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The black cockatoo is nearly identical to its neighbour, the Carnaby’s. And that’s a problem for protecting the endangered species

• The Guardian/BirdLife Australia Bird of the Year poll for 2021 will begin on 27 September

In the early 1830s, the painter Edward Lear was painstakingly illustrating a black cockatoo, based on a specimen collected by French explorer Nicholas Baudin in the south-west of Western Australia in 1804.

The image, which would become the holotype for the Baudin’s cockatoo, was published in Illustrations of the Family of Psittacidae, or Parrots (1832). Back in Lear’s time it was believed that the Baudin’s was the only species of white-tailed black cockatoo. Another white-tailed black cockatoo, called the Carnaby’s, was classified as a subspecies. But more than a century later, scientists began to believe the differences between the two birds were far too significant for them to be considered one species; they breed differently, don’t eat the same food and occupy different habitats. The Carnaby’s was declared a separate species in 1979.

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After asking for public help with their investigations, scientists have received thousands of reports and specimens of dead, shrivelled frogs

In the middle of Sydney’s lockdown, scientist Jodi Rowley has been retrieving frozen dead frogs from her doorstep.

Occasionally one will arrive dried and shrivelled up in the post.

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Apple has just unveiled the latest all-singing, all-dancing iteration of its handset, but perhaps you should resist the hype

On Tuesday, Apple released its latest phone – the iPhone 13. Naturally, it was presented with the customary breathless excitement. It has a smaller notch (eh?), a redesigned camera, Apple’s latest A15 “bionic” chipset and a brighter, sharper screen. And, since we’re surfing the superlative wave, the A15 has nearly 15bn transistors and a “six-core CPU design with two high-performance and four high-efficiency cores”.

Wow! But just one question: why would I buy this Wundermaschine? After all, two years ago I got an iPhone 11, which has been more than adequate for my purposes. That replaced the iPhone 6 I bought in 2014 and that replaced the iPhone 4 I got in 2010. And all of those phones are still working fine. The oldest one serves as a family backup in case someone loses or breaks a phone, the iPhone 6 has become a hardworking video camera and my present phone may well see me out.

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Labour’s shadow business secretary says the government must ‘rebuild trust’ after a series of missteps on way to climate summit

Boris Johnson should set out plans to provide Covid-19 vaccinations to all developing countries to achieve a global climate deal, Labour’s shadow business secretary, Ed Miliband, has urged.

Only 2% of the population of developing countries have been inoculated, despite promises by rich nations. Ensuring the rest have access to vaccines would build trust with the poor world which is lacking, Miliband said, ahead of the vital UN Cop26 climate talks in Glasgow in November.

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Seabird carcasses discovered along Northumberland, North Yorkshire and Scottish shores, with many more found emaciated

Several hundred seabirds have been found dead along the coasts of north-east England and Scotland, while many have been discovered emaciated.

The UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH), which is investigating the cause of the deaths, said the majority of the birds were guillemots.

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UK activists have protested on the M25, but should they instead be picketing China's embassy?

Environment groups decry protection ‘downgrade’ that would affect Tasmanian devil, whale shark and Kangaroo Island glossy-black cockatoo

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The Morrison government has proposed scrapping recovery plans for almost 200 endangered species and habitats including the Tasmanian devil, the whale shark and the endangered glossy-black cockatoo populations on Kangaroo Island, one of the worst-affected areas in the 2019-20 bushfires.

Environment groups have decried the move as a backward step less than 12 months after a statutory review of Australia’s national environmental laws found successive governments had failed to protect the country’s unique wildlife.

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A daily summary of our news plus bite-sized updates from around the world.

WCI regulated entities increased their open short positions for the second consecutive week as prices began to rebound in the futures market, while speculators’ holdings rose slightly over the period, according to US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) data published Friday.

The Q-4 California-Quebec auction will roundoff the year with its lowest volume since Q-1 according to an auction notice published Friday afternoon, increasing the chances of record-breaking prices on Nov 17.

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The sixth instalment of Carbon Forward - the premier annual environmental markets conference - is back, and it's stacked with a first-class line-up of speakers to discuss the global boom in carbon credit prices, as well as government- and corporate-led efforts to scale up these markets.

Global GHG emissions will be 16% higher in 2030 than they were in 2010 - levels aligned to 2.7C of warming - even if all nationally-determined contributions (NDCs) submitted under the Paris Agreement are fully achieved, according to a UN updated NDC synthesis report released Friday.

Though the days turn cold and the night draws in, we should not mourn; this time of year is full of richnesses and new beginnings too

So, after a late short blaze of summer, autumn is here. The leaves are turning, the blackberries are mostly eaten. So much of our approach to the season in literature and music has a dying fall: “Nothing gold can stay”, as Robert Frost put it. Not that summer was especially golden in the UK this year. Many, deprived of the long warm days of beach-going and picnics they had hoped for, feel it never happened at all. And now there is a rising drumroll of warning about winter infection rates, NHS overwhelm and rocketing heating costs.

True, the swifts are leaving, and geese honk across the sky. The mornings are darker and evenings shorter – one definition of autumn is that it begins on the equinox, 21 September, when dark and light are equal; another is based on average temperature, and kicks the season off on 1 September – but a flock of swallows waiting for the signal to go is a wonderful thing. And other birds, including knots, waxwings, fieldfares, light-bellied brent geese and redwings are just arriving.

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The president asks leaders to commit to cutting emissions by at least 30% below 2020 levels by 2030.

Major commitment with deadline of 2030 is big advance towards reaching 1.5C goal set out in Paris agreement

The US and the EU made a joint pledge on Friday to cut global methane emissions by almost a third in the next decade, in what climate experts hailed as one of the most significant steps yet towards fulfilling the Paris climate agreement.

The pledge came as the UN secretary-general, António Guterres, warned of a “high risk of failure” at vital UN climate talks, called Cop26, set for Glasgow this November.

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People living amid toxic fumes hope ruling will force Walleys Quarry to make urgent changes

When she returned to her home in the village of Knutton, outside Newcastle-under-Lyme, after a trip to London on Thursday, the landfill fumes hit Helen Vincent like a brick wall. “We were saying to each other: ‘Oh how nice was the fresh air in London?’ You won’t hear many people say that,” she laughed.

Vincent had been in London for a landmark high court ruling which ordered the Environment Agency to do more to protect five-year-old Mathew Richards from the landfill’s hydrogen sulphide fumes, which doctors said were shortening his life expectancy.

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Climate plans of more than 100 countries show we're heading in the wrong direction, the UN says.

It's 100 years since the great Antarctic explorer set out on his last voyage to the White Continent.

Overfishing, a heating planet, pollution and habitat destruction have devastated reefs, scientists warn

The world’s coral reef cover has halved since the 1950s, ravaged by global heating, overfishing, pollution and habitat destruction, according to an analysis of thousands of reef surveys.

From the 1,430-mile (2,300km) Great Barrier Reef in Australia to the Saya de Malha Bank in the Indian Ocean, coral reefs and the diversity of fish species they support are in steep decline, a trend that is projected to continue as the planet continues to heat in the 21st century.

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