The Guardian

An alligator snapping turtle, with a jaw experts say can break through bone, was spotted living by a lake in Cumbria.

The animal is native to swamplands of the southern US such as Florida, has a hard and rugged shell as well as a sharp and wide jaw.

Vets said despite not being used to the cooler climate in the UK, the turtle, who has been named Fluffy, was relatively healthy, although a little lethargic when first brought in. The turtle will soon be moving to a specialist wildlife centre in Cornwall

• Fluffy the alligator snapping turtle with ‘nasty bite’ found in Cumbrian tarn

This sorry saga is not encouraging if it is a precedent for how Labour will handle the hard choices that it will face in government

I know a dead pledge when I see one, and I’m looking at one now. Labour’s green prosperity plan is history. It’s kicked the bucket, run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. This is an ex-pledge. It has suffered the same fate as the Norwegian Blue in Monty Python’s Dead Parrot sketch.

The abandonment of the commitment to invest £28bn a year to accelerate the transition to a carbon-free economy is not a routine political volte-face. This was Sir Keir Starmer’s signature pledge, one launched with tremendous fanfare as his flagship policy in 2021. There has not been a larger, more contentious or more excruciating U-turn during his time as Labour leader.

With the royals as ambassadors for these luxury cars, there’s little hope for the rest of us

If you have tears – that is, any not used up on MPs struggling to get by, parents forced to choose between skiing and private schools, second homeowners who feel unwelcome, Etonians shut out of Oxbridge, and people cut adrift with unusable city wood burners – prepare to shed them on the latest affluent but afflicted minority: Range Rover owners unable afford their car insurance.

Thanks in large part to the Daily Mail, which has been prioritising their plight, a series of distressing cases has recently come to light. One owner, it reports, gave up after being quoted £14,000 to insure his £100,000 Range Rover Sport, and instead “bought himself a new Mercedes GLE”. Insurers, who say the vehicles are too likely to be stolen, seem to be deaf to the suffering of owners whose only fault was to buy an obese status symbol coveted by many hard-working criminals, as well as by Prince Andrew.

The species can climb waterfalls and reaches back to Gondwanaland – but there are fears polluted runoff has proven fatal

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A “miracle fish” may have been snuffed out in its Sydney habitat by bungled construction work at a nearby government high school, local environmentalists fear.

The climbing galaxias (Galaxias brevipinnis) belongs to a species line reaching back to Gondwanaland. It was only identified in the Manly Dam region in Sydney’s north – the fish’s most northerly known location in Australia – in 1998.

Inspired by French action, British campaigners say they will continue slow tractor protests after Dover roads were blocked

Farmers say there will be further French-style blockades following a slow tractor protest at Dover against low supermarket prices and cheap food imports from post-Brexit trade deals.

Around 40 tractors and other farm vehicles blocked roads around the Kent port for several hours on Friday evening by driving slowly and carrying signs with slogans such as “No More Cheap Imports”.

EVs heavily subsidised by Beijing are flooding Europe and the globe. If we don’t watch out, it could start a major trade war

Whenever people learn that I have an electric vehicle (EV) the conversation invariably turns to whether I suffer from “range anxiety” – the fear of running out of charge. The answer is that generally I don’t, though I might if I were contemplating a drive across the Highlands of Scotland to Aviemore, say. But otherwise, no. Why? Because I am able to charge the car overnight at home, and most of my trips are much much shorter than the vehicle’s 300-mile range.

In that sense I am statistically normal. Government estimates are that 99% of car journeys in England are of less than 100 miles. So if you can charge at home, then most of your problems are over, which probably explains when the last time the Department for Transport did a survey, 93% of the country’s EV owners had home charging.

Gordon Pointe is going for a snip at $295m – but set in a location particularly vulnerable to sea-level rises, buyers should beware

Reality deniers with big pockets are sought by a family of Floridian property developers hoping to sell the most expensive home in the US: a waterfront property on the market for $295m (£234m). The compound squats on Gordon Pointe peninsula, a spit of beachfront in south-west Florida, extending perilously into the Gulf of Mexico. The late financier John Donahue bought the land for $1m in 1985, when it was a beautiful remote nature spot, protected by mangroves, with a small fisherman’s cottage on it. He soon razed this and replaced it with McMansions with de rigueur swimming pools and lawns. Offered for your $295m are three houses with parking for yachts and other conveniences for the wealthy sea-level-rise gambler. The Donahue family is selling at the right time. This is one of the parts of the world most vulnerable to climate impacts, with sea levels rising three times faster than the global average, and increasing risk from hurricane damage. The whole neighbourhood, Port Royal, has been categorised as at “extreme risk of flooding” over the next 30 years, and is regularly hit by weather disasters, making it very expensive to get home insurance. Buyer beware, as Canute might say. Diminishing returns…

Organiser of go-slow protest says farmers in Europe have ‘shown us what can be accomplished’

The organiser of a protest in which tractor-driving farmers caused traffic jams around the Port of Dover has said there could be more demonstrations.

Road traffic in and out of the coastal town in Kent was disrupted by the go-slow demonstration on Friday night.

Housebuilders and campaigners warn of cold, damp homes and UK missing legally binding targets

Labour’s slashing of proposed spending on home insulation will leave millions of people on low incomes in cold, damp homes and could prevent the UK meeting its legally binding carbon targets, campaigners and housebuilders have warned.

The Federation of Master Builders criticised the drastic scaling back of Labour’s low-carbon policies, announced by Keir Starmer on Thursday after months of speculation.

The Focus exhibition at the National Archives of Australia contains pictures drawn from its collection of almost 11m images. Government photography is usually associated with politics but the photographers also documented the lives and work of well-known and everyday Australians

Collapse in system of currents that helps regulate global climate would be at such speed that adaptation would be impossible

The circulation of the Atlantic Ocean is heading towards a tipping point that is “bad news for the climate system and humanity”, a study has found.

The scientists behind the research said they were shocked at the forecast speed of collapse once the point is reached, although they said it was not yet possible to predict how soon that would happen.

Scientist wins award against conservative writers who said his work was ‘fraudulent’ and that he ‘molested and tortured’ data

The high-profile climate scientist Michael Mann has been awarded $1m by a jury in a defamation lawsuit against two conservative writers who compared his depictions of global heating to the work of a convicted child molester.

The case stretches back 12 years. In a statement posted on Mann’s X account, one of his lawyers said: “Today’s verdict vindicates Mike Mann’s good name and reputation. It also is a big victory for truth and scientists everywhere who dedicate their lives answering vital scientific questions impacting human health and the planet.”

Experts say boarded-up communal space illustrates crisis in social housing funding and need to protect play areas

Families in south London say their children have stopped playing outside after communal spaces and playgrounds were ripped out to make room for new homes and then left boarded up when Southwark council ran out of money.

The council began tearing down large parts of the Bells Gardens and Lindley estates in Peckham last August but abandoned the build in January due to a funding crisis driven by rising interest rates. All that remains of the previous play area is a small pitch surrounded by hoardings and out of sight of the flats.

Dramatic changes in energy industry and EVs reducing fossil fuel use, but shipping, aviation and industry a long way from net zero

Humanity has made some uneven progress in reducing our addiction to fossil fuels – but there remain three areas of our lives in which we are notably not on track to kick the habit over the next 30 years, according to a new analysis.

Record levels of investment in clean energy (solar has been called the cheapest source of electricity in history by the International Energy Agency) and a decline in coal-powered generation means less and less of the world’s power will come from fossil fuels between now and 2050, the analysis from Rhodium shows.

The best of this week’s wildlife photographs from around the world

First study to tally asthma exacerbations with air pollution during pandemic finds numbers admitted to A&E fell 41% in 2020

A new study in Oxford has found that emergency hospital admissions for asthma dropped by 41% in 2020 as air pollution from traffic fell due to Covid restrictions.

Dr Suzanne Bartington from the University of Birmingham, who led the Oxford study, said: “The Covid-19 pandemic led to a unique opportunity where we could study the impacts of rapid changes in human activities on air quality.”

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Keir Starmer’s announcement is a historic mistake on economic, political and environmental grounds

On Thursday, they finally made it official. For the first time, the EU’s climate change service confirms, global warming has exceeded 1.5C above preindustrial levels across an entire year. The speed and scale of that rise represents a terrifying precedent if it is not reversed, and a shocking act of collective damage to the planet.

It also casts Thursday’s other grim climate announcement – Labour’s long-trailed decision to retreat from its signature commitment to spend £28bn a year equipping the economy to reach its climate targets – into even starker relief. Labour ended up choosing an embarrassing day to make its announcement. But the truth is that any day would have been a bad day for such a humiliating rowback.

No one expected the Tories to crash the economy like they did. Building a greener Britain means being honest about this

The coming election will be a once-in-a-generation choice: between five more years of economic failure or a long-term plan to invest in Britain’s future. At the beginning of a new age of economic and technological change, we have the chance to seize these historic opportunities so we can once again be a thriving, prosperous nation.

We are under no illusion about the scale of the challenge facing us. Taxes are at a 70-year high, our public services are on their knees, the national debt is continuing to rise, and the cost of living crisis is still biting for families across our country. These are not signs of a successful economy. They are the symptoms of 14 years of economic failure and a Britain that is worse off.

Judicial review looking at claims agency allowed destructive levels of nutrients from chicken manure to enter waterway

One of the country’s favourite rivers is going into a “death spiral” say campaigners, as lawyers argued in court that the Environment Agency was failing to apply the law and save the waterway.

Anti-pollution charity River Action took the Environment Agency (EA) to court on Wednesday for a judicial review, claiming it is allowing destructive levels of nutrients from chicken manure to enter the River Wye.