The Guardian

‘The officers cautiously unzipped the bag and found this gorgeous boy,’ Queensland police say of Alfred the joey

A woman taken into custody by Queensland police has stunned officers by handing over a baby koala she had been secretly carrying inside a zipped canvas bag.

The East Brisbane woman, 50, was asked if she had anything to declare after her arrest on unrelated matters by officers on patrol in the city’s south on Sunday night. She produced the bag, saying it contained a joey.

Environment minister Steven Miles calls on federal government to fast-track extra $1.65m for agency tasked with protecting the reef

Queensland’s environment minister has flagged concerns that the agency tasked with protecting the Great Barrier Reef is running as a “shell of its former self” amid the underfunding of a cornerstone program.

Steven Miles called on the federal government to fast-track an extra $1.65m for the main “on-water” management program for the reef, which had seen no increase to its funding since 2008.

The Chevin, Otley, West Yorkshire Dry stone walls intrigue because there is a hint of the impossible about them. They stand as if by sleight of hand, artificial but organic

A gentle, mysterious, monosyllabic presence, Alan Dickinson was, to my childhood imagination, less a man and more a wildling from some semi-mythical moorland tribe. He looked as rugged as Almscliff Crag and smelled of woodchip and weather. I viewed him with quiet awe.

The husband of Andrea, my childminder, Alan was of farming stock, and his occupation was building dry stone walls. He has shaped my image of this trade ever since: inscrutable men stacking stones in windswept, lonely places where walls define the landscape.

By including Toma in my film at the Great Barrier Reef I want to show how environmental disasters are creating a lonely world for our children

The short film I’ve made with the Guardian stars my son, Toma, aged four years and five months. That’s a little scary for me to write, since, up until this moment, my husband, Avi, and I have been pretty careful about protecting him from public exposure. No matter how damn cute we think he’s being, absolutely no tweeting is allowed.

So I want to explain how I decided to introduce him to you in this very public way.

Exclusive: In Under the Surface, a special Guardian film, the award-winning writer and environmental campaigner Naomi Klein travels to the Great Barrier Reef with her son, Toma, to see the impact of coral bleaching caused by climate change. In a personal but also universal story, Klein tells how she wants him to bear witness. ‘Just in case, amid the coral that is still alive, he can find something beautiful to connect with, something he can carry with him as he navigates life on a warmer, harsher planet than the one I grew up on. Because climate change is already here – and kids are on the frontlines’
Extra footage supplied by David Hannan

• Naomi Klein: Climate change is intergenerational theft. That’s why my son is part of this story

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• Great Barrier Reef: a catastrophe laid bare

Using the hashtags #DelhiSmog and #DelhiChokes, locals are voicing concern over heavy pollution shrouding the city

Residents and visitors to Delhi are struggling to cope with severe levels of toxic air pollution that have prompted authorities to declare and “emergency situation” in the city.

Locals have expressed their concern over the dangerous smog on Twitter, with some saying they have been forced to take their families out of Delhi due to concerns over their health and others noting that they haven’t seen the sunrise in more than a week due to the haze that clogs the sky.

Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 8 November 1916

From Cumberland I hear that the rainfall for October has been heavy, but the corn on the lower lands has been at last got in, and only on the high mountain farms is there any grain still out. This, I am sorry to say, is no new experience for the hill farmers. Here we have had wind and rainstorms, with very little sunshine, and in a journey through the Midlands and into Surrey last week I gathered that this had been the general experience. Yet I found the general condition of the country for autumn was favourable. Even in the Trent Valley the floods were slight, and wherever workers could be obtained in all parts of the country the root crops are being slowly got in. It is, however, disheartening to see the stubbles that ought to have been ploughed and sowed with corn. Surely there are ploughmen in all our camps in England that could be spared for a few weeks, and give us some chance of a crop next year. The time is short, but still some good could be done by immediate action.

Few realise the quantity of food that is grown in the large and small gardens of our suburbs. One gentleman who usually has three workers on his garden cannot even get a boy, so not only greenhouses are left desolate, but tomato-houses and the vegetable garden will be a wilderness. There are no day gardeners, so that many small patches that usually produce heavy crops are out of cultivation. This is work for which good pay can be obtained, but women do not appear to care to tackle it. An American who was passing through Germany tells us it is very different there. Even the railway embankments are planted with potatoes, and every available scrap of land is being utilised. One hopes that the lectures that are being given will incite many to take a hand in a great endeavour to make the most of our opportunities of food production.

A remarkably fine and dry month, with Shetland recording more than twice the average hours of sunshine, and rainfall less than half the average through most of the UK

October was a remarkably fine and dry month over the whole of the UK. As a result it seemed mild, but temperatures were actually close to average. The settled conditions were caused by a blocked pattern in the atmosphere in which the “normal” westerly winds were held at bay by a blocking high pressure system that lingered for much of the month. This pattern has characterised recent Octobers. Due to the high frequency of easterly winds, the north and west was favoured for sunshine and dryness, in contrast to recent months.

Majority report from 350 residents questions safety, cost and the ability of the government to deliver, run and regulate a nuclear waste storage facility

Pressure is growing on the South Australian government to scrap the idea of building a high-level nuclear waste dump in the state’s north after a citizens’ jury rejected the concept.

After investigating the issue over six sitting days, the jury of 350 South Australian residents refused to back the proposal, with 70% unwilling to support it under any circumstances.

Is it a conflict of interest to have representatives of coal and oil companies at the climate change discussions?

As the world gathers in Morocco for the historic first meeting under the Paris agreement – called “COP22” but now also “CMA1” – it does so with the unprecedented involvement of corporate interests who have fought climate action around the world, funded climate change denial and whose fundamental interest is in extracting and burning as much fossil fuel as possible.

Earlier this year, desperate moves from countries representing the majority of the world’s population to examine how the UN might identify and minimise conflicts of interest were swept under the carpet by rich countries – especially the US, EU and Australia – who argued they wanted to be as “inclusive” as possible and that the concept of “conflict of interest” was too hard to define.

New South Wales government is failing to protect koalas by allowing further land clearing, logging and habitat destruction, National Parks Association says

Koalas are “under siege” across NSW, with three separate policies poised to be implemented set to destroy their remaining habitats, according to a briefing paper written by the National Parks Association of NSW.

In light of the increasing threats, the paper calls on the NSW EPA to protect koala habitats.

Plants help to purify the air and process out pollutants

Breathing is given remarkably little air time. But a comprehensive report on outdoor air quality worldwide emerged from the World Health Organisation recently, linking 3 million deaths a year to air pollution.

It’s enough to keep you indoors. Unfortunately there’s declining air quality inside, too, particularly from concentrations of volatile organic compounds (VOCs). This chemical class includes formaldehyde and toluene and leads to so called “sick building syndrome”. Symptoms include dizziness, asthma and allergies.

Ten years ago the leading economist warned about climate change in a landmark report – he says while there is cause for optimism, the picture is still grim

A lot has happened since Nicholas Stern, then a permanent secretary at the Treasury, produced his landmark review of the impact of climate change 10 years ago. His work was quickly recognised as the definitive account of the economic dangers posed to the planet by global warming.

Since then, global temperatures have risen to record levels. Arctic summer sea ice has continued to shrink, as have many major land-based ice sheets. Carbon dioxide is being pumped into the atmosphere in ever-increasing amounts. At the same time, low-lying coastal areas, such as south Florida and parts of Bangladesh, are experiencing more and more flooding as sea levels have risen. Scientists have begun to link extreme weather events to the planet’s changing climate, while animal and plant species are gradualling moving towards the poles. So, a decade on, is Stern plunged in despair over our prospects? Not quite. While the picture is certainly grim, the world’s top climate economist still believes there are grounds for modest optimism.

For centuries scientists dismissed birds as dumb based on physical differences in their brains. How wrong we were.

When Jane Goodall observed chimpanzees making tools in 1960, humans lost their self-aggrandizing status as the world’s only tool makers. Now scientists are beginning to realise there may be much more ‘intelligent life’ in the universe than previously thought, but it’s just here: on our planet. Since Goodall’s discovery, researchers have found numerous other mammals displaying high levels of intelligence, including the great apes, elephants, dolphins, orcas and many canine species. But only in the last couple decades has scientists’ attention turned to intelligence in non-mammals, including birds.

“Studies of avian intelligence have been hampered by the old fashioned idea that birds are stupid, and not worth considering in terms of intelligence,” said Nathan Emery, author of the new book, Bird Brain: An Exploration of Avian Intelligence and senior lecturer at Queen Mary: University of London.

The battle for Mosul, the Day of the Dead, the US elections – the best photography in news, culture and sport from around the world this week

Ocean predators swirl through a growing school of salmon gathering just off the coast of New South Wales on Friday. The footage also features kayakers paddling nearby. The images were captured using a drone hovering near Avoca beach on the central coast

The US presidential race is guaranteed to prove a distraction at the Morocco COP22 gathering, where action is on the agenda

The Australian government takes a delegation to the United Nations climate change talks in Morocco starting Monday – two weeks that are sure to be dominated by, well, who knows?

Because, during the first week, the United States will go to the polls to pick a new president – an event that will act like a giant weapon of mass distraction in Marrakech.

Republican assembly candidate stands by his belief that global warming is a good thing because it will negatively affect ‘our enemies in desert climates’

Randy Voepel is a big fan of climate change because America’s “enemies are on the equator” and a warmer climate will make their lives worse.

Voepel, a Republican running unopposed to be a California assemblyman, told a reporter in 2007 that he likes global warming because of the harm it will bring to certain nations and because “warmer weather gives the region warm days in November”, the Voice of San Diego reported at the time.

The amendment, backed by $20m from large energy utilities, has been described by Al Gore and environmentalists as a dishonest attempt to trick consumers

Climate change may have been largely ignored during the presidential election but it will be on the ballot on 8 November, with Florida voters deciding on a measure backed by large utilities that could effectively snuff out the solar industry in the state.

The measure, known as amendment 1, has been criticized as “fundamentally dishonest” for superficially appearing to be pro-solar. However, renewable energy experts warn that it would remove the incentive for homeowners to get rooftop solar panels, devastating the solar industry in America’s sunshine state.

Officials have destroyed an Asian hornet nest in Gloucestershire after the invasive species was spotted there, posing a threat to the UK’s honeybees

An Asian hornet outbreak has been contained, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has said. The first sightings of the pest in the mainland UK were reported in Tetbury, Gloucestershire, in September.

Inspectors from the National Bee Unit destroyed the nest and although two dead hornets were found in North Somerset no further sightings have been reported.