The Guardian

Coalition frontbencher calls for Queenslanders to boycott Australia’s second-largest bank after it says it will now only lend to mines in established coalfields

All of Australia’s big four banks have ruled out funding or withdrawn from Adani’s Queensland coal project, after Westpac said it would not back opening up new coalmining regions.

Westpac, the country’s second-largest bank, released a new climate policy on Friday, saying it would limit lending for new thermal coal projects to “only existing coal producing basins”.

Malaysia-based IOI Group announces further moves to address deforestation and exploitation in its supply chain

Greenpeace has suspended its campaign against one of the world’s largest palm oil traders in recognition of its “significant commitment” to address deforestation and exploitation in its supply chain.

One year after its sustainability certificate was suspended, IOI Group announced further commitments to improve its environmental practice in a nine-month progress report released on Friday.

University stops short of fully divesting its $36bn endowment from coal, oil and gas but green groups welcome the breakthrough after a five-year campaign

Harvard University is “pausing” investments in some fossil fuel interests following a five-year campaign by some students and environment groups to pressure the university to divest itself from coal, oil and gas.

Government’s advocate applies to delay publishing proposals until 30 June, saying controversy might be seen as ‘Tory plan’

The government wants to delay publishing its plan to tackle air pollution in England and Wales because it would be like dropping a bomb into the election campaign, the high court has heard.

James Eadie QC, representing the government, said it would be better to put the publication on hold until after the general election to avoid the controversy over how to tackle the air quality crisis being seen as a “Tory plan”.

As despair intensifies over Trump’s agenda, the bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus brings Democrats and Republicans together to break the deadlock

The failure of American politics to deal with, or even coherently discuss, climate change was perhaps best illustrated when James Inhofe, a Republican from Oklahoma, took to the floor of the US senate with a ziploc bag and a mischievous grin in February 2015.

Related: March against madness - denial has pushed scientists out into the streets | Dana Nuccitelli

A new paper finds no statistical evidence that global warming slowed down in recent years or that it’s sped up just yet

As humans continue to dump heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the Earth continues to warm. In fact, it has been warming for decades and we now routinely hit temperatures that are 1°C (about 2°F) above the temperatures from 100 years ago.

But despite what we may expect, temperatures across the globe don’t rise little by little each year in a straight line. Rather, temperature changes are a bit bumpy. They go up and they go down somewhat randomly as they increase. Think of a wiggly line superimposed on a straight rising line.

Peter Walker takes in stunning views and steep climbs on one of an increasing number of UK cycling sportives that take place on routes shut to motor traffic

If there is one single activity most responsible for the recent mini-boom in Britons taking up road biking, it is arguably the sportive.

These organised, entry-only mass cycling events have sprung up around the UK in ever-increasing numbers. For various legal and insurance reasons they are not races but instead challenge riders only against the clock.

Tourist survives, suffering only moderate injuries, after rare attack at Curio Bay in the South Island

A French tourist survived a rare shark attack in New Zealand on Thursday, suffering only moderate injuries, rescuers and locals said.

The woman, aged in her 20s, was bodyboarding in the afternoon at Curio Bay in the South Island when the shark attacked her leg, St John Ambulance said.

Sandy, Bedfordshire Two kingfishers, with daggers of beaks and undercarriages of deep orange, were engaged in a chase

In the days before we gave names to storms, an anonymous blow laid low a riverside tree. Years later, leafless and lifeless, its branches bare of bark, the tree still lay across the water, an antlered jetty.

That gale had heaved the tree over, root plate and all, taking a giant’s bite out of the riverbank. The tree’s sheared and weathered anchors stuck out like pirates’ bones from the caked soil at the base of the trunk. A long-ago flood had wrapped a silt-stained shred of black plastic around one of the protruding roots.

Locals told proposed mine in the southern highlands of NSW, part of Sydney’s water catchment, would damage water table in the region for as long as 73 years

A controversial underground coalmine that will threaten the water supply of 71 landowners in NSW’s southern highlands will net the state government just $120m over two decades, locals have been told.

A multinational steelmaker, Korea-based Posco, is seeking approval for an underground coalmine near Berrima in the southern highlands of New South Wales, part of Sydney’s drinking-water catchment.

Wildflowers have erupted across California deserts in the past month in a phenomenon known as a ‘super bloom’. After heavy rainfall ended months of drought, the flowers carpeted such vast areas that the transformation was visible from space

• Video courtesy of Heather Lomax
• Images courtesy of Planet Labs

Mount Etna, India’s ship graveyard and trees in Africa are among the images captured by European Space Agency and Nasa satellites last month

The Mackenzie river system is Canada’s largest watershed, and the 10th largest water basin in the world. The river runs 4,200km (2,600 miles) from the Columbia icefield in the Canadian Rockies to the Arctic Ocean. If your vehicle weighs less than 22,000lb, you can drive the frozen river out to Reindeer Station. The bitterly cold ice road runs for 194km between the remote outposts of Inuvik and Tuktoyaktuk. White, snow- and ice-covered waterways of the east channel of the Mackenzie river delta stand out amid green, pine-covered land. The low angle of the sunlight bathes the higher elevations in golden light. The pond- and lake-covered lands around the river are home to caribou, waterfowl, and a number of fish species. Several thousand reindeer travel through this area each year on the way to their calving grounds.

The new cycling and walking investment strategy is the first legislation of its kind to legally bind the government to long-term funding for cycling and walking provision

Unless you’re an avid transport campaigner, it’s likely that among the rush of government announcements made last week, you will have missed one very important one: the publication of the cycling and walking investment strategy (CWIS),

The government’s intention to launch a CWIS was first announced in January 2015. It took more than two years, but we now have the first legislation of its kind in England to bind the government with legal commitments to invest in cycling and walking provision.

Figsbury Ring, Wiltshire Sewn like gems into the sward, these little blue flowers take shelter in the lee of the earthwork rings

Bluer than the sky, bluer than the sheen on rooks and the lustre of oil beetles, the milkwort flowers are sewn like gems into the sward. Polygala calcarea is the chalk milkwort, with a gentian-blue far brighter than the common milkwort flowers I’m used to seeing on Wenlock Edge. High on Salisbury Plain, open to the winds and shafts of sunlight through distant showers, the little blue flowers take shelter in the lee of earthwork rings, an archaeological monument within the largest remaining area of calcareous grassland in north-west Europe.

Milkwort gets its name not from increasing milk yield in grazing cattle but from herbalists prescribing it to new mothers to aid breastfeeding, although I’m not sure anyone would now. It has also been used as an anti-inflammatory and a hepatoprotector (against liver damage), but perhaps its most important cultural role here was that it was collected at Rogationtide.

Scientists reveal unique, intimate form of communication between humpback mothers and calves as well as silent method to initiate suckling

Newborn humpback whales and their mothers whisper to each other to escape potential predators, scientists reported Wednesday, revealing the existence of a previously unknown survival technique.

“They don’t want any unwanted listeners,” researcher Simone Videsen, lead author of a study published in Functional Ecology, said.

Global index reveals 60% of asset owners are now taking some action, but warns there is still ‘enormous resistance’ to managing climate risk

For the first time a majority of global investor heavyweights recognise the financial risks of climate change, according to the results of a major global index rating how investors manage such risks.

But despite the advances, the Asset Owner Disclosure Project chairman, John Hewson, has warned there is still an “enormous resistance” to managing climate risk.

Constitutional experts say government is on ‘very dodgy ground’ claiming election purdah forces it to postpone publishing pollution strategy

The government’s attempt to delay publishing its air pollution strategy because of the election is “dishonest” and leaves ministers on “very dodgy ground”, according to constitutional experts.

The government had been under a court direction to produce tougher draft measures to tackle illegal levels of nitrogen dioxide pollution, which is responsible for thousands of premature deaths each year, by 4pm on Monday. The original plans had been dismissed by judges as so poor as to be unlawful.

Critics say air pollution issue is public health and not political issue and ministers must defend delay in high court

The government has been ordered back to the high court to explain its last-minute bid to delay publication of the UK’s clean air plan.

Politicians and environmental groups had complained that ministers were “hiding behind the election” after they said they could not publish the proposals because of election purdah.

America’s leaders are playing Russian roulette with our future

This past weekend, hundreds of thousands of people in the US and around the world marched in support of science. Next weekend, the People’s Climate March will follow.

Redglass Pictures and StarTalk Radio created a short film in which the brilliant scientist and communicator Neil deGrasse Tyson – though not specifically talking about the science marches – perfectly articulated the motivations behind them.

Joël Meriko Ari and Gerome Bolimola Afokao discovered a group of men with a freshly slaughtered elephant carcass. The rangers leave behind 11 children

Elephant poachers have killed two wildlife rangers in a shootout in Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), reports African Parks, a not-for-profit conservation group that manages 10 protected areas across Africa in partnership with governments and local communities.

While out patrolling on 11 April, ranger Joël Meriko Ari and Sgt Gerome Bolimola Afokao of the DRC armed forces heard gunshots, African Parks reported. The patrol unit followed signs and tracks until they discovered a group of six poachers who were chopping up a freshly slaughtered elephant carcass.