The massacre of Red Crescent and civil defence aid workers has elicited little coverage and no condemnation by major powers — this is the age of lawlessness, warns JOE GILL
Streams, drought, flood, eight-eyed blood hedgehogs
DAVE BANGS takes a walk down a Wealden brook…

JUST after midsummer, sitting on a gravel “beach” by a shallow murmuring stream, dappled by sunlight through the alder canopy, we divided up our snacks and got down to serious eating.
From the corner of my vision a flash of red and blue whizzed by just in front of our noses. I froze. Then a few seconds later a second jewel flashed across, followed by a familiar whistle … one of the two kingfishers calling to its companion.
That kingfisher pair told us something. Their presence confirmed that the stream still held a healthy population of fishlings — bullhead (“miller’s thumb” to us oldies), minnow, troutlings — and that the birds likely had a bank nest somewhere close by, though we failed to find it.
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From John Clare country to ancient fenland, Ed Miliband’s solar farm approvals risk industrialising precious rural spaces — we must find greener solutions that don’t sacrifice our countryside’s beauty, writes DAVE BANGS

Decades of right to buy have eroded the social balance of our countryside — and now holiday lets and second home owners from the cities are compounding the crisis, writes DAVE BANGS

Spring has sprung in all its glory — but DAVE BANGS is disturbed by the absence of a crucial sound