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Emanuele Lobina makes the case for public ownership of the water industry, while Peter Simpson of Anglian Water defends the privatised company’s record on reducing leaks

Nils Pratley (Labour’s water renationalisation plan is a damp squib, 17 May) argues that there is no need to renationalise water because regulation is enough to tame the monopolistic behaviour of the private operators. This argument is not convincing when you look at the experience with water privatisation since 1989.

Related: 'Water poverty' to rise in the UK as scarcity pushes up bills

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Girl left traumatised but unharmed after large sea lion grabs her dress and pulls her into the water near Vancouver, Canada

A young girl and her family were left traumatised after a large sea lion grabbed her and pulled her underwater.

The girl was sitting on a dock in Richmond, near Vancouver in Canada, watching the seemingly playful sea lion in the water before it grabbed her dress and pulled her into the water.

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Oxfam attacks Australia’s ‘climate policy paralysis’ and urges it to promise no new coalmines and end public subsidies

New coalmines will leave more people in poverty, Oxfam has said in a new report, calling on Australia to commit to no new coalmines and to end public subsidies for coalmining.

The report comes as the Queensland and federal governments continue to push for the controversial Adani coalmine in the Galilee basin, signalling potential infrastructure support and “royalty holidays”.

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Look but don't touch as it tumbles down the Pulama Pali slope in Hawaii.

The world's highest mountain poses new hazards after the collapse of a key rocky outcrop.

One of the UK’s largest battery storage schemes, built next to a windfarm, will offer vital services to the National Grid

Nestling alongside rows of conifers and wind turbines in a Welsh valley, a pioneering project will materialise this summer that could prove a blueprint for unlocking Britain’s renewable energy potential.

The Upper Afan Valley near Swansea is already home to the biggest windfarm in England and Wales, but in July work will begin there on one of the UK’s largest battery storage schemes.

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As Trump administration reviews 27 national monuments, conservationists fear a federally mandated effort to strip public lands of environmental protections

A decision by the Republican governor of Maine, Paul LePage, to ban signs to Katahdin Woods and Waters, a national monument designated by Barack Obama, has been described as “sophomoric and petty” by a member of the family that donated the 87,563-acre tract to the nation.

Related: 'This is our land': New Mexico's tribal groups gear up to fight for their home

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Electoral Commission says charities must declare all campaign spending since June last year, despite them not knowing a snap election would be called

UK charities face a permanent “chilling effect” on their campaigns after the Electoral Commission said they must declare any work that could be deemed political over the past 12 months to ensure they are not in breach of the Lobbying Act.

At least one charity has been warned that if it does not, it may face “civil or criminal sanctions”.

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Environment experts weigh up the manifesto pledges on issues such as air pollution, climate change, energy and waste

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Fabrics such as cotton come at a dear cost to the environment. Look for progressive alternatives made from pineapples, eucalyptus, even mushrooms

Future generations will shake their heads at our loyalty to a handful of fibres with terrible environmental profiles, such as cotton (thirsty for pesticides and water) and plastic (oil based). They’ll want to know why we didn’t display more imagination.

Many innovations in the fashion industry have a distinctly mushroomy flavour

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Lomborg’s Copenhagen Consensus Centre says investment in keeping temperature rises below 2C would return less than $1 for every $1 spent

Experts have challenged a claim by Bjørn Lomborg’s Copenhagen Consensus Centre that holding global temperature rises to 2C is a poor investment.

In 2015 the education department abandoned plans for Lomborg to set up an Australian Consensus Centre, but gave the Copenhagen centre $640,000 to support its Smarter UN Post-2015 Development Goals project.

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The southern continents were once united as the supercontinent Gondwana, but does this explain the links between the plants of the southern hemisphere? Dr Barbara Briggs travelled to Madagascar to find out.

The southern continents were once united as the supercontinent Gondwana, but does this explain the links between the plants of the southern hemisphere? Dr Barbara Briggs travelled to Madagascar to find out.

A key component of the UK's first high-energy proton beam machine is delivered to its new home in Newport.

Measures are announced after water enters a frozen facility guarding the world's key crop seeds.

Rome has a problem with wild boar; wolves mingle with surburban Germans; mountain lions frequent LA. All around the world, city life seems increasingly conducive to wildlife

In Aesop’s fable, the town mouse turns his nose up at his country cousin’s simple fare, preferring the haute cuisine to be scavenged in the city. It appears that the wild boar of Italy have taken note, and are venturing ever more boldly into Rome.

But they are not alone: all around the world, city life seems to be increasingly conducive to wildlife. Urban nature is no longer unglamorous feral pigeons or urban foxes. Wolves have taken up residence in parts of suburban Germany as densely populated as Cambridge or Newcastle. The highest density of peregrine falcons anywhere in the world is New York; the second highest is London, and these spectacular birds of prey now breed in almost every major British city. And all kinds of wild deer are rampaging through London, while also taking up residence everywhere from Nara in Japan to the Twin Cities of the US.

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Mockbeggar, New Forest Tiny, parched, sorrels streak the ground with red but there is feverish activity in the ditch

From Moyles Court, a fine 17th-century house that is now a private school, we set off up the slope with paddocks on either side. Leaving the Avon Valley Path, we cut the corner of Newlands Plantation, and climb steadily uphill along the woodland edge. Rhododendron ponticum infests part of the margin, with the blooms of young plants announcing their colonisation of the adjacent open ground.

Related: For a beetle at risk, what better place to be?

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A Humboldt penguin chick has hatched at a sea life sanctuary for the first time in more than a decade.

Boomerang Bags is an Australian solution to plastic pollution that's gone global.

The Arnavon Islands are the largest rookery for the critically endangered hawksbill turtle in the South Pacific.