Blighted European hop harvest last year and growing demand for craft beer may see prices rise too high for some independent brewersFans of craft beer could soon face higher bar bills as small, independent brewers face a potentially serious shortage of hops.

A break in the Isles of Scilly showed me how children thrive away from traffic. Just a shame that we had to navigate the M5 to get thereI realised it would be an unusual Easter holiday when we were met at the jetty of St Martin’s, in the Isles of Scilly, by a 1965 Massey Ferguson tractor. Its tiny trailer transported me, my children and our luggage to our chalet.Here was a rural idyll of the kind that vanished from mainland Britain in the last century: sparrows chirruping from every bush, roadside stalls with open money boxes selling free-range eggs and everyone saying hello. Continue reading...

Three men found on a south Pacific island pulled off a text-book escape by writing ‘HELP’ in the sand. But other castaways have been even more inventiveWhat would you do if you were stranded on a desert island? Keep calm and wait for Man Friday? Finally decide on those Desert Island Discs? Fashion a boat out of nothing but a washed-up piece of portable toilet and some Hollywood-sized chutzpah a la Tom Hanks in Cast Away? Wish you were as handy, or at least as good looking, as the cast(aways) of Lost? Or would you take a different palm leaf out of the Book of Desert Island Rescue Motifs (one imagines it has a foreward written by Bear Grylls), write HELP in the sand with it, and wait …Related: Three men rescued from deserted island after spelling 'help' with palm leaves Continue reading...

Malaysian civil defence officers look after a python, measuring nearly eight-metres in length, after it was caught in Penang, northern Malaysia on Thursday. The snake was caught by the civil defence department after workers spotted it on a construction site the town of Paya Terubong. The reptile is currently at the southwest district civil defence team’s office in Sungai Ara, but will eventually be handed to the state wildlife department Continue reading...

Local authorities say snake is estimated to be 8m long, beating the previous Guinness world record for a snake of the same species called MedusaA huge python found on a construction site in Malaysia could take the record for the longest snake ever to be caught, with initial estimates at eight metres.

Concerns remain chemical widely used in agriculture as a herbicide can kill all plants, algae, bacteria and fungi in a crop’s vicinity, affecting biodiversityTwo-thirds of Europeans support a ban on glyphosate, the most-widely used agricultural chemical in the world’s history, according to a new Yougov poll.A prohibition on the herbicide ingredient was backed by three quarters of Italians, 70% of Germans, 60% of French and 56% of Britons, in a survey of more than 7,000 people across the EU’s five biggest states. Continue reading...

To build on its historic election victory, Myanmar’s ruling party must invest in agriculture to tackle poverty and stimulate growthOn 30 March, Htin Kyaw, a long-time adviser and ally of Aung San Suu Kyi – whose National League for Democracy party achieved a historic victory in recent elections – became the first elected civilian to hold office in Myanmar since the army took over in 1962.The NLD won the democratic battle and enjoys unparalleled political capital and legitimacy. It must now deliver on exceedingly high expectations, build a cohesive multi-ethnic state and improve citizens’ lives. Economic progress will be indispensable if the country is to overcome years of ethnic armed conflict and move towards a common future. So what can the new government do?

Companies from Walmart to McDonald’s have listened to American consumers on animal welfare standards – UK retailers have no excuse not to follow suit

Independent review says EU rules, such as on clean water and wildlife protection, have benefited UK’s environmentEU membership has been a major factor behind the “marked improvement in environmental quality in the UK” since the 1980s, according to an independent report into the potential impact of a leave vote in the June referendum.The 60,000-word report, from the group The UK in a Changing Europe, found that the net result on the UK’s environment from EU membership had been positive and that leaving the union would be risky and could damage key green protections. It said that actions taken to fulfil EU obligations, for instance on clean water and wildlife protection, had been beneficial to the UK’s environment, along with EU policies that have helped infrastructure investments, for instance in renewable energy. Continue reading...

The Grattan Institute has proposed adapting the Coalition’s Direct Action into a bipartisan policy that effectively cuts emissionsA climate change policy that could be both effective, and potentially supported by both major parties, has been proposed by the Grattan Institute in a new report that tries to find a pragmatic solution to the decade of toxic political debates on the issue.Media reports have emerged suggesting Labor would adopt a policy of opening an inquiry into Australia’s energy industry, and shutting down the oldest and dirtiest power stations to lower emissions and create more demand for renewable energy. Continue reading...

As polar ice retreats, tourists are rushing in, many claiming to bear witness to climate change. But their expeditions are only speeding the region’s destructionEvery year at about this time, a Russian cargo plane deposits many tonnes of equipment on an ice floe one degree off the north pole. There, at the 89th parallel, engineers begin construction of a private ice air strip and base camp for scientists, adventurers and, more than ever, wealthy tourists.Related: Northwest Passage, Canada: going with the floe Continue reading...

Holmes Chapel, Cheshire Drones make brief, veering, playful flights, revealing the familiar from fresh anglesRough ground looks like chenille, softly tactile, from 20 metres up. A puddle blinks back whitely, a fallen fragment of sky. I can’t absorb what I’m seeing fast enough. The land beneath me rolls away and the horizon pulls near, creating a sense of adventurous possibility. I’m used to trudging about the garden, hauling sacks of compost, dragging wheelbarrows over gravel; this, by contrast, feels like freedom.Hoping for deeper knowledge of my garden, a hectare (2.47 acres) of former farmland on the Cheshire plain, I’ve acquired a small drone with a camera. Drones make brief, veering, playful flights, revealing the familiar from fresh angles. Mine seems more like a kite or a bird than a human with wings: it’s heedless of paths, happiest in ascent, sensitive to the breeze. When it skims the ground it glides over obstacles with grace and purpose, motors no louder than a couple of bumblebees. Continue reading...

Documentarian’s message rings especially loud for Australians, who have the privilege and duty to look after this natural wonder“Do we really care so little about the Earth on which we live that we don’t wish to protect one of its greatest wonders from the consequences of our behaviour?”Related: Greg Hunt rebuked by Attenborough film-maker after upbeat verdict on Great Barrier Reef Continue reading...

Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 15 April 1916Surrey

Last month, scientists from 12 European countries gathered in a Paris suburb to watch a spring phenomenon. They were not disappointed. Once again, western Europe was enveloped in particle pollution. The Parisian pollution warning service was activated on 11 March. On the next two days, the UK air pollution index reached its top value across London and north-east England; the worst spring episode here since the index was launched in 2012. This spread to cover all of England and parts of south Wales.Despite the two seasons having similar weather, spring is often the most polluted time of year in the UK and autumn the cleanest. Traffic in our cities is much the same each week, but in the countryside, spring is very different to autumn. Crops are planted, fields are fertilised, farm animals are let out of their barns and their manure, stored over the winter, is spread on the land. This causes a massive release of ammonia, that mixes with diesel exhaust and emissions from heating and industry to create airborne particles over a wide area. Continue reading...

Amateur scholar and journalist whose book Seeds of Change altered the way we understand modern historyHenry Hobhouse, known as Tom, made his mark with a groundbreaking book, Seeds of Change: Five Plants That Transformed Mankind (1985). An exploration of how western man’s discovery, use and trade of sugar, tea, cotton, the potato and quinine transformed the world, it changed the way we understand modern history.Hobhouse, who has died aged 91, was not a professional historian, botanist or writer, but in succession a sailor, a journalist, a West Country farmer, and county council chair. But his love of debate, insatiable search for facts and inquisitive nature defined all that he did. Continue reading...

ShareAction says that BP has fallen well short of the environmental commitments it made at last year’s meetingCampaigners claim BP has failed to do enough on environmental pledges made at last year’s annual general meeting (AGM) and will hold bosses to account at the oil company’s shareholder gathering.At last year’s AGM, BP worked with groups under the “Aiming for A” banner on a resolution committing it to greater openness about its impact on climate change. The resolution, supported by the board, received 98% shareholder approval and the company’s new environmental awareness won wide praise. Continue reading...

In 2006, Eli Reichman began photographing a ranching community in the fracking fields of western North Dakota. For the last decade, he has documented the cultural and social breakdown of an agricultural community being pressured to compromise in order to stay on land originally homesteaded by their ancestors in the early 1900s.

Busy stations including Waterloo, King’s Cross and London Bridge among the most threatened, unpublished review statesEighty-five sites on the London Underground are at high and rising risk of flooding, according to a report that says it is “only a matter of time” before serious flooding strikes.Most threatened are some of the capital’s busiest stations, including Waterloo, King’s Cross and London Bridge, and the report warns of potential dangers to passengers. “The rapid nature of flooding events often produces high safety consequences,” it reads. The report was funded after Hurricane Sandy swamped the metro in New York City in 2012. Continue reading...

Letter to firms including McDonald’s and JD Wetherspoon raises concerns over health and damage to firms’ reputationsA group of powerful City investors who together control more than $1tn in assets have written to leading fast food, pub and restaurant chains urging them to take immediate action to reduce antibiotic use in their meat and poultry supply chains.The financiers, including Aviva Investors, Strathclyde Pension Fund and Coller Capital, are particularly concerned about the use of antibiotics classified as “critically important” to human health and the routine use of drugs on factory farms to prevent disease. Continue reading...

As long as six years after the school district learned of possible contamination, the EPA required testing across 300 schools in what was one of the largest such efforts in the country – but ‘people have no idea’, says a watchdogAfter the Philadelphia school district failed to tell the public about lead contamination in school water for as long as six years, officials in the city undertook one of the largest remediation programs in the nation to try to get the lead out.But with $5m spent and 20,000 water sources tested, few people know about the project, why it left spray painted “do not drink” signs above taps in nearly every school, or why the Philadelphia school district continues to struggle to provide students with access to water. Continue reading...

The air-trapping properties of feathers – a by-product of poultry farming that often goes straight to landfill – are being put to use by studentsThe ability of chickens to stay warm in winter has inspired a new energy-efficient home insulation product developed by students at Imperial College London.

Outdoor raves have a rich green heritage. But the new ravers must take steps to limit environmental damageIn eco news as in fashion, it has all gone a bit early 90s. Illegal outdoor raves are returning. Remember them? Recent police crackdowns include Operation Enigma in Hampshire, which sounds like a rave itself. Oddly, it is wildlife crime police who are charged with shutting down these events.In truth, it’s hard to stop a multi-sound-system outdoor rave in the dark once it gets going, so the police often have to sit it out. When dawn comes the extent of the damage is revealed. According to police, landowners and many conservationists, illegal raves trash habitats. Continue reading...

Two weeks ago, Clive Aslet wrote about how the countryside had never had it so good. Tobias Jones argues that the reality is very differentTwo weeks ago these pages featured one of the most bizarre encomiums to the countryside I’ve ever read. Written by Clive Aslet, editor at large of Country Life magazine, the argument went that the British countryside is a far better place than it was when Aslet started travelling around it, first class, in the 1970s. It read like a parody: things are improved because it’s no longer “ruinously expensive to heat a country house”, Anglesey is now OK because Waitrose delivers there, and – “hurrah!” says Aslet – you can easily source Baron Bigod brie.If you read the piece carefully, it demonstrated the opposite of Aslet’s argument. In a relatively short article the word “look” appeared nine times. This, it became clear, was the countryside as spectacle, something pleasing to gawp at, photograph and visit. Aslet wasn’t just looking through rose-tinted specs but through a windscreen. Continue reading...

Scientists warn that wild ape populations, already devastated by poachers and habitat loss, now face a new threat from Ebola and other virusesVaccine campaigns to protect wild chimpanzees, gorillas and orang-utans could be the only hope of preventing the planet’s remaining great apes from suffering catastrophic population crashes, scientists have warned.They say that recent surveys of several populations of great apes have revealed devastating drops in numbers and that protective steps must now be taken as a matter of urgency. Continue reading...

EPA data shows 278 schools and daycare centers across the country violated federal lead level requirements within past three years

While celebrities like Katy Perry, Diplo and Adam Levine are pushing premium Core water, experts say few of the touted benefits are realYou may have seen Core water in any number of music videos. Katy Perry has been quoted as endorsing the “nutrient enhanced” bottled water, which advertises its “science based ingredients”. You may even have bought it at a nearby Whole Foods or 7-Eleven, where the company claims it is “locally made” from nearby municipal tap water.Manufacturers of premium bottled waters in the US bend over backwards to differentiate themselves. The brand Smartwater positions itself as high-tech: “We one-up mother nature by adding in electrolytes for a clean crisp taste”, reads the product description. Essentia bottled water claims that it is “hydration perfected”. Continue reading...

Global warming is changing the way the Earth moves on its polar axis. A new Nasa study says that Melting ice sheets are affecting the distribution of weight on Earth, which is causing both the North Pole and the wobble, which is called polar motion, to change course. Scientists say the polar motion shift is harmless, but that it highlights the impact humans are having on the planet Continue reading...

The continuing refugee crisis in Europe, the ongoing violence in Syria, the Nuit debout protest movement – the best photography in news, culture and sport from around the world this week Continue reading...

Three decades after the nuclear disaster, the concrete protecting the reactor is starting to crack. Yet people still live there – and a new virtual reality project will take many more inside the ‘death zone’At first they thought it was just a fire, then the chickens started to turn black. When it comes to the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, everyone has a vivid detail that is snagged in the memory; the absurdities or the obscenities. It might be the local village that, once evacuated, was claimed by a mob of pigs. Or the way milk would turn to white powder whenever the residents of Pripyat (the town built a few hundred metres from the doomed power plant) would attempt to churn butter. Or the cat that refused to be stuffed into a suitcase by its owner, who couldn’t bear to abandon his pet during the mass exile, 36 hours after the explosion. Who can forget that 70 Belarusian villages had to be buried under the ground? Or that Soviet soldiers shot every dog, in case it wandered, toxically, into a neighbouring city? Or that many of those same men risked their lives hoisting flags on the roofs of buildings every few weeks, whenever the old ones were chewed to lace by the radioactive breeze?For many, it is the story of a 23-year-old pregnant woman, married to one of the brave and reckless firemen who put out the blaze at reactor number four in the early morning of 26 April 1986. Doctors at the Moscow hospital to which he was transferred warned her not to hug her husband. She refused, tending to him even when the nurses would no longer enter the room where he lay, naked, under a sheet of thick plastic. Two months after he died, she visited the cemetery where he was buried in a matryoshka nest of coffins: one zinc and, within that, one wooden. She knelt at his grave and promptly went into labour. At her late husband’s suggestion, she named the baby Natashenka. Due to the radiation, Natashenka was born with cirrhosis of the liver and congenital heart disease. She died less than four hours later in a tragedy of appalling symmetry: a child both conceived and destroyed in her parents’ lingering embrace. Continue reading...

Government-backed scheme has started offering cover to at-risk householders, but there still are exclusionsFlood Re, the scheme designed to offer affordable insurance to 350,000 UK homes at high risk of flooding, has finally opened for business. But thousands of householders may have to switch home insurer to take advantage.Developed by the insurance industry, with government backing, Flood Re was set up after insurers said they were no longer prepared to offer universal flood cover to households who had been flooded in the past. Continue reading...

Big Moor, Derbyshire The glimpse resolved itself into a knot of plump, scaly flesh, two adders wound around each other“It is the bright day that brings forth the adder,” Brutus warned in Julius Caesar, “and that craves wary walking.” As I crossed the white dome of Big Moor, snakes were the last creatures on my mind. That morning’s blue skies had given way to dark, scudding clouds and a keen wind. Twelve hundred feet up, it felt too cold for snakes. I sank my chin into my jacket and walked less warily and more briskly.The moor, rich with curlew and lark, is split by Bar Brook, dammed in the past but no longer; it descends to enter a smaller reservoir, sheltered with birch and willow. Here on the ground were sheets, randomly placed, of corrugated iron. This looks like building waste, but the tin was in fact placed deliberately 20 years ago to attract adders for a census. The warm air building up underneath was thought to be irresistible, herpetologically speaking. Continue reading...

The controversial Belo Monte hydropower dam was pushed through by President Rousseff despite protests by environmental and social campaignersIndigenous communities and the Amazon rain forest have joined the growing list of potential victims of Brazil’s huge corruption scandal, according to a senior construction executive who testified that the Belo Monte dam was used to generate 150m reais ($41.4m) in donations to the ruling coalition.In a plea bargain that adds to the pressure on Brazil’s president, Dilma Rousseff, Otávio Marques de Azevedo, the former president of the construction company Andrade Gutierrez, also told investigators that dozens of other projects were used to generate funds for political parties.

Company has taken more than £700m in free carbon allowances and offsets, according to analysis of emissions trading scheme dataNo other British company has benefited from the EU’s emissions trading scheme as much as Tata Steel, according to a recent report by consultants CTDelft. And it’s not alone — only firms in one country, Germany, received more than the €3bn pocketed by British businesses through the ETS between 2008 and 2014.Yet Tata Steel’s chairman, Theo Henrar, argued that the ETS put its Port Talbot steelworks at “a competitive disadvantage”, because foreign rivals were not burdened by such tough environmental rules. Continue reading...

To coincide with the Woodland Trust’s Big Bluebell Watch, we’d like to see your pictures of the bluebells you have discovered so far this springOften found in ancient woodland, bluebells are a significant part of our springtime. These forest flowers only have a small window to bloom; between the arrival of the warmer sun and the opening of the tree canopy which casts them in shade.This spring the Woodland Trust is mapping bluebells across the country with the launch of its Big Bluebell Watch. The idea is to determine how bluebells are being affected by climate change, and whether any action is needed to protect them.

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Dubai’s flamingos, wolverines in Scotland and hedgehogs in a Tokyo cafe are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world Continue reading...

With Massey Energy boss Don Blankenship headed to prison and some of the industry’s biggest companies bankrupt, a historic transformation may be aheadOn a wintry night in 2010 a few months before 29 men were killed in the Upper Big Branch mine explosion, the coal boss, Don Blankenship – then one of the richest and most powerful men in West Virginia – squared up to Robert Kennedy Jr in a public debate about destructive mining practices and climate change.The contest had been an epic smackdown and about 1,000 people turned out to see the scion of the liberal Kennedy clan take on the native son and champion of coal. Continue reading...

Landmark event on 22 April to mark the record for highest number of countries signing an international treatyA record number of more than 130 countries will sign the landmark agreement to tackle climate change at a ceremony at UN headquarters on 22 April, the United Nations said on Thursday.Secretary general Ban Ki-moon is hosting the signing ceremony on the first day that the agreement reached in Paris in December opens for signature. Continue reading...