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The worst drought in 40 years has a cruel grip on Somalia. A struggling young government and militant violence have compounded to bring crisis to 6.7 million lives. The town of Baidoa is facing some of the harshest conditions. Surrounded by territory controlled by al-Shabaab militants and amid ongoing attacks, 160,000 people have had to leave their farms and are surviving in camps where hunger, thirst and cholera await them

All photographs by Peter Caton/Mercy Corps

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Daimler says diesel is worth fighting for but there is no comeback for the toxic technology and the fight must now be to save lives

When the story of Volkswagen’s cheating on diesel emissions tests broke nearly two years ago, a number of reporters asked me if this spelled the end for diesel cars. My response was a confident, dismissive “no”. While dieselgate would cast a long shadow, there was no reason to write off diesel cars, at least in the short term. After all, the technology does exist to make clean diesel cars. It’s just a question of improving the existing regulations and enforcing them better.

I was wrong.

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Moreland Council and the Victorian State Government announce $1m spending on commercial-scale hydrogen refueling station for garbage trucks.

Queensland govt opens registrations for reverse auction, with aim of installing 100MW of energy storage before 2020, alongside 400MW new solar and wind.

There is increased speculation that the Coalition government is prepared to spend taxpayers money on a new clean/cleaner/cleanish/not-quite-so-dirty coal plant in an effort to get conservative support for a clean energy target and even to appease potential One Nation voters.

A rash of new incinerators could make it impossible for the UK to meet future recycling targets.

For the second time running, Quit Targa West will feature an Electric Vehicle in its line up, as part of a global movement to adopt this game changing technology.

The transition to a clean, affordable and equitable supply of energy is finely on the agenda in Australia, compounded by soaring electricity prices and the mostly favourable response to the Finkel review.

South Australia's energy security target could increase electricity prices while providing an incentive for power companies to pump out more carbon emissions.

Queenslanders apparently blame renewables for price rises, even though they have any. But don't get between a poll and a Murdoch campaign.

Dark Peak, Derbyshire Even avowed outdoor evangelists should be allowed to keep one or two places to themselves

I am not going to tell you where I am writing about. It is one of those places of personal sanctity that has, miraculously, escaped the popular attention I am fully aware it deserves. Even avowed outdoor evangelists should be allowed to keep one or two of these places to ourselves.

I discovered it a few years ago, but had not gone back since. On a searing day this spring, after two excruciating hours inching through Manchester traffic, it flashed back into my head on my journey over the Pennines. Craving the mini-rebirth of a soak in wild water, I fled my car and marched up to it in my work clothes. There it shone, almost landscaped in its perfection, the porter-coloured beck tumbling down in bright cascades over exquisite water-smoothed shelves of rock. The cool pool at the bottom was treacle-dark and deep enough for submersion; water from heaven.

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Malcolm Turnbull should have a word with network owners and regulators this week, as well as the gentailers. Network charges per unit of electricity have more than doubled.

Foresters and mountain bike riders face-off in the tiny Tassie town of Derby.

Equis to build 1000MW solar farm in heart of Qld coal and gas country, looking for more opportunities in NSW, South Australia.

The notice has no legal weight and does not begin the process of departure from the landmark climate agreement.

It’s time for governments to get serious about helping everyone to join the energy transition, not just the most affluent.

With another 93MW solar added to Australian homes and business in July, Sunwiz declares market to be “level – at exceptionally high levels.”

Lisa Kikuchi of SenSprout tells the BBC how she is developing soil moisture sensors to help Japan's farmers.

It's ziplines versus a Sunoco pipeline in one Pennsylvania family's backyard.

Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 7 August 1917

Almost every year I reply, early in August, to correspondents who, like the writer from Patterdale, have noticed dead and mutilated bees lying beneath the lime trees. Evelyn speaks of the lime, with “sweet blossoms, the delight of bees,” and in July and early August we have all noticed the happy hum of the bees as they boom round the limes, filling themselves with honey. But the bees, especially the drones of certain bumble-bees, are like many human drinkers; they do not know when to stop, and, soaking all day long, at last become so stupid that they cannot fly; they drop, intoxicated, to the ground beneath. Thus we find them, drunk and incapable, and often with ghastly wounds in their bodies, dead or only able feebly to move a limb.

Ten or a dozen years ago I spent some time watching the limes and examining the bodies of the slain. I failed to see tits actually kill the bees, but Mr Edward Saunders, to whom I submitted some of the bees, assured me that he had seen a bee drop and detected a great tit at work in the tree; the tits, he felt sure, emptied the bodies of the stupefied bees of their honied contents. This I do not doubt, but examination of the bodies and the ground beneath the trees caused me to think that possibly birds were not the only destroyers; the drunken bees were at the mercy of ants or carnivorous beetles, which the nature of the wounds of some of them suggested. The late Fred Enock, a wonderfully keen observer, found that an introduced lime was far more intoxicating than our native species – its honey was more heady, and consequently more bees which sipped its sweets fell victims than those which visited other plants. There is one other point from which we can draw a moral; it is at the present time, when bees are less busy on behalf of the full nests – when there are an abundance of workers to look after stocking the nests with food, – that the death-rate increases; the bees indulge to excess and pay the penalty.

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