The Guardian

• Hiking with the wildlife author who studies Yosemite’s high peaks: ‘These animals are equal to us’

  Inspired by childhood encyclopedias and Jane Goodall, Beth Pratt writes about the more than 150 species in the national park – and transports readers to a rarefied world

  A shrill call was followed by a flash of movement through a pile of boulders on a high country slope in Yosemite national park. “Hello, Sophie!” Beth Pratt responded to the round, feisty pika who had briefly emerged to pose defiantly in the sun.

  Pratt, a conservation leader and wildlife advocate, has spent more than a decade observing the tiny mammals and the other inhabitants of these serene granite domes and the alpine meadows they overlook, which gleamed gold on a crisp afternoon in mid-October.

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• No high-level US representatives will go to UN climate talks, Trump officials say

  Decision to stay away from Cop30 meeting in Brazil underscores administration’s hostility to climate action

  The Trump administration has confirmed that no high-level representatives will be sent by the US to upcoming UN climate talks in Brazil, underscoring the administration’s hostile stance towards action on the climate crisis.

  The US has always sent delegations of various sizes to UN climate summits over the past three decades, even during periods under George W Bush and in Donald Trump’s first term, where there was scant desire to address the global heating crisis.

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• I tried lab-grown chocolate. Could it be the future of Halloween?

  It could eventually cut down on the production of traditional chocolate, which degrades soil and requires much fertilizer and pesticides

  • Tell us: have you fallen in love this year?

  Would you eat lab-grown chocolate?

  I requested a sample from California Cultured, a Sacramento-based company. Its chocolate, not yet commercially available, is made with techniques that have previously been used to synthesize other bioactive products like certain plant-derived pharmaceuticals for commercial sale.

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• Harrison Ford says Trump’s assault on climate policy ‘scares the shit out of me’

  Indiana Jones star calls US president one of history’s greatest criminals for attacks on science and boosting of fossil fuels

  Harrison Ford has said that Donald Trump’s assault upon measures to address the climate crisis “scares the shit out of me” and makes the US president among the worst criminals in history.

  In a blistering attack upon the president, Ford told the Guardian that Trump “doesn’t have any policies, he has whims. It scares the shit out of me. The ignorance, the hubris, the lies, the perfidy. [Trump] knows better, but he’s an instrument of the status quo and he’s making money, hand over fist, while the world goes to hell in a handbasket.”

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• Two found dead in flooded basements as New York city hit by rainstorm

  Separate incidents see bodies pulled from basements in Brooklyn and Manhattan as heavy rain closes roads and causes delays

  Two people died in flooded New York City basements Thursday during a rainstorm that shut down roadways and caused airport delays, authorities said.

  A scuba team recovered the body of a 39-year-old man after firefighters received a call of a person trapped in the flooded basement of a townhouse in Brooklyn at about 4.30pm, police said. A video posted online showed firefighters carrying the victim away through calf-deep water on the street.

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