Analysis says expansion could also harm access to housing, education, healthcare, open spaces and transport
Construction of a third runway at Heathrow is likely to have significant adverse effects on the health and wellbeing of up to 3 million people living nearby, an official report has said, as the government launched the next stage of its rapid airport expansion plan.
An analysis for the Department for Transport has found that expanding London’s hub airport could have “major adverse” impacts on the health of the most local population.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
06/18/2026 - 11:19
06/18/2026 - 11:15
‘Mastermind’ Dawie Groenewald given fine of 2m rand or four-year jail term almost 16 years after arrest
Two traffickers of rhino horns have been sentenced by a South African court in what police said was the world’s largest such case, partly bringing to an end an almost two-decade legal saga.
Dawie Groenewald and Tielman Erasmus had faced more than 1,700 charges ranging from illegally hunting and dehorning rhinos to racketeering and money laundering.
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06/18/2026 - 11:00
A prospecting company’s search for gold has the town of Lone Pine and Indigenous leaders on edge, as the Trump administration greenlights new projects across the American west
Lone Pine, population 1,882, lies along a stretch of California highway framed by the vast Inyo mountains and a sweeping desert landscape of sagebrush and dunes.
It’s the type of small town tourists drive through en route to Death Valley; where hikers get a motel room between Pacific Crest Trail treks. But amid the quiet downtown strip of bars and shops, there are signs of a battle brewing under the town’s sleepy surface.
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06/18/2026 - 10:00
Top 10% generate climate and biodiversity damage bill that exceeds economies of most countries, say researchers
The environmental damage bill racked up by the highest-consuming 10% of the world’s population has reached up to $5.7tn a year – larger than the economy of every country except the US and China, a study has found.
Mega-consumers in this group are concentrated in the global north, accounting for more than half the population of the US and 40-45% of people in the EU.
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06/18/2026 - 08:00
Federal agency to use herbicide to clear lands for replanting after 2021 Caldor fire – but public reaction to plan is fierce
Katherine Levy remembers a childhood deeply rooted in the natural offerings of Lake Tahoe – water-skiing in the summer and working as ski instructor on the surrounding snow-covered mountains during winter months.
She recently moved back to live out her retirement along the lake’s north shore. But she doesn’t like what she has found upon her return: a US government plan to spray multiple types of herbicides, including the cancer-linked glyphosate weedkiller – within national forest property that abuts the community’s cherished lake.
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06/18/2026 - 03:13
Generator’s shares rise as regulator finds no evidence of misleading statements about fuel’s sustainability
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The City watchdog has closed an investigation into the owner of the Drax power plant after an almost 10-month review into whether the company’s sustainability claims mislead shareholders.
The Financial Conduct Authority said it had “reviewed thousands of pages” of “complex material” relating to the company’s sourcing of wood pellets for the Drax power plant in Selby, North Yorkshire, but “did not find evidence that justified any further action”.
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06/18/2026 - 03:00
More than half of Ayetoro – a Christian utopia founded in the 1940s – has been lost to the ocean, and its remaining people are running out of options
In the early hours of 15 February 2019, the Atlantic Ocean came for Arowo Victoria’s livelihood. The 60-year-old retired midwife was asleep when neighbours began banging on her door, shouting that the sea had started covering buildings along the nearby coastline.
By the time she got to her small shop, she discovered that the Atlantic had already swept it away, destroying the business she had built with borrowed money after retirement.
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06/18/2026 - 03:00
John Ray, 17th-century botanist who coined words petal and pollen, was a tutor at Cambridge when he created his first garden
He coined the terms petal and pollen, helped to lay the foundations of modern biology and is widely regarded as the greatest English naturalist of the 17th century.
But it was while he was a young college tutor at Cambridge in the 1650s that the botanist John Ray – also known as “the father of natural history” – created his first known garden and began to systematically study plants for the first time.
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06/18/2026 - 02:59
A major study of Australian native bees found that stem-nesting species may be the first to feel the impact of climate change. Unlike bees that nest underground, they have few ways to escape dangerous heat. Researchers also discovered that tropical bees are particularly vulnerable, even when they are already adapted to hot environments. The findings suggest bee behavior could be a key factor in determining which species survive a warming world.
06/18/2026 - 02:00
The Biodiversity Heritage Library is an invaluable online archive of historic texts on species living and lost supplied by the world’s leading museums and universities. Now its future is in doubt
Some go there to read about the wood that Victorian manufacturers used to make walking sticks. Others want to see an illustration of a Tasmanian tiger or marvel at the field diary of one of the first known botanists to explore the Antarctic.
Over the past 20 years, more than 64m pages have been made freely available through the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) – a digital treasure trove for fans of the natural world. More than 680 museums, universities, libraries and scientific institutions from China, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand to Europe, Africa, Mexico, Canada and the US, have contributed to the library.
Manuscript on parchment from the Circa instans. Dating from about 1190, it is the oldest book in the digital library. Photograph: LuEsther T Mertz Library/New York Botanical Garden/Biodiversity Heritage Library
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