Environment

It is widely accepted that there is a housing crisis in the UK, whether you can’t afford to get on the property ladder, apply for a mortgage, live in poor local authority properties or paying sky-high rents for poor quality dwellings. It seems that everyone you speak to has a serious issue with the home they live in. Now a survey by Shelter has discovered that almost half of us (43 per cent) live in homes of poor quality. The...

A dodgy landlord has been slapped with a huge fine after he was found cramming 18 people into a flat, which was dangerous to live in. This area of London usually hosts the super-rich, living in lavish luxury, but not at this particular address. Abbas Rasul,64 was making a staggering £15k a month letting out the dwelling, which is in a Grade II listed building in uber-pricey Kensington, West London. Properties can be sold for tens of millions and attract...

The Government has just overturned a council decision and will allow fracking in Lancashire, regardless of the concerns of the public, and local officials who are against the controversial process. The decision has led to some people saying it signals an attack on local democracy by central government. There are also plans for another site in Doncaster with the decision expected next month. Now a YouGov poll has indicated that support for the energy extraction process is at only 37.3%,...

This isn’t something you see everyday, a daredevil skydiver was able to take pictures as he flew over an entire rainbow. As if that wasn’t exciting enough it was also his FIRST skydive, as he drifted over a circular rainbow in the Bay of Islands at the sub-tropical north of New Zealand on Oct 3rd. 29-year-old, Anthony Kileen has been backpacking since 2011 when he left the UK for a journey of a lifetime, and he says the 16,000 daring...

More worrying news has emerged in post-Brexit Britain, with a 147 per cent rise in homophobic attacks in the UK in the three months since the UK voted to leave the EU. There have already been reports of a rise in racist attacks, but the rise in attacks on the LGBT community is an unexpected development. Many people will believe that the EU vote has unleashed a dark side of some people in the UK, and a rejection of liberal...

Warmer cities could be fuelling climate change by stunting the growth of trees and increasing pests. Replanting tress are often cited as one answer in trying to capture carbon, but new research has found that cities are are reducing the tree's carbon capture capacity by an eighth, because the hotter the urban environment becomes, the more trees become infected with pests which reduces the growth of branches. And even if the trees are pest-free, they still have slower growth and smaller trunks. In the...

This is the cute moment a huge bull elephant tried and failed to play hide and seek with a photographer. Ramona Reichert snapped the playful giant trying to conceal his vast five-tonne frame behind a tree in Tarangire National Park in Tanzania last month. The 36-year-old saw the spectacle while out on safari. She and her husband Ivo Schemionek were watching a family of elephant cows and calves at a watering hole before the male arrived. Ms Reichert said: "When they...

After Lancashire County Council refused to allow permission to take shale gas out of the county, the Government has decided that they will allow it anyway. The council has turned down the request, from shale gas company Caudrilla, because of concerns over traffic and noise pollution. There are also huge concerns about environmental impact and concerns over the power of local councils to stand up to central government. Drilling in the area a few years ago, caused earth tremors and...

A paper written by James Hanson, an ex-Nasa climate scientist, and a number of other leading experts in the field have reported that the earth is now as hot as it has been for 115,00 years. The worrying news is further compounded by their claims that climate change has contributed to this level of heat, not experienced by modern day humans. The problem is that sea levels will rise and huge structural and technological development will be needed to stem...