Toyota has released details about its first mass-produced electric vehicle in a significant step for the world’s second-biggest carmaker. The bZ4X is an SUV with optional rooftop solar panels that will be sold in both front-wheel or all-wheel-drive variants. The public had its first look at the concept for the bZ4X – “bZ” stands for “beyond zero” – at the Shanghai motor show in April this year...
A carpet of brown greeted Matt Lovenfosse as he pulled up to his home on Monday morning. “So I went out to have a look and it was millions of spiders,” he says. They were running ahead of flood water rising up from Kinchela Creek, pouring across the back of Lovenfosse’s property on the mid-north coast of New South Wales. The spiders aren’t the only animals he has spotted fleeing the floods. “When...
Members of the public have been urged to be careful what they flush after a “huge, disgusting” fatberg the weight of a small bungalow was cleared from an east London sewer. Thames Water engineers and MTS Cleansing Services spent two weeks using high-powered water jets and hand tools to chip away at and eventually remove the rock-like heap, which was said to have smelled like composting festival...
The willow tit, one of Britain’s smallest and most endangered birds, requires a surprisingly large area of wild land to thrive, according to research. Less than 3,000 pairs of the bird survive, mainly on brownfield sites in former coal mining areas, making it the fastest declining resident species, with numbers plummeting by 94% since 1970. A study of the birds nesting on a former mining area in...
Paris, London and Brussels have dropped talk of a trade war and appeared to settle a dispute over post-Brexit fishing licences, but angry French fishers threatened to go ahead with a pre-Christmas blockade of British goods entering Calais. The European Commission and the French government signalled satisfaction with the result of an intensive fortnight of negotiations as the UK and Channel...
Life may be getting busier as the long, hard lockdowns come to an end but people are being urged to pause for a few moments to savour the sights and scents of one of nature’s precious but fleeting glories – the blossom season. The National Trust is launching on Saturday what it bills as the UK’s first ever “blossom watch” day. The idea is that people will find a tree, bush or hedge bursting with...
The botanist David Bellamy, who has died aged 86, fired the imagination of millions of television viewers with the beauty and complexity of the natural world – and our impact upon it. For a generation, his instantly recognisable facial features, surrounded by white hair and matching beard, became synonymous with energetic, vibrant and thoroughly compelling explanations of how our world works. His...
Iam walking with a woman named Kerry, whom I have just met, to her car. She is in her mid-30s and has a tinge of attitude. When we reach her car, she opens the boot. Inside are hundreds of industrial-sized tubs of hummus, enough to power Brighton for a week. I met Kerry online, not via some kind of hummus-appreciation society messageboard, but on Olio, an app that is attempting to end food waste...
Like most children, Margaret Howe Lovatt grew up with stories of talking animals. “There was this book that my mother gave to me called Miss Kelly,” she remembers with a twinkle in her eye. “It was a story about a cat who could talk and understand humans and it just stuck with me that maybe there is this possibility.” Unlike most children, Lovatt didn’t leave these tales of talking animals behind...