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• E/V Nautilus team find likely sea slug 5,000ft below sea off Santa Barbara
• Analysis reveals foot and proboscis, making it ‘a gastropod of some kind’

More than 5,000ft below the surface of the ocean, in a canyon off the coast of southern California, the purple, globular creature appeared to glow under the submersible’s lights.

Related: Sea sponge the size of a minivan discovered in ocean depths off Hawaii

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Thousands of people in Thorne and village of Moorends, near Doncaster, told not to use tap water while utility firm investigates

Thousands of people in a South Yorkshire town have been warned not to use tap water for drinking or cooking after high levels of bacteria were detected.

The former Labour leader Ed Miliband said he was concerned over the situation affecting 3,600 properties in parts of Thorne, near Doncaster, and the neighbouring village of Moorends, which is in his constituency.

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Towers of lettuce and pak choi, or a three-storey farm in an office building - could this be the future of farming?

Hay-on-Wye, Powys Market town enjoys a renaissance of home produce picked the day before with no chilled storage in sight

Joe at the market garden called 100% Hay is always smiley, but this market day morning he’s looking especially chirpy. The sun is shining, customers are queuing, and the full bounty of summer is weighing heavy on his stall.

Laid out beside his year-round staples – potatoes, garlic, onions and chard – are boxes of summer fruit: red and yellow raspberries, deep purple blackcurrants, blush-red strawberries. Out of adjacent boxes spill the season’s first tomatoes and courgettes.

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The boss of EDF in the UK says he is confident the Hinkley Point C nuclear power station will be built, despite the government delaying its approval.

New innovative software combined with local generation and storage is changing the way we generate, use, buy and sell electricity.

A rare, and extremely pungent. 'corpse flower' has bloomed in New York Botanical Garden.

The largest rodent in Australia is amphibious, fulfils the same niche as an otter and could be used to get rid of the pest black rat. AND, it's got a golden, fluffy belly. It's the water rat.

The RSPB is concerned after the number of little terns nesting in the UK's biggest colony dropped by almost half.

Shoppers in England are on target to use six billion fewer plastic bags in the first year since a 5p levy on them was introduced, government data suggests.

Number of single-use bags handed out dropped to 500m in first six months since charge, compared with 7bn the previous year

The number of single-use plastic bags used by shoppers in England has plummeted by more than 85% after the introduction of a 5p charge last October, early figures suggest.

More than 7bn bags were handed out by seven main supermarkets in the year before the charge, but this figure plummeted to slightly more than 500m in the first six months after the charge was introduced, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said.

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Andy Green looks at the logistics involved in getting the Bloodhound supersonic car to South Africa next year so that it can begin its assault on the world land speed record.

One of the world’s largest flowers, Amorphophallus titanum takes around a decade to bloom and promptly dies two days later in a foul-smelling crescendo

Visitors crowded the New York botanical garden in the Bronx and began to sniff. On a rainy Friday morning, they traveled en masse to witness one of the world’s largest and smelliest flowers – Amorphophallus titanum, also known as the corpse flower. It’s the first time the flower, which takes around a decade to bloom and then dies after 24-36 hours, has appeared in the city since 1939.

“It smells like lettuce when you take it out of the bag,” a woman yelled from the crowd of onlookers in the Enid A Haupt conservatory. “It smells like the aquarium. Like the penguin enclosure,” another added. The odor came in waves as onlookers jostled for the best spot to take photos and selfies with the giant flower. Some left holding their noses.

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Stork-billed kingfishers and baby rhinos are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world

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This week, fasten your seatbelts because we’re taking a trip into the future of fuels. We ask if biofuels are really that brilliant and discover how one lab is attempting to reinvent diesel.

The Kilauea volcano in Hawaii has erupted, however the volcano appears to be "smiling"

Ministers create presentation to show how idle land around nuclear disaster site can be used to produce renewable energy

The contaminated nuclear wasteland around Chernobyl could be turned into one of the world’s largest solar farms, producing nearly a third of the electricity that the stricken plant generated at its height 30 years ago, according to the Ukrainian government.

In a presentation sent to major banks and seen by the Guardian, 6,000 hectares of “idle” land in Chernobyl’s 1,000 square km exclusion zone, which is considered too dangerous for people to live in or farm, could be turned to solar, biogas and heat and power generation.

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Australia is to shift its longitude and latitude to address a gap between local co-ordinates and those from global navigation satellite systems (GNSS).

The establishment of community gardens in inner city areas can boost social and ecological wellbeing, suggest researchers.

One of the largest ever dinosaur footprints has been found in Bolivia, of the Abelisaurus dinosaur