Decision a major step forward for $21.7bn coalmine, which green groups warn will fuel global warming and compound threats to Great Barrier ReefRelated: Adani fails to force activists to pay $1m costs for Carmichael challengeThe Queensland government has granted three mining leases for Adani’s multi-billion dollar Carmichael coalmine, which will be the largest in Australia. Continue reading...

Musicians’ love affair with tonewoods such as mahogany and and ebony plays mayhem with sustainability – and synthetic materials sound just as goodThe tag “rock’n’roll royalty” should really belong to the instruments: the backstory of some of the world’s best acoustic guitars is frankly breathtaking. Take Bedell’s Antiquity Milagro Parlor guitar. It’s carved from a 400-year-old Brazilian rosewood tree. Wandering troubadours who possess one should make sure they have their “guitar passport” handy, otherwise their instrument could be confiscated by customs officials under trade-in-endangered-species laws.Many other guitars sold each year (nearly 3m in the US alone) are also made from rare timber. Thanks to musicians’ bias for tropical tonewoods – particularly mahogany, rosewood and ebony – this is a market in which the illegal timber trade can flourish. That’s anything but harmonious when you bear in mind that every two seconds an area of forest the size of a football field is clear-cut by illegal loggers. Continue reading...

Bruni’s taps deliver poison to its poor, largely Hispanic residents but other rural towns in the state suffer with water that is black, brown or stinks of rotten eggsJulio Perez sprayed his yard with water from a garden hose. While the flowers were no doubt grateful for the refreshment on a warm afternoon, there was no chance of him quenching his own thirst with a gulp of tap water.The 66-year-old lives in Bruni, a tiny Texas town notable for a very unwelcome reason: the quantity of arsenic in its water. In 2014-15 the average concentration of the carcinogen was 79.6 parts per billion: almost eight times the federal limit. Continue reading...

It’s a sign that spring has arrived as cherry trees burst into flower around the world. Here are some of the most beautiful, including a selection submitted by our readers via GuardianWitness Continue reading...

The continuing refugee crisis in Europe, the EgyptAir hijacking, West Indies’ dramatic semi-final victory over India in the World Twenty20 – the best photography in news, culture and sport from around the world this week Continue reading...

Collusion between private sector and government exacerbating problems, says corruption official

I’ve been making plans for yet another in the string of springs that I never expected to seeIn the oncology clinic at Addenbrooke’s, my latest blood test went pretty well, but I got a bit down in the mouth anyway, because for someone in my condition, even a good result is a reminder that you have to go on throwing a double six to stay in the game. In the cab home, however, gloom was soon dispelled by the sight of the flowers in the lawns of the college “backs”, so called to help foreign visitors grasp the Cambridge concept of a back yard that looks better than anybody else’s front yard.Some of the daffodils had been on display for weeks, but now they had tripled their numbers and were being joined by searching bursts of crocuses, erupting like Byzantine tracer through the grass. Or perhaps Botticelli’s Primavera girl had just gone dancing through, or Matilda from Dante’s Earthly Paradise. Or perhaps they were just crocuses. Good of them, though, to arrive just in time for me to notice. Continue reading...

Borth, Ceredigion The stumps rise from clots of dark peat lying on boulder-clay and held together by a lattice of blanched rootsSmall waves hissed into the pebbled shore, clacked stone against stone as I made my way to the drowned forest. One of many around the coasts of Wales (a particularly fine example lies just beyond the east end of Rhyl’s promenade), that at Borth has become more prominent since storms in 2014 scoured away covering sand, which in time will conceal it again. Continue reading...

About 200 people rode on horseback to protest against pipeline that encroaches on tribal lands and could pollute Missouri river: ‘We’re looking out for all people’Dozens of tribal members from several Native American nations took to horseback on Friday to protest against the proposed construction of an oil pipeline which would cross the Missouri river just yards from tribal lands in North Dakota.The group of tribal members, which numbered around 200, according to a tribal spokesman, said they were worried that the Dakota Access Pipeline, proposed by a subsidiary of the Dallas, Texas-based Energy Transfer Partners, would lead to contamination of the river. The proposed route also passes through lands of historical significance to the Standing Rock Lakota Sioux Nation, including burial grounds. Continue reading...

Satellite maps show tiger habitat is being lost but still adequate for meeting international goal of doubling tiger numbers by 2022Forests that harbour tigers are being lost but are still large enough to take double the world’s tiger population in the next six years, according to a study using new satellite mapping technology.

Whale experts discover orca they know as Comet is same killer whale that swam into Northern Irish city nearly 40 years agoA killer whale that sparked widespread attention when it swam into a Northern Irish city almost 40 years ago is still alive and living off the west coast of Scotland, experts have found.The whale was nicknamed Dopey Dick by locals after he made his way up the river Foyle into the heart of Derry in pursuit of salmon in 1977. He is now thought to be at least 58 and was identified when pictures of the Irish incident were compared with images taken of a pod of whales near the Isle of Skye in September 2014. Continue reading...

Campaigners hail a symbolic shift away from fossil fuels, but others see move as more style than substanceSaudi Arabia is planning to establish a $2tn (£1.4tn) sovereign wealth fund by selling off its state petroleum assets in preparation for a world beyond oil.Greenpeace said it was a pivotal moment akin to Switzerland abandoning banking, but others claimed Riyadh had long wanted to diversify its economy and spread its wealth though it had failed to do so. Continue reading...

Countries responsible for 40% of world’s carbon emissions to formally approve historic pact and pursue efforts to limit warming to 1.5C, reports Climate HomeChina and the United States, the world’s two leading carbon polluters, said on Thursday they planned to formally join the Paris climate agreement in 2016.In a joint statement, the major powers agreed to sign the historic deal to cut carbon emissions at a UN ceremony in April, and take “respective domestic steps” to approve it as “early as possible this year.” Continue reading...

Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton loses her patience with a Greenpeace activist who asked her whether she will reject money from the petroleum industry. Coming face-to-face with the activist after a rally in New York, Clinton says she only takes money from people working for companies involved in fossil-fuel and accused Bernie Sanders’ campaign for spreading lies

Scuffles break out and shots fired in Cotabato province when police move in to break up four-day demonstrationPolice have clashed with farmers blocking a highway in the southern Philippines to demand drought relief from the government, leaving at least two demonstrators dead and dozens of people injured.Scuffles broke out and shots were fired when security forces moved in to disperse about 6,000 farmers and their supporters, who were protesting for the fourth day in a row in Kidapawan, the capital of Cotabato province, police sources and the Cotabato governor, Emmylou Mendoza, said. Continue reading...

Sprinting hares, lesser deer mouse and Sumartan slow loris are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world Continue reading...

The iconic US soup maker will stop using Bisphenol-A by 2017, after the chemical was found in all 15 of its cans tested in a US surveyThe iconic US soup manufacturer, Campbell’s, has said that it will stop using Bisphenol-A (BPA) in cans by mid-2017, after the hormone-mimicking chemical was found in all 15 of its cans tested in a US survey.

Immigration chief Ronny Sompie says Oscar-winner’s visa could be revoked after comments made on environmental campaign visit – but DiCaprio appears to have left the country alreadyThe Indonesian government has threatened to deport Leonardo DiCaprio after the Oscar-winning actor and film-maker made critical statements about the country’s palm oil industry during a visit.DiCaprio, an environmental campaigner, landed in Indonesia on 26 March from Japan. On Tuesday he posted a photograph to his Instagram highlighting the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation’s plans with local partners to establish a “mega-fauna sanctuary” in the Leuser rainforest ecosystem, a lowland Sumatran national park where palm oil plantations, mining, logging and other developments are endangering local populations of Sumatran elephants, orangutans, rhinos and tigers. Continue reading...

Ever-changing weather in much of the world as seasons change from spring to summer or autumn to winter – what does it mean for the wildlife near you?

Prototypes go on show in California in front of 800 fans as chief executive Elon Musk reveals 115,000 preorders ahead of 2017 launchTesla Motors has finally unveiled its long-anticipated lower cost electric car, the Model 3, at its design studio in Los Angeles.

Rescued olive ridley sea turtle is too buoyant to be able to dive for food but experts hope to change that with decompression treatmentVets have put a rescued sea turtle into a hyperbaric chamber, usually used to treat human divers suffering the bends, in a bid to remove gas bubbles in its body that stop it diving.Experts from Seattle will test the buoyancy of Tucker the 20-year-old endangered olive ridley sea turtle on Friday in the hope that they can one day release him back into the ocean. Continue reading...

Vale of Strathmore, Perthshire Dams are constantly being repaired and rebuilt to create canals where the beavers can move safely undetectedThe dipper bobbing along the top of the dam looks oddly smart in this drunken landscape, his clean white bib reflected in the water below. All around is chaos. The beavers have felled most of the bankside birch, sycamore and other trees they like to eat and use for their dams.Less tasty species, like larch, left marooned in the flood, have simply toppled over, exposing great root bulbs, which, now, are slowly rotting. Fresh shoots sprout from a recently gnawed willow; the cartoonish stump is pointed, as if it has been put through a giant pencil sharpener. Continue reading...

My first butterfly of this year, a canary-yellow male brimstone, materialised in exactly the same spot as last year, zig-zagging along an ivy hedge in my garden. This year, however, its meticulous search for a female was 15 days later, testimony to the cold, late spring.In Tove Jansson’s Moomintroll books, a golden butterfly is a lucky omen for the summer ahead, but my optimism last year was misplaced. After a mediocre 2015 (except for the brimstone, which enjoyed its best season in 40 years of scientific monitoring), 2016 is not promising much. Continue reading...

Species expected to suit changing conditions have outperformed other birds in the past 30 years, joint European-US study showsBirds that were expected to do well due to climate change have outperformed other species in the past 30 years, a study of wildlife in Europe and the US has found. Scientists said they have shown that common bird populations thousands of miles apart are responding to changing weather in a similar, pronounced way.The international team, led by Durham University, found that birds they thought would be suited to the changing conditions “substantially” outperformed those expected to suffer between 1980 and 2010. Continue reading...

Former employee of The Energy and Resources Institute alleges she was ‘scared of Pachauri’s motives’A third woman has claimed she was sexually harassed by the former head of the UN climate change panel, Rajendra Pachauri, who is charged with sexually harassing, stalking and intimidating a female employee.The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said on Thursday she had decided to make a public statement after reading an article in the Observer in which Pachauri denied the allegations against him claiming his email account had been hacked and the claims were a conspiracy to defame him. Continue reading...

A startup incubator in an Osaka shopping mall lets customers test experimental prototypes such as drones and holograms. Its aim is to stop the city’s brain drainAt first glance, Grand Front Osaka in the heart of Japan’s second city looks like any high-end international mall. Fashionistas parade their latest purchases from upscale boutiques, while expensively dishevelled youths cruise endless escalators, coffees in hand.

If Liz Truss’s plans for deregulation come to pass, the part of the industry that regards animals as products will determine how they’re treatedThe UK government will tell you that we have some of the best animal welfare standards in the world. We are hailed as a nation of animal lovers, and in common consciousness a typical British farm would involve lush green pastures and animals happily grazing the day away.The long-held notion that the UK is a world leader for animal welfare carries some truth. The achievements that have been made over the years since the dawn of large-scale, industrial farming have been monumental when it comes to the welfare of farm animals. The banning of the veal crate in 1990, for example, meant that calves were no longer confined into such a tight space they couldn’t turn around, were often tied by the neck, and fed low-quality feed which made their flesh turn white. This was one of the first of a string of victories in the ongoing fight against farming systems which are cruel to animals. Continue reading...

In part two of the eel saga, I take a more detailed look at how the pieces of the trade fit together, and what’s being done to combat it.This is my second blog about the illegal trade of eel between Europe and Asia. In the first I wrote about the ecological plight of the eel and the scale of the trade. You can read that post here.In January 2016, David Baker, an ecologist at The University of Hong Kong’s Swire Institute of Marine Science received an unusual package: a frozen, lumpy mass of unknown fish seized at Hong Kong airport. His job was to carry out DNA analysis on the samples to find out what they were. But in solving the mystery, he also uncovered a crime: the fish were European Eel, a species that should never have reached Hong Kong, because trading these animals between Europe and Asia is completely illegal. Continue reading...

Figures show a 4% reduction in the national annual emissions of carbon dioxide, with coal now burning at its lowest level in at least 150 yearsPlummeting coal use in 2015 led to a fall of 4% in the UK’s annual carbon dioxide emissions, according to government energy statistics published on Thursday. Coal is now burning at its lowest level in at least 150 years.The closing of old polluting coal-power stations and the rapid rise in renewable energy meant coal consumption fell by 22% compared to 2014, the biggest drop ever seen outside of miners’ strikes, according to analysts at Carbon Brief. Production of coal in the UK also fell to a new record low, dropping by 27% due to mines closing. Continue reading...

Students are flocking to study agriculture – and the student farmer of the year says he’s not surprised

Senior official says India plans to borrow from the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank to meet 100GW solar expansion targetIndia hopes to receive one of the first loans issued by the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) later this year, as it looks to raise $500m for solar power projects from the newly created lender, Indian officials said.Funding for clean energy projects would allay fears of environmental lobbyists that the bank’s relaxed lending criteria could promote dirty fuels like coal in developing economies, like India, that are in a hurry to ramp up energy output. Continue reading...

What does it take to ride for the world’s best women’s cycling team? Helen Pidd went to Mallorca and tried to keep up with the Olympic gold medallist and her Wiggle High5 team matesIf you want to feel fat, old and totally out of shape, I thoroughly recommend joining the world’s number one women’s cycling team for a bike ride up a big hill.I’d been invited to join Wiggle High5 in Mallorca as they prepared for the 2016 season with a winter training camp. My preparation for riding with the best female cyclists on the planet had largely involved eating bacon butties all winter and ending every other ride in the pub. Lean, I was not.

A new exhibition showcases a local artist using jerry cans to draw attention to the country’s pollution crisisThe brightly coloured plastic jugs once played a vital role transporting water during Ghana’s droughts. Now, they’re creating a new environmental catastrophe of their own.Seas of discarded yellow, blue and white containers – referred to locally as “Kufuor gallons” after the water crises endured under president John Kufuor in the early 2000s – have become a troubling part of Ghana’s landscape. Continue reading...

Long-tailed tit returns to the top 10 most commonly seen garden birds for the first time in seven years, results from the RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch showA mild winter has boosted the number of small birds visiting UK gardens, with the long-tailed tit returning to the top 10 most commonly seen species for the first time in seven years, according to results from the world’s largest garden wildlife survey.Recorded sightings of the tiny, sociable tit rose by 44% on 2015 figures and the species was seen in more than a quarter of participants’ gardens. Other small garden bird species that are thought to have benefitted from the warmer weather include the great tit and coal tit. Continue reading...

Advocacy groups and Australian Capital Territory consumer affairs minister say a density of 10,000 hens per hectare is out of step with expectationsA new national definition for what constitutes a free-range egg falls short of consumer expectations, advocacy groups have warned.State and commonwealth ministers on Thursday agreed on a legal definition of free-range, meaning a standard on animal welfare will be put in place for the first time. Continue reading...

Much Wenlock It is hard to imagine any human culture not seeing some kind of symbolism in eggs – spring, rebirth, life emerging from chaos, fertilityThere is a nervousness about the crow’s swagger. It walks as if it’s concentrating on something else, nothing to do with an egg, never noticed it before. Then it half-hops, half-shimmies a few steps towards it. Head cocked, one eye over its wing to see who else may be watching and the other inspecting the thing as if it ticks, as if it might go off.I don’t know how the crow came by the egg, whether it took it from a nest, or another creature did and was either persuaded to relinquish it or just left it there next to some dead stumps for the crow to find. The egg is forlorn, there is no hope for it despite the crow’s edgy circumspection, and it’s already a bit cracked. It has lost the rocking movement of an irregular sphere and, despite its apparent weightlessness, it now looks ill-defined, like crash wreckage. Continue reading...