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ENDS UK: Environment agency consults on new air quality monitoring network that would detect the release of particulates and sulphur dioxides

The eruption of Eyjafjallajökull in 2010 led to the closure of European airspace and harmed air quality.

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) is consulting on a new air quality monitoring network intended to detect the release of particulates and sulphur dioxide from Iceland’s volcanoes.

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A swarm of Silver Y moths at the Stade de France turned into a swarm of memes after one moth tended to the injured Ronaldo. Watch out, they could be heading for Premier League stadiums next

It will forever be remembered as the moth balls final: a rather drab climax to Euro 2016 enlivened by a swarm of moths.

Related: Euro 2016: Guardian writers pick their highs and lows from France

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Earth’s record hottest 12 consecutive months were set in each month ending in September 2015 through May 2016

2014 and 2015 each set the record for hottest calendar year since we began measuring surface temperatures over 150 years ago, and 2016 is almost certain to break the record once again. It will be without precedent: the first time that we’ve seen three consecutive record-breaking hot years.

But it’s just happenstance that the calendar year begins in January, and so it’s also informative to compare all yearlong periods. In doing so, it becomes clear that we’re living in astonishingly hot times.

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The zero-fuel aeroplane, Solar Impulse, has begun what should be its penultimate flight, leaving Seville in Spain bound for Cairo in Egypt.

EU proposal on a free trade deal with the US could curb energy saving measures and a planned switch to clean energy, say MEPs

The latest draft version of the TTIP agreement could sabotage European efforts to save energy and switch to clean power, according to MEPs.

A 14th round of the troubled negotiations on a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) free trade deal between the EU and US is due to begin on Monday in Brussels.

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Developing northern Australia: all talk and no action - until now.

The era of cheap fossil fuel power in Australia is dead and buried. And unless the Coalition has the stomach to take on Australia's energy oligopoly, the country's chances of having a cheap renewable energy system will also be diminished.

Climate change and El Niño the culprits, says Norm Duke, an expert in mangrove ecology, after seeing 7,000ha of dead mangroves over 700km

Climate change and El Niño have caused the worst mangrove die-off in recorded history, stretching along 700km of Australia’s Gulf of Carpentaria, an expert says.

The mass die-off coincided with the world’s worst global coral bleaching event, as well as the worst bleaching event on the Great Barrier Reef, in which almost a quarter of the coral was killed – something also caused by unusually warm water.

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Clean water can help to break the link between poor hygiene and eye diseases such as trachoma. Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association (CAAMA)

Nations are gathering in New York this week to discuss the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which aim to improve health, wealth and well-being for countries both rich and poor.

As a developed nation, it might be assumed that Australia will easily meet these new goals at home – including goal number 6, to ensure “availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all”. But the unpalatable truth is that many Australians still lack access to clean water and effective sanitation.

The World Bank’s Development Indicators list Australia as having 100% access to clean water and effective sanitation. But a discussion paper we released last week with our colleagues outlines how some remote Aboriginal communities struggle to meet Australian water standards.

Making water safe

High standards of health and well-being are unattainable without safe, clean drinking water, removal of toilet waste from the local environment, and healthy hygiene behaviours.

The Western Australian government has reported that drinking water in some remote communities is contaminated with uranium, faecal bacteria and nitrates above the recommended levels.

This contamination – combined with problems such as irregular washing of faces, hands and bodies (often without soap), and overcrowding in homes – means that residents in these communities suffer from water- and hygiene-related health problems at a higher rate than the general Australian population.

The health situation in affected communities throws up some sobering facts. Australia is the only developed country that has not eradicated trachoma, a preventable tropical disease that can cause blindness. It persists in remote areas with poor hygiene, where children repeatedly pass on the infection.

Cleaning faces can break the link with long-term ear and eye health impacts such as trachoma and deafness. The Footprints Network

Similarly, glue ear, which is influenced by poor water and hygiene practices and can cause permanent hearing loss and developmental difficulties, is prominent in these communities. The Australian Bureau of Statistics reported that one in eight Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people reported ear and/or hearing problems in 2012-13. This is significantly more than non-Indigenous people.

Installing properly managed community swimming pools can provide a community-wide (and enjoyable) amenity that will also contribute to preventing glue ear, trachoma and other hygiene-related infections.

Community swimming pools have been found to be the best way to ensure clean skin and prevent the spread of neglected tropical diseases. OzOutback How committed is Australia to delivering at home?

In signing up to the SDGs last September, the Australian government stated that this agenda:

…helps Australia in advocating for a strong focus on economic growth and development in the Indo-Pacific region … [and is] well aligned with Australia’s foreign, security and trade interests.

What is glaring about this statement is the lack of any mention of a national focus.

Australia should focus on delivering safe water at home as well as abroad – especially given Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s new role as a member of the United Nations' High-Level Panel on Water.

Our discussion paper sets out how Australia can approach the task of delivering safe water, sanitation services and hygiene practices both at home and in the Asia-Pacific region.

One crucial recommendation is for government departments to avoid addressing the 17 SDGs (which have 169 different targets) as a simple “checklist”, because many of them overlap and intersect in complex ways.

For example, education quality (SDG 4) can affect gender equality (SDG 5), which in turn affects behaviour around water use and hygiene (SDG 6). Similarly, within SDG 6 itself are targets to protect water-based ecosystems, but this obviously influences the accompanying targets of water quality and universal human access to safe water.

The World Health Organisation has estimated that access to clean, safe water and sanitation could reduce the global disease burden by almost 10%. The UN SDGs provide aspirational goals to address this. In Australia, the disease burden is low but persistent. This means that the goal for proper water and sanitation cannot be said to have been satisfactorily met.

This week’s UN talks offer an ideal time to put Australia’s remote communities in the spotlight and draw much-needed attention to the preventable toll of water-related health issues they still experience.

Cindy Shannon is affiliated with AIATSIS as an external appointment.

Nina Lansbury Hall and Paul Jagals do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

Round 2 of ACT battery storage auction, a $2m funding round for 2MW of solar storage, has attracted 17 bids to install more than 8MW.

Watendlath Tarn, Borrowdale At my approach the soot-black, long-necked bird opens its hook-tipped bill, and utters a harsh croak

Watendlath Tarn shines like a burnished mirror. Perfect reflections of the surrounding hills and a Chelsea blue sky are disrupted only by the occasional splash of mallards and greylag geese and jumping trout. Black buzzer flies (chironomids or non-biting midges) on the surface are hatching from the tarn bed.

I think of Judith Paris, the historical novel by Hugh Walpole, which was a bestseller in the 1930s, though little read these days. It is partly set in revolutionary Paris and partly in Watendlath, with tales of passion and murder played out against vivid descriptions of the Cumbrian countryside.

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Australia’s third-biggest island could combine wind, solar, PV and battery storage to fuel own electricity needs – and set a blueprint for the rest of the country

Kangaroo Island is one of the great icons of Australian tourism. As Andrew Boardman, the chief executive of the Kangaroo Island council, says: “You can’t buy a name like that.”

But now the third-biggest island in Australia, which lies just 120kms from Adelaide, wants to make its mark in a different way: by supplying 100% of its electricity needs and much of its transport fuels through locally sourced renewable energy.

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Speculation abounds as Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk tweets that he is ready to drop part two of his top secret Master Plan.

The good news: NSW homes and businesses can still get fantastic returns from solar. The less good news: the returns won’t be the same, and most meters will need to be changed.

Recent science and new developments have highlighted the urgency of reducing global warming emissions to “net zero” as soon as possible.

Panasonic expects its annual sales of auto-related lithium-ion batteries to more than double within 3 years owing to demand for Tesla’s products.

Solar Juice and Fronius have proudly announced a distribution partnership.

Looking at electricity and gas prices this past week might make you think volumes had doubled. But they actually fell in most regions.

Success of commercial lighting initiatives creates a surplus of energy efficiency certificates, and pushes price down to near two year lows.

Radiation levels in the Pacific are almost back to their pre-Fukushima levels (except around Fukishima itself), and are expected to have fully recovered by 2020.