Scientists sound the alarm over substances such as arsenic and lead contaminating soils and entering food systems
About one sixth of global cropland is contaminated by toxic heavy metals, researchers have estimated, with as many as 1.4 billion people living in high-risk areas worldwide.
Approximately 14 to 17% of cropland globally – roughly 242m hectares – is contaminated by at least one toxic metal such as arsenic, cadmium, cobalt, chromium, copper, nickel or lead, at levels that exceed agricultural and human health safety thresholds.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
04/17/2025 - 13:00
04/17/2025 - 12:46
Toby Carvery owner apologises over tree’s felling as football club faces questions about whether it knew of decision
An ancient London oak controversially felled earlier this month was assessed to be a “fine specimen” last year by tree experts working for Tottenham Hotspur as part of the football club’s plans to redevelop parkland next to the site.
Mitchells & Butlers Retail (MBR), which owns the Toby Carvery in Whitewebbs Park, Enfield, apologised on Thursday for the “upset” caused by the felling of the tree.
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04/17/2025 - 12:38
Exclusive: Henry Dimbleby joins farmers in voicing fears of lower standards and a poor deal for British food producers
Britain’s rural communities could be “destroyed”, the former government food tsar has said, if ministers sign a US trade deal that undercuts British farming standards.
Ministers are working on a new trade deal with the US, after previous post-Brexit attempts stalled. Unpopular agreements signed at the time with Australia and New Zealand featured tariff-free access to beef and lamb and were accused of undercutting UK farmers, who are governed by higher welfare standards than their counterparts. Australia, in a trade deal signed by Liz Truss in late 2021 that came into effect in 2023, was given bespoke sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) standards aimed to not be more “trade-restrictive than necessary to protect human life and health”.
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04/17/2025 - 11:28
The pivotal ‘barbarian conspiracy’ of AD367 saw Picts, Scotti and Saxons inflicting crushing blows on Roman defences
A series of exceptionally dry summers that caused famine and social breakdown were behind one of the most severe threats to Roman rule of Britain, according to new academic research.
The rebellion, known as the “barbarian conspiracy”, was a pivotal moment in Roman Britain. Picts, Scotti and Saxons took advantage of Britain’s descent into anarchy to inflict crushing blows on weakened Roman defences in the spring and summer of AD367.
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04/17/2025 - 09:00
Liberals in the US make up about 15% of the prepping scene and their numbers are growing. Their fears differ from their better-known rightwing counterparts – as do their methods
One afternoon in February, hoping to survive the apocalypse or at least avoid finding myself among its earliest victims, I logged on to an online course entitled Ruggedize Your Life: The Basics.
Some of my classmates had activated their cameras. I scrolled through the little windows, noting the alarmed faces, downcast in cold laptop light. There were dozens of us on the call, including a geophysicist, an actor, a retired financial adviser and a civil engineer. We all looked worried, and rightly so. The issue formerly known as climate change was now a polycrisis called climate collapse. H1N1 was busily jumping from birds to cows to people. And with each passing day, as Donald Trump went about gleefully dismantling state capacity, the promise of a competent government response to the next hurricane, wildfire, flood, pandemic, drought, mudslide, heatwave, financial meltdown, hailstorm or other calamity receded further from view.
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04/17/2025 - 06:30
Lawsuit focuses on day-one executive order claiming to ‘unleash American energy’ by boosting oil industry
Conservationists on Wednesday sued the Trump administration over its attempts to boost the oil industry by rolling back green policies.
Filed by the environmental non-profit Center for Biological Diversity, the litigation focuses on Trump’s day-one “unleashing American energy” executive order. In an effort to boost already booming US energy production, the emergency declaration directed federal agencies to identify all policies and regulations that “unduly” burden fuel producers and create “action plans” to weaken or remove them.
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04/17/2025 - 06:00
Brazilian ranchers in Pará and Rondônia say JBS can not achieve stated goal of deforestation-free cattle
Bibles, bullets and beef: Amazon cowboy culture at odds with Brazil’s climate goals
The life and death of a ‘laundered’ cow in the Amazon rainforest
The world’s largest meat company, JBS, looks set to break its Amazon rainforest protection promises again, according to frontline workers.
Beef production is the primary driver of deforestation, as trees are cleared to raise cattle, and scientists warn this is pushing the Amazon close to a tipping point that would accelerate its shift from a carbon sink into a carbon emitter. JBS, the Brazil-headquartered multinational that dominates the Brazilian cattle market, promised to address this with a commitment to clean up its beef supply chain in the region by the end of 2025.
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04/17/2025 - 05:17
Salmon is often marketed as the sustainable, healthy and eco-friendly protein choice. But what you may not realise is that most of the salmon you buy is farmed, especially if you live in the UK, because Scottish salmon producers are no longer required to tell you.
Josh Toussaint-Strauss finds out why it is important for consumers to know where their salmon comes from, and examines the gap between the marketing of farmed salmon and the reality for our health, the environmental and animal welfare
Scottish government must do more to control salmon farming, inquiry finds
Scottish salmon producers allowed to remove ‘farmed’ from front of packaging
Norway rules out fish farm ban despite ‘existential threat’ to wild salmon
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04/17/2025 - 04:04
Nearly a quarter of shareholders vote against the chair, Helge Lund, as green protesters are blocked from entering
BP suffered an investor rebellion on Thursday after facing shareholders for the first time since abandoning its climate strategy at a meeting marred by protest.
About a quarter of shareholders voted against the chair, Helge Lund, at the company’s annual meeting in Sunbury-on-Thames, on the edges of London, which attracted protest from several green campaign groups.
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04/17/2025 - 02:00
From the rock sea-spurrey, which appears to grow out of solid rock, to the slender centaury that lives on a landslip, these plants exist where they do for good reason
I first encountered coastal wildflowers when I was 11. I was visiting my grandmother’s friend in Devon and a lady said: “Here, dear,” and dug up a clump of Warren crocuses – a rare plant that, at the time, was only thought to grow in the seaside resort of Dawlish Warren. She gave them to me to grow in my garden at home. But of course they didn’t grow away from the sea.
That was when I realised there was something special about coastal wildflowers. They fascinate me because, as well as being beautiful flowers, they often grow in tough locations. Take the rock sea-spurrey: a delicate little plant that appears to grow out of solid rock, such as a crevice in a cliff base. It can put up with being splashed with sea spray and baked by the summer sun. And yet it seems to thrive in that difficult, harsh environment.
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