In Melbourne, 14C was the forecast maximum for Saturday, with a high chance of showers, the BoM says
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Winter is coming for south-eastern Australia this weekend, with the Bureau of Meteorology forecasting rain, hail and even snow for some parts of the country.
In New South Wales, wet and windy conditions could see a “really rough end to the weekend”, Miriam Bradbury, a senior meteorologist at the bureau, said.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
05/16/2025 - 00:01
05/15/2025 - 23:00
For 1,500 years, Mexico’s Mixtec people have extracted ink from the rare purpura snail to dye yarn. But they fear the species – and their rich tradition – may soon be lost for ever
Photographs by Mauricio Palos
The site for the camp is well chosen. Mangrove trees provide shade from the sun; from their hammocks, the two men can look out over the yellow sand of Chachacual Bay. Rocks rise at both ends of the beach, breakers crashing against them. Next to the camp, turtles have left their tracks in the sand. “They often come at night and keep us company,” says Mauro Habacuc Avendaño Luis, 81, known to everyone as Habacuc.
While Habacuc lights a campfire to make coffee, his son Rafael, 42, sets up a small tent for the night. Rain is forecast. “We’ve been camping in the same spot for many years,” says Habacuc. “From here, we roam the coast in search of the purpura snail.”
White cotton skeins dyed with snail ink turn from yellow to green and finally ‘tixinda’ purple in the sun
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05/15/2025 - 23:00
npj Ocean Sustainability, Published online: 16 May 2025; doi:10.1038/s44183-025-00131-8
Opportunities to enhance conservation success for sharks
05/15/2025 - 19:31
West Coast Game Park Safari, popular attraction that has more than 450 animals, accused of multiple violations
A dead tiger, left in a freezer for months. Starving lions and leopards. Animals dying without medical attention. One full-time staffer feeding over 300 animals. According to police and USDA inspection reports, that’s the state of affairs at Oregon’s West Coast Game Park Safari.
State police served multiple search warrants at the south Oregon property on Thursday as part of a “lengthy” criminal investigation. The park is a regional attraction, with over 450 animals across 75 species, and has been in operation since 1969. USDA reports in recent years have noted consistent violations.
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05/15/2025 - 18:01
Report says proposals ‘threaten to affect most vulnerable’, who would be helped by more time to seek advice
A group of influential MPs has urged the government to delay controversial planned changes to inheritance tax for farmers to “allow for better formulation of tax policy” and to protect vulnerable farmers by giving them more time to seek advice.
The environment, food and rural affairs (Efra) committee has called on the government to hold off announcing its overhaul of agricultural property relief and business property relief until October 2026, before bringing them into effect from April 2027.
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05/15/2025 - 13:46
Exclusive: Firm close to insolvency says using £3bn loan to pay ‘substantial’ bonuses is vital to retain senior managers
Ministers plan to use new powers to block bosses from Thames Water taking bonuses worth hundreds of thousands of pounds as the company fights for survival, the Guardian can reveal.
Britain’s biggest water company admitted this week that senior managers are in line for “substantial” bonuses linked to an emergency £3bn loan.
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05/15/2025 - 12:30
Ministers must resist pressure to relax environmental standards in the rush for new housing
Almost two decades after the last Labour government announced a zero carbon homes standard, and with the breaking of temperature records around the world now so normal as to seem routine, it ought to be uncontroversial that new buildings should be as environmentally friendly as possible. Given everything we know about global heating, and the law obliging the UK to reach net zero by 2050, it is disturbing that even the basics of promoting energy security and efficiency continue to be questioned.
But that is the situation Britain faces, as the government lays the ground for a housebuilding spree that it hopes will last for the rest of this parliament (as planning is devolved, the target of 1.5m new homes is for England only). Much of the blame for this discouraging state of affairs lies with the Tories, who delayed progress towards sustainability by scrapping environmental rules, leading to a disgraceful proliferation of new developments where the houses do not even have solar panels on the roofs.
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05/15/2025 - 12:21
The Amazon rainforest may be able to survive long-term drought caused by climate change, but adjusting to a drier, warmer world would exact a heavy toll, a study suggests.
05/15/2025 - 12:18
Natural ecosystems comprise groups of species capable of living in the specific conditions of a biological system. However, if we visit a specific natural area, we will not find all the species capable of living in it. The proportion of species that could live in a specific location but do not do so is known as dark diversity, a concept coined in 2011. Research has now discovered that this dark diversity increases in regions with greater human activity.
05/15/2025 - 12:17
A new study shows that seagrass ecosystems along the northern half of Florida's Gulf Coast have remained relatively healthy and undisturbed for the last several thousand years.
