Literary event ‘suspends’ arrangement with Baillie Gifford after Charlotte Church and Nish Kumar joined performers pulling out
Middle East crisis – live updates
The Hay literary festival has dropped its principal sponsor after boycotts from speakers and performers over the firm’s links to Israel and fossil fuel companies.
The singer Charlotte Church and the comedian Nish Kumar were among the latest to pull out over the investment management firm Baillie Gifford’s sponsorship of the festival. On Friday afternoon, the festival said it was ending its sponsorship deal with the company.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
05/24/2024 - 11:07
05/24/2024 - 09:00
Smaller secondary systems that create hailstorms and tornadoes pack a punch that is causing billions of dollars in damages
This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration
The rising cost of homeowner’s insurance is now one of the most prominent symptoms of the climate crisis in the US. Major carriers such as State Farm and Allstate have pulled back from offering fire insurance in California, dropping thousands of homeowners from their books, and dozens of small insurance companies have collapsed or fled from Florida and Louisiana following recent large hurricanes.
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05/24/2024 - 06:02
Display at Chelsea flower show highlights work in UK and US to bring orchid habitats back to health
Scientists are racing against the clock to save the world’s orchids by discovering the soil fungi they need to thrive, breeding them and then, in a first for conservation, transplanting them into orchid habitats.
Among the showy blooms at Chelsea flower show this week was a moss-covered exhibit, sprouting from which were the types of rare, native flowers one does not normally see at horticultural exhibits.
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05/24/2024 - 02:30
PFAS contamination recorded in groundwater on Angus Fire site in Bentham, and includes chemicals with known health impacts
A small North Yorkshire town has been found to have the highest concentration of “forever chemicals” in the UK, it can be revealed.
The market town of Bentham, which is home to 3,000 people and set on the banks of the River Wenning, is also home to the Angus International Safety Group – locally known as Angus Fire – which, since the 1970s, has been producing firefighting foams containing PFAS at a factory near the town centre.
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05/24/2024 - 02:00
The best of this week’s wildlife photographs from around the world
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05/24/2024 - 01:02
Shishir Dholakia of the University of Southern Queensland's Centre for Astrophsics has identified Gliese 12b, a possibly temperate Earth-sized planet just 40 light years away. The student has been co-leading an international team that published the discovery in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Earth-sized planet spotted orbiting small star with 100 times sun’s lifespan
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05/24/2024 - 01:00
Friends of the Earth will argue private companies are allowed to create their own public order laws that stifle demonstrations
The government is to be challenged at the European court of human rights over its use of “confusing and opaque” anti-protest injunctions.
The environmental group Friends of the Earth (FoE) is to argue such injunctions allow private companies to create bespoke public order laws that stifle peaceful protest.
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05/24/2024 - 00:00
Speaking at the UK River Summit, Philip Duffy said officials do not want to reveal the true ‘embarrassing’ environmental picture
The head of the Environment Agency has admitted that freedom of information requests have been buried by the regulator because the truth about the environment in England is “embarrassing”.
Philip Duffy, the body’s chief executive, told an audience at the UK River Summit in Morden, south London, this week that his officials were “worried about revealing the true state of what is going on” with regards to the state of the environment.
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05/23/2024 - 14:24
Two committees inquiring after reports of ex-president’s offer to roll back dozens of regulations for $1bn campaign donations
Powerful Senate Democrats have launched an investigation into an alleged quid pro quo offer from Donald Trump to fossil fuel executives.
At a meeting at his Mar-a-Lago home and club last month, the former president reportedly told oil bosses he would immediately roll back dozens of environmental regulations if elected, and requested $1bn in contributions to his presidential campaign. It would be a “deal” for the executives because of the costs they would avoid under him, he reportedly said.
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05/23/2024 - 14:00
Factors including ‘near-record warm ocean temperatures in Atlantic’ lead to stark prediction from Noaa for June to November
The 2024 Atlantic hurricane season will be “above normal” amid very warm ocean temperatures, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has predicted, prompting some scientists to warn of a summer of natural disasters caused by the powerful storms.
Hurricane season, which takes place from 1 June to 30 November this year could be an “85% chance of an above-normal season”, the federal weather agency said on Thursday.
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