The Guardian

While tourists flock to the Italian island in greater numbers, a water crisis is intensifying for its rural population

For the first time in four generations of his family’s farming history, Vito Amantia’s threshers have lain silent this year. The 650,000kg of wheat that his farm would usually produce in a year has been lost, parched and withered under the scorching sun and relentless drought.

“A seasoned farmer doesn’t need to check the weather forecast to understand what the weather will be like,” says Amantia, 68, who farms on the Catania plain in eastern Sicily. “Already last January, I knew it would be a disastrous year. The wheat seedlings that normally reached 80cm stopped at 5cm. Then they dried up.”

Queensland police say the man remained in his tinny after the whale hit him in waters near Coolangatta

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A man has suffered serious injuries after being struck by a whale while in a tinny in waters near the border of Queensland and New South Wales.

Jetski riders off the coast of Coolangatta called emergency services just before 9am on Sunday when a whale reportedly collided with the man in his boat.

Experts worry hydrogen cars will delay electrification of transport – but only five were sold in Australia in the last quarter, while EVs sell steadily

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Is Australia’s love affair with the hydrogen car over before it began? New data shows just five vehicles running on hydrogen fuel-cells were sold across the country last quarter.

Battery-powered electric vehicles, on the other hand, sold steadily. Australians bought 25,353 EVs in the three months to 30 June – 8% of the total. Hybrid cars were even more popular, with 46,727 sold.

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‘Freshie’ spotted in Hughenden’s human-made lake after unexpectedly escaping death in cold snap

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The residents of Hughenden in Queensland’s outback have two questions.

How did a freshwater crocodile come to be living in their local swimming spot – and when is it going to move on?

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Convicted of non-violent offences in Insulate Britain action, Dr Diana Warner is second GP to have licence suspended, which a medical tribunal ruled could damage patient trust

A retired GP has become the second doctor to have their medical licence suspended after being convicted of non-violent offences during peaceful climate protests.

Dr Diana Warner, who worked as a GP for 35 years in surgeries around Bristol, was imprisoned for a total of six weeks for twice breaching private anti-protest injunctions banning people from blocking traffic on the M25 in 2021 and 2022. She was also jailed for six weeks for gluing her hand to the dock during her plea hearing at a magistrates court in east London in 2022.

Dr Adi Paterson’s statements are apparently at odds with the group’s official position, which says nuclear is needed to tackle the climate crisis

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The chair of a leading Australian nuclear advocacy group has called concerns that carbon dioxide emissions are driving a climate crisis an “irrational fear of a trace gas which is plant food” and has rejected links between worsening extreme weather and global heating.

Several statements from Dr Adi Paterson, reviewed by the Guardian, appear at odds with statements from the group he chairs, Nuclear for Australia, which is hosting a petition saying nuclear is needed to tackle an “energy and climate crisis”.

Surviving a shark – or lion, or bear – attack is the key criteria for entry into Bite Club. Together its members navigate their next big challenge: what happens after you survive?

Paul Kenny was camping behind the dunes at Samurai beach, north of Port Stephens on the Australian east coast, when he jumped naked into the water to “just wake up”. It was freezing but he caught a good wave, got some speed up and hit something. At first he thought it was another person but there was no one else swimming. He had body surfed into the head of a 2.5-metre (8ft) bronze whaler shark and his outstretched arm was in its teeth.

And with that, Kenny met the criteria to enter the small, exclusive Bite Club.

Pilot whale that beached itself in 1973 was infested with thousands of parasitic nematodes that may have eaten away at its blowhole

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A vial of white parasitic worms left for decades in a Tasmanian museum may help solve a timeless mystery: why do whales strand themselves on beaches?

The worms were collected from the blowhole of a pilot whale that beached itself in 1973 and then stored in Launceston’s Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery.

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DLA Piper seeking to recover costs in relation to injunctions it secured for National Highways and HS2, records show

Britain’s biggest law firm has sought more than £1m from climate protesters to cover the cost of court orders banning them from protesting, an investigation has found.

The multibillion-pound City law firm DLA Piper has been trying to recover costs from activists for work done on behalf of National Highways Limited (NHL) and HS2 Ltd – both public bodies – obtaining injunctions banning protests on their sites.

Friederike Otto of World Weather Attribution says poor people and outdoor workers are dying around the world

Heat inequality is causing thousands of unreported deaths in poor countries and communities across the world, a leading analyst of climate impacts has warned, following global temperature records that may not have been seen in 120,000 years.

Sweltering conditions act as a stealthy killer that preys on the most economically fragile, said Friederike Otto, co-founder of World Weather Attribution, in an appeal for the media and authorities to pay more attention to the dangers.

Compound used in refrigeration and air conditioning accumulates at much higher levels that other chemicals

Rain and air samples collected in metro Detroit that researchers checked for toxic PFAS “forever chemicals” showed the highest levels of TFA, an alarming finding because the compound is a potent greenhouse gas and more toxic than previously thought, but not well-studied.

While PFAS are a chemical class known to be ubiquitous in the environment, the new research is part of growing evidence around the globe that points to TFA, commonly used in refrigeration, air conditioning and clean energy technology, accumulating at much higher levels than other well-studied compounds.

An oarfish, which resembles a serpent, was found floating dead on the ocean surface off the San Diego coast and was brought ashore for study. Scientists say it is only the 20th time since 1901 an oarfish is known to have washed up in California

• Stonehenge megalith came from Scotland, not Wales, ‘jaw-dropping’ study finds

Data shows continued surge in wind and solar power amid hopes Chinese greenhouse gas emissions may have peaked

China produced as much clean electricity in the first half of this year as the UK generated from all sources in the same period last year, data shows, as wind and solar power generation continued to surge in the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases.

Electricity generation from coal and gas dropped by 5% in China in July, year on year, according to an update from the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) thinktank, basing its analysis on data released by the Chinese government on Thursday.

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

I smugly assumed I was offering my children a crash course in wholesomeness. The reality was quite different

Earlier this week, I dropped my kids off at a day camp in a park in London and then congratulated myself all the way home. The summer holiday is long and camp programmes are expensive, and when you sign up for one, there is a hard-to-resist expectation that the kids will be not only entertained but improved – physically (swimming lessons), morally (team games – specifically rounders) and, in the case of the camp we signed up for, spiritually. By which, of course, I refer to two sacred words in the middle-class lexicon: forest school.

I should say I’m completely down with the broad mission of forest school. Adults and children are improved by spending time in nature; studies and experience show this. There is a difference, however, between forest school the movement, a laudable push to get kids learning outside based on ideas that stretch back to the 19th century and popularised in the 1950s by, of course, the Scandinavians, and forest school, the modern marketing and business initiative. It reminds me of the catnip status latterly occupied by Mandarin lessons in the New York state primary system, which, when my three-year-olds started pre-school in 2018 – one of them still wearing pull-ups – saw them slogging each week through a mandatory class. There is nothing wrong with learning Mandarin, but it is perhaps not a priority for people who can’t use the toilet yet.

Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist

An architectural zigzag design can limit how much heat is absorbed by buildings – and emitted back to space

Incorporating zigzag patterns into building walls could help cool overheated buildings, research has found.

Buildings are now responsible for approximately 40% of global energy consumption, contributing more than a third of global carbon dioxide emissions.

Researchers at Australia’s Flinders University hope the acoustic method will make it easier to find and fix soil degradation

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Ever wondered what the Earth sounds like? New research suggests healthy soil has a distinctive soundtrack of its own – the crackles, pops and clicks of ants and worms bustling around underground.

Scientists from Australia’s Flinders University listened to microphones planted in the ground to see if invertebrate instrumentals are a good indicator of biodiversity and soil health.

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Paul Watson fighting efforts byJapan to have him stand trial there for 2010 confrontation with whalers

A Greenland court has ordered the anti-whaling activist Paul Watson to remain in custody until 5 September pending a decision on his possible extradition to Japan.

Watson, an American-Canadian who has been detained since his arrest in Nuuk in July, had appealed against the court’s decision, the statement on Thursday added.

News follows scrapping of two other Atlantic windfarms and axing of hundreds of jobs as costs surge

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The Danish company developing the world’s largest offshore windfarm in the North Sea has been forced to delay a major project off the north-east coast of the US, months after cancelling two nearby developments and cutting hundreds of jobs.

Ørsted has pushed back the start of commercial operations at its 704 megawatt Revolution Wind project off the coast of Rhode Island and Connecticut by a year, to 2026.

Increasing tree cover in urban areas could reduce heat-related deaths – but a fight has ensued between corporate interests and residents

It’s 9pm on a blistering July night in Plaza de Santa Ana, a square at the heart of Madrid’s literary district. The thermometer has barely dropped below 39C, but despite the heat a 78-year-old woman climbs on to a bench to give an impassioned speech to a 200-strong crowd.

“Did you think we weren’t going to be here, Señor Almeida?” She scans the crowd, searching for José Luis Martínez-Almeida, Madrid’s mayor, while anguished cries of “Arboricida!” (tree murder) punctuate the silence. Her face is immediately recognisable. She is movie star Marisa Paredes, an actor immortalised in Almodóvar classics such as High Heels – just one of many activists trying to stop what seems like a concerted campaign to strip central Madrid of its trees.