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Wenlock Edge, Shropshire The weathered waymark, like a fragment of a wooden henge, is an archive of local history

At the top of steps into the railway cutting stands a wooden post. It is old and weathered and, when sunlight through trees catches it, a beautiful greenfinch blush of moss and algae.

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More hurricanes? Rising temperatures? BBC meteorologist Tomasz Schafernaker looks ahead to the year.

A glimpse into the life the Inupiat, an indigenous community in Alaska.

Migratory animals are often blamed for the global spread of disease. However, recent research indicates they may not be the primary culprit. Alice Risely, PhD candidate in Ecology, Deakin University Bethany J Hoye, Lecturer in Animal Ecology, University of Wollongong Marcel Klaassen, Alfred Deakin Professor and Chair in Ecology, Deakin University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

For decades, countries including Australia, the United Kingdom, Japan and the United States have relied on China to hoover up their waste and recycle it into new products and packaging. On January 1, the country introduced a new ban on foreign waste imports.

The systems will save billions of pounds by enabling the diseases to be picked up much earlier.

Chain will now knock 50p off prices in bid to help change customers’ habits, with the UK discarding an estimated 2.5bn coffee cups every year

Customers who bring reusable cups to Pret a Manger will be given a 50p discount on hot drinks after the company introduced the measure and said it was hoping to change people’s habits and reduce waste.

The sandwich chain has been offering 25p discounts to customers using reusable cups since 2017, alongside Costa and Starbucks. CEO Clive Schlee said he hoped that doubling the discount would make a difference, following other initiatives to reduce waste such as not using plastic cup stoppers in inner city Pret shops.

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Plastic that would have been imported to China will cause chaos for councils as it mounts up, warn industry experts

A ban on imports of millions of tonnes of plastic waste by the Chinese government is already causing a build up of rubbish at recycling plants around the UK and will bring chaos for councils in the weeks ahead, according to industry experts.

Simon Ellin, chief executive of the UK Recycling Association, said his members had already seen some lower grade plastics piling up at their yards and warned urgent action was needed.

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The BBC's Dan Johnson visited a plant in Southwark to see how they're dealing with recycling build-up.

Ryan Zinke has recommended three major marine monuments be reduced to allow greater commercial fishing, prompting anguish from environmental groups

The Trump administration’s plan to shrink four land-based national monuments has provoked howls of anguish from environmental groups, Native American tribes and some businesses, such as the outdoors company Patagonia.

Related: In America and beyond, the spirit behind public lands is at risk | Hansjörg Wyss

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Climate scientists predicted the rapid rise in global surface temperatures that we’re now seeing

2017 was the second-hottest year on record according to Nasa data, and was the hottest year without the short-term warming influence of an El Niño event:

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In 2012 a form of gene editing was discovered, it is called CRISPR Cas9. It uses "molecular scissors" to alter a very specific strand of DNA.

Young freshwater pearl mussels are being grown at a fishery in Powys

Grassington, Upper Wharfedale The stark geometry of the bone-white boundary walls complements the outcrops and escarpments around Grass Wood

The weakest of the year’s sunlight falls on the barn-studded latticework of dry stone walls just outside Grassington. I stop to admire the skill they must have required: the Great Scar Limestone that underlies much of Upper Wharfedale comes from the fields in big, irregular chunks, too dense for a chipping hammer, and the resulting walls are completed puzzles that testify to the creativity of the builder.

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Wildlife rescuers retrieve 43 eggs thought to be from of one of the world’s most poisonous snakes, the eastern brown

Students at a school on the New South Wales mid-north coast have learned a valuable lesson: sandpits make great snake nests.

Wildlife rescuers were shocked when a call to remove about a dozen eggs from a sandpit at a school near the coastal town of Laurieton, 350km north of Sydney, became rather more dramatic.

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The Long Read: Most Australians' power bills have been rising for a decade. There are many reasons why, but the common thread is a lack of government willingness to get to grips with crucial policy problems. David Blowers, Energy Fellow, Grattan Institute Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

People across Britain reported seeing a large greenish light streak across the sky on Sunday evening.

Somebody cut the cake – new documents reveal that American oil writ large was warned of global warming at its 100th birthday party.

It was a typical November day in New York City. The year: 1959. Robert Dunlop, 50 years old and photographed later as clean-shaven, hair carefully parted, his earnest face donning horn-rimmed glasses, passed under the Ionian columns of Columbia University’s iconic Low Library. He was a guest of honor for a grand occasion: the centennial of the American oil industry.

Over 300 government officials, economists, historians, scientists, and industry executives were present for the Energy and Man symposium – organized by the American Petroleum Institute and the Columbia Graduate School of Business – and Dunlop was to address the entire congregation on the “prime mover” of the last century – energy – and its major source: oil. As President of the Sun Oil Company, he new the business well, and as a director of the American Petroleum Institute – the industry’s largest and oldest trade association in the land of Uncle Sam – he was responsible for representing the interests of all those many oilmen gathered around him.

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Toxic NO2 pollution affects most of urban areas of the UK, but London is worst hit. View live data from the capital to see which site is the first to break legal limits in 2018

In January 2017, Brixton Road in south London broke its annual legal limit for toxic nitrogen dioxide (NO2) in less than a fortnight, according to the final calibrated data. In 2016, Putney High Street was the first, in less than seven days.

The rapid breaching of the limits is a dramatic illustration of the illegal air pollution affecting most urban areas in the UK, which will see the government being sued in the high court for a third time early in 2018. High NO2 levels are estimated to cause about 23,500 early deaths a year.

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Turning turds into power is not new but most of this energy still goes to waste. A host of innovative projects aim to maximise poo’s full potential

A long winding road climbs into a gathering dusk, coming to an abrupt dead end in front of a house. Here, a solitary flickering flame casts out a warm glow, illuminating the nearby ridge line of the Malvern Hills.

Below the light sits a mysterious green contraption resembling a cross between a giant washing machine and a weather station. This is the UK’s first dog poo-powered street lamp, and it is generating light in more ways than one.

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