Waves glow turquoise in a glorious nocturnal display from an algae bloom off America’s west coast

• Waves dazzle surfers: ‘Never seen anything like it’

Social distancing rules will ‘kill cities’, experts warn – and the future of mass transit hangs in the balance

This is the second feature in our Life after lockdown series, which looks at how Covid-19 could change Australia for good

Before the pandemic struck, Sara Blazey made the same three-hour commute to work, three days a week, for the better part of 12 years. The 63-year-old family lawyer from the Blue Mountains works for a domestic violence legal advice hotline in Parramatta and it used to be that she would wake at 7am, drive seven minutes to Hazelbrook station and from there catch the 7.17am train to Parramatta before making the same one-and-a-half hour trip home in the evening.

With the pandemic, all that would change. Domestic violence support services such as the one Blazey worked for were declared “essential” services, meaning they could keep operating despite restrictions. To ensure they could do so safely, the organisation did what some commentators long thought impossible and began to transition its employees into working from home.

The Guardian investigates fire in the state of Pará - to reveal the loopholes that allow deforestation to be legitimised

We found the first fire without looking, crackling and roaring on farmland beside the busy Amazon highway, the flames consuming a road sign with its name – BR-163 – lying in the grass. Trucks thundered past, ferrying soya and corn from the agricultural heartlands of Brazil’s central-west to the ports of Santarém and Miritituba. Nobody was around.

Every year fires roar across the Amazon, and in just a few months they will be here again. But last August the number of blazes reached a nine-year high, and sparked an international crisis for Brazil’s far-right president Jair Bolsonaro. Months later, their traces hung over the forests in the Amazon state of Pará, leaving blackened logs and charred tree stumps where there was once rainforest.

Human cost of climate crisis will hit harder and sooner than previously believed, research reveals

The human cost of the climate crisis will hit harder, wider and sooner than previously believed, according to a study that shows a billion people will either be displaced or forced to endure insufferable heat for every additional 1C rise in the global temperature.

In a worst-case scenario of accelerating emissions, areas currently home to a third of the world’s population will be as hot as the hottest parts of the Sahara within 50 years, the paper warns. Even in the most optimistic outlook, 1.2 billion people will fall outside the comfortable “climate niche” in which humans have thrived for at least 6,000 years.

From making their own toothpaste to foraging locally for edible plants, more and more people are learning to cut the amount of rubbish they throw out. Here’s how they do it

Through my work, I have seen the huge amount of waste and recycling that we produce. Watching an incinerator for half an hour shocked me and made me want to take action. I was standing on a balcony wearing a full body suit and goggles watching gigantic grabbers emptying waste from trucks. The scale is so shocking and you realise how tiny we are compared to the amount of waste we create. I don’t want to contribute to that wastefulness and it has made me want to take action.

Tapirs in South America, hirolas in Somalia, hornbills in Indonesia, chimps in Nigeria, tamarins in Brazil and frogs in South Africa ... the ‘green Oscars’ recognise and celebrate the achievements of the animals’ grassroots protectors

The filmmaker’s latest venture is an excruciating mishmash of environment falsehoods and plays into the hands of those he once opposed

Denial never dies; it just goes quiet and waits. Today, after years of irrelevance, the climate science deniers are triumphant. Long after their last, desperate claims had collapsed, when they had traction only on “alt-right” conspiracy sites, a hero of the left turns up and gives them more than they could have dreamed of.

Planet of the Humans, whose executive producer and chief promoter is Michael Moore, now has more than 6 million views on YouTube. The film does not deny climate science. But it promotes the discredited myths that deniers have used for years to justify their position. It claims that environmentalism is a self-seeking scam, doing immense harm to the living world while enriching a group of con artists. This has long been the most effective means by which denial – most of which has been funded by the fossil fuel industry – has been spread. Everyone hates a scammer.

Marshwood Vale, Dorset: It began in March, when the buff-tailed queens emerged from hibernation, zigzagging from bloom to bloom

In the garden on a bright morning, with sunshine lancing the cherry blossom, my eye is drawn to the fat glitter of a queen bumblebee gathering nectar in the golden bowl of a tree peony flower. A black, almost velvety, body and rich orange-tipped rump indicate that this is a red-tailed bumblebee (Bombus lapidarius). Her wings shine as if newly waxed, while her tongue briskly probes a tassel of stamens. After a few seconds she’s off to check the next bloom – then airborne again, zooming over the wall.

Lockdown has replaced the background hum of distant traffic with the low, blundering drone of bumblebees. It began in March when buff-tailed queens emerged from hibernation, zigzagging across the lawn. Buff-tails are easily recognised by their size – the queens can be more than 2cm long – and their markings, two well-separated yellow bands and a brown-tinged tail-tip. Because they nest in holes in the ground, they are also called earth bumblebees (Bombus terrestris). The name is like an anchor, tethering a creature of sunlight, pollen and warmth to the chthonic darkness underground.

Only government action will preserve the clearer, bluer skies gifted to us by the coronavirus lockdown

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Many of us will have noticed differences in traffic noise and air pollution during the lockdown. Startling images have come from India where, for the first time in a generation, the Himalayas have been visible more than a hundred miles away. Something similar happened in the UK in 1921 when coal shortages during a miner’s strike led to newspaper reports of distant landmarks being visible as never before. In the UK we too have been able to look up at clearer blue skies, less impeded by air pollution and not crisscrossed by aircraft contrails. This helped Germany to break a solar power record.

In Beijing, air pollution controls for the 2014 Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting also brought a return to blue skies. The term “APEC blue” emerged in Chinese social media and was nominated as Beijing’s top environmental phrase for the year. Later it took on a tinge of sadness, to mean something wonderful, but brief. One woman posted about love on social media, “He’s not that into you – it’s just an APEC blue!”

City leaders publish ‘statement of principles’ putting climate action at centre of recovery plans

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Mayors from many of the world’s leading cities have warned there can be no return to “business as usual” in the aftermath of the coronavirus crisis if humanity is to escape catastrophic climate breakdown.

City leaders representing more than 750 million people have published a “statement of principles”, which commits them to putting greater equality and climate resilience at the heart of their recovery plans.

Maroon 5 could have silenced their many haters with a spectacular performance. But they didn’t do that.

The 46-year-old actress is now revealing the agony she went through before receiving a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis (MS) last August."Ever since my son was born, I was in an MS flare-up and didn't know, and I was giving it everything to seem normal," Blair told Robin Roberts in an interview that aired Tuesday on "Good Morning America." "And I was self-medicating when he wasn't with me. Blair recalled that she would get so fatigued prior to her diagnosis that she would need to pull over to take a nap after dropping her son, now 7, off at his school one mile away from their home. During her interview with "GMA" at her Los Angeles home, Blair was in an "exacerbation" of MS, or an attack that causes new symptoms or the worsening of existing symptoms.

'Avengers: Endgame' tops 'Star Wars,' breaks previous pre-sale record originally appeared on goodmorningamerica.com"Avengers: Endgame" tickets went on sale Tuesday and just like Thanos' famous snap, they were gone just like that. But way more than half.Fandango is reporting that "Endgame" has broken its pre-sale records, topping the previous holder, "Star Wars: The Force Awakens."(MORE: New 'Avengers: Endgame' trailer features Captain Marvel, the battle to beat Thanos)Guess the force is strong with Earth's mightiest heroes. ...

Mike 'The Situation' Sorrentino Is 'Having the Time of His Life' in Prison

Iconic hip-hop producer and Alicia Keys’s husband, Swizz Beatz, isn’t afraid to tell his guy friends he loves them.

But Davis does see a path forward: empathy and becoming educated on one another’s experiences.

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The Cyclone helicopter was participating in a NATO training exercise. A Nova Scotia native died, and two others from the province were missing.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the government had been in the process of introducing the ban when its agenda was overturned by the pandemic.

A health economist who has taught on both sides of the border examines the difference between Canada and the United States.

Sightings of the Asian giant hornet have prompted fears that the vicious insect could establish itself in the United States and devastate bee populations.

Los avistamientos del avispón asiático gigante han provocado temores de que el insecto se establezca en Estados Unidos y extermine a las poblaciones de abejas.

This six-bedroom house on the coast of Prince Edward Island sits on an isolated nine-acre lot. It is on the market for $1.67 million.

Canada’s smallest province remains one of its most affordable, despite a shortage of inventory exacerbated by the pandemic.

Whatever effect warm weather has on the coronavirus, it won’t be enough to safely drop social restrictions.

I support release of the Mueller report — ChuckGrassley (@ChuckGrassley) April 4, 2019

President Trump on Thursday did not directly address reports that Attorney General William Barr’s assessment of special counsel Robert Mueller’s...

President Donald Trump gleefully tweeted “WELCOME BACK JOE!” alongside a doctored video of a fake Joe Biden grabbing the shoulders...

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) came back at Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX) with the Twitter equivalent of “I can’t hear you!”...

Thank you to two great people! https://t.co/9VoIV44L9c — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 6, 2019

Nielsen: "I just want to thank the President, again." pic.twitter.com/5m8WSU9Xej — TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) April 8, 2019

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) on Monday called for ousted Secret Service Director Randolph “Tex” Alles to testify before...

Following the ousters of the Homeland Security secretary and Secret Service director, and the withdrawal of the would-be ICE director’s...

Rep. Mike McCaul was tapped on to head a GOP House panel scrutinizing China. Disclosures show his family holds stock in a Chinese internet company.

Despite their clashes in past, the two Trump allies find themselves in alignment now.

GOP senators denied Obama a seat on the high court. They'll deliver for Trump.

Tapes of conference calls of FEMA and HHS officials across the country reveal widespread worries about new waves of Covid-19 infections.

To public health specialists, it’s a disturbing trend that could lead to people ignoring government warnings.

The White House confirmed that both President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence have tested negative for coronavirus.

The vice president’s allies are watching two tracks for Pence as he battles the pandemic: one for Trump in 2020 and another for his own potential bid.

Millions more coronavirus tests will be needed to safely reopen the country, the chairman of the Senate HELP Committee said at a hearing Thursday.

The co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation cited a lack of national coordination.

The speaker isn’t yet negotiating with Republicans or the White House on the next aid bill.