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Warning over wider global health impacts after findings reveal thousands of tonnes of colostin - the ‘antibiotic of last resort’ - are being shipped to India’s farms

Chickens raised in India for food have been dosed with some of the strongest antibiotics known to medicine, in practices that could have repercussions throughout the world.

Thousands of tonnes of an “antibiotic of last resort” – only used in the most extreme cases of sickness - are shipped to India each year to be used, without medical supervision, on animals that may not require the drugs but are being dosed with them nevertheless to promote the growth of healthy animals.

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Get involved in our project mapping the change in UK seasons: tell us if you’re seeing an early spring near you

Has spring sprung early where you are? Are you already noticing changes to the appearance or behaviour of flora and fauna in gardens, window boxes or local wild spaces? If so, we’d like to hear about it for a project mapping what appears to be a trend of shorter winters in the northern hemisphere.

Related: Spring flowers in autumn, birdsong in winter: what a freak year for nature

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Scientists say climate targets cannot be met using the technologies, which either risk huge damage to the environment or are very costly

Ways of sucking carbon dioxide from the air will not work on the vast scales needed to beat climate change, Europe’s science academies warned on Thursday.

From simply planting trees to filtering CO2 out of the air, the technologies that some hope could be a “silver bullet” in halting global warming either risk huge damage to the environment themselves or are likely to be very costly.

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Durham city: Minute male capsules on the prothallus burst open, releasing sperm with whiplash tails that swim frantically towards the egg cells

Since humans first began to pile stone upon stone to build walls, and later learned to stabilise them with mortar, plants have taken root in the crevices. They are often ephemeral opportunists, growing from seeds distributed by birds, but for some spleenwort ferns that naturally colonised bare limestone cliffs the crumbly alkaline cement of the manmade alternative offers almost unlimited opportunities.

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Directive seeks better access to safe drinking water to reduce use of throw-away containers

The EU is to oblige national governments to provide greater access to drinking fountains, encourage restaurants to offer free tap water, and raise the standards required of suppliers, as part of a move to clamp down on plastic waste and improve the health of Europeans.

Related: Bottled water is a nonsense. Just ban it and fill our towns with drinking fountains | Sonia Sodha

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NSW Premier suggests intervening in Liddell closure as way of "guaranteeing cheap and reliable electricity" for state.

The climate system will heat well past 1.5 °C and perhaps up to 2°C without any further fossil fuel emissions, new research finds.

Herbert Smith Freehills has cemented its reputation as the pre-eminent firm for project finance in the renewables sector across Australia and New Zealand after topping the Inframation Deals league tables for 2017 .

NAIF's first loan - to the oil and gas industry - is an effective subsidy to accelerate climate change.

Best performing utility in US says it will be soon be cheaper to install new renewables than to continue operating existing coal and nuclear plants.

Landis+Gyr announced that it has entered into an exclusive agreement with energy retailer Simply Energy to provide smart metering services to more than 550,000 households across Australia .

Arizona – a Republican Party stronghold – is poised to take the lead on energy storage as it mulls an 80 per cent clean energy target by 2050.

Cullen Range, the first solar farm to be co-located with a wind farm formally opened, to be followed by at least a dozen more.

Researchers have discovered that salmon from the chalk streams of southern England are genetically unique.

Plenty of cafes these days will let you take home some used coffee grounds, to put on your garden. It's a versatile material with loads of potential uses - as long as you treat it properly first. Tien Huynh, Senior Lecturer in the School of Sciences, RMIT University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Energy retailer Powershop signs up for new 200MW solar farm and two major wind projects and says it was "stunned" by the low prices offered. It will also buy three hydro generators, but will need to more than double customers to match output.

After a growth spurt from the 1960s to the '90s, then 20 years of stagnation, the Era of Nuclear Decommissioning is upon us.

While the US suffers an overdose epidemic, most of the world misses out on painkillers.

It's 15 years since disaster struck as the Columbia returned to Earth following a research mission.

Campaigners ask Westminster to ‘drive war on plastic waste’ and Prince Charles calls for action

Campaigners are demanding that the UK parliament cuts its use of throwaway plastics, as new figures show the Westminster estate purchased more than 2m plastic straws, bottled drinks, plastic-lined coffee cups, food sachets and cutlery items last year.

Freedom of information requests submitted by Surfers Against Sewage show that hundreds of thousands of items of plastic cutlery, more than a million takeaway coffee cups and nearly 22,000 plastic straws were used last year in the Commons and Lords.

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