Forest fires in Portugal have left 29 people injured, as temperatures are predicted to reach up to 45C (113F) in parts of the country from Tuesday.

On Saturday, the country recorded 125 fires, the highest number in a single day this year, with around 1,500 firefighters fighting three big blazes.

The government declared a state of alert across the country, from Monday to Friday 15 July.

Next week’s weather has caused further concerns due to high temperatures.

From Tuesday, the Portuguese weather agency predicts temperatures of up to 45C (113F) in Alentejo – the region between Lisbon and the Algarve – with the rest of the country expecting temperatures in the high 30Cs and low 40Cs.

A wildfire threatening the largest grove of giant sequoias in Yosemite National Park more than doubled in size in a day, and firefighters were working in difficult terrain Sunday to protect the iconic trees and a small mountain town.

Campers and residents near the blaze were evacuated but the rest of the sprawling park in California remained open, though heavy smoke obscured scenic vistas and created unhealthy air quality.

“Today it’s actually the smokiest that we’ve seen,” Nancy Phillipe, a Yosemite fire information spokesperson, said Sunday. “Up until this morning, the park has not been in that unhealthy category, but that is where we are now.”

More than 500 mature sequoias were threatened in the famed Mariposa Grove but there were no reports of severe damage to any named trees, including the 3,000-year-old Grizzly Giant.

A sprinkler system set up within the grove kept the tree trunks moist and officials were hopeful that the steady spray of water along with previous prescribed burns would be enough to keep flames at bay, Phillipe said.

The cause of the Washburn Fire was under investigation. It had grown to nearly 2.5 square miles (6.7 square kilometers) by Sunday morning, with no containment.

In addition to residents, about 600 to 700 campers who were staying at the Wawona campground in tents, cabins and a historic hotel were ordered to leave.

Temperatures were expected rise and reach the lower 90s in the coming days, but fire crews working in steep terrain were not contending with intense winds, said Jeffrey Barlow, senior meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Hanford.

The giant sequoias, native in only about 70 groves spread along the western slope of California’s Sierra Nevada range, were once considered impervious to flames but have become increasingly vulnerable as wildfires fueled by a buildup of undergrowth from a century of fire suppression and drought exacerbated by climate change have become more intense and destructive.

Phillipe, the park spokesperson, previously said some of the massive trunks had been wrapped in fire-resistant foil for protection, but she corrected herself on Sunday and said that was not the case for this fire. However, crews have wrapped a historic cabin in the protective foil, she said.

Lightning-sparked wildfires over the past two years have killed up to a fifth of the estimated 75,000 large sequoias, which are the biggest trees by volume and a major draw for tourists to the national park that’s the size of the state of Rhode Island.

There was no obvious natural spark for the fire that broke out Thursday next to the park’s Washburn Trail, Phillipe said.

Smoke was reported by visitors walking in the grove that reopened in 2018 after a $40 million renovation that took three years.

A fierce windstorm ripped through the grove over a year ago and toppled 15 giant sequoias, along with countless other trees.

The downed trees, along with massive numbers of pines killed by bark beetles, provided ample fuel for the flames.

Meanwhile, most evacuation orders were lifted Saturday in the Sierra foothills about 80 miles (128 kilometers) to the northwest of the Yosemite fire, where a fire broke out on July 4.

The Electra Fire that began near Jackson was mostly contained, and only areas directly within the fire’s perimeter remained under evacuation orders, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

So far in 2022, over 35,000 wildfires have burned nearly 4.7 million acres in the U.S., according to the National Interagency Fire Center, well above average for both wildfires and acres burned.

The Faroe Islands is to provisionally limit its controversial dolphin hunt to 500 animals, after receiving widespread criticism over last year’s cull, where more than 1,400 were killed.

A review was ordered in February, in response to the outcry.

Animal rights activists have long decried the hunt, deeming the slaughter cruel and unnecessary.

Faroe Islanders give the practice their broad support, arguing the dolphins have fed them for centuries.

Known as the grind (or Grindadrap in Faroese), the hunting of sea mammals – primarily whales – is a tradition that has been practised for hundreds of years on the remote islands, a Danish autonomous territory in the North Atlantic.

But the scale of the killing last year shocked many locals and even drew criticism from groups involved in the practice.

Records showed that it was the largest number of dolphins ever killed on one day in the Faroe Islands.

A petition with almost 1.3 million signatures calling for a ban on the traditional hunt was submitted to the Faroese government.

Now the government has limited the annual catch of white-sided dolphins to 500 for the next two years.

Only the dolphin hunt is currently being reviewed, not the entire grind tradition.

The quota was set after the “unusually large catch” of 1,423 white-sided dolphins in September, the government said in a statement.

“Aspects of that catch were not satisfactory, in particular the unusually large number of dolphins killed,” it added.

However, the government stated that the hunt serves as an “important supplement to the livelihoods of Faroe Islanders”.

SeAH will build its new factory on part of the Teesworks site
Work has officially begun on building a £400m offshore wind turbine factory on the site of a former steelworks.

Korean firm SeAH wind wants to build up to 150 turbine bases a year at its new Teesworks site creating 750 new jobs.

Tees Valley mayor Ben Houchen said the old Redcar steelworks site was “filling up” with SeAH the first “private sector project to get spades in the ground”.

But General Electric has said it will “not be moving forward” with its plans to make turbine blades there.

Ground was officially broken on SeAH’s 90-acre site, the main building of which will be 850m (2.800ft) long, by dignitaries including the South Korean ambassador, Mr Houchen, and business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng.

SeAH president Joonsung Lee said the factory would “bring manufacturing back to Teesside”, adding the UK was the “perfect place” to start the steelmaking company’s journey into wind technology.

Mr Houchen said it would be the world’s “biggest monopile factory” and was a “huge milestone” for the Teeswork site, the Local Democracy Reporting Service said.

Turbines built there would be shipped out to the North Sea wind farms such as Dogger Bank from a new £107m quay being built as part of the Teesworks Freeport scheme.

Teesworks is owned in a 90-10 split in favour of JC Musgrave Capital, Northern Land Management, and DCS Industrial Limited – with 10% kept by the South Tees Development Corporation.

Chris Harrison, on behalf of Northern Land Management and JC Musgrave, said £130m had been spent on demolition and remediation of the wider Teesworks site.

A decade ago, Elon Musk proposed a new form of transport that would shoot passengers through vacuum tunnels in levitating pods at almost the speed of sound — he called it “hyperloop”.

Since then, cities from Abu Dhabi to Zurich have been touted as destinations, research projects have gobbled up millions of dollars and a host of commercial ventures have sprung up — even Richard Branson got involved.

“The transportation network has not had a new mode for over 100 years,” said Rick Geddes, a transport infrastructure expert at Cornell University in the United States, who compared the excitement to the early days of aviation.

But nobody has come close to making the hyperloop work.

The difficulties have ranged from costs and finding suitable locations, to simply persuading people that travelling through a narrow tunnel at speeds faster than a jet plane is a good idea.

Musk’s initial proposal would have been a “barf ride”, transport blogger Alon Levy wrote at the time.

Despite all the problems, though, the hyperloop idea still energises university campuses, corporate board rooms and city halls across the world.

Hidde de Bos, a 22-year-old engineering student, first heard of it four years ago.

His university at Delft in the Netherlands excelled in competitions run by Musk’s SpaceX firm, which invited students to develop pods to fire through vacuum tunnels.

“It made me really excited to see what the possibilities were,” he said.

He is now chief engineer of Delft Hyperloop, a non-profit university spin-off.

De Bos said the SpaceX competitions, which were discontinued in 2019, were too focused on speed and became like “drag races in a tunnel”.

Now, his team is taking part in a student-led competition, European Hyperloop Week, which he hopes will refocus on sustainable energy and developing levitation systems.

And Musk himself recently gave a jolt to the hyperloop fraternity by tweeting that his tunnelling firm The Boring Company would “attempt to build a working Hyperloop” in the coming years.

Musk first mentioned the idea in a 2012 media interview before publishing a white paper about it a year later.

But his direct involvement has been sporadic, and he has always encouraged others to develop the idea.

Los Angeles-based firm Hyperloop TT, among the first and most enthusiastic firms to run with Musk’s idea, welcomed his return.

Rob Miller, the firm’s chief marketing officer, told AFP it was “further validation” for the concept.

But he stressed that hyperloop was now much bigger than just one man.

Bearing out his point, new proposals have emerged in recent months from local authorities ranging from Italy to India.

However, proposals are one thing, and revolutionising public transport is quite another.

In its early years, Hyperloop TT signed exploratory deals in India, China and beyond.

In 2019, the firm promised a 10-kilometre (six-mile) track would open in the UAE the following year.

None of these projects has come to fruition.