What happened
Firefighters say this year could surpass the national annual record for the number of wildfires in the UK, with crews having already tackled 856 incidents in England and Wales alone.

Who said what
Phil Garrigan, chair of the National Fire Chiefs Council (NFCC), told The Guardian that firefighters were "already being pushed to their limits" as climate change fuelled "more frequent and intense" weather events, making wildfires a year-round threat.

Speaking to the BBC, Professor Guillermo Rein of Imperial College London warned of the growing threat of "firewaves" – multiple urban fires triggered after prolonged dry spells – saying London could be at risk again this weekend.

What next?
The NFCC said the number of blazes in England and Wales was a third higher than the record-breaking totals seen in 2022 and six times the number recorded last year. The organisation has urged the public not to use barbecues in open countryside, parks and moorland areas. The public has also been advised not to discard cigarettes, matches or glass bottles as they can all ignite dry vegetation.

What happened
Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology say they have used Artificial Intelligence to create two experimental antibiotics capable of killing drug-resistant strains of gonorrhoea and methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). Unlike earlier AI approaches that sifted through existing molecules, the research team used generative algorithms to design the compounds from scratch. Both drugs proved effective in lab dishes and animal models, according to findings published in Cell.

Who said what
Lead researchers said the work could herald a "second golden age" of antibiotic development, tackling a field that had seen little progress for decades. "Drug-resistant infections cause more than a million deaths annually," noted the team, warning that overuse of existing antibiotics had accelerated bacterial resistance.

What next?
The two compounds "still need years of refinement and clinical trials before they could be prescribed", said James Gallagher on the BBC. But MIT scientists believe that AI-led drug design could shorten discovery timelines, potentially leading to more tools to combat the superbugs that currently evade available treatments.

Blue whales have been singing less, and it could be a bellwether of climate change. Warming oceans affect the availability of their only food source, krill, and according to a study published in the journal PLOS One, there's a correlation between blue whale vocalisations and their food supply.

The study tracked more than six years of acoustic monitoring in the Central California Current Ecosystem. During those years, blue whale sounds decreased by approximately 40%.

Blue whales are one of the animals most affected by a lack of food because krill is their "only food source", while humpback whales "also eat small fish such as anchovies and sardines", said Newsweek. And with fewer sounds coming from the ocean giants, there's "concern about how changing ocean conditions, likely caused by climate change, are impacting the species and what that will mean for biodiversity and whale numbers in the region".

Marine heat waves are only going to get worse due to fossil fuel usage. Oceans act as the world's largest carbon sink, meaning they "already absorb more than 90% of the excess heat from climate change", said The Independent.

Blue whales, the largest animal on the planet, can provide important "clues about how resilient different whale species may be in the face of changing ocean conditions", said Newsweek. As they "navigate seas transformed by climate change, noise and industrial activity, their voices offer a vital record of a world in flux", said National Geographic. And if a species "capable of roaming an entire coastline begins to falter", struggling to find food and delaying reproduction, researchers say the signal is "unmistakable: something deep within the ecosystem is shifting".