Government says it has done all it can to prepare for strongest hurricane in country since records began
Hurricane Melissa – latest updates
Hurricane Melissa has made landfall in Jamaica, where sheltering residents braced themselves against ferocious winds, heavy flood waters and landslides from the category 5 storm, one of the strongest Atlantic hurricanes in history.
Videos and photographs published by local newspapers painted a devastating portrait of the impact: roads transformed into raging rivers, downed power lines and trees, and roofs ripped off buildings by the power of the winds. “Hurricane Melissa is wreaking absolute havoc on Jamaica’s breadbasket parish,” the Jamaica Observer reported from St Elizabeth in the south-west of the island.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
10/28/2025 - 12:54
10/28/2025 - 11:43
Slow-moving giant makes landfall and will linger over the island before slamming into Cuba
Hurricane Melissa – latest updates
Hurricane Melissa has made landfall in Jamaica as a catastrophic category 5 storm, the strongest to lash the island since record-keeping began in 1851.
The slow-moving giant hit the island on Tuesday afternoon and is expected to linger, moving diagonally through it until heading on to slam into Cuba, with impacts also expected in Haiti and the Bahamas.
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10/28/2025 - 11:26
Billionaire’s statement comes a day after UN said humanity missed 1.5C climate target and warned of devastation
Bill Gates has called for a “strategic pivot” in the effort against the climate crisis, writing that the world should shift away from trying to limit rising temperatures to instead focusing on efforts to prevent disease and poverty.
Writing on his Gates Notes website, the billionaire Microsoft co-founder criticized what he described as a “doomsday view of climate change” which is focusing “too much on near-term emissions goals”.
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10/28/2025 - 10:04
Exclusive: Firms say added costs would mean they are unable to install enough turbines to meet green energy goals
Offshore windfarm companies may be exempted from new UK nature rules in an attempt to keep down the cost of renewable energy, the Guardian has learned.
The energy firms have said they would be unable to build the vast number of turbines required to meet the government’s green electricity goals if they have to meet new rules for nationally significant infrastructure projects (Nsips).
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10/28/2025 - 09:00
Exclusive: Briefing by conservative thinktank Centre for Independent Studies was arranged by a Coalition backbench committee
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Coalition MPs weighing up whether to abandon net zero have been briefed on research that argues “heat deaths aren’t a thing”, plays down the prospect of substantial sea level rises and claims “no one has ever made low-cost energy” from wind and solar.
Guardian Australia has viewed slides from a presentation the conservative thinktank Centre for Independent Studies (CIS) gave to MPs in Canberra this week, along with the findings of private polling on net zero.
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10/28/2025 - 09:00
From 2040 onwards the average year for marine ecosystems is likely to be more extreme than the worst years experienced up until 2015, researchers say
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Australia’s oceans will enter “uncharted territory” by 2040 due to global heating, even if significant emissions cuts occur, new research has found.
Australian researchers modelled ocean conditions under four scenarios, including current, high- and low-emissions futures. They found that in 15 years, marine ecosystems would be facing extreme heat, oxygen loss and acidity conditions.
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10/28/2025 - 08:00
Claimants seek compensation from RWE and Heidelberg Materials after extreme flooding destroyed harvests
A group of Pakistani farmers whose livelihoods were devastated by floods three years ago has fired the starting shot in legal action against two of Germany’s most polluting companies.
Lawyers acting for 43 men and women from the Sindh region sent the energy firm RWE and the cement producer Heidelberg formal letters before action on Tuesday warning of their intention to sue later this year.
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10/28/2025 - 07:00
US groups aim to represent country at UN climate summit even as Trump administration declines to send a delegation
Despite historic environmental rollbacks under a president who pulled the US from a key international climate treaty – and recently called global warming “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world” – US civil society groups say they are gearing up to push for bold international climate action at a major UN conference next month.
“This is a really important moment to illustrate that Trump does not represent the entirety, or even anywhere near a majority, of us,” said Collin Rees, US program manager at the environmental non-profit Oil Change International, who will attend the annual UN climate conference, known as Cop30.
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How do you move a village? Residents of France’s last outpost in North America try to outrun the sea
10/28/2025 - 06:00
As rising tides eat away at the Saint-Pierre and Miquelon archipelago off Canada, plans to move the historic village to higher ground have divided residents
Franck Detcheverry, Miquelon’s 41-year-old mayor, trudges up a grassy hill. “The view isn’t too bad, huh?” he jokes. The ocean sparkles 40 metres below the empty mound. The sound of a man playing the bagpipes, as if serenading the sea, floats up from the shoreline. This hill will be the location of his new home and those of all his fellow villagers.
In the distance, about half a mile away, you can see the outline of the 400 or so buildings in the village of Miquelon. It sits only 2 metres above sea level on the archipelago of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon. Situated off the Canadian coast to the south of Newfoundland, it is an “overseas collectivity” of France, and the country’s last foothold in North America.
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10/28/2025 - 03:09
Extracts of planned changes to the EPBC Act prompt ‘anger’ from conservation organisations that fear nature protection will be weakened
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State governments could be given expanded powers to make decisions on fossil fuel developments under Labor’s proposed overhaul of environment law, prompting “shock and anger” from community-based conservation organisations that fear nature protection would be weakened.
The Albanese government plans to introduce its planned changes to the national law – the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act – to parliament later this week, and has been briefing interest groups on its plans.
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