Environment

The Home Energy Resources Unit, or HERU, generates enough power to heat a home for a day

A police investigation into a hunt has been dropped by the CPS - despite being given this video of a fox being chased by a pack of dogs followed by huntsmen. The CPS was handed footage of a fox fleeing for its life, chased by hounds across fields in Cheshire - followed by terriermen on quads and hunt members on horses. Cheshire Monitors - a group of hunt saboteurs - captured the chase from two different locations and gave the...

They say the next two weeks are crucial in stopping its spread and becoming established

A 'dead zone' in the Arabian Sea that is "bigger than Scotland" has been discovered by British scientists. It has no fish, marine plants or other animals because climate change and sewage has sucked out all the oxygen. People who rely on the ocean for food and work are also being endangered, warn the researchers. The environmental disaster was identified by underwater robots exploring more than half a mile down in the Gulf of Oman. Global warming and human waste...

A female whale shark has travelled more than 12,000 miles in the longest migration ever recorded. The gentle giant, called Anne, was tracked by researchers from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute from the eastern Pacific to the western Indo-Pacific for 20,142 kilometers. Whale sharks have been tracked for shorter distances along similar routes, but this is the longest-recorded migration to date and the first evidence of a potential trans-Pacific route. Anne remained in Panamanian waters for 116 days, then swam...

The Deepwater Horizon disaster turned into one of the biggest environmental tragedies in history - because of the sun, suggests new research. Dispersants used to clean up major oil spills are almost a third less effective in sunlit waters - such as those in the Gulf of Mexico, according to the study. Researchers found that crude oil floating on the surface is chemically altered within days - or even hours. Dr Collin Ward, of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in the...

Ambulance staff bitten, stabbed and have blood spat at them in barrage of more than 14,000 physical assaults since 2012 The number of violent attacks on ambulance workers in the UK increased by 34 per cent between 2012/13 and 2016/17, a major investigation by GMB, the union for ambulance workers, has revealed. A total of 14,441 physical assaults were recorded against ambulance workers between 2012/13 and January 2018.​ In 2016/17, recorded attacks on ambulance workers averaged more than eight (8.2)...

Plastic particles that may be a threat to human health are being transported thousands of miles across the oceans in melted sea ice, according to new research. The once pristine Polar regions have become a 'temporary sink' for billions of microbeads from cosmetics, synthetic fabrics, packaging, paints and even cigarette butts. As the planet warms up the toxic chemicals are released into the water to be consumed by marine life and, in turn, people. Some are a sixth of the...

Private Member’s Bill to protect emergency workers returns to Parliament on Friday and must cover sexual assaults, says union. GMB, the union for NHS workers, is demanding a change in the law as its investigation reveals that reported sexual assaults on ambulance staff have increased by 211 per cent over five years. According to the results of a Freedom of Information Act survey undertaken by GMB, there have been at least 688 sexual assaults on ambulance staff since 2012/13. In...