Southern and Wessex to increase charges
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Water bills for millions of households in England are to increase by even more than expected after the competition regulator gave the green light for five water suppliers to raise charges to customers – but rejected most of the companies’ demands.
An independent group of experts appointed by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) decided provisionally to let the companies collectively charge customers an extra £556m over the next five years, it said on Thursday. That was only 21% of the £2.7bn the companies had sought.
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10/08/2025 - 23:00
Plant inventories dating back to 1884 and nearly thrown away enable unique time-lapse study of biodiversity in Swiss meadows
For two years, a team of Swiss researchers crossed the country by train, car and foot, carrying with them a red frame measuring 30 by 30 centimetres. At 277 sites they placed the frame in the grass and counted all of the plant species within it.
The scientists were retracing a path set more than 100 years earlier, when two botanists had done the same thing in exactly the same meadows, long before such plant inventories became common.
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10/08/2025 - 12:51
With global heating on a dangerous trajectory, it would be unforgivable for the prime minister to miss the summit in Belém
In a month, this year’s UN climate summit, Cop30, begins in Belém, Brazil – preceded by a key leaders’ meeting. It is a crucial moment. The UN’s scientists have yet to publish calculations based on the latest round of nationally determined contributions (NDCs) – as countries’ emissions pledges are known. But Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has called leaders together because it is already clear that the current emissions pledges are nowhere near enough. The Paris 1.5C threshold was crossed last year. Without stronger action, that temporary breach will become irreversible – with devastating consequences for people and planet.
Lula’s diplomatic outreach to Donald Trump, who calls the climate crisis a “con job”, suggests he is trying to bring key players into the fold ahead of Belém. Having heavyweights in the room can make all the difference. Ten years ago in Paris, world leaders’ presence proved crucial to securing an ambitious deal. That’s why it is important that Sir Keir Starmer attends. He may not be the most powerful world leader, but his presence is a moral and diplomatic imperative. If King Charles is able to, he ought to go too. Soft power can help to rebuild the spirit of cooperation to keep the hopes in the Paris agreement alive.
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10/08/2025 - 11:00
Armed criminal groups tear down precious rainforest to capitalise on record gold prices, report finds
An illegal gold rush has cleared 140,000 hectares of rainforest in the Peruvian Amazon and is accelerating as foreign, armed groups move into the region to profit from record gold prices, according to a report.
About 540 square miles of land have been cleared for mining in the South American country since 1984, and the environmental destruction is spreading rapidly across the country, Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project (MAAP) and its Peruvian partner organisation, Conservación Amazónica, found.
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