The Guardian

Interbreeding may have boosted wildcat immunity to domestic cat diseases, but now threatens their survival as a distinct species

Humans weren’t the only creatures to fall under the sway of free love in the 1960s. After 2,000 years of keeping one another at paw’s length, wildcats and their domestic cousins began to interbreed about 60 years ago, a new study suggests.

Doing so may have helped to protect their offspring against diseases harboured by domestic cats, but this interbreeding is now threatening the survival of wildcats as a distinct species.

In showing their disdain for the climate crisis, homelessness and refugees, the Conservatives are being deliberately provocative, and they expect us to lap it up

Imagine someone had said to King Charles: “Yes, you are going to end up top dog, but you won’t give your first address to parliament as king until a week before your 75th birthday. And, in it, you’ll have to walk the country through new annual oil and gas licences that represent a disregard for the future of the planet that you’ve spent your adult life worrying about.” Well, the poor guy would have been pretty dispirited. In fact, these energy plans look like a deliberate provocation – so much so that you have to wonder whether Rishi Sunak and the king have beef we don’t know about.

The oil and gas licences themselves are nonsense. Sunak knows that. None of the major industry players are rewriting their business strategies on the understanding that the Tories will be in power even this time next year, let alone on a rolling annual basis beyond that. The fields under offer are unlikely to produce enough oil and gas to meet our need for what Sunak calls “energy security”; Shell and BP have already sold some of their North Sea assets. In other words, this policy has no concrete practical application. It is pure vice-signalling.

Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist

Exclusive: study finds militaries have generated about 430m metric tonnes of CO2 emissions since 2015 Paris accords

The US and UK militaries owe at least $111bn in reparations to communities most harmed by their planet-heating pollution, a first-of-its-kind study calculates.

The research employs a “social cost of carbon” framework – a way to estimate the cost, in dollars, of the climate damage done by each additional tonne of carbon in the atmosphere.

Two Just Stop Oil activists wielding safety hammers smashed the glass cover of a painting at the London National Gallery on Monday.

The painting they targeted was an artwork from the 1600s that was previously attacked by the suffragette Mary Richardson in 1914. 'Women did not get the vote by voting. It is time for deeds and not words. It is time to just stop oil,' said one of protesters.

Police said the two activists had been arrested on suspicion of criminal damage

Campaigners accuse government of failing to stick to promises made at Cop26 climate summit in 2021

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Beef, soy and palm oil products driving deforestation are still being imported into the UK, despite government promises this practice would end, data has revealed.

Campaigners have criticised the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) for failing to put practices in place to stop the import of goods from areas with high deforestation rates. This is despite the government having promised at the Cop26 climate conference in 2021 to implement the rules.

Governments draw up blueprint for fund to be administered at first by World Bank after tense Abu Dhabi talks

Countries have agreed key measures to supply funds to the world’s most vulnerable people to repair the damage from climate breakdown.

Governments from richer and poorer countries drew up the blueprint for a new “loss and damage” fund after a tense two-day meeting under UN guidance in Abu Dhabi that ended late on Saturday night.

Final testing being done in project to give North Yorkshire site new life as source of geothermal energy

A former fracking site in the North Yorkshire village of Kirby Misperton, once a lightning rod for environmental protests, may soon be a new frontier in Britain’s clean energy revolution. For the first time in the UK, an abandoned gas well could begin a second life as a source of geothermal energy.

It is a far cry from its beginnings as a highly contested site where frackers hoped to tap fresh reservoirs of gas trapped in layers of shale beneath the earth’s surface. In 2016, Third Energy was granted permission to carry out fracking at an existing well but its plans were ultimately thwarted by a government moratorium on using the technology in the UK.

I may be in denial about my computer being on the blink, but after another hot and muggy Halloween, one thing is frighteningly clear

I fear the Apple Store. It’s a disorienting cross between a Los Angeles hotel lobby, the place where everyone over 30 gets killed in Logan’s Run and the headquarters of Hydra ™ ®. The protocols for attracting a staff member seem inexplicably opaque, like the rules for bidding in an auction, or initiating a new friendship. They induce mild panic attacks and my heart flutters as groomed twentysomethings, who could be customers or staff, waft by me, geishas for Steve Jobs’s ghost. Why aren’t there any queues? Can I just sit in here quietly and eat the things from my bag? Is there a duty free section?

In the Apple Store, I never know if a commercial transaction is taking place, or if I am just involved in a continuing discussion about my “needs”, a situation I admittedly find replicated in my dealings with my therapist and people generally. And there is now a raised area at the rear of the Regent Street branch in London that suggests a ziggurat. Here, ancient Aztecs tore out people’s hearts to appease Quetzalcoatl, a sacrifice still less demanding than the financial one required buy a new Apple laptop. When I mentioned, to the charming young man attending me, that the shop design made me think of the death rituals of the winged serpent worshippers, he just smiled, as if I were complimenting Apple’s bold aesthetics. But I will have to go to the Apple Store again. Soon.

Basic Lee tour dates are here; a six-week London run begins 9 December at Leicester Square theatre

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Most liners rely on marine gas oil when docked, despite claims they reduce emissions by plugging into low-carbon electricity

Cruise ships visiting Britain are frequently failing to plug into “zero emission” onshore power and instead running their engines and polluting the local environment with fumes.

The industry is under scrutiny over air pollution and contribution to greenhouse gases, with some European cities banning vessels from central ports. Cruise firms say ships can reduce emissions by switching off engines and plugging into low-carbon electricity when moored. But an investigation by openDemocracy has found that cruise ships regularly fail to use shore power at Southampton, Britain’s largest cruise port.

Agency had strong limits on TCE use until the Trump administration reversed them; now the agency wants to ban it

The Biden administration is proposing a ban on TCE, a highly toxic chemical commonly used in stain removers, adhesives and degreasers, and which had been found to be contaminating drinking water on a wide scale across the US.

The move comes after years of mounting scientific evidence showing TCE is “extremely toxic” at low levels of exposure, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) wrote in a statement.

Charity to bring its gardens to urban areas to allow nature-deprived communities access to green spaces

Bringing glorious gardens and green space to nature-deprived people in cities is one of the National Trust’s most important roles, its head has said.

Maintaining some of the most famous country houses in England, Wales and Northern Ireland has long been thought of as the trust’s central purpose, but the charity is aiming to bring its gardens to urban areas to increase access to nature, with an urban garden planned for Chelsea flower show that will model a pocket park that can be copied and rolled out across towns and cities.

Exclusive: Even as juries decide against a herbicide maker, proposed industry-backed measures would limit lawsuits and local use restrictions

Cancer patients are celebrating a string of courtroom victories after juries in three US states recently ordered Germany’s Bayer to pay more than $500m in damages for failing to warn about the health risks of its Roundup herbicides. But the consumer wins come as proposed federal legislation backed by Bayer and the powerful agricultural industry could limit similar cases from ever going to trial in the future.

Dubbed the Agricultural Labeling Uniformity Act, the proposed measure would provide sweeping protections for pesticide companies and their products, pre-empting local governments from implementing restrictions on pesticide use and blocking many of the legal claims that have been plaguing Bayer, according to the American Association for Justice (AAJ) and other critics.

When I had a baby, those future generations I’d worried about had a face. It transformed me

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I’ve been worried about climate change my whole life. When I was a kid we called it the greenhouse effect and I assumed that, by the time I grew up, someone else would have fixed it. But no one did.

In my 20s I realised that, as one of the grownups, it was my job to fix it. I sought out roles in sustainability and grew increasingly despondent at leaders who denied climate change. Then I had a baby.

World leaders will reconvene in Abu Dhabi before UAE’s Cop28 after talks broke down two weeks ago

Governments will meet this weekend for a last-ditch attempt to bridge deep divisions between rich and poor countries over how to get money to vulnerable people afflicted by climate disaster.

Talks over funds for “loss and damage”, which refers to the rescue and rehabilitation of countries and communities experiencing the effects of extreme weather, started in March but broke down in rancour two weeks ago.

Cut shopping bills, landfill and carbon emissions by using up peelings and stems where possible

With their spiky crowns of leaves, pineapples are about as close as you can get to a tropical paradise while doing the weekly shop – but now Sainsbury’s has begun selling the fruit shorn of its exotic plumage, all in the name of cutting food waste.

With the fruit’s hardy leaves usually ending up in the bin or a food waste caddy, the move shines a spotlight on waste in the home. So could the leaves, stems and skins of the fruit and vegetables we routinely throw away be put to better use in the kitchen?

Concerns ahead of Cop28 climate summit that Rishi Sunak among leaders backsliding on green measures

The UN secretary-general, António Guterres, will be seeking assurances from the UK that there will be no reneging on climate promises, after Rishi Sunak’s rowing back on green measures.

The UN is concerned that countries may be backsliding on pledges to cut greenhouse gas emissions sharply, to limit global temperature rises to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.

A man on a motorcycle was injured when the camper van braked suddenly to go around the roaming arachnid

When tarantulas are on the move, it’s best to use caution. That’s the message park officials are trying to get out after a roving arachnid caused a car crash in Death Valley national park last weekend.

Two tourists from Switzerland braked hard after seeing a tarantula scampering across Route 190 in a remote area almost 5,000ft above sea level. A 24-year-old Canadian man on a motorcycle then crashed into the back of the Swiss couple’s rented camper van and had to be transported to a hospital.

The best of this week’s wildlife photographs, including thirsty leopards, a released vulture and a swan shopping in Bath

Divers captured the spawning of soft corals on Moore Reef with researchers to analyse next generation

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Annual coral spawning has begun on the outer Great Barrier Reef, with researchers set to analyse the next generation of corals.

Divers captured the spawning of soft corals on Moore Reef, 47km east of Cairns, on Thursday night.

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Drone images of cages shot by activist reveal open sores affecting ‘up to 1m fish’. Fish producers are now culling them for animal feed

Images of severely diseased, dead and dying salmon at an Icelandic fish farm, obtained by the Guardian, have been described by one veterinary expert as an “animal welfare disaster” on a scale never previously seen.

The drone footage, shot last week over an open-pen sea cage in the country’s remote Westfjords region, shows salmon suffering from such a severe infestation of sea lice that huge numbers of the fish are having to be prematurely slaughtered.