Environment news

• Niger Delta Avengers group claims five attacks in Nigeria's southern Delta

  03-07-2016 23:37
  By Tife Owolabi and Alexis Akwagyiram YENAGOA, Nigeria (Reuters) - The Niger Delta Avengers, a militant group that has been carrying out attacks on Nigerian oil facilities in the past few months, claimed responsibility on Sunday for five new attacks in the southern energy hub since Friday. The group had previously not laid claim to any attacks in the Niger Delta - the source of most of the OPEC member's oil - since June 16. Petroleum Ministry sources said in late June that a month-long truce had
  
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• Dark woods inspire fantasies: Country diary 100 years ago

  03-07-2016 23:30 via theguardian.com
  
  Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 8 July 1916Surrey
  Sun and rain, coming almost together, have extended the branches and enlarged the leaves in the great woods that spread over many acres beyond our commons. You are housed now in their recesses under dark green roofs through which the eye cannot penetrate; there is a mysterious shaking and rustling by the wind overhead, and this helps to strengthen or inspire the fantasies which in these dim solitudes are created by the mind. Bi
  
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• Dartmoor beauty spot is battleground for Britain’s threatened woodlands

  03-07-2016 20:32 via theguardian.com
  
  A couple who have cared for woodland on their Devon farm for five years face a costly legal battle with national park planners. Here they explain why the country’s heritage is at stakeIt is an idyllic spot. Sylvan slopes dip down to a babbling river fringed by alder and willow that winds through organic pasture where hens peck, sheep graze and bees hum.The ethos is sound – to restore the woods to their ancient glory, to create a small, sustainable business producing timber and firewo
  
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• Paris bans old cars on weekdays

  03-07-2016 15:29 via feedproxy.google.com
  Paris was at the forefront of public bike-sharing schemes, and it now has electric car-sharing schemes and is something of a laboratory for mobility. As of today, motorists with cars built before 1997, and motorcycles built before 2000, will no longer be able to drive them in the city during daylight hours on weekdays.Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo says keeping old cars out of the city will help lower pollution levels. But not everyone is happy about it.Marc Vernhet makes his living driving tourists a
  
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• Saudi economic growth slowest in three years as austerity bites

  03-07-2016 09:53
  Saudi Arabia's economy expanded at its slowest rate in three years during the first quarter of 2016 as low oil prices forced the government to cut spending and raise costs for industry, official data showed on Sunday. Gross domestic product, adjusted for inflation, grew 1.5 percent from a year earlier in the first quarter, down from a revised growth rate of 1.8 percent in the fourth quarter of 2015.
  
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• The eco guide to electric vehicles

  03-07-2016 07:00 via theguardian.com
  
  It’s the future: EVs are making a greener dream come true“You lot [earth lovers] won’t be happy till there’s rose petals coming out the exhaust,” a car industry insider complained to me.I’d settle for an electric vehicle. Not emission free (you have to factor in the source of the electricity), but a technology that can make a real dent in climate-change emissions. My next car needs to be an EV – and so does yours. Continue reading...
  
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• Seaweed, salt and soil: how ‘terroir’ cooking put local flavour on the plate

  03-07-2016 01:04 via theguardian.com
  
  Chef Stephen Harris once described the Sportsman as a ‘grotty boozer by the sea’. Last week it was voted restaurant of the year. Harris reveals how the use of local produce has transformed gastronomyRewind a few years and the Sportsman pub’s greatest claim to fame was the fact that it stood next to the only place in the second world war where British troops exchanged fire with German forces on English soil.On an unprepossessing strip of marshland hugging the Thames estuary in n
  
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• It’s always a joy to discover a new species. But there is a downside... | Michelle Nijhuis

  03-07-2016 01:03 via theguardian.com
  
  Finding a new creature such as the swimming centipede is to be celebrated. But it doesn’t make up for the ones we’re constantly losingIn December 2000, George Beccaloni, an entomologist at the Natural History Museum in London, was honeymooning in southern Thailand. On a streambank near Khao Sok national park, he turned over a few rocks in search of interesting critters – and encountered a huge, startlingly ugly centipede, 20cm long.“It was pretty horrific looking,”
  
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