Environmental campaigners scored a rare victory in Albania after authorities announced the creation of a national park to protect the Vjosa River, one of Europe’s largest undammed waterways.

For years, activists lobbied to save what they call Europe’s last major “wild river” — one whose course is unaltered by industry or dams — recruiting A-listers like Leonardo DiCaprio to their cause.

Spanning more than 400 kilometres (248 miles), the Vjosa and its tributaries will now enjoy the highest level of protection.

Albania’s Prime Minister Edi Rama praised the project.

“It is a transformational moment for the whole area and also for the future of communities around it, for the whole country,” Rama told AFP.

Activists agreed, saying the national park breaks new ground in the world of conservation.

“It establishes, for the first time, a conservation concept where an entire river system is protected and not just individual sections of a river,” said Ulrich Eichelmann, head of the Austria-based advocacy organisation RiverWatch.

On Wednesday, Rama and Tourism and Environment Minister Mirela Kumbaro oversaw a ceremony inaugurating the opening of the project in Tepelena, a southern town on the river’s banks.

Local and international NGOs have been battling for years to raise awareness of the need to protect one of the last undammed rivers on the continent.

In Albania, the river was threatened by a string of hydroelectric power projects, which have now been banned by authorities.

Activists and residents living near the Vjosa’s banks have been warning for years that the dams would cause floods and grave damage to the river’s ecosystem.

Around 1,200 animal and plant species have been recorded along the Vjosa, including around 40 that are listed internationally as threatened.

Before the ceremony Kumbaro said proclaiming the 12,727-hectare (31,449-acre) national park was a major milestone for Albania, which relies on hydroelectric energy to power its economy.

“But, we consider the huge responsibility we have towards our children and the Albania we are going to leave them as more important,” she said.

Armed forces in eastern Libya say they have found about two and a half tonnes of uranium ore that were reported missing by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Ten drums containing the ore were found near the border with Chad, said the head of the forces’ media unit.

The IAEA has not verified the claim.

The agency sounded the alarm after a visit by its inspectors earlier this week to the undisclosed site, which was not in government-controlled territory.

Since Libya’s former leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi was deposed in 2011, the country has been divided into competing political and military factions.

It is now split between an interim, internationally recognised government in the capital, Tripoli, and another one in the east, led by Gen Khalifa Haftar.

Neither is in control of the south, where the uranium was taken from.

The statement on Thursday came from the self-styled Libyan National Army, the military force that backs the eastern Libyan administration.

Gen Khaled al-Mahjoub, commander of its communications division, said the containers of uranium had been found “barely five kilometres [three miles]” from where they had been stored in southern Libya.

The IAEA says the site has been difficult to reach in recent times.

Inspectors had wanted to visit the location last year, but the trip had to be postponed because of fighting between rival Libyan militias.

Many foreign governments and groups have been vying for influence in Libya since Nato-backed forces overthrew Col Gaddafi. They include Russia’s Wagner Group and Islamic State militants.

The oil-rich country is largely lawless and has previously been described as an “arms bazaar”.

In 2013, the UN reported that weapons smuggled out of Libya were fuelling conflicts in other parts of Africa and the Middle East.

The devastation caused by a tropical storm that ripped through Malawi, killing 225 people is a “national tragedy”, the president has said.

Lazarus Chakwera promised to intensify search and rescue operations, as he attended the funeral of some victims.

Tropical Storm Freddy led to people being swept away by raging waters, or being buried under landslides.

The government has set up 30 emergency camps for at least 20,000 people who have had to leave their homes.

Blantyre, the hilly commercial capital of Malawi, has been worst-affected, with residents dying in landslides and homes crumbling into flood waters.

“Even our health workers need help,” Health Minister Khumbize Kandodo Chiponda told the BBC’s Focus on Africa programme.

Described the situation as “very fragile”, she said that more than five million people had been affected by the storm.

“We have a history of getting cyclones. Unfortunately for Freddy, it was totally different, totally unexpected,” she said.

“We are still recovering dead bodies. One child was recovered, fortunately still alive,” Ms Chiponda added.

The government’s disaster management agency said that 41 people were still missing, and more than 700 had been injured as the storm tore through Blantyre, and other parts of southern Malawi.

“My best friend, her brother, sister and mother went with the mudslide and their bodies have not been found. It’s devastating. You can’t even mourn,” 19-year-old Blantyre resident Fadila Njolomole was quoted by AFP news agency as saying.

President Chakwera, wearing rubber boots and a raincoat, attended the funeral service of 21 victims at a primary school in the city.

“I appeal for more assistance from international partners and donors. This is a national tragedy that has affected every one of us,” he said.

He declared 14 days of national mourning.

A plan to build the world’s first octopus farm has raised deep concerns among scientists over the welfare of the famously intelligent creatures.

The farm in Spain’s Canary Islands would raise about a million octopuses annually for food, according to confidential documents seen by the BBC.

They have never been intensively farmed and some scientists call the proposed icy water slaughtering method “cruel.”

The Spanish multinational behind the plans denies the octopuses will suffer.

The confidential planning proposal documents from the company, Nueva Pescanova, were given to the BBC by the campaign organisation Eurogroup for Animals.

Nueva Pescanova sent the proposal to the Canary Islands’ General Directorate of Fishing.

Octopuses caught in the wild using pots, lines and traps are eaten all over the world, including in the Mediterranean and in Asia and Latin America.

The race to discover the secret to breeding them in captivity has been going on for decades. It’s difficult as the larvae only eat live food and need a carefully controlled environment, but Nueva Pescanova announced in 2019 that it had made a scientific breakthrough.

The prospect of intensively farming octopus has already led to opposition: Lawmakers in the US state of Washington have proposed banning the practice before it even starts.

Nueva Pescanova’s plans reveal that the octopuses, which are solitary animals used to the dark, would be kept in tanks with other octopuses, at times under constant light. The creatures – the species octopus vulgaris – would be housed in around 1,000 communal tanks in a two-storey building in the port of Las Palmas in Gran Canaria.

They would be killed by being put in containers of water kept at -3C, according to the documents.

Currently there are no welfare rules in place, as octopuses have never been commercially farmed before. However studies have shown that this method of slaughtering fish using ‘ice slurry’ causes a slow, stressful death.

The World Organisation for Animal Health says it “results in poor fish welfare” and the Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) – the leading farmed seafood certification scheme – is proposing a ban unless fish are stunned beforehand.