Europe

"After a period of cooler weather, swaths of central and eastern Europe face another heatwave as hot air over south-western Europe pushes north-west."

"Biologists once thought that humans did little to affect the course of evolution in the short term. But a recent study of cod in the Baltic Sea reveals how overfishing and selective harvest of the largest fish has caused genetic changes that favor slower growth and smaller size."

"France’s highest court on Thursday blocked a key part of a contentious farming law that would have brought back a banned pesticide."

"Climate change is bringing ever more precipitation and rising seas to low-lying Denmark. In response to troubling predictions, Copenhagen is enacting an ambitious plan to build hundreds of nature-based and engineered projects to soak up, store, and redistribute future floods."

"The EU has narrowly avoided a full-blown trade war with Donald Trump by pledging to buy $750 billion of U.S. oil and gas by the end of his term. But achieving that will be almost impossible."

"Two men who carried out a “moronic mission” to fell one of the most loved and photographed trees in the UK have been jailed."

"Researchers in Europe found everyday plastics, especially farmers’ baler twine, being used by the birds as a building material and entangling their young. It is a problem that affects other species too, say experts in the US, UK and Argentina" 

"Multiple countries in the Mediterranean region have been battling intense wildfires this summer, including France, Greece, Syria and Turkey. These aggressive, recurring fires suggests a new normal of altered lives, landscapes and economies in the Mediterranean basin." 

"Human-caused climate change is responsible for killing about 1,500 people in last week’s European heat wave, a first-of-its-kind rapid study found."

"Days after an intense, record-breaking heat wave sweltered wide swaths of Europe, a group of scientists released a rapid analysis estimating the extent to which climate change might have amplified the heat wave’s death toll."