Sunday, April 30, 2017

Household food waste level 'unacceptable'

The level of household food waste in England is "unacceptable" and householders have a key role to play in reducing it, MPs have said.
The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee said 7.3m tonnes of food was wasted in UK households in 2015.
The committee said shops should relax standards that prevent the sale of "wonky vegetables" to help cut waste.
And the next government should consider whether "best before" dates were needed, it said.
Committee chairman Neil Parish said: "One-third of food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted globally, and in the UK over £10bn worth of food is thrown away by households every year.
"Economically, food waste costs households hundreds of pounds a year and causes increased disposal costs to local authorities, pushing up council tax bills.
"Socially, it is a scandal that people are going hungry and using food banks when so much produce is being wasted.
"And environmentally, it is a disaster, because energy and resources are wasted in production only for the food to end up rotting in landfills where it produces methane - a potent climate-changing gas."
Food waste costs the average person in the UK £200 per year, the report said.
The average household lost £470 a year because of avoidable food waste, while those with children lost £700, it said.
The report said about two-thirds of the potential reduction in UK food waste would need to come from action at a household level.
It said it would be "hugely challenging" to reduce food waste further and would require "a considerable investment of resource".
In their report, Food Waste in England, the MPs said:
  • The incoming government should establish a national food waste target for England.
  • It should examine how lessons on food and avoiding waste could be incorporated into the curriculum.
  • Waste reduction body Wrap, a charity which helps people and businesses reduce waste, should have sufficient money from the government to maintain its efforts in raising awareness.
  • Food businesses and retailers over a certain size should be forced to separate food waste for collection.
  • Supermarkets should be required by the government to publish data on the amount of food they bin. The report commended Tesco for already doing so and Sainsbury's for moving in the same direction.
  • Retailers should increase the amount of surplus food they give away to charities.
  • Retailers should improve their packaging by, for example, increasing resealable packets.
  • Retailers should make food storage instructions clearer on packaging.
  • The next government should work with restaurants on reducing waste by, for example, offering smaller portions, reducing the amount of sides, and encouraging the taking home of leftovers.
It also called for a review of whether "best before dates" were needed at all.
While "use by" dates refer to food safety, "best before" labels refer only to quality.
Foods will be safe to eat after the "best before" date, but may not be at their best.
The report said current date labelling was unnecessarily confusing, and guidance should be issued to the industry by the end of the year.
The report also highlighted the issue of suppliers' food being rejected for cosmetic reasons.
It said up to a quarter of apples, up to a fifth of onions and up to about an eighth of potatoes were rejected by supermarkets on cosmetic grounds alone.

DNA of extinct humans found in caves

The DNA of extinct humans can be retrieved from sediments in caves - even in the absence of skeletal remains.
Researchers found the genetic material in sediment samples collected from seven archaeological sites.
The remains of ancient humans are often scarce, so the new findings could help scientists learn the identity of inhabitants at sites where only artefacts have been found.
The results are described in Science.
Antonio Rosas, a scientist at Spain's Natural Science Museum in Madrid, said: "This work represents an enormous scientific breakthrough.
"We can now tell which species of hominid occupied a cave and on which particular stratigraphic level, even when no bone or skeletal remains are present."
"We know that several components of sediments can bind DNA," said lead researcher Matthias Meyer of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.
"We therefore decided to investigate whether hominin DNA may survive in sediments at archaeological sites known to have been occupied by ancient hominins."
The team collaborated with researchers excavating at seven dig sites in Belgium, Croatia, France, Russia and Spain.
They collected sediment samples covering a time span from 14,000 to 550,000 years ago.
Back in the lab, they fished out tiny fragments of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) - genetic material from the mitochondria, which act as the "powerhouses" of biological cells. Even sediment samples that had been stored at room temperature for years yielded DNA.
Dr Meyer and his team members were able to identify the DNA of various animals belonging to 12 mammalian families, including extinct species such as the woolly mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, cave bear and cave hyena.
The scientists looked specifically for DNA from ancient humans in the samples.
"From the preliminary results, we suspected that in most of our samples, DNA from other mammals was too abundant to detect small traces of human DNA," said co-author Viviane Slon, from the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, Germany.
"We then switched strategies and started targeting specifically DNA fragments of human origin."
The team members managed to retrieve DNA from Neanderthals in the cave sediments of four archaeological sites, including in layers where no human skeletal remains have been discovered.
In addition, they found new samples of Denisovan DNA in sediments from Denisova Cave in Russia.
"The technique could increase the sample size of the Neanderthal and Denisovan mitochondrial genomes, which until now were limited by the number of preserved remains," co-author Spanish National Research Council scientist Carles Lalueza-Fox told the AFP news agency.
"And it will probably be possible to even recover substantial parts of nuclear genomes."
Svante Pääbo, director of the Evolutionary Genetics department at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, commented: "By retrieving hominin DNA from sediments, we can detect the presence of hominin groups at sites and in areas where this cannot be achieved with other methods.
"This shows that DNA analyses of sediments are a very useful archaeological procedure, which may become routine in the future."

Fifa: Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Sabah resigns following denial of any wrongdoing


High-ranking Fifa official Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Sabah has resigned a day after denying claims linking him to a fraud case.
Following the release of court documents, Kuwaiti Sheikh Ahmad was linked in media reports to Richard Lai, the Fifa audit and compliance committee member who was banned for bribery.
Lai admitted taking $950,000 (£735,000) in bribes in a US Court on Thursday.
In a statement, Ahmad said he "vigorously" denies any wrongdoing.
The 53-year-old, a member of both Fifa's ruling council and president of the Olympic Council of Asia, had admitted on Saturday to being aware of the media speculation but said he was "very surprised" by the allegations.
Court documents in Lai's case did not not directly name Sheikh Ahmad but referred to someone who "at various times" was a "high-ranking official of Fifa, the Kuwait Football Association (KFA), and the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA)".
And in a second statement announcing his resignation, Ahmad said it was in Fifa's "best interests" for him to go.
"With regards to alleged illegal payments to Richard Lai, I can only refer to my previous statement and vigorously deny any wrongdoing," it read.
"I intend to work with all relevant authorities to disprove these, for me, totally surprising allegations.
"However, I do not want these allegations to create divisions or distract attention from the upcoming AFC (Asian Football Confederation) and Fifa congresses.
"Therefore, after careful consideration, I have decided it is in the best interests of Fifa and the AFC for me to withdraw my candidacy for the Fifa council and resign from my current football positions.
"I have been honoured to serve on the Fifa council, Fifa reform committee and AFC for the last two years and I will continue to support the family of football once these allegations have been disproved."
Lai, president of the Guam Football Association and a US citizen, admitted two counts of wire fraud conspiracy - relating to accepting and paying bribes - and one count of failing to disclose foreign bank accounts.
He agreed to pay more than $1.1m (£850,000) in forfeiture and penalties.
Following Ahmad's resignation, Fifa president Gianni Infantino stated: "I have taken note of the decision of Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Sabah.
"I want to thank him for taking this decision which certainly was not easy to take but is in the best interest for Fifa."

Analysis

BBC Radio 5 live sports news correspondent Richard Conway
Sheikh Ahmad Al-Sabah is one of the most powerful sports officials in the world. And chances are you've probably never heard of him.
That's the way he likes it. He is a man who operates in the shadows.
The Kuwaiti was a powerbroker in Fifa and the Asian Football Confederation. As it stands he still holds sway within the Olympic movement.
He helped Thomas Bach get elected as IOC president in 2013, leveraging his position as president of the Olympic Council of Asia to deliver key votes for the German.
There was intriguingly no mention in his statement about his Olympic jobs though, showing he may want to cling on there.
However, his resignation from football will help Fifa and the AFC limit the damage these allegations have caused.
Ahmad was identified in a US court case as allegedly giving bribes to another football official in return for votes and support. He denies any wrongdoing but his resignation from all of his football positions may now stop altogether, or at least delay, a lengthy and embarrassing ethics investigation from taking place.
Football's world governing body, trying to reassert its moral authority after years of financial and political scandal, will be thankful one of its top officials has gone relatively quietly.
However, there may be more pain to still to come. The US court case which prompted Ahmad to walk away marked a potentially significant move into alleged wrongdoing by Asian football officials for the first time.
Fifa president Gianni Infantino has already declared that the crisis for his organisation is over - Sheikh Ahmad's resignation shows there is quite clearly still some way to go before that rings true.

Dozens of Yazidis enslaved by IS in Iraq now free

Thirty-six members of the Yazidi religious minority are free after nearly three years in the hands of so-called Islamic State (IS), the UN says.
They have been taken to UN centres in Dohuk in Kurdish northern Iraq.
It is unclear whether they escaped in Iraq or were freed, as the UN declined to give more information to avoid jeopardising future releases.
IS killed and enslaved thousands of Yazidis after seizing the northern town of Sinjar in 2014.
Kurdish Peshmerga forces regained control in 2015 but many Yazidis were held captive by IS elsewhere as the group took over large swathes of northern Iraq.
The 36 Yazidi survivors include men, women and children who were enslaved, the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs said.
They reached Dohuk two nights ago where they are being housed in centres established by the UN Population Fund.
There, they are being reunited with family members and offered care including clothing and medical and psychological aid, the UN said.
Three of the group will receive specialised services at dedicated women's centres.
The UN estimates that 1,500 women and girls are still being held by IS and could be suffering protracted sexual abuse.
The UN did not say where the 36 had been held or where they regained their liberty.
IS has been under increasing pressure in Iraq, losing much of the territory it seized in 2014.
Iraqi forces have recaptured most the city of Mosul from IS, but they are still trying to push the group out of the Old City district in the west.

Ueli Steck: Everest claims 'Swiss Machine' climber

The Swiss climber Ueli Steck has been killed on Mount Everest, Nepal's tourist office says.
Steck, who was known as the "Swiss Machine", died in an accident while acclimatising for an attempt on the mountain without oxygen by a new route.
The 40-year-old had won multiple awards and was known for his rapid ascents.
His body has been recovered from the mountain. Reports suggested Steck was climbing alone near Camp II.
The Himalayan Times wrote that he had been seen climbing near the Nuptse Face in the early hours of Saturday, and may have slipped and fallen on the icy slope.
On Wednesday, Steck wrote on his Facebook page that he had a "quick day from Basecamp up to 7,000m and back" as he believed "active acclimatisation" was the most effective way of getting used to high altitude.
The climber reached Mount Everest's summit without oxygen in 2012, and in 2015 climbed all 82 Alpine peaks over 4,000m (13,100ft) in 62 days.
Steck had returned to the world's tallest mountain four years on from an altercation with sherpas which caused him to abandon an attempt to climb Everest and Lhotse.
The world's highest traffic jam
In a video about his Everest-Lhotse project ahead of his departure for the Himalayas, Steck said he felt super-ready and psyched. "My body is as strong as it was never before," he added.
Asked about his definition of success for the ambitious plans to traverse Everest and Lhotse via the Hornbein Couloir, Steck said: "To be not successful is just if you have an accident or if you're going to die, that's definitely not successful, all the other things, it's a success already."
He died while preparing for the attempt.
Last year Steck and fellow climber David Goettler found the bodies of two American mountaineers in Tibet, 16 years after they were killed by a huge avalanche.
British mountaineer Kenton Cool paid tribute to Steck, describing him as "a true inspiration" who "showed us all what was possible in the mountains and beyond".
The British Mountaineering Council described him as a "legendary mountaineer and all-round great guy".
Ueli Steck set new standards in alpine climbing - setting a string of records for making breathtakingly quick solo ascents of classic routes.
He also played a big part in bringing the sport to a new audience through the epic films made of his exploits.
He was nicknamed the "Swiss Machine" for his ruthlessly methodical approach and his ability to keep going even after pushing himself to the limits of human endurance.
In 2015 he climbed one of the world's most famous walls, the North Face of the Eiger, in two hours 47 minutes - a time that would have been unthinkable to the early pioneers of the sport, who took days to complete it.

Thursday, April 27, 2017

First Americans claim sparks controversy

A study that claims humans reached the Americas 130,000 years ago - much earlier than previously suggested - has run into controversy.
Humans are thought to have arrived in the New World no earlier than 25,000 years ago, so the find would push back the first evidence of settlement by more than 100,000 years.
The conclusions rest on analysis of animal bones and tools from California.
But many experts contacted by the BBC said they doubted the claims.
Thomas Deméré, Steven Holen and colleagues examined material from the Cerutti Mastodon site near San Diego. The site was originally uncovered in 1992, during highway construction work. Possible stone tools were discovered alongside the smashed up remains of a mastodon (Mammut americanum) - an extinct relative of mammoths and living elephants.
The researchers behind the latest study were unable to carry out radiocarbon dating on the remains, so they used a technique called uranium-thorium dating on several bone fragments, coming up with a date of 130,000 years.
The team members found that some of the bones and teeth bore a characteristic breakage pattern known as spiral fracturing, considered to occur when the bone is fresh. Additionally, some of the bones showed typical signs of being smashed with hard objects.
Rocks found alongside the mastodon remains show signs of wear and being struck against other surfaces, the researchers say. They conclude that these represent hammerstones and anvils - two types of stone tool used by prehistoric cultures around the world.
Dr Deméré, curator of palaeontology at the San Diego Natural History Museum, said the totality of evidence at the site had led team members to the conclusion that "humans were processing [working on or breaking up] mastodon limb bones using hammerstones and anvils and that the processing occurred at the site of burial 130,000 years ago".
Dr Steve Holen, co-director of the Center for American Paleolithic Research in South Dakota, commented: "We have conducted two experiments breaking elephant bones with large rock hammers and anvils. We produced exactly the same kind of fracture patterns as we found on the Cerutti mastodon limb bones."
He added: "We can eliminate all of the natural processes that break bones like this. These bones were not broken by carnivore chewing, or by other animals trampling on this bone... the distribution patterns of the fractured pieces of bone right around the anvils is fairly conclusive evidence because we see that experimentally also."
It's not entirely clear why early humans smashed up the mastodon bones.
"We have no evidence that this is a kill or butchery site, but what we do have evidence of is that people were here breaking up the limb bones of this mastodon, removing some of the big thick pieces - probably to make tools out of - and they may also have been extracting the marrow for food," said Dr Holen.
But if the team's conclusions are correct, people could have reached the Americas from Asia via a land bridge across the Bering Strait. This bridge periodically emerged during cold periods - when ocean water was locked up as ice - and disappeared when the climate warmed again and sea levels rose.
The earliest widely accepted evidence for humans in the Americas dates to roughly 15,000 years ago. This is a field where fierce debate has raged over rolling back the ages of human occupation by one or two thousand years, let alone 100,000.
Dr Deméré and colleagues are not the first scientists to posit much earlier dates for people settling in the Americas. What distinguishes the latest work is that it has been published in one of the most prestigious peer-reviewed science journals in the world - Nature.
However, other experts remain unconvinced by the new evidence. Prof Michael R Waters, from Texas A&M University in College Station, described the new paper as "provocative".
He told BBC News the study "purports to provide evidence of human occupation of the Americas some 115,000 years before the earliest well established evidence".
Prof Waters explained: "I have no issues with the geological information - although I would like to know more about the broader geological context - and the likely age of the locality. However, I am sceptical of the evidence presented that humans interacted with the mastodon at the Cerutti Mastodon site."
"To demonstrate such early occupation of the Americas requires the presence of unequivocal stone artefacts. There are no unequivocal stone tools associated with the bones... this site is likely just an interesting paleontological locality."
Prof Tom Dillehay, from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, told BBC News the claim was not plausible.
Another authority on early American archaeology, Prof David Meltzer from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, said: "Nature is mischievous and can break bones and modify stones in a myriad of ways.
"With evidence as inherently ambiguous as the broken bones and non-descript broken stones described in the paper, it is not enough to demonstrate they could have been broken/modified by humans; one has to demonstrate they could not have been broken by nature.
"This is an equifinality problem: multiple processes can cause the same product."
Chris Stringer, from London's Natural History Museum, said that "if the results stand up to further scrutiny, this does indeed change everything we thought we knew about the earliest human occupation of the Americas," adding: "If true, the results may well mean that archaic people like the Denisovans or Neanderthals were the first colonisers of the Americas, rather than modern humans."
He explained that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence - each aspect requires the strongest scrutiny," but Prof Stringer also observed: "High and concentrated forces must have been required to smash the thickest mastodon bones, and the low energy depositional environment seemingly provides no obvious alternative to humans using the heavy cobbles found with the bones."
The dating method used by the researchers to assign an age to this material works by measuring the radioactive decay of uranium that becomes incorporated into the bones over time.
"The type of samples that are most widely dated with this technique are ones that contain uranium as a primary substitution in their structure, such as inorganic carbonates, like cave carbonates, or corals, which take in uranium as they take calcium out of seawater," Dr Warren D Sharp, an expert in isotope dating from the Berkeley Geochronology Center in California, told BBC News.
"What they've done in this paper is applied it to bone. That can be challenging because bones don't contain significant amounts of primary uranium. They acquire the uranium when they become buried - they take it up from soil porewaters."
He added: "That said, I think the dating is sound. They have done a very careful job. They have dated multiple samples and obtained similar results. The systematics of the concentrations of uranium in profiles across the bones are what you'd expect for reliable dates. And the bones that they've dated seem to be an integral part of the site, so their age should be relevant to the rest of the observations."
Prof Meltzer said the history of the material from the site meant it would be difficult to prove that humans broke the bones. He explained: "[The evidence] comes from a site that was excavated [approximately] 25 years ago as a salvage project during a highway expansion.
"The kinds of detailed information necessary to understand how these bones and stones came to be... is simply not available. The authors do what they can with the extant collections, but they necessarily have to rely more on generalisations about what could (or could not) account for the evidence - which gets us back to the equifinality problem."

Baby humpback whales 'whisper' to mums to avoid predators

The humpback whale is known for its loud haunting songs, which can be heard 20 miles away.
However, new recordings show mothers and calves "whisper" to each other, seemingly to avoid attracting predators.
The quiet grunts and squeaks can be heard only at close range.
By calling softly to its mother, the calf is less likely be overheard and preyed on by killer whales, scientists believe.
Dr Simone Videsen of Aarhus University in Denmark is part of a team of scientists who tracked eight baby whales and two mothers to learn more about the first months of a humpback whale's life.
They used special sound and movement recorders, which were attached to the whale's skin via suction cups.
"We were really surprised because humpback whales are really vocal normally and they have these long songs," she said.
"But when you look at the communication pattern between mother and calf you see that they're often silent and they do produce these weaker signals."
She said it was the first time that communication signals between mother and calf had been recorded in this way.
The researchers believe mothers and calves communicate quietly to avoid being overheard by killer whales or male humpback whales who are in search of a mate.
Calves must stay close to their mother to feed and grow before they set off on their long annual migration to the food-rich waters of the Antarctic.
The nursery grounds of tropical waters are key to their survival. Here, they must feed and build up fat stores to sustain them as they travel 5,000 miles across open water in rough seas.
The findings will help in the conservation of this habitat, say the researchers, who studied a population of whales outside Exmouth Gulf off West Australia.
"From our research, we have learned that mother-calf pairs are likely to be sensitive to increases in ship noise," said Dr Videsen.
"Because mother and calf communicate in whispers, shipping noise could easily mask these quiet calls."
There are two major humpback whale populations, one in the northern hemisphere and the other in the south.
Both breed in tropical waters and then migrate to the Arctic or Antarctic to feed.
Humpback whales are slow to reproduce; pregnancy lasts for 11 months and calves stay with their mothers until they are one-year-old.
The research is published in the journal, Functional Ecology.

Wednesday, April 26, 2017

Nasa waits on Cassini radio contact from Saturn

Controllers and scientists must wait until Thursday to hear from Cassini.
The probe was due early on Wednesday to make the first of 22 dives in between Saturn's cloudtops and the inner edge of its spectacular rings.
The daredevil flights are designed to gather pictures and other science data of unprecedented resolution.
But Cassini was out of radio contact for the duration of the plunge and is not scheduled to re-establish communications for another day.
Because the probe was moving so fast - at over 110,000km/h (70,000mph) - there was some risk attached to flying through the ring plane.
An impact with even a tiny ice or rock particle at that velocity could do a lot of damage, and so the decision was made to point Cassini's big antenna in the direction of travel, to act as a shield.
But, of course, that meant it could not also then talk to Earth at the same time.
Assuming all goes well, 21 similar dives will be made over the course of the next five months before the probe dumps itself in the atmosphere of Saturn. With so little fuel left in its tanks, Cassini cannot continue its mission for much longer.
The US space agency (Nasa) is calling the gap-runs the "grand finale", in part because of their ambition. They promise pictures of unparalleled resolution and science data that finally unlocks key puzzles about the make-up and history of this huge world.
"We're going to top off this mission with a lot of new measurements - some amazing new data," said Athena Coustenis from the Paris Observatory in Meudon, France.
"We're expecting to get the composition, structure and dynamics of the atmosphere, and fantastic information about the rings," she told the BBC.
A key objective is to determine the mass and therefore the age of the rings. The more massive they are, the older they are likely to be - perhaps as old as Saturn itself.
Scientists will do this by studying how the velocity of the probe is altered as it flies through the gravity field generated by the planet and the great encircling bands of ice.
"In the past, we were not able to determine the mass of the rings because Cassini was flying outside them," explained Luciano Iess of the Sapienza University of Rome, Italy.
"Essentially, the contribution of the rings to the gravity field was mixed up with the oblateness of Saturn. It was impossible. But by flying between the rings and the planet, Cassini will be able to disentangle the two effects.
"We're able to tell the velocity of Cassini to an accuracy of a few microns per second. This is indeed fantastic when you think Cassini is more than one billion kilometres away from the Earth."
Having the mass number might not straightforwardly resolve the age issue, however, cautioned Nicolas Altobelli, who is project scientist for Nasa's Cassini mission partner, the European Space Agency.
"We still need to understand the rings' composition. They are made of very nearly pure water-ice. If they're very old, formed at the same time as Saturn, how come they still look so fresh when they're constantly bombarded with meteorite material?" he pondered.
One possibility is that the rings are actually very young, perhaps the remains of a giant comet that got too close to Saturn and broke apart into innumerable fragments.
Coustenis, Iess and Altobelli discussed the end phases of the Cassini mission here in Vienna at the General Assembly of the European Geosciences Union.
The earliest that Cassini is expected to radio home is 07:00 GMT (08:00 BST) on Thursday. Contact should come through Nasa's 70m-wide Deep Space Network antenna at Goldstone, California.
If a stable communications link is established, pictures and other data ought to start coming down about half an hour later.

Builders 'behind UK flooding risk'

New housing developments that contribute to the risk of flooding are still being built, MPs say.
House builders are supposed to create housing schemes that catch water with features like green roofs and porous road surfaces.
The government has frequently said it's committed to reducing flood risk.
But the Commons Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Efra) committee says rules on drainage for new homes are still weak and poorly enforced.
The MPs say this has to change, because the government's commitment of a million new homes by 2020 must be achieved without an increase in flood risk.
The idea of catching water where it falls has shot up the policy agenda following heavy flooding in recent years.
In house-building it's known as Sustainable Drainage (SuDS) in which developers create features like ponds and grassy hollows, which catch heavy rains and provide the spin-off benefit of wildlife habitats.
The MPs say ministers have espoused SuDS in principle - but have failed to put policy in place to deliver results.
That means far too few sustainable drainage schemes have been installed, and those that do exist don't provide all the potential benefits of flood-prevention, wildlife enhancement, and nicer surroundings for people.
The chair, Neil Parrish, said: "The government purports to support SuDS but has not set up a robust policy framework to promote their use.
"Instead it has adopted sub-standard planning policies which have led to far too few schemes, many of which are of low quality. Significant improvements must be delivered."
The committee wants house builders to lose the automatic right to connect to the sewers.
The environment department Defra says it is constrained from commenting by rules on election purdah - but it has been under pressure from house builders to avoid what they say are potentially onerous conditions that would be impractical and increase costs.
But Mr Parish said: "Guidance must be tightened to reduce significantly the potential for developers to opt out from installing schemes on cost or site-practicality grounds."
Over recent years several trial schemes have claimed a reduction in flood risk by innovative low-tech measures. In Llanelli, for instance, a school has gouged a dip out of its playing fields which catches excess water during a downpour.
The committee wants to see much more of this sort of thing.
The debate is part of a wider discussion on how water can be captured where it falls. Looking to the post-Brexit era, ministers are considering how to incentivise more farmers to store water on their land. A pioneer scheme at Pickering in Yorkshire is still being appraised.