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Octogenarian couple Charles and Lois O’Brien have this week announced they would donate their home collection of more than a million insects to Arizona State University. The collection was gathered over almost six decades and is worth an estimated $10m (£8m). It will help be a resource for scientists who study natural controls on the environment

• Couple donates bug collection worth $10m, a goldmine for researchers
  

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The expansion, which was originally proposed in 2008 and faced strong protest from environmental advocates, secures permit to start building from Trump

2008

TransCanada proposes expanding an existing pipeline to transport oil from Hardisty, Alberta to Port Arthur, Texas, to transfer Canadian tar sands oil to US refineries. It was scheduled to be completed by 2013.

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Cactus flowers, a former circus bear and a baby elephant are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world

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Research programme will send aerosol injections into the earth’s upper atmosphere to study the risks and benefits of a future solar tech-fix for climate change

US scientists are set to send aerosol injections 20km up into the earth’s stratosphere in the world’s biggest solar geoengineering programme to date, to study the potential of a future tech-fix for global warming.

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President to officially announce plans Friday to allow TransCanada to start controversial project that state department claims serves national interests

The Trump administration has issued a presidential permit to pipeline builder TransCanada to build the Keystone XL pipeline.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer tweeted that Donald Trump would discuss the pipeline later Friday morning.

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Researchers are warning of a "devastating" loss of coral at the Dongsha Atoll in the South China Sea.

The Zoological Society of London zoo is home to more than 650 animal species. Photographer Linda Nylind was given exclusive access to spend time with the keepers and find out more about their daily routines

London zoo was established in 1828 and is the world’s oldest scientific zoo. Created as a collection for the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), the animals from the Tower of London’s menagerie were transferred there in 1832 and it opened to the public in 1847. Today it houses more than 20,000 animals and almost 700 species.

ZSL is not funded by the state – it relies on memberships and fellowships, entrance fees and sponsorship to generate income.

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The British-led effort to break the World Land Speed Record is delayed by cash-flow problems to 2018.

Collection will help scientists piece together a large branch of insects’ family tree and be a resource for scientists who study natural controls on the environment

In two rooms of Charles and Lois O’Briens’ modest home in Tucson, Arizona, more than a million insects – a collection worth an estimated $10m – rest in tombs of glass and homemade shelving. They come from every continent and corner of the world, gathered over almost six decades; a bug story that began as a love story.

This week, the O’Briens, both octogenarians, announced that they would donate their collection, one of the world’s largest private holdings, to Arizona State University.

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On Saturday, people in 7-thousand cities across the world will turn their lights off to mark Earth Hour.

The government is still being niggled from inside and outside the party coalition on two issues; 18C and same-sex marriage.

Stoke Wood, Northamptonshire Hazel, as boles, can provide a rich hunting ground and my first unusual find is a pill millipede

The rolling limestone landscape exhibits the first signs of spring. Hawthorn buds burst with fresh green leaves and huge queen bumblebees career between blossoming sallow shrubs. Rockingham Forest once spanned these valleys and hills, and Stoke Wood is a salvaged fragment of that vast forest.

The wood has a rich ground flora; bluebell leaves push through in many areas, while elsewhere there are ankle-high seas of proud and pointed-leaved dog’s mercury, the plants already waving their unassuming tassels of green flowers.

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‘High quality units’ could lower cost of obligations, discussion paper says, despite previous opposition from Tony Abbott

The Turnbull government has left open the prospect of using international carbon credits to help meet Australia’s emissions reduction targets at lowest cost, a practice Tony Abbott ruled out when he was prime minister.

While Abbott used to characterise the trade of international credits as “money that shouldn’t be going offshore into dodgy carbon farms in Equatorial Guinea and Kazakhstan” – a new discussion paper, released on Friday, notes that “high quality international units could contribute to lowering the costs of meeting [Australia’s] 2030 target”.

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Note to readers: Our website will be down from 8pm on Friday March 24 ADST due to an upgrade to our servers.

The town of Coober Pedy is in uproar. What should have been a positive plan to shift to a renewable-focused mini-grid based around wind and solar and storage is causing outrage in the community, and embarrassment to the developer, and the federal agency that backed it.

Because of the lack of competition that could have been introduced if RET policy was held steady, fossil fuel generators can use their market power to artificially inflate prices, and somehow convince media and politicians that it is all the fault of wind and solar.

Queensland says proposal to lower voltage standards will allow networks to more easily accommodate rooftop solar and other technologies.

Coalition publishes climate policy discussion paper amid CCA resignations, claims of right-wing, anti-science bias.

A claim like this takes lashings of chutzpah, blinkers the size of Trump’s hairspray bill and more hubris than you can shake a branch of dead coral at

It takes a very special person to label the photographed, documented, filmed and studied phenomenon of mass coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef “fake news”.

You need lashings of chutzpah, blinkers the size of Donald Trump’s hairspray bill and more hubris than you can shake a branch of dead coral at.

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The NSIDC doesn’t usually release data for both poles simultaneously, but has done so this time because of what scientists have dubbed an “exceptional” year in 2017..