Peak of French mountain now 4,807 metres high and fluctuates year by year due to changes in Alpine climate

Western Europe’s highest mountain shrank by more than a metre last year. The peak of Mont Blanc in France now stands 4,807.47 metres above sea level, a team of surveyors said on Wednesday, putting “the roof of Europe” 1.29 metres lower than in 2025.

The mountain is about 4,792 metres tall but the summit constantly shifts as heat, wind and precipitation change the thickness of snow and ice on top. The height scientists recorded during an expedition last month was 1.88 metres greater than it was in 2023, when it reached the lowest levels in recent memory.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Design Pics Inc/Alamy

© Photograph: Design Pics Inc/Alamy

© Photograph: Design Pics Inc/Alamy

A small dog that's been on the loose in Yellowstone National Park for a month has been spotted crossing intersections, strolling through employee housing and entering lodges.

A small dog that's been on the loose in Yellowstone National Park for a month has been spotted crossing intersections, strolling through employee housing and entering lodges.

Seven of 16 planetary vital signs are in their most extreme state ever recorded, and El Niño is here to make matters even worse.

At Bybi in Copenhagen, a dedicated group of staff and volunteers have built a community for all centred on the production of honey – much of which is given away for nothing. Could it be replicated elsewhere?

The bees at Bybi, a collective of beekeepers in Copenhagen, live on the roof. Their home is a complex of Victorian buildings, right in the centre of the city, that looks like an idealised vision of the modern social enterprise, ennobled by the architecture of the past. It’s a place of cottage industry in concert with nature, where the marginalised are brought in from the fringes and corporations stand waiting to help, where jobs happen but a lot of the work is done by volunteers, and where – this bit is important – a lot of time is spent discussing ideas.

Oliver Maxwell, Bybi’s 48-year-old founder, encourages me to examine the buildings more closely. They were once a prison, a workhouse and a hospital; their functions today – a homeless shelter, a young offender institution and, until recently, a job centre – are not so different. Denmark’s Victorian transformation, from “agricultural backwater to industrialised agriculture”, was reflected in how they treated people, Maxwell says.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Valdemar Ren/The Guardian

© Photograph: Valdemar Ren/The Guardian

© Photograph: Valdemar Ren/The Guardian

Sales of fast tech like mini fans and disposable e-vapes, as well as wearable health tech such as heart monitors and smartwatches are soaring. They're creating a new e-waste problem but are full of hidden treasure.

The deeply uncomfortable film forces audiences to confront what types of stories we tell ourselves about who has economic and political power.