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Heavy flooding hit the village of Pulborough in southern England after the River Arun burst its banks. Cars were seen driving on a road amid flooded fields in the aftermath of Storm Henk. Major rivers across the UK were flooded as the government issued a further 300 flood warnings. A succession of storms in recent weeks meant prolonged rainfall fell on saturated ground, causing more extreme flooding

• UK weather: Storm Henk flooding misery to continue beyond weekend

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Climate Change Committee tells chancellor issuing new oil and gas licenses is ‘inconsistent’ with government’s temperature goals

Jeremy Hunt has been criticised by the head of the independent Climate Change Committee (CCC) over his assurances that the government can still meet its climate targets while allowing companies to extract more oil and gas from the North Sea.

Piers Forster, the interim chair of the CCC, publicly challenged the chancellor on Sunday, after Hunt used predictions made by the committee to defend his government’s oil and gas licensing bill. MPs will vote on the bill on Monday, with several Conservative MPs likely to team up with Labour in voting against it.

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1,800 properties estimated to have flooded in England, as forecasters warn of colder weather on the way

The misery and chaos caused by flooding in England is set to continue until at least Monday, according to authorities.

In its latest update, the Environment Agency estimated that more than 1,800 properties had flooded after the heavy, intense downpours brought by Storm Henk.

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As Afcon kicks off under an oil firm’s banner, it is a tragic irony that the climate crisis is making the game ever more unsafe to play outdoors

This Saturday, the Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) – or to give the competition its full title, the TotalEnergies Afcon 2023 – the continent’s biennial international men’s football tournament, will kick off in Ivory Coast. The main point of interest, in the British sports press at any rate, is the impact that this will have on the course of the Premier League, where the leading teams will, mid-season, be losing their African star players for up to six weeks. Less remarked on, perhaps, is that Afcon 2023 is actually being played in 2024, and that its title is so prominently linked to the French hydrocarbon giant.

For more than half a century, the tournament has been played in January and February but, in an effort to placate the needs of a few European leagues and clubs, the Confederation of African Football (Caf) had originally scheduled this edition for June and July 2023. However, those dates coincided with west Africa’s rainy season, and under conditions of climate crisis the region has become more vulnerable to more extreme weather events at this time of year.

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Who are the eight surviving members of humanity's greatest feat of exploration?

A wildlife cameraman's close encounter with a silverback as he filmed a process designed to save the species.

More than simple pleasure and ticking a species off a list, it’s a hobby that dwells on the joy of being alive

As city dwellers head off for the summer break into the country or along the coast, their focus might be drawn to a splash of colour from a king parrot in the bush or a lone sandpiper on a deserted beach.

For most, it’s idle curiosity or an appreciation of nature that draws their attention.

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The country should be building resilience into the infrastructure to counter flooding like that brought by Storm Henk, experts say

Hydrologist Hannah Cloke has a straightforward description of the inundation that has just struck Britain. “Our decorations may have come down but the flood warning map is currently lit up like a Christmas tree.”

And the immediate cause of this mayhem is clear. A sequence of storms this autumn and winter – Babet, Ciarán, Debi, Elin, Fergus and Gerrit – have turned Britain into “a sopping wet sponge”, as the Reading University researcher put it.

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A daily summary of our news plus bite-sized updates from around the world.

'Nature hero' Rosemary Parslow is still helping the wildlife of the Scilly Isles even in her late 80s.

We have several roles available in the UK ETS team, including on supporting development of free allocation policy, co-ordinating the legislative programme, and supporting the implementation of wider ETS policy.

For the second week in a row, regulated parties and speculators both built on their net holdings of California Carbon Allowances (CCAs) and RGGI allowances (RGAs) as the new year began, while the US Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) again did not report Washington allowance (WCAs) holdings, data published Friday showed.

Saskatchewan, which stopped collecting the federal carbon levy on gas utility bills as of Jan. 1, will be in violation of Canadian law should it refrain from making payments to Ottawa, with significant impacts to the CO2 tax rebates that are returned annually to provincial households, experts told Carbon Pulse.

A Denver-headquartered emissions management firm is set to receive financial backing from the US Department of Energy's (DOE) Loan Programs Office (LPO) to scale its methane detection technology across six states.

CO2RE, the UK's national research hub on CO2 removals (CDR) led by the University of Oxford, this week announced the four winners of its latest funding round, with each set to receive up to £50,000.

Scientist say animals still need protecting and also connecting to restore habitats fragmented by human activities

African elephant populations have stabilised in their southern heartlands after huge losses over the last century, according to the most comprehensive analysis of growth rates to date.

The latest analysis also provides the strongest data so far showing that protected areas that are connected to other places are far better than isolated “fortress” parks at maintaining stable populations, by allowing the elephants to migrate back and forth between areas as they did naturally in the past.

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PM insists government is responding, as some residents are told to expect five more days of misery and colder weather

Large swathes of England ended the week devastated by flood water as rivers reached record highs, provoking a bitter political row over funding for the country’s most vulnerable areas.

Labour accused Rishi Sunak of being “asleep at the wheel” over flood warnings at the end of a week in which at least 1,000 properties were flooded and some villages were totally cut off, with parts of Nottinghamshire, Shropshire, Gloucestershire and Wiltshire worst affected.

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South Africa's energy ministry has published a new draft long-term energy blueprint that foresees the building of more coal power capacity, a move that appears to lower the nation's climate ambition as the government tries to grapple with energy security issues.

Midwinter is for hibernation and the chance to make different kinds of connections

“Disconnect from the internet for at least two hours a day and treat your own thoughts like a garden through which you are strolling,” was the advice offered by the novelist Ian McEwan to younger writers after being made a Companion of Honour in December. The capacity to be curious about mental processes – while simultaneously experiencing them – is an important one for an author seeking to describe the human condition. But anyone who values self-awareness will be used to noticing how their mind works and wondering why.

“Only connect” was the maxim of another famous novelist, EM Forster. Forster used the characters in his novels to put flesh on his arguments against the emotionally repressive code of the time. But McEwan’s recommendation to disconnect should not be understood as a repudiation of Forster’s humanism. He was not warning writers off paying attention to other people’s minds and ideas – but drawing attention to the need to spend time with our own. In a world of permanent connection, in which attention has been commodified, switching off and away from the outside world is arguably harder than ever before.

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