‘Maha’ promised to tackle ultra-processed foods – but is it hijacking the food movement instead?
Over the space of the last year, Robert F Kennedy Jr. has made the term “ultra-processed foods” something of a household phrase.
Once a term only used by nutritionists and food policy researchers to describe the most processed foods in the supply chain (think: chips and sodas, packaged bread, microwave dinners and even some yogurts), ultra-processing has become a calling card of the “Make America Healthy Again” (“Maha”) movement.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
07/08/2025 - 05:00
We all need to be careful about how we get information and reach conclusions – especially now
Why exactly so many people drowned in the terrible Independence Day floods that swept through Texas’s Hill Country will probably have multiple explanations that take a while to obtain. But it’s 2025, and people want answers immediately, and lots of people seized on stories blaming the National Weather Service (NWS).
There were two opposing reasons to blame this vital government service. For local and state authorities, blaming a branch of the federal government was a way of avoiding culpability themselves. And for a whole lot of people who deplore the Trump/Doge cuts to federal services, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Weather Service, the idea that the NWS failed served to underscore how destructive those cuts are.
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07/08/2025 - 05:00
Experts scrambling to understand losses in hives across the country are finally identifying the culprits. And the damage to farmed bees is a sign of trouble for wild bees too
Bret Adee is one of the largest beekeepers in the US, with 2 billion bees across 55,000 hives. The business has been in his family since the 1930s, and sends truckloads of bees across the country from South Dakota, pollinating crops such as almonds, onions, watermelons and cucumbers.
Last December, his bees were wintering in California when the weather turned cold. Bees grouped on top of hives trying to keep warm. “Every time I went out to the beehive there were less and less,” says Adee. “Then a week later, there’d be more dead ones to pick up … every week there is attrition, just continually going down.”
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07/08/2025 - 04:00
Cuts and chaos instigated by Trump come as threat from extreme weather grows due to human-caused climate crisis
The deadly Texas floods could signal a new norm in the US, as Donald Trump and his allies dismantle crucial federal agencies that help states prepare and respond to extreme weather and other hazards, experts warn.
More than 100 are dead and dozens more remain missing after flash floods in the parched area known as Texas Hill Country swept away entire holiday camps and homes on Friday night – in what appears to have been another unremarkable storm that stalled before dumping huge quantities of rain over a short period of time, a phenomena that has becoming increasingly common as the planet warms.
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07/08/2025 - 02:11
Restrictions to be brought in from Friday after region receives just 15cm of rainfall between February and June
Business live – latest updates
Yorkshire Water has introduced hosepipe restrictions after the region recorded its driest spring in 132 years.
Yorkshire received just 15cm of rainfall between February and June, less than half of what is expected in an average year, pushing the region to an official drought status.
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07/07/2025 - 18:01
Research in Chile suggests climate crisis makes eruptions more likely and explosive, and warns of Antarctica risk
The melting of glaciers and ice caps by the climate crisis could unleash a barrage of explosive volcanic eruptions, a study suggests.
The loss of ice releases the pressure on underground magma chambers and makes eruptions more likely. This process has been seen in Iceland, an unusual island that sits on a mid-ocean tectonic plate boundary. But the research in Chile is one of the first studies to show a surge in volcanism on a continent in the past, after the last ice age ended.
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07/07/2025 - 11:55
Hundreds of homes, bridges and roads washed away in north Indian state after unusually heavy rainfall
India’s mountainous state of Himachal Pradesh has been left reeling after it was hit by rainstorms, flash floods and landslides, with dozens of people reported missing.
Hundreds of homes, bridges, roads and electricity pylons in the north Indian state were washed away after 23 flash floods and 16 landslides caused by unusually heavy rainfall over the weekend. There were also 19 cloudbursts, in which an enormous amount of rain falls in a sudden deluge, according to a report by the Himachal Pradesh state government.
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07/07/2025 - 09:00
Across the Bangladeshi megacity, designers are adapting to the climate crisis
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07/07/2025 - 08:00
Exclusive: Experts call for stricter regulation as current rules set in 1989 require testing for only a few heavy metals
Millions of tonnes of treated sewage sludge is spread on farmland across the UK every year despite containing forever chemicals, microplastics and toxic waste, and experts say the outdated current regulations are not fit for purpose.
An investigation by the Guardian and Watershed has identified England’s sludge-spreading hotspots and shown where the practice could be damaging rivers.
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07/07/2025 - 07:23
President Lula rebukes wealthy countries for retreating on climate and trade but bloc is divided and unbalanced
As the US retreats from the international stage, the most powerful political alliance in the global south has come together in Brazil this week to try to revive and reinvent a collective approach to the world’s problems.
The summit of the Brics group of nations at the Museum of Contemporary Art on the edge of Guanabara Bay in Rio de Janeiro is both a dress rehearsal for the Belém Cop30 UN climate conference in November and a rebuke to wealthier countries that have withdrawn to bunkers, launched missiles and choked off aid to poorer regions.
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