Environment news

• Unchecked pollution and bad food ‘killing thousands in UK’

  30-04-2016 22:26
  
  Government’s failure to tackle health and safety issues, food poisoning and pollution leading to ‘largely avoidable’ deaths, says thinktankThousands of people are dying each year because of the government’s failure to tackle food poisoning, health and safety breaches and pollution, a thinktank is warning.A new report from the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies (CCJS)claims that lax regulation and weak enforcement are failing to hold businesses in check and are tantamoun
  
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• Blacklisted oil tanker returns to Libya's Zawiya port

  30-04-2016 20:58
  A tanker that Libya's rival eastern government had been using to try to export oil in defiance of the Western-backed administration in Tripoli returned to the country on Saturday, after it was blacklisted by the United Nations, the state oil company said. The eastern government's parallel oil company had hoped to sell the cargo of 650,000 barrels, but the United Nations measure required states to ban it from entering any port. Two competing governments, one in Tripoli and one in the east, backed
  
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• Kenya burns largest stockpile of ivory - video

  30-04-2016 18:05
  
  Kenya sets ablaze 100 tonnes of elephant ivory and one tonne of rhino horn, in what is being called the largest stockpile of the material to be destroyed. Led by Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta at the Nairobi national park, eleven giant pyres of ivory is set on fire using 20,000 litres of gasoline. The decision to destroy the ivory was made to highlight the impact of poaching Kenya burns largest ever ivory stockpile to highlight elephants’ fateContinue reading...
  
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• Large Hadron Collider shut down by a Weasel!

  30-04-2016 16:50 via feedproxy.google.com
  A small mammal has sabotaged the world's most powerful scientific instrument.The Large Hadron Collider, a 17-mile superconducting machine designed to smash protons together at close to the speed of light, went offline overnight. Engineers investigating the mishap found the charred remains of a furry creature near a gnawed-through power cable."We had electrical problems, and we are pretty sure this was caused by a small animal," says Arnaud Marsollier, head of press for CERN, the organi
  
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• Kenya burns largest ever ivory stockpile to highlight elephants' fate

  30-04-2016 16:00
  
  Kenyan president lights pyres in move some fear will drive further poaching by taking 5% of global stock out of circulationMore than 100 tonnes of ivory has been set ablaze in Kenya, the largest ever such fire, in a bid to shock the world into protecting the future of endangered elephants.Eleven giant pyres of tusks from around 6,000 elephants, a pile seven times the size of any burned previously, was lit by the Kenyan president, Uhuru Kenyatta, at a ceremony in Nairobi national park on Saturday
  
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• China, Japan more upbeat on ties but challenges remain

  30-04-2016 15:47
  By Ben Blanchard BEIJING (Reuters) - China and Japan both expressed a willingness to improve strained relations on Saturday after a rare meeting between their two foreign ministers in Beijing, though China said Japan should stop pushing the notion that China is a threat. China, the world's second-largest economy, and Japan, the third-largest, have a difficult political history, with ties strained by the legacy of Japan's World War Two aggression and conflicting claims over a group of uninhabited
  
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• VIDEO: Helping hand for chilly owls

  30-04-2016 13:37 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Barn owls can struggle to survive in cold, wet weather and as low temperatures persist people in Yorkshire are doing their best to give the birds a helping hand as Paul Murphy reports.
  
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• Return of the bison: new American national symbol tells story of strife

  30-04-2016 13:30
  
  Nearly wiped out in a bid to demolish Native American resistance, the bison’s history paints a picture of strife and redemption that mirrors the US’s ownThe bald eagle may appeal to America’s sense of self – soaring, majestic, hard to tame – but as a national symbol, the more humble bison paints a truer picture of the strife and redemption that has marked US history.The bison is to become the first national mammal of the US, elevating it to the giddy heights of symb
  
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• Return of the bison: new American national symbol tells story of a nation

  30-04-2016 13:30
  
  Nearly wiped out in a bid to demolish Native American resistance, the bison’s history paints a picture of strife and redemption that mirrors the US’s ownThe bald eagle may appeal to America’s sense of self – soaring, majestic, hard to tame – but as a national symbol, the more humble bison paints a truer picture of the strife and redemption that has marked US history.The bison is to become the first national mammal of the US, elevating it to the giddy heights of symb
  
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• Daimler hires Deloitte for internal emissions probe

  30-04-2016 12:34
  Daimler has hired auditor Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu to help with an internal investigation into its diesel-engine emissions technology requested by the U.S. Department of Justice, the luxury car maker said. The investigation is to see if Daimler used devices to manipulate emissions tests and comes after another German carmaker, Volkswagen AG, admitted installing software that did so. Daimler said last week that it was conducting an internal investigation of its certification process for diesel ex
  
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• Kenya burns confiscated ivory – in pictures

  30-04-2016 11:41
  
  Kenya has destroyed 105 tonnes of confiscated ivory, almost all of the country’s stockpile, at an event in Nairobi national park attended by several African heads of state and conservationists. The event was intended to send a strong anti-poaching message Continue reading...
  
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• Britain's best places to take off on a butterfly safari

  30-04-2016 11:30
  
  The purple emperor and chequered skipper await, whether you just fancy a flutter or metamorphose into a full-blown spotter The purple emperor butterfly, a rather eccentric 1950s schoolmaster called Ian Heslop once declared, is the ultimate “big game”. A renowned collector, he boasted of catching as many emperors as he had shot elephants (four) but said that no exotic African beast gave him “so much joy as the seeing of my first emperor safely in the net”.It is no longer a
  
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• The shame of ivory

  30-04-2016 10:52
  
  Paula Kahumbu: Kenya’s ivory burn will help end demand worldwide by making people ashamed to buy and own ivory We are often told that wildlife conservation should make economic sense, and so it should. In my previous article I outlined some of the economic arguments in favour of burning ivory stockpiles.Wildlife conservation should make moral sense as well. Winning the moral argument is probably even important than good economics for saving elephants and wildlife. Continue reading...
  
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• Has the Chernobyl disaster affected the number of nuclear plants built?

  30-04-2016 10:00
  
  Thirty years on from one of the worst radiation leaks in history, several countries have moved to phase out nuclear energy production altogether, and experts say another accident would kill the industry Related: Chernobyl nuclear disaster 30th anniversary – in pictures This week marks 30 years since an accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine led to a huge leak of radiation across eastern Europe. Continue reading...
  
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• Britain's wild places are vital to our imaginations

  30-04-2016 08:30
  
  The UK has hundreds of islands, hills and rivers and a coastline almost 20,000 miles long, inspiring a passion deep within us. Plus: top five wild hotspotsCountry files: nature writers on the books that inspired themRecently, I climbed Maol Chean-dearg, a mountain in the far north-west of Scotland. Down in the glens, it was not far above freezing, and the cold air pooled as mist. But up on the summits the sun blazed, and the temperature touched 15C. The result was one of the most dazzling cloud
  
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• Seeing the woods for the trees

  30-04-2016 06:30
  
  Crewe Green, Cheshire Creative writing students take a walk in the natural world in search of material for poetry
  The sky is as lovely as an illustration in a children’s picture book, pale blue with a big sun, yellow as a buttercup. There is a cobweb-faint breeze. We are approaching the copse, a group of creative writing students and I, a walk in the natural world, material for poetry. The air is alive with spring sounds: bees buzzing, birds singing, a gardener cutting the lawn near the ha
  
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• Oil rig helicopter crashes off Norway coast, 13 presumed dead

  30-04-2016 01:51
  By Stine Jacobsen and Ole Petter Skonnord OSLO (Reuters) - A helicopter ferrying passengers from a Norwegian oil platform crashed in the North Sea on Friday, apparently killing all 13 people on board, rescue officials said. The 11 passengers and two crew on the flight from the Gullfaks B oil platform, operated by Norway's Statoil , were all Norwegian except for one British and one Italian national, according to the Rescue Coordination Centre for Southern Norway. "The helicopter is completely des
  
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• Donald Trump effigy burns in San Francisco

  30-04-2016 00:23
  
  Got a minute? Protesters burned Trump piñata … Indiana’s governor gave a non-endorsement to Ted Cruz … and everything else you need to know.By Scott Bixby 11.16pm BSTDonald Trump may have snuck in to speak at the California Republican convention in San Francisco, but protesters still managed to make their feelings known. 11.16pm BSTThat was not the easiest entrance I’ve ever made ... It felt like I was crossing the border, actually. I was crossing the border, but
  
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• Paris agreement is a strong signal that 'we will solve climate crisis', Al Gore says

  30-04-2016 00:08
  
  Leading environmental activist says cheaper renewable energy provides an opportunity to create a sustainable world economy – but we must do moreAl Gore, former US vice-president, Nobel laureate and chairman of the Climate Reality Project, has led the global discussion about climate change for many years. His multi-award-winning film An Inconvenient Truth (2006) has been widely credited with changing the way world leaders and citizens think about the issue. Don Henry is public policy fellow
  
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