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Two new air pollution threats to Britain which could wipe out vulnerable plant species, cut crops yields of wheat and potato by 20% and affect human health, have been identified by scientists working on a government study.
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Power industry wins weaker enforcement on air pollution
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Galapagos saved but focus shifts to the islands' future.
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The US must act on domestic pollution.
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Chinese leaders object to lectures about environmental pollution from high-consumption nations such as the US when a quarter of China's population still lives on less than $1 a day.
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The Italian tanker carrying chemicals from the Fawley oil refinery in Hampshire sank in the Channel off the island of Alderney yesterday - 24 hours after sending out distress signals during Monday's gales.
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The environment agency last night warned that the risk of pollution was a major problem facing hundreds of people returning to their flood-hit homes.
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All male fish sampled in the River Aire in Yorkshire show signs of feminisation - and "gender-bending" chemicals in the water could be to blame, scientists said yesterday.
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About twice as many people are killed each year in Europe by air pollution as die in road traffic accidents, according to research sponsored by the world health organisation published today in the Lancet.
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Dioxins, the highly toxic chemicals produced by waste incineration and industrial processes which tests have shown to be lingering in the bodies of people all over the planet, have been identified as the cause of many cancers in a new report from the US Environmental Protection Agency.
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Millions of tonnes of contaminated waste are being illegally dumped across Britain - on golf courses, farms, beaches and in city centres - to avoid the new landfill tax, an investigation by the Guardian and the Channel 4 programme Dispatches reveals today.
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Air pollution from heavy industry, power plants and oil refineries can prevent rainfall locally, according to researchers who have tracked plumes of smoke across the surrounding countryside.
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A series of environmental tax measures will set Britain on a path towards an economic strategy to achieve targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The Chancellor claimed the planned industrial energy tax, reforms of vehicle duties and company car tax plus moves to protect the land represented the biggest package of green reforms ever seen.
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In a week's time all clean-up work will halt on the massive Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska. Even now,
comprehension is strained by the immensity of the last March's disaster when the tanker hit a reef and
shed 11 million tonnes of crude oil along 2400 miles of coastline.
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The worst oil spill in American waters spread an ominous dark stain across the ice floes and fragile Alaskan ecology of Prince William Sound yesterday, after a giant oil tanker ran aground near the Valdez oil terminal.
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According to one encyclopaedia fog may be defined as "a cloud that touches the ground reducing the visibility to less than 1,100 yards". We have had a "cloud touching the ground" in London for the last two days which has frequently reduced the visibility to eleven inches or less and which shows no signs of lifting. The traffic standstill is almost absolute in Central London, bus services have been cancelled wholesale, and travellers must depend on the underground, which is running almost normally but much overcrowded. All over London there are abandoned cars whose drivers have given up the struggle, and by six o'clock tonight almost all traffic had ceased, leaving the streets to walkers playing a dangerous form of blind man's buff with each other. At Hyde Park Corner last night the chaos was complete, and it was the same at the Elephant and Castle today when the police found it impossible, for a time, to disentangle the traffic locked in the dark, beyond aid from traffic lights, flares, or constables with torches.
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Fog, which held up traffic over many parts of Britain yesterday, causing trains to be cancelled and dislocating air services, is expected to persist near large towns today. Last night dense local fog in the London area reduced visibility in places to only ten yards; at Richmond Bridge it was almost nil.
Poisoning those who are poor