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A 5.3m Burmese python caught in the Everglades is declared the largest specimen ever recorded by scientists in Florida. The snake, a constrictor, weighed 74.6kg and was found to have 87 eggs in its stomach. An invasive species, its presence is thought to be the result of people discarding unwanted pets Continue reading...

Fishing groups lobby to cull birds blamed for killing river fish, while naturalists argue for the use of non-lethal tactics

Walk the four-mile stretch of the river Lea from Hackney Wick up to Tottenham Hale, and it is easy to forget that you are in London's East End. It may be August but tangles of wild flowers can still be seen in the river's surrounding fields. On the river, moorhens attend to chicks marooned on islands assiduously constructed out of twigs.

The many narrowboat owners who live on the Lea take advantage of the summer to repair their craft while rowers, urged on by their bicycle-riding coaches, guide single sculls through algae blooms and haughty swans. But something is missing from this English riverbank scene: anglers. There are almost none to be found, even on a sunny afternoon last Wednesday when throngs of fishing enthusiasts were out in force on London's canals.

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Norfolk police's Julian Gregory explains why investigation into the University of East Anglia's hacked emails was so complex

On Wednesday, Norfolk Police announced that it was formally ending its two-and-a-half-year investigation into the theft of thousands of private emails stored on servers at the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) – an event that has commonly come to be known as "Climategate".

Detective chief superintendent Julian Gregory, the senior investigating officer, said that due to the three-year statutory limitation placed on the investigation by the Computer Misuse Act 1990, he was closing the case now because there was no realistic chance of bringing a prosecution ahead of the third anniversary of the theft in November. He did say, though, that the "the data breach was the result of a sophisticated and carefully orchestrated attack" and that there was no evidence to suggest that anyone working at or associated with UEA was involved in the crime".

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ETC Group has produced a world map of geoengineering that represents the first attempt to document the expanding scope of research and experimentation in the large-scale manipulation of Earth or climate systems

• US geoengineers to spray sun-reflecting chemicals from balloon Continue reading...

Experiment in New Mexico will try to establish the possibility of cooling the planet by dispersing sulphate aerosols

Two Harvard engineers are to spray sun-reflecting chemical particles into the atmosphere to artificially cool the planet, using a balloon flying 80,000 feet over Fort Sumner, New Mexico.

The field experiment in solar geoengineering aims to ultimately create a technology to replicate the observed effects of volcanoes that spew sulphates into the stratosphere, using sulphate aerosols to bounce sunlight back to space and decrease the temperature of the Earth.

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A rainbow-like 'glory', wildfire clouds and Africa's highest mountains were among the images captured by European Space Agency and Nasa satellites last month

• More Satellite eye pictures: The moon's shadow during an eclipse in May and a tectonic spectacle in Africa in April Continue reading...

SSEE National - Serving Sustainability and Environmental professionals

If none of the money goes to charity, how is the event's entry fee – the most expensive on the sportive calendar – justified?

Riders signing up for Britain's newest and most expensive charity cycling sportive could be forgiven for thinking that part of their entry fee goes direct to a good cause.

After all, the official title of the event is the Marie Curie Cancer Care Etape Pennines.

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Engineering Ethics - come to the June SSEE seminar to learn more

TV farmer Jimmy Doherty promotes revival of rose veal to prevent 'useless' male dairy calves being shot at birth

As far as reputation goes, it's up there with foie gras and shark's fin. But a decade after furious protests on the streets of Britain brought a ban on both the controversial live export of calves and on the rearing-in-crates system – veal is back.

British rose veal has already won the ethical stamp of approval from the RSPCA and Compassion in World Farming (CIWF) but it remains a niche market in the UK, just 0.1% of the meat we consume each year.

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Ian Buchan, of Peterhead, pleaded guilty to illegally landing and selling £4.5m worth of mackerel in 'black landing' scam

A Scottish trawler skipper has had £1m seized by the courts after pleading guilty to a major role in one of Europe's largest illegal fisheries scandals.

Ian Buchan, 55, from Peterhead, was given the £1m confiscation order after he admitted illegally landing and then selling nearly £4.5m worth of mackerel in a highly sophisticated "black landing" scam to evade European fishing quotas.

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Phthalates, PCBs and parabens should be used with greater caution, claims environment agency – but ban not recommended

Common chemicals found in household products, cosmetics and medicines may be causing cancers, fertility problems and other illnesses including diabetes and obesity, according to a study.

Europe's environmental watchdog, the European Environment Agency, has warned that products containing endocrine disrupting chemicals should be treated with caution until their true effects are better known. However, it stopped short of recommending a ban of any specific products. A few such chemicals have already been banned, but many are still in widespread use.

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US thinktank launches poster campaign comparing Unabomber and Osama Bin Laden to those concerned about global warming

It really is hard to know where to begin with this one. But let's start with: "What on earth were they thinking?"

The Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based rightwing thinktank notorious for promoting climate scepticism, has launched quite possibly one of the most ill-judged poster campaigns in the history of ill-judged poster campaigns.

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Earth Institute director says urgency of problem and immaturity of renewable energy industry leave little option but nuclear

Combating climate change will require an expansion of nuclear power, respected economist Jeffrey Sachs said on Thursday, in remarks that are likely to dismay some sections of the environmental movement.

Prof Sachs said atomic energy was needed because it provided a low-carbon source of power, while renewable energy was not making up enough of the world's energy mix and new technologies such as carbon capture and storage were not progressing fast enough.

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The rise of the cargo bike makes perfect sense: it's nippy enough for narrow streets, and weighty enough to take 400kg

It is a familiar, unpleasant but seemingly inescapable part of modern city life: streets full of diesel-belching vans or lorries on delivery runs, either stuck in jams or else creating them as the driver double-parks to dash into a building. The solution? Roll forward the humble bicycle, or at least its close cousin.

The idea of cycle freight replacing the ubiquitous truck might seem initially fanciful, but it is an increasingly serious idea, one being presented to transport ministers from several dozen countries at a major conference starting on Wednesday.

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Living Buildings & Sustainability Assessment Training. SSEE Qld update.

Nature writer and broadcaster Sarah Raven and Andy Byfield at Plantlife identify 10 of Britain's most endangered wild flowers.

Don't miss your 108-page guide to 50 of Britain's wild flowers, an exclusive excerpt from Sarah Raven's Wild Flowers (Bloomsbury), free this Sunday 29 April with the Observer Continue reading...

Supermarket launches new roll with 11mm shaved off cardboard tubing, meaning about 500 fewer lorry trips a year

With each Briton getting through an average of 50 toilet rolls a year, the carbon footprint created by supplying it is huge.

Makers including Andrex have made rolls last longer by increasing sheet numbers. But Sainsbury's is set to try something new: shrinking the inner tube.

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Patrick Barkham loves watching butterflies zip along the hedgerows. So how would he feel seeing them live and die as exhibits in Damien Hirst's Tate Modern retrospective?

Butterflies made Damien Hirst's career and this is how he repays them: in a stark, white, windowless room in Tate Modern, hundreds of insects pull themselves from their pupae only to die there a few days later, surrounded by gawping tourists.

For some visitors to Hirst's blockbuster retrospective, it is not the rotting cow's head surrounded by flies, the sheep in formaldehyde or the giant ashtray filled with cigarette butts that makes them feel queasy. It is the installation in Room 5, where tropical butterflies futilely flit around the boxy space, eventually falling to die on the floor, where they are promptly scooped up by security staff.

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Go-ahead to fit technology, developed by Williams F1, to six prototype buses – with fuel savings estimated at up to 30%

A fuel-saving flywheel first developed for use in Formula One racing cars, but abandoned before it could be used due to a regulation change by the sport's administrators, will soon be retrofitted to a handful of London buses.

Six prototype buses owned by Go-Ahead, one of the UK's largest buses operators, are currently being fitted with the flywheels for a trial beginning later this year in and around Putney, south-west London.

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