With catches down 80%, dead crabs and lobsters washed up on beaches and officials denying any responsibility, Hartlepool seafarers have taken a stand

Hartlepool fisherman Stan Rennie has been called the next Mr Bates. For nearly 50 years Rennie has fished the same stretch of northeast coastline – then in October 2021, thousands of crabs, starfish and lobsters washed up dead and dying on the beaches. “It was like something out of a horror film,” says one local. Rennie and other fishermen suspected industrial pollution, but an investigation by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs concluded that the most likely cause of the die-off was “algal bloom”. For Rennie and the other fisherman, it didn’t add up. So, they crowdfunded their own independent scientific study.

This documentary from Jeanie Finlay (Your Fat Friend) tells the story, and it’s maddening. The fishermen are close to bankruptcy, they’ve got mortgages and kids, catches are down 80%. The cost of diesel is higher than the price of a haul, and most put their boats up for sale. “Any jobs in Lidl?” reads one placard as they protest through town. What the fishermen suspect is that toxic sediment dredged from the River Tees and dumped in the sea is to blame. Their investigation finds evidence of a link to the chemical pyridine, a byproduct of steelmaking.

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© Photograph: Courtesy of Jeanie Finlay

© Photograph: Courtesy of Jeanie Finlay

© Photograph: Courtesy of Jeanie Finlay

These yachts are highly popular with the ‘super-bourgeoisie’ – and getting bigger. Can anything be done to stop them destroying our seas?

Who knew? Apparently everyone did, apart from me: you don’t wear shoes on a superyacht. Now, about to step on to my first teak deck at the Monaco Yacht Show, I’ve got to take my trainers off, and I’m having a sock panic. Have they got holes? Do they even match? Do they smell?

To be honest, I’ve come dressed all wrong for Europe’s big annual superyacht trade exhibition. The code for men seems to be crisp and tucked in, blazers and chinos, navy and white, sculpted hair and designer sunnies. (I went colourful, loose, casual). For women, it’s something like Riviera elegance. Everyone – whether they’re Italian, French, English, German, American, exhibitors, buyers, brokers, charterers – seems to know each other. The international superyacht community seems to be a close-knit one, and I’m not part of it. Yet.

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© Photograph: Sam Wollaston/The Guardian

© Photograph: Sam Wollaston/The Guardian

© Photograph: Sam Wollaston/The Guardian

Letter from 150 scientists, MPs and activists calls for action to protect lower-income and minority-ethnic communities

The government must hold an inquiry into the unequal impacts of air pollution, 150 scientists, MPs and activists have urged.

Research by the Institute for Fiscal Studies shows that across England, lower-income areas have persistently higher levels of air pollution than wealthier areas.

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© Photograph: Alicia Canter/The Guardian

© Photograph: Alicia Canter/The Guardian

© Photograph: Alicia Canter/The Guardian

Exclusive: Chris Hinchliff urges environment watchdog to block rules that will allow almost 16,000 new homes in one of UK’s most protected areas

The environment watchdog is being urged to intervene in “cash to trash” planning rules that will allow almost 16,000 new homes in the Norfolk Broads despite the damage to one of the UK’s most environmentally protected areas.

Labour’s flagship planning reforms allow damage to protected habitats and species to be overlooked if developers pay into a central nature restoration fund, which is used for conservation actions at a later date. These environmental delivery plans (EDPs) have been called “cash to trash” by critics, who say they roll back decades of environmental law and are a “licence to kill nature”.

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© Photograph: Jim Laws/Alamy

© Photograph: Jim Laws/Alamy

© Photograph: Jim Laws/Alamy

Warning for other Arctic communities as residents told not to use water in Longyearbyen in Svalbard, one of the fastest-warming places in the world

Residents of a remote town in Norway that is in one of the fastest-warming places in the world have been told they must no longer drink tap water due to heavy metal contamination that scientists have linked to the thawing permafrost.

Longyearbyen, in the archipelago of Svalbard, gets its main drinking water supply from a 1.5 mile-long (2.5km) dammed lake called Isdammen, or “ice pond”. Higher temperatures as a result of the climate crisis have thawed permafrost, leading to newly exposed bedrock leaching metals into the pond.

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© Photograph: Rimante_Hegland/Getty Images/iStockphoto

© Photograph: Rimante_Hegland/Getty Images/iStockphoto

© Photograph: Rimante_Hegland/Getty Images/iStockphoto

Millions affected by smoke from wildfires as schools close, respiratory illnesses soar and diplomatic tensions rise

Singapore is threatening to prosecute companies responsible for some of the worst fires in years in neighbouring Indonesia, as the region grows increasingly frustrated with a persistent, acrid haze that could result in diplomatic relations fraying.

Lawrence Wong, the Singaporean prime minister, said his government was distributing masks to vulnerable citizens and working with countries in the region to deal with the smoke. “At the same time, we are looking into which companies may be responsible for the fires,” he said in a Facebook post on Thursday, adding that he was exploring the idea of “joint action with other countries”.

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© Photograph: REINA/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: REINA/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: REINA/AFP/Getty Images

US research says nitrogen dioxide in restaurants that cook with gas can exceed WHO limits, which also affects diners

Each time we enjoy a meal out or order a takeaway, someone cooks for us in a commercial kitchen. In the UK, 3.6 million people work in catering and hospitality. In the US it is estimated at close to 16 million. A first-of-its-kind study in the US has found catering staff can experience high air pollution at work – and that this can affect diners too.

Dr Drew Michanowicz, senior author of the study at non-profit research institute PSE Healthy Energy, said: “I was motivated by what we have learned over the years about what just 30 minutes of gas cooking can do to air quality in homes with the realisation that millions of people cook for a living for hours on end.”

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© Photograph: Cavan Images/Alamy

© Photograph: Cavan Images/Alamy

© Photograph: Cavan Images/Alamy

Families in Vaca Muerta, the centre of Patagonia’s shale operation, report cancers, miscarriages and pollution

In Allen, a small town in Argentine Patagonia, many people living on the same street ended up falling ill. For some, it was severe migraines, nausea or skin irritation. For others, cancers, congenital abnormalities, miscarriages or stillbirth seemed to affect foetuses or children. People say it all started 13 years ago – when a well was drilled near their homes to extract gas and oil.

Calle Ciega 10 [Dead-end Street 10] lies on the eastern edge of Vaca Muerta, a vital area for Argentina’s economy, home to the world’s second-largest reserve of shale gas and fourth-largest reserve of shale oil. The region has more than 2,600 active wells, including one on this small street where about 20 families live, most of them seasonal workers on fruit farms.

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© Photograph: Erica Canepa/The Guardian

© Photograph: Erica Canepa/The Guardian

© Photograph: Erica Canepa/The Guardian

A Thames21 charity citizen science project helps track plastic pollution in the capital’s river

On a pale-blue Sunday morning on the foreshore of the River Thames, 40 people are searching for what others have tried to lose. Dotted across a 250-metre stretch under Hammersmith Bridge, they are combing through layers of silt, seashells and dirty driftwood to find one of the river’s most stubborn problems: wet wipes.

“People come and walk here and it looks just like mud, at a distance,” says the organiser, Dr Felicity Rhodes. “And then you get closer in and see.”

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© Photograph: Jill Mead/The Guardian

© Photograph: Jill Mead/The Guardian

© Photograph: Jill Mead/The Guardian

Happy hormones | Fuel costs | Drive-in parking | Guys and girls | Young or old? | Singapore pollution

Re your report (‘Pull the plug’: protesters resort to direct action against AI firms, 6 October), the US neuroscientist Ben Rein has shown that there is a fundamental difference in our cognitive response according to the type of interaction we have. In-person meetings and conversations show a dramatic increase in serotonin, oxytocin and dopamine – “feelgood” hormones – compared with online interactions. I have been encouraged to speak to people at bus stops.
Judith Furner
Eastbourne, East Sussex

• Re easing winter fuel costs (Report, 6 October), it would benefit everyone if the outrageous daily standing charges were reduced or on a sliding scale based on usage. I can’t be the only person whose standing charges each month are half or more than the energy used.
Judith Pearson
Sheffield

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© Illustration: Jitendra Jadhav/Getty Images

© Illustration: Jitendra Jadhav/Getty Images

© Illustration: Jitendra Jadhav/Getty Images

Exclusive: Firms made more than £340m last year from processing industrial and commercial wastewater at sewage works that are unable to remove many chemical pollutants

Water companies in the UK made more than £340m in revenue last year by pouring billions of litres of industrial and commercial wastewater into sewage treatment works that experts say are not designed to remove most chemicals, leaving pollutants to pass into rivers, seas and farmland.

Water companies in England are required by law to take industrial wastewater and issue permits called “trade-effluent consents” that allow businesses to send it to sewage works, though water companies can refuse applications.

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© Photograph: Neil Hall/EPA

© Photograph: Neil Hall/EPA

© Photograph: Neil Hall/EPA

Cleaner air makes kids smarter. A 20 year study of over 1100 children in New York found that their memory and sensory skills improved fastest during the periods when local air pollution fell fastest.

The Norwegian government has given a permit to a mining company to release waste into Førde fjord despite a 17-year battle by campaigners and a supreme court ruling against it

Shortly after the Norwegian stock market closed on 17 June 2026, a few dozen local people from the small west coast town of Vevring crowded around a laptop in a school. Surrounded by children’s drawings and windows looking out over Førde fjord, they listened as news arrived from Oslo. Norway’s supreme court had ruled against its government: a permit to release mining waste directly into the fjord two miles upstream was illegal, the court said.

The moment marked the end of a 17-year fight, one of Norway’s most protracted environmental battles in living memory. In Oslo, Ingvild Fonn Asmervik, the project leader for Naturvernforbundet (Friends of the Earth Norway), compared the joy she felt to giving birth to her child. For Anne-Line Thingnes Førsund, a third-generation fisher living on the banks of the fjord in Vevring and a volunteer for the charity’s local branch, it was more of a relief. Like a mountain lifting off her shoulders, she said.

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© Photograph: Marek Slusarczyk/Alamy

© Photograph: Marek Slusarczyk/Alamy

© Photograph: Marek Slusarczyk/Alamy

NGOs in Indonesian Borneo file class action lawsuit calling for government to better manage annual fires and

The Indonesian government has been accused of “gross negligence” in a class action lawsuit over its handling of wildfires that have cloaked large parts of South-east Asia in a toxic haze, shuttered schools and caused a spike in respiratory illnesses.

The lawsuit, filed by indigenous and civil society groups in the Indonesian part of Borneo, named President Prabowo Subianto and the governor of West Kalimantan among 10 defendants. The case seeks comprehensive recovery and rehabilitation measures that would include covering the healthcare costs of residents.

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© Photograph: DITO/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: DITO/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: DITO/AFP/Getty Images

Small particulates sent up by wildfires are a well-documented health hazard. But recent research finds that ground-level ozone is now on the rise, too.

© Angela Weiss/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The lawsuit is the 97th the state has filed against the Trump administration over the past year and a half.

© Stella Kalinina for The New York Times

On Friday, Amazon committed to donating more than $1 billion over the next five years to communities neighboring data centers.

In a press release, Amazon Web Services’ CEO Matt Garman said that communities would decide how to prioritize funds across “education, job training, energy affordability, water, and energy preservation, and local priorities.”

Laying out other community commitments, Amazon also promised to ensure data centers wouldn’t increase power bills or wipe out local water supplies. Regarding the latter, Amazon promised to be “water positive” by 2030, while claiming that 75 percent of projects have already met this goal.

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© Anna Moneymaker / Staff | Getty Images News

The mostly Democratic-led states say that the E.P.A. acted unlawfully when it erased Biden-era limits on carbon dioxide from coal- and gas-fired plants.

© Benjamin Rasmussen for The New York Times

An unusual study aims to estimate the pollution and health costs from a cluster of proposed data centers, instead of considering each one separately.

© Paul Ratje for The New York Times

In a previously unreported letter, a top lobbyist floated the idea of using emergency powers to keep aging coal plants open.

© Rachel Woolf for The New York Times

The move marked the final step in the administration’s efforts to dismantle policies aimed at speeding the shift to electric vehicles.

© Kenny Holston/The New York Times

New Jersey officials said that the natural gas-powered generators, each the size of a tractor-trailer, were operating without permits.

© USA Today, via Reuters

Less than a year ago, Gov. Greg Abbott welcomed data centers. Now he is confronting concerns about the projects even among fellow Republicans.

© Paul Ratje for The New York Times

A teenager struggling with climate anxiety searches for hope in an unexpected place – writing letters to imprisoned activists. Max, 14, is on a quest to understand the human stories behind direct action and why so many climate protesters are in prison​. As replies begin to arrive, a dialogue bridging generations unfolds and connection transforms despair into purpose. ​When Max writes to the judge presiding over a high-profile trial​, he is surprised to hear the letter referred to in the judge's closing remarks

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© Photograph: The Guardian

© Photograph: The Guardian

© Photograph: The Guardian

The Democratic candidate for governor backed restrictions on disposal of fracking wastewater around a hard-hit town, and called for a “thorough investigation” of the dangers.

© Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times

Low rainfall and shrinking rivers are causing shipping bottlenecks, and higher prices, around the world.

© Ina Fassbender/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The Pentagon has again postponed PFAS cleanups at hundreds of military sites, in some cases up to 19 years, prompting bipartisan anger in Congress.

© Kenny Holston/The New York Times

Under the proposal, states would no longer need to provide public notice or solicit comments on air pollution permits for data centers and other projects.

© Paul Ratje for The New York Times