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Hubble scores unique close-up view of distant galaxy
Jordan urged to end animal mistreatment at Petra site
Consuming our future
Could biodiversity destruction lead to a global tipping point?
We are destroying the world’s biodiversity. Yet debate has erupted over just what this means for the planet – and us.
Just over 250 million years ago, the planet suffered what may be described as its greatest holocaust: ninety-six percent of marine genera (plural of genus) and seventy percent of land vertebrate vanished for good. Even insects suffered a mass extinction – the only time before or since. Entire classes of animals – like trilobites – went out like a match in the wind.
But what’s arguably most fascinating about this event – known as the Permian-Triassic extinction or more poetically, the Great Dying – is the fact that anything survived at all. Life, it seems, is so ridiculously adaptable that not only did thousands of species make it through whatever killed off nearly everything (no one knows for certain though theories abound) but, somehow, after millions of years life even recovered and went on to write new tales.
'The feeling of freedom': empowering Berlin's refugee women through cycling
When NGO Bikeygees set out to teach female refugees how to ride a bike they were shocked by the demand. Now hundreds have benefitted from the scheme
Emily is a 21-year-old Afghan refugee living in Berlin, and her best experience in Germany so far has been, without a doubt, learning to ride a bike.
Continue reading...Country diary: the deadly beauty of spider silk
Wolsingham, Weardale: In the fog every surviving thread was spangled with water droplets, sparkling as the sun broke through
Swirling fog plays tricks. As we crossed an open field the silhouette of an oak loomed, with a glimmer of pale yellow light cradled in its branches, before it dissolved back into the clammy miasma.
We had descended from the high fells, from clear blue sky and crystal-clear views into a monochrome lake of valley fog, cold grey vapour trapped by warmer air above. It thickened as we followed the footpath along the riverbank.
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