The Guardian

Station in Anglesey, the oldest in the UK, shuts as focus is on energy provider EDF over its plans for new facilities at Hinkley Point

Britain’s oldest nuclear plant closed on Wednesday, leaving in its wake a £700m decommissioning bill and further questions about the UK’s ability to keep the lights on.

The closure of the Wylfa plant in Wales after 44 years of service puts more pressure on EDF Energy to take a final investment decision for new reactors at Hinkley in Somerset.

Parts of Britain are under water again as torrential rain from Storm Eva causes mass flooding in the north west of England on Boxing Day. The Met Office has issued severe weather warnings for rain, snow, wind, fog and ice

• Severe flooding in Britain prompts Boxing Day evacuations – live

Right-to-roam law means pre-1949 rights of way that are not on official maps must be recorded in next 10 years or will no longer be protected

Thousands of footpaths, alleys and bridleways across the UK face being lost forever within a decade under a clause in right-to-roam legislation, campaigners have warned.

From 1 January, walkers, horseriders – and even those taking regular shortcuts to the shops in towns – will have 10 years to apply to save any rights of way that existed before 1949 but do not appear on official maps.

Authorities respond to forecasts of heavy smog by issuing first red alerts for pollution in 10 cities, following two warnings in Beijing this month

More Chinese cities are issuing their first red alerts for pollution in response to forecasts of heavy smog, after the capital, Beijing, issued two this month following criticism for not releasing them earlier.

Shandong province in eastern China issued alerts in four cities after warning that the density of particulate matter in the air would exceed high levels for more than 24 hours. The Shandong environmental protection bureau said the alerts started Thursday morning and that kindergarten, primary and middle schools should close and construction of buildings and roads, and demolition work, should stop.

‘Obviously I screamed a little bit. The shark jumped off my board, swam off in the other direction,’ says surfer after close encounter of the marine kind

A Sydney surfer has had a run in with a six-foot shark after it “jumped” on to his board at Bondi beach.

Related: Shark 'eco-barrier' nets for NSW north coast to be installed after Christmas

Overhunting affects seed dispersal and thus survival of hardwood trees, resulting in drastic reduction in Earth’s natural carbon storage, study finds

Large fruit-eating monkeys and birds in tropical forests have been revealed as surprising climate change champions, whose loss to over-hunting is driving up carbon emissions. This is because their seed-spreading plays a vital role in the survival of huge, hard-wooded trees.

Tropical forests store 40% of all the carbon on the Earth’s surface and the slashing of trees causes about 15% of the greenhouse gases that drive global warming.

The last deep coal mine in Britain closes today, drawing to an end a series of closures in an industry once known as King Coal

When the last shift of underground miners emerges at Kellingley colliery in North Yorkshire on Friday, it will bring down the final curtain on one of Britain’s most successful and enduring industries.

Coal has been dug out of the ground since pre-Roman times. It fuelled the Industrial Revolution and was still providing 40% of power for electricity generation as little as three years ago.

Cocktail of Saharan dust and diesel fumes prompts officials to issue health warning for Saturday as unseasonably warm weather continues

A further spell of air pollution caused by a cocktail of Saharan dust and diesel fumes is expected to hit England and Wales on Saturday as temperatures remain unseasonably warm.

Parts of eastern, central and southern England are already being affected by a moderate pollution episode on Thursday, causing officials to warn adults and children with lung problems to reduce physical activity outdoors.

The public are being enlisted to read through detailed logs of whaling ships which include records of ice flows and weather conditions

Maritime historians, climate scientists and ordinary citizens are coming together on a project to study the logbooks of 19th-century whaling ships to better understand modern-day climate change and Arctic weather patterns.

The crew of whaling ships kept meticulous daily logbooks of weather conditions during their often years-long voyages searching the globe for whales, valued for their light-giving oil, said Michael Dyer, a senior maritime historian at the New Bedford whaling museum in Massachusetts, which is supplying much of the data.

Older people, asthma sufferers and those with breathing difficulties are most at risk as pollution levels expected to rise

A Saharan dust cloud is expected to settle over parts of the UK on Thursday, prompting health experts to issue warnings to elderly people and those who suffer from breathing problems.

High levels of pollution are expected over southern and central England, with Lincolnshire bearing the brunt of the cloud.

Cartoon in News Corp paper by veteran Bill Leak described by critic as ‘shocking ... and unequivocally racist, drawing on base stereotypes of third world people’

A cartoon in the Australian depicting starving Indians chopping up and eating solar panels sent to the developing nation in an attempt to curb carbon emissions has been condemned as “unequivocally racist”.

Drawn by the veteran cartoonist Bill Leak, Monday’s cartoon was his response to the climate deal signed in Paris at the weekend. India is the world’s fourth-largest greenhouse emitter.

Two decades of talks have come to this: an ambitious agreement to hold states to emissions targets – but already low-lying countries are worried

Governments have signalled an end to the fossil fuel era, committing for the first time to a universal agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions and to avoid the most dangerous effects of climate change.

After 20 years of fraught meetings, including the past two weeks spent in an exhibition hall on the outskirts of Paris, negotiators from nearly 200 countries signed on to a legal agreement on Saturday evening that set ambitious goals to limit temperature rises and to hold governments to account for reaching those targets.

The goal of 1.5C is a big leap below the 2C agreed six years ago in Copenhagen. Here’s what the agreement means for global emissions and the future of the planet

Governments have agreed to “pursue efforts” to limit warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels: something that would have seemed unthinkable just a few months ago.

The former Nasa scientist criticizes the talks, intended to reach a new global deal on cutting carbon emissions beyond 2020, as ‘no action, just promises’

• John Kerry rejects scientist’s claim Paris talks were ‘fraud’

Mere mention of the Paris climate talks is enough to make James Hansen grumpy. The former Nasa scientist, considered the father of global awareness of climate change, is a soft-spoken, almost diffident Iowan. But when he talks about the gathering of nearly 200 nations, his demeanour changes.

Related: John Kerry rejects leading climate scientist's claim Paris talks were 'fraud'

A Siberian tiger called Zolushka is filmed in the Bastak nature reserve in east Russia playing with two young cubs. Zolushka was found orphaned in 2012 and after a year of rehabilitation was retuned to the wild. Now it seems Zolushka has given birth to cubs in the wild. The Siberian tiger is one of the most endangered species in the world with as few as 500 left in the wild

Scientist who features in BBC series says Australia’s positions on reef and coal are incompatible, but environment minister Greg Hunt fails to address contradiction at Paris screening

A leading scientist who features in David Attenborough’s new series about the Great Barrier Reef has told the Australian government it cannot expand coal exports and continue to claim to be protecting the reef.

The government is planning a big tourism campaign to run at the same time as the new series screens around the world.

Committee on Climate Change had warned in October that the government must take action to protect homes from risk of flooding

The UK government was warned by its official climate change advisers in October that it needed to take action on the increasing number of homes at high risk of flooding but rejected the advice.

The decision not to develop a strategy to address increase flooding risk came just a few weeks before Storm Desmond brought about severe flooding in Cumbria, Lancashire and other parts of the north west causing an estimated £500m of damage.

Millionaire behind adventure brand and Esprit, who ploughed fortune into saving South American ecosystems, suffers hypothermia from falling into lake

Douglas Tompkins, co-founder of the North Face outdoor company who poured millions into conservation, has died after falling into near-freezing waters during a kayak accident in southern Chile.

Tompkins, 72, was taken with acute hypothermia to a hospital in Coyhaique after high winds flipped his adventure kayak during a trip across Lake General Carrera in Patagonia on Tuesday, reports said. He died about six hours after arriving at hospital in the regional capital.

From rapid ice melts to calving glaciers and a snow terrain poked by dark patches, Daniel Beltrá’s stunning images show how rising temperatures and global pollution are literally leaving their dark imprints on Greenland’s pristine landscape. ‘Climate change is having its biggest and most visible impact in Greenland. It is like the canary in a coal mine; what is happening there will affect us all,’ he says

Photographs by Daniel Beltrá/ Courtesy of Catherine Edelman Gallery

The draft negotiating text for a global deal is in. These are some of the people who will now decide the outcome of the talks

As ministers from countries around the world fly in for the crunch second week of the UN climate talks in Paris there are still significant areas of disagreement, but also optimism at the talks that a deal can be done. The negotiating text has been pared back to just over 20 pages – a much better position than at the equivalent point at the Copenhagen talks in 2009. Here are some of the key individuals who will decide the outcome of the talks.