The Guardian

Meteorologists predict scorching temperatures for the weekend before weather cools just in time for Labor Day

Millions of Americans will continue to swelter as Labor Day weekend approaches, with much of the country under some kind of excessive heat watch.

The brutal heatwave the US midwest suffered earlier this week has spread to the eastern half of the country, with more than 20 million people under some kind of a heat alert.

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

Before biomass firm is promised a penny extra from billpayers, Ed Miliband should commission a review of its business model

A finding that you submitted dodgy data to the regulator on where your wood pellets come from sounds like very bad news if, like the biomass power generator Drax, you are the lucky recipient of £500m-plus of subsidies every year and are trying to keep the handouts flowing beyond their scheduled end date of 2027.

But shares in Drax did not collapse on Thursday. City analysts judged that the end of Ofgem’s investigation represented an excellent development for the company – “a clear positive”, said RBC, and “a positive read-across” for the chances of getting a new contract with the government, thought Jefferies.

After the polar blast of a few weeks back, we have opened our eyes to the luminous full bloom of premature spring

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These unseasonal late-winter days of warmth and clear skies, of the sudden necessity of shorts and T-shirts for the morning dog-walk, are at once glorious and somewhat disconcerting.

Spring – the season of renewal, of awakening, of birth and perhaps re-birth – demands to be celebrated. But somehow this year, all of its ridiculously early harbingers feel double-edged for their presaging of the realities of climate change and sea-level rise.

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A drone image of two humpback whales ‘bubble-net feeding’ by Western Australian photographer Scott Portelli has taken out the top prize in the 2024 Australian Geographic nature photographer of the year competition. This is a cooperative hunting strategy used by humpbacks that allows as many of them as possible to feed in a short time. It is widely believed the whales developed this feeding method after they were hunted to near extinction. The image was chosen from 1,856 entries and the exhibition is now on at the South Australian Museum until Sunday 3 November

• Focusing in on the microscopic world of nanophotography – in pictures

Government says it will not challenge reviews of approval given to controversial Jackdaw and Rosebank fields

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The future of two of the UK’s most controversial oil and gas projects has been thrown into doubt, after the energy secretary, Ed Miliband, withdrew government support for the companies in two legal cases brought by campaigners.

The Jackdaw oilfield, operated by Shell, was given approval in 2022, and Greenpeace applied for a judicial review shortly after the decision. Last year, the previous Conservative government gave the green light to Equinor-operated Rosebank, the UK’s biggest untapped oilfield, against the recommendation of climate advisers. Greenpeace and Uplift demanded a judicial review, arguing that the approval was incompatible with the UK’s legally binding climate commitments, and saying that ministers’ original analysis ignored the devastating impact of burning oil from the site.

Campaigners hail Labour’s ‘proactive approach’ after series of policy U-turns under Conservatives

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The UK government is considering making further commitments on cutting greenhouse gas emissions, likely to be announced at the UN climate summit this year.

It is hoped the plan will help kickstart global ambitions on cutting emissions and encourage other countries to follow suit.

Greek authorities have started collecting hundreds of thousands of dead fish that poured into a tourist port in the central coastal city of Volos this week after being displaced from their usual freshwater habitats during flooding last year. 'It spans kilometres,' a city council member, Stelios Limnios, told Reuters. 'It’s not just along the coast, but also in the centre of the Pagasetic Gulf,' he said, referring to the waters off Volos, where the coast is lined with holiday homes. There have been warnings that the rotting fish could create an environmental disaster for other species in the area

• Greece tourist port flooded with hundreds of thousands of dead fish

WaterNSW says closure a ‘precautionary measure’ and water supplied from filtration plant to local communities is safe and meets guidelines

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WaterNSW has temporarily closed a dam in the Blue Mountains after tests detected elevated levels of PFAS chemicals in untreated water.

The state’s water agency said it had disconnected Medlow Dam from the region’s water supply as a precautionary measure while further investigations were conducted.

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Authorities in Volos say affected area spans kilometres and could cause environmental disaster for other species

Greek authorities have started collecting hundreds of thousands of dead fish that poured into a tourist port in the central city of Volos this week after being displaced from their usual freshwater habitats during flooding last year.

The floating carcasses created a silvery blanket across the port and a stench that alarmed residents and authorities who raced to scoop them up before the odour reached nearby restaurants and hotels.

Selected from almost 60,000 entries from 117 countries and territories, the winners of the 60th competition will be announced on 8 October. The 100 winning images will be on display at the Natural History Museum in London from 11 October

Lobbyists from Airlines for America argued against European Commission draft rules to report cocktail of pollutants, freedom of information requests show

US airlines lobbied against plans to monitor the damage wrought by planet-heating pollutants pumped out of planes in a previously undisclosed meeting with the European Commission, the Guardian can reveal.

Lobbyists from Airlines for America and some of its member companies met representatives of the European Commission’s climate team in May in a meeting that is not logged on the participants’ pages in the EU transparency register. The commission said the meeting took place at a technical level and that it is under no obligation to publish details of meetings at lower levels of its hierarchy.

Extinct in central Europe for 300 years, 36 northern bald ibis are following an ultralight aircraft on their long-forgotten migration route from Austria to Spain

The northern bald ibis was extinct in central Europe for 300 years. Now, it has returned – and scientist “foster parents” aboard a tiny plane are teaching the birds to fly their long-forgotten migration routes.

Thirty-six of these endangered birds are now following an ultralight aircraft 1,740 miles (2,800km ) from Austria to Spain, on a trip that could take up to 50 days to complete.

Australia needs more gas in the short term because of our sluggish transition to renewables – but at worst the shortfall may lead to some rationing

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The gas industry has been unleashing a firehose of rhetoric in recent days over concerns Australia could suffer a shortage of gas.

In a series of articles in the Australian newspaper under the banner “Gas Crisis”, industry figures and the Coalition’s energy spokesman, Ted O’Brien, claim a shortage is going to “destroy” the economy, cause a “crippling energy crisis” and have Australians suffering the ignominy of “cold showers”.

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Records of Kamala Harris and running mate Tim Walz instill hope that progress under Biden could be extended

Public health advocates are optimistic that a Kamala Harris win in the November presidential election in the US would lead to further regulation of PFAS toxic “forever chemicals”, on which the Biden administration has already taken unprecedented regulatory action.

In part that is based on past actions. Last year, Harris’s running mate, the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, signed bold legislation prohibiting the use of toxic PFAS across a range of common consumer goods from menstrual products to food packaging – a measure that is considered by public health advocates to be among the “strongest bans in the world”.

‘Beaver bombing’ increasing because of failure by successive governments to approve releases, say experts

“Beaver bombing”, covertly releasing beavers into the countryside, is increasing in England because successive governments have not fulfilled promises to permit some planned wild releases, conservationists are warning.

Beavers now live freely on river systems across swaths of southern England, and conservationists are calling on Labour to allow official releases of free-living beavers and produce a national strategy to maximise the biodiversity and flood alleviation benefits delivered by the industrious mammals.

Why have politicians outsourced the most important issue of our time to private agencies and individuals? We can’t do it all - this way lies disaster

There are several services and assets I would like to see nationalised. But at the top of my list is neither water, nor trains, nor development land, much as I’d like to see them brought under national or local public ownership. Above all, I want to see the nationalisation of my own business: environmental persuasion. I love my job. But I’m not very good at it. None of us is.

We face the greatest predicament humankind has confronted: the erosion and possible collapse of our life-support systems. Its speed and scale have taken even scientists by surprise. The potential impacts are greater than any recent pandemic, or any war we have suffered. Yet the effort to persuade people of the need for action has been left almost entirely to either the private or voluntary sectors. And it simply does not work.

More than 150 councillors join 15,000 members of the public calling for urban areas to be free of the chemicals

The UK should copy Paris and ban pesticides in urban areas, campaigners and local councils have said.

Drawing attention to how the capital city of France still looked pristine while hosting the Olympics, the Pesticide Action Network (PAN) has said the same can be true of UK towns and cities.

Madrid study finds people from below-average income groups more likely to die in heatwaves

Scorching temperatures across Europe have killed tens of thousands of people in recent years. But as fatalities rise, researchers are finding that one group is disproportionately bearing the brunt of extreme heat: those living in poverty.

“It’s common sense,” said Julio Díaz Jiménez, an investigative professor at Madrid’s Carlos III health institute. “A heatwave is not the same when you’re in a shared room with three other people and no air conditioning, as when you’re in a villa with access to a pool and air conditioning.”

The cameras that made the falcons a social media phenomenon are rolling again for a new breeding season, capturing a new female falcon incubating an egg atop Melbourne's Collins Street skyscraper. There are high hopes for this season after last year’s eggs were unable to hatch after the female stopped incubating, likely due to a territorial dispute

• New peregrine in town: female falcon becomes latest to nest atop Melbourne skyscraper