Exhausted firefighters wage ‘war of attrition’ against blaze that forced 200,000 people from their homes
By noon it is time for a break. The temperature is about 35C, the smell of ash, cinders and burnt wood hang acrid in the air. At tables laid out in the shrinking shade on the desiccated grass and sand outside the sports centre in Le Porge, 200 men and a handful of women have gathered. Firefighters, soldiers, police, gendarmes, officials, first aid teams, foresters and volunteers sit elbow to elbow, plates of sausages, steak and potatoes in front of them.
The village was evacuated just over 14 hours after the “megafire” – as it has become known in France – broke out 6km away last week. The blaze has consumed 42,000 hectares (104,000 acres) of mainly forestland west of Bordeaux. Though finally contained, there are outbreaks every day, pushing to the limit emergency services and the hundreds of amateurs who have come to their aid.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
07/31/2026 - 23:00
07/31/2026 - 23:00
Exclusive: As wildfires rage, Frank Elderson says more work needed to assess risk from collapse of ecosystem services
A senior policymaker at the European Central Bank has said the climate emergency and the breakdown of nature poses a dramatically growing risk to the global economy.
Frank Elderson, a member of the ECB’s executive board, said the eurozone lender of last resort was stepping up its monitoring of the financial risks linked to the destruction of “ecosystem services”, which are nature-related processes or assets that support human activity.
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07/31/2026 - 12:38
Federal government plan outlines cuts of roughly 40% to California, Arizona and Nevada but fix is likely to be only temporary
The US government released its anxiously awaited plan for how to manage the Colorado River crisis on Friday, which includes the potential for harsh cuts in water supplied to California, Arizona and Nevada.
Under the proposal, the so-called lower basin states stand to lose up to 3m acre-feet (3.7bn kiloliters) a year – enough water annually to serve more than 25 million people and roughly 40% of their collective total. The so-called upper basin states – Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming – were spared from mandates restricting their supply.
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07/31/2026 - 11:24
António Guterres says strengthening El Niño will help push the world’s climate crisis into ‘uncharted territory’
India’s monsoon is in danger and hotter, drier conditions are forecast across much of the world as a stronger El Niño weather system is taking hold, weather experts have warned.
António Guterres, the UN secretary general, said the strengthening El Niño was “adding fuel to a planet already on fire” and pushing the world into “uncharted territory”.
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07/31/2026 - 08:39
Exclusive: Danielle Kirton calls on Ed Miliband to help her get answers about why evacuation order came too late
The bereaved daughter of a British couple who died in a Spanish wildfire is calling on the foreign secretary, Ed Miliband, to get answers from Spain’s government about why her parents were not told to evacuate until it was too late.
Severe wildfires have burned across Spain and France since early July, killing people, destroying thousands of homes and forcing more than 300,000 people to flee.
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07/31/2026 - 07:00
Contender, largest tagged male great white, heading north as overheating oceans alter range of several shark species
The largest tagged male great white shark in the Atlantic Ocean has been identified traveling up the US and Canada coastline amid a surge in sightings of sharks that are increasingly shifting their movement patterns due to the overheating of the oceans.
The great white shark, named Contender, is nearly 14ft long and weighs more than 1,650lbs. The hulking fish has been pinged in several locations off North Carolina and Maine as he headed north for the summer, with Contender’s last known location located off Nova Scotia in Canada on 11 July.
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07/31/2026 - 04:13
This week’s best wildlife photographs from around the world
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07/31/2026 - 04:00
Boom in solar farms and home installations in first half of 2026 began shortly after start of US-Israel war against Iran
Great Britain has recorded more new solar power installations in the first half of this year than in any six-month period since 2011, as households turn to rooftop panels to help cut their energy bills.
An analysis of the government’s official figures shows that Great Britain added 142,536 solar installations in the first six months of the year, putting it on track to top last year’s record solar additions.
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07/31/2026 - 03:22
Emergency crews say situation remains ‘dynamic’ as more than 100 firefighters battle Dunwich Heath blaze
A wildfire near Britain’s biggest nuclear power station has caused “total devastation” to one of the UK’s most important landscapes, as fire crews said the situation remained “dynamic”.
More than 100 firefighters have been battling the blaze on Dunwich Heath, near Leiston, on the Suffolk coast since Wednesday evening. The fire service said on Friday afternoon the situation was stabilising but remained a “major incident” that was “dynamic and potentially changeable”.
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07/31/2026 - 02:00
Latest study says global heating has made hot, dry and windy conditions in Spain at least 20 times more likely
The extreme heat and drought stoking huge wildfires in Spain and France were made far more likely by the climate crisis, a scientific analysis has found.
Global heating made hot, dry and windy weather at least 20 times more likely in Spain and twice as likely in France, experts from the World Weather Attribution (WWA) consortium calculated. The finding is the latest to pin the blame for the continent’s sweltering and deadly summer firmly on the heating caused by the burning of oil, gas and coal.
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