Major flooding isolates 1,800 people in northern NSW as evacuation routes cut. Follow today’s news live
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There is a rescue under way in Newmarket Road, Windsor, where cars have tried to drive through flood waters.
The Queensland government has stressed to use common sense, adjust speeds and not drive through flood waters. There has been some heavy rainfall overnight and the roads are dangerous.
We’ve been working on a budget now, in the normal course, and budget submissions have been presented to the expenditure review committee. I sit on that.
And so we’ve been very busy in over the last few months, really, and particularly over the last few weeks, in the lead-up to the budget.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
03/09/2025 - 16:23
03/09/2025 - 07:00
Damage to trees in western North Carolina from Hurricane Helene was ‘extraordinary and humbling’ but urban areas face particular problems
The city of Asheville and its surrounding areas have been left vulnerable to floods, fires and extreme heat after Hurricane Helene uprooted thousands of trees that provided shade and protection from storms.
Helene was catastrophic for the region’s trees – in part due to the heavy precursor rainstorm that pounded southern Appalachia for two days straight, drenching the soil before Helene hit, bringing yet more heavy rain and 60-100mph winds.
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03/09/2025 - 01:24
Millions of people in northern NSW and south-east Queensland are bunkering down for dangerous conditions including flash flooding, heavy rain and intense winds after the storm now downgraded to a tropical low crossed the coast
Ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred LIVE: latest news and updates
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03/08/2025 - 19:48
South-east Queensland and northern NSW face further heavy downpours and flash flooding
Ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred LIVE: latest news and updates
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More than 230,000 households and businesses are without power and flash flooding alerts have been issued for coastal areas in the aftermath of ex-tropical cyclone Alfred.
The warnings follow heavy rain across southeast Queensland overnight and are clustered around the Brisbane, Gold Coast, Logan and Ipswich council areas.
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03/08/2025 - 12:00
In the Zuleta community in Ecuador, farming is about more than just sustenance: it is about cultivating a deep relationship with the land based on ancestral knowledge. In her travels in the region, Colombo-Ecuadorian photographer Yinna Higuera collaborates with rural women, who in exchange share their understanding of medicinal plants and give her leaves from their gardens. In her Traces series, which has been shortlisted for a Sony world photography award, Higuera uses chlorophyll printing to superimpose the women’s portraits on banana leaves, vegetables and herbs. “Each of these women has a unique story,” she says, “yet they all share a profound bond with the land. Through these portraits, my goal is to make their strength and wisdom visible, honouring their role as stewards of the earth.”
Traces is shortlisted in the creative category, professional competition, Sony world photography awards 2025. Exhibition at Somerset House, London, 17 April to 5 May, worldphoto.org
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03/07/2025 - 13:08
Trump pulls out of Cop28 loss and damage deal that recognises harms done by richer, polluting economies to vulnerable nations
The Trump administration has withdrawn the US from a global agreement under which the developed nations most responsible for the climate crisis pledged to partly compensate developing countries for irreversible harms caused by global heating.
The loss and damage fund was agreed at the Cop28 UN climate summit in late 2023 – a hard-won victory after years of diplomatic and grassroots advocacy by developing nations that bear the brunt of the climate crisis despite having contributed the least to greenhouse gas emissions. The fund signalled a commitment by developed, polluting countries to provide financial support for some of the irreversible economic and noneconomic losses from sea level rise, desertification, drought and floods already happening.
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03/07/2025 - 13:00
Biden-era suit sought to curb emissions of the carcinogen chloroprene at Denka plant formerly owned by DuPont
The Donald Trump administration has formally agreed to drop a landmark environmental justice case in Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley” region, marking a blow to clean air advocates in the region and a win for the Japanese petrochemical giant at the centre of the litigation.
Legal filings made public on Friday morning reveal that Trump’s Department of Justice agreed to dismiss a long-running lawsuit against the operators of a synthetic rubber plant in Reserve, Louisiana, which is allegedly largely responsible for some of the highest cancer risk rates in the US for the surrounding majority-Black neighborhoods.
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03/07/2025 - 12:56
A new analysis reveals that nearly half of the genus Heliconia, a group of tropical plants popular for their bright, beak-shaped flowers, are threatened with extinction.
03/07/2025 - 12:56
'Forests are among the most important ecosystems in nature, constantly evolving, yet their monitoring is often delayed,' says an expert. Climate change, pests, and human activity are transforming forests faster than we can track them -- some changes become apparent only when the damage is already irreversible.
03/07/2025 - 10:17
Council of Europe says Swiss government failing to respect human rights court’s ruling on emissions
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The Swiss government has been told it must do more to show that its national climate plans are ambitious enough to comply with a landmark legal ruling.
The Council of Europe’s committee of ministers, in a meeting this week, decided that Switzerland was not doing enough to respect a decision last year by the European court of human rights that it must do more to cut its greenhouse gas emissions and rejected the government’s plea to close the case.
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