Environment

A new study has ranked Middlesbrough as the worst place to be a girl. Charity Plan International UK took various factors into account to make the decision. They assessed child poverty, educational attainment and teen pregnancy rates. Sadly for Middlesbrough it came top of the list, not an enviable place to be. As expected there appears to be a north/south divide between the best and worst places to be a young female. Poverty could be seen as a major factor...

Humans have destroyed ten per cent of the Earth's wilderness since 1992, according to new research. The study, authored by researchers from Australia’s University of Queensland and published in Cell, revealed that the earth has lost nearly 1.3 million square miles of wilderness (defined as areas that are largely free of human development) in less than 30 years, with most of this loss occurring in South America. This leaves approximately 11.6 million square miles of wilderness left on Earth (accounting for about 23...

Jeremy Corbyn wants to impose a blanket ban on fracking in the UK if he is elected to become the next PM in 2020. The controversial energy extraction process caused minor earth tremors in the UK in recent years, and the policy was put on the back burner, but has see a resurgence of interest under the Conservative Government. However, the Labour leader is setting a green agenda for his party. He will close all coal-fired power stations, outlaw fracking...

A 4.7 megawatt wind farm which is set to be built in one of the most deprived parts of the UK has won the 2016 Community Renewable Energy Project Award. The community energy project, which has been running for 18 years, has raised £1.2 million so far and trained up ten local unemployed people in consultation techniques and then employed them for a year. The Community Energy England and Community Energy Wales convened on Saturday to celebrate the achievements the sector made after a...

Piers Morgan is not everyone’s cup of tea, I’ll level with you he isn’t mine, but today he took on two big-game hunters. A twelve-year-old called Aryanna Gourdin and father Eli had suffered a huge backlash on social media after posting a picture of a giraffe she had just killed. In her reaction to receiving death threats she said: "I'm very upset that people would value an animal's life over another person's. "I try to ignore most of the comments...

A shocking poll by YouGov has found that people in the UK support a ban on wearing the Burka by a two to one majority. After the furore regarding women being banned from wearing burkinis on certain beaches in France, these findings will concern many Muslim women who wear the Islamic attire. Images circulated of a woman being forced to remove her burkini by four police officers carrying guns, or she would have faced a fine. The decision to ban...

Incredible news has come out from Central America. Cost Rica has managed to power itself using only renewable energy for over one hundred days reports the Independent. It is a fantastic achievement and now the nation wants to push for a whole year without having to use fossils fuels. Currently the small nation has gone 121 days without using energy that has a negative impact on the environment. In 2015 renewable energy accounted for 99 per cent of Costa Rica’s...

It is an excellent idea and one that will be life-changing for users of the London transport network who have an invisible illness or disability. TFL have just said they are launching a card and badge allocation to people who suffer from a range of issues, that hamper their daily commute. It is hoped, like the baby on board sticker for pregnant women, people will offer to give up their seats on buses and tubes to these people, making their...

The last place you want to be on a boiling hot day like today is one the Tube, the Central Line is more like a sauna than a form of transport in the summer months. Anyone who has spent a journey crammed against a sweaty persons' armpit will testify that the tube can be a cruel place. So to overcome this situation Transport for London has launched a Walking Tube map, that shows how far is from station to station....