Stretchy dairy cheese could now be made without any cows, after the development of yeast strains that produce the crucial milk proteins.

The key to the development, by Israeli company DairyX, is producing casein proteins that are able to self-assemble into the tiny balls that give regular cheese and yoghurt their stretchiness and creaminess. Existing plant-based cheeses often fail to deliver the textures that dairy lovers prize, and the company believes it is the first to report this breakthrough.

Cattle have a major impact on the climate and natural world, owing to the methane gas they burp and the pollution and destruction of nature associated with the global industry. The development of lower-impact alternatives to regular dairy and meat has accelerated in recent years, with the production of plant-based foods and meat grown in vessels.

DairyX’s approach is a third route – precision fermentation. It is now scaling up its operation and aims to seek the regulatory approval needed for consumers to buy the product in 2027. If successful, the caseins could be used by cheese and yoghurt companies as a drop-in replacement for dairy milk, without changes to equipment or ingredients.

Other companies developing fermented caseins include New Culture in the US, which is focusing on mozzarella, and Australia’s Eden Brew, targeting cow-free milk, as well as All G Foods, Fooditive and Standing Ovation.

“People have been trying to take the cow out of making dairy since the late 1970s,” said Dr Arik Ryvkin, DairyX founder and chief executive. Early efforts used plant protein but about a decade ago biotechnology developments opened a new path, pioneered by the company Perfect Day, he said. “We now bring the last step in that line of evolution … helping dairy companies make the exact products consumers desire while helping cows live happier lives.”

Ryvkin previously followed a vegan diet for 10 years, but became frustrated at being unable to include good cheese in what he ate: “So I slipped, and then decided to solve the problem for everyone.”

Many existing plant-based dairy products use additives, such as stabilisers, emulsifiers and thickeners, but still do not fully replicate the stretchiness and creaminess of regular dairy products. DairyX used engineered yeast strains to produce casein that is genetically identical to dairy proteins. But for these proteins to self-assemble into the tiny balls – called micelles – they also had to perfect the addition of other attached molecules which determine the properties of the protein.

Dr Stella Child, at the Good Food Institute Europe, which supports alternative protein development, said: “Producing caseins that can self-assemble into micelles – while not the only method of developing these ‘building blocks of dairy’ – could help to bring affordable and attractive products to the market sooner by reducing production costs and eliminating the need for additives.”

The scientists tested and refined their research by coagulating the proteins in the same way as when making cheese. They have yet to taste the product, as this requires regulatory approval. Galit Kuznets, at DairyX, said. “Our casein also eliminates the need for hormones and antibiotics [used in cows] on dairy farms.”

The company is using evolutionary techniques to select for the yeast strains that produce the largest amount of proteins, aiming to make the product the same price as dairy casein. Price parity and taste are the key to future success, said Ryvkin.

Preliminary analysis indicates that climate-heating greenhouse gases from the production of DairyX’s fermented casein are 90% lower than for regular dairy if the leftover yeast mass is reused, potentially as food ingredients, or 50% lower if not. All precision fermentation products require far less land and water than their animal counterparts.

Other approaches to cow-free dairy proteins are being taken by companies such as Israel’s NewMoo, which is growing casein proteins in plant seeds, and New Zealand’s Daisy Lab, which is making “all yeast, no beast” whey powder.

At least two Las Vegas radio stations have removed Green Day from their playlists after frontman Billie Joe Armstrong called the city “the worst shithole in America”.

Speaking on stage on 20 September during a performance at San Francisco’s Oracle Park, Armstrong complained about the decision of John Fisher, the current owner of the Oakland Athletics baseball team, to move it to Las Vegas.

“We don’t take no shit from people like John fucking Fisher who sold out the Oakland A’s to Las fucking Vegas,” Armstrong, an Oakland native, reportedly said. “I hate Las Vegas. It’s the worst shithole in America.”

The decision to more the Oakland A’s from California to Nevada has been controversial among the team’s fans, with some heard chanting “fuck John Fisher” at the team’s final game in Oakland last week, where they have played for nearly 60 years. The A’s will play in Sacramento for the next three years before moving to a stadium on the Las Vegas Strip – that has yet to be built – in 2028.

After Armstrong’s comments, Las Vegas rock station KOMP 92.3 announced they were pulling all Green Day music. “KOMP 92.3 has pulled any and all Green Day from our playlist,” they wrote on Instagram. “It’s not us, Billie … it’s you. #vegas4ever.”

Alternative rock station X 107.5 shared a statement announcing their own ban on their website, with the decision also announced on air. “Well, Sin City heard [Armstrong] loud and clear – and X107.5 is not having it,” they wrote. “In response to Armstrong’s inflammatory comments, the station is banning all Green Day music, effective immediately … we’re breaking up with Green Day completely. Bye Bye, Billie!”

But also in the days after Armstrong’s comments, Fisher released a letter apologising to Oakland A’s fans, saying the team had tried to find a new home in the Bay Area but “we came up short”.

“I know there is great disappointment, even bitterness,” he wrote. “Though I wish I could speak to each one of you individually, I can tell you this from the heart: we tried. Staying in Oakland was our goal, it was our mission, and we failed to achieve it. And for that I am genuinely sorry.”

Armstrong and Green Day have not yet commented on the reaction, but the frontman subsequently shared a picture of himself aged six in an Oakland A’s hat on social media, describing the team’s move as “devastating”.

Seventy per cent of soft plastic collected in supermarket recycling schemes and tracked after collection ended up being burned, an investigation by campaigners has found.

By placing trackers inside packages of soft plastic that were collected by Sainsbury’s and Tesco in July 2023 and February 2024, campaigners found that most of them ended up being incinerated rather than recycled.

Everyday Plastic, which carried out the investigation alongside the Environmental Investigation Agency, tracked parcels of soft plastic that the supermarkets collected from customers with the promise they would be recycled. Of 40 packages of plastic, the trackers reached end destinations in 17 cases. Of these, 12 packages were used as fuel pellets or burned for energy, the investigation found.

When Sainsbury’s launched its in-store soft plastic collection in 2021, it said: “The innovative recycling system allows customers to recycle polypropylene film found in several household products.”

Tesco said its customers would be able to bring back any soft plastic packaging for recycling. Soft plastic is hard to recycle and very few facilities in the UK have the ability to process it.

Alison Colclough, of Everyday Plastic, said: “Our trackers reveal the hard truth about soft plastic recycling schemes at supermarkets – soft plastic packaging is not going to get recycled.

“The majority of the bundles of soft plastic we tracked ended up being burned for energy recovery – a solution that is being deployed more and more in order to deal with the unmanageable amount of plastic waste.

“The takeback schemes are being presented as a solution, which is diverting attention from the main issue that can’t be overlooked: far too much unnecessary plastic packaging is being produced.”

Katie-Scarlett Wetherall, of the environmental NGO Client Earth, said the investigation into what was really happening to soft plastic collected by supermarkets revealed a huge gap between what consumers were being told and the reality. She said soft packaging recycling claims made on packages were misleading.

Next month countries will attempt to hammer out a global plastics waste treaty after a pushback from developed countries over the proposed remit. In the last talks on the UN plastics treaty there were accusations that developed nations had bowed to the fossil fuel and plastics lobby over whether cuts in plastic production should be a key part of the treaty.

The UK sends most of its plastic waste abroad, exporting nearly 600,000 tonnes of plastic waste for recycling in 2023, a 10% increase on the previous year. In August 2023 alone, nearly 53,000 tonnes of plastic waste was exported.

Turkey was the largest destination for UK plastic waste exports in 2023, taking more than 140,000 metric tons. The Netherlands received the second most, at 116,500 metric tons.

Plastic waste exports are counted in UK government recycling data.

Sainsbury’s said: “We’re always seeking ways to positively manage the end of life of our packaging. Our return to store recycling scheme provides the opportunity to recycle more soft plastic until kerbside collection becomes available in 2026-27.

“We collect a small volume of flexible plastic overall in store. The majority is in good condition and so is recycled. However, when materials are soiled or damaged then they may need to be converted for energy, which is managed by our supplier.”

A Tesco spokesperson said: “We have a clear plan to remove packaging wherever possible and reducing, reusing and recycling it where we can’t. Given the challenges of collecting soft plastics at kerbside, we have soft plastics collection points in our stores for customers.

“Where it is not possible to recycle the collected plastic, we put it to alternative uses to avoid these materials going to landfill, for example using it for energy recovery.”

Clinging to almost vertical cliffs on the Costa Brava in north-east Spain, the resort of l’Estartit has a dramatic location but the real drama is unfolding under the waves, where an innovative approach to ancient techniques is helping to revive declining populations of prized cuttlefish

Cuttlefish (Sepia officinalis) are a valuable catch for Spanish fishers and a popular dish, either on their own or as a key ingredient in seafood paella. However, their numbers have declined on the Catalan coast through a combination of pollution and unregulated recreational fishing.

In 2017, a fortuitous meeting between a local fisherman, Isaac Moya, and a marine biologist, Boris Weitzmann, led to the creation of the Sepia Project, which has the twin objective of reviving stocks and keeping artisanal fishers in business.

The project fixes tree branches to the shallow sea bed just beyond the Estartit harbour wall, as cuttlefish need somewhere solid to lay their eggs.

“Fishers have been putting branches on the sea bed to attract cuttlefish for thousands of years,” says Weitzmann. “In Morocco they use palms; in Galicia, pines. Using this traditional method we attached different species of tree branches to ropes. It’s a case of looking to the past in order to move forward.”

However, not content with waiting for the molluscs to lay their eggs, the project uses the underwater branches as incubators for eggs that attach to fishing nets.

Moya set out to persuade others in his fishing comunity to save the eggs in buckets of water rather than throw them into the sea where they perish. The buckets are then left on the quayside and the eggs are distributed among the branches that serve as a nursery.

Although he is well known locally, Moya does not come from a fishing family and at first had a hard time persuading others not to throw the eggs away.

“Their attitude was a bit ‘what do you know?’,” he says, but fortunately several young locals were open to new ideas. In the first two years of the project they collected 1.5m eggs.

“It’s important that Isaac doesn’t come from a family of fishers,” Weitzmann says. “In the history of humanity, innovation doesn’t come from within, it comes from outside. What we have done here is combine tradition and innovation to achieve a transformation.”

The project is not just about conservation. It also aims to keep artisanal fishers in business by helping them to sell their catch at a fair price. “It’s a perfect example of the circular economy,” he says.

They have chosen cuttlefish partly because they have a short life cycle. They lay their eggs in spring and after six to eight weeks the project takes the young to grow in the open sea. They reach maturity within a year, giving the fishers a good catch after the lean winter months.

“Cuttlefish often die after they’ve laid their eggs,” Weitzmann says. “They have inbuilt planned obsolescence.” In effect, catching a mature cuttlefish once it has laid its eggs has little impact on the population.

The project looked for support from bodies such as the nearby Montgrí national park but also from local businesses, ranging from car mechanics to a three-star Michelin restaurant, El Celler de Can Roca.

“We wanted everyone to have a stake in it,” Weitzmann says. “We could have got more money from the European Union but what happens is you get the money to run a project for two years then they file it away in a drawer and that’s that.

“We’re producing more cuttlefish but that’s not really the point,” he says. “We want to change the mentality of both fishers and consumers.

“Consumers need to be educated about what they’re buying and where their money is going. Most people don’t ask or care.

“As a fisherman, if I need €500 [£415]a month to cover my expenses and I’m paid €5 for a fish that’s worth €10, I have to catch twice as many fish,” says Moya. “The consumer is the primary cause of overfishing.”

It is illegal in Spain for fishers to sell directly to the public. They have to go through the local association and then the wholesalers.

“The system is based on a reverse auction, which pushes down prices and we artisanal fishers can’t compete with industrial boats,” says Moya. “They arrive with 500kg of cuttlefish and the price is set; we arrive with 10kg and no one is interested.”

To combat this, a handful of fishers from l’Estartit and nearby l’Escala have set up Empesca’t, an organisation that aims to sell directly to local people and businesses, although Moya says neither the fisheries sector nor the regional government has encouraged them.

Despite many setbacks, Covid among them, both Moya and Weitzmann remain optimistic.

“It’s like fruit, you have to wait but eventually it ripens and falls,” Weitzmann says. “And besides, everyone knows that if we carry on the way we are, there’s no future.”

Pete Rose, baseball’s career hits leader and fallen idol who undermined his historic achievements and Hall of Fame dreams by gambling on the game he loved and once embodied, has died. He was 83.

Stephanie Wheatley, a spokesperson for Clark county in Nevada, confirmed on behalf of the medical examiner that Rose died on Monday. Wheatley said a cause of death has not yet been determined.

For fans who came of age in the 1960s and 70s, no player was more exciting than the Cincinnati Reds’ No 14. “Charlie Hustle” was a brash superstar with shaggy hair, a puggish nose and muscular forearms. Rose was old school, a conscious throwback to baseball’s early days. He would crouch and scowl at the plate, running full speed to first even after drawing a walk.

A 17-time All-Star, the switch-hitting Rose played on three World Series winners. He was the National League MVP in 1973 and World Series MVP two years later. He holds the major league record for games played (3,562) and plate appearances (15,890) and the NL record for the longest hitting streak (44).

But no milestone approached his 4,256 hits, breaking his hero Ty Cobb’s 4,191 and signifying his excellence no matter the notoriety which followed. Rose’s secret was consistency, and longevity. Over 24 seasons, all but six played entirely with the Reds, Rose had 200 hits or more 10 times, and more than 180 four other times. He batted .303 overall, even while switching from second base to outfield to third to first, and he led the league in hits seven times.

“Every summer, three things are going to happen,” Rose said, “the grass is going to get green, the weather is going to get hot, and Pete Rose is going to get 200 hits and bat .300.”

He caught up with Cobb’s on 8 September 1985, and surpassed him three days later, in Cincinnati, with Rose’s mother and teenage son, Pete Jr, among those in attendance.

Baseball commissioner Peter Ueberroth declared that Rose had “reserved a prominent spot in Cooperstown.” After the game, a 2-0 win for the Reds in which Rose scored both runs, he received a phone call from President Ronald Reagan.

“Your reputation and legacy are secure,” Reagan told him. “It will be a long time before anyone is standing in the spot where you’re standing now.”

Four years later, he was gone. In March 1989, Ueberroth, who would soon be succeeded by Bart Giamatti, announced that his office was conducting a “full inquiry into serious allegations” about Rose. Reports emerged that he had been relying on a network of bookies and friends and others in the gambling world to place bets on baseball games, including some with the Reds. Rose denied any wrongdoing, but the investigation found that the “accumulated testimony of witnesses, together with the documentary evidence and telephone records reveal extensive betting activity by Pete Rose in connection with professional baseball and, in particular, Cincinnati Reds games, during the 1985, 1986, and 1987 baseball seasons.”

Betting on baseball had been a primal sin since 1920, when several members of the Chicago White Sox were expelled for throwing the 1919 World Series – to the Cincinnati Reds. Baseball’s Rule 21, posted in every professional clubhouse, proclaims that “Any player, umpire or club or league official or employee who shall bet any sum whatsoever upon any baseball game in connection with which the bettor has a duty to perform shall be declared permanently ineligible.’’

As far back as the 1970s, teammates had worried about Rose. By all accounts, he never bet against his own team, but even betting on the Reds left himself open to blackmail and raised questions about whether his baseball decisions were based on his own financial interest.

In August 1989, at a New York press conference, Giamatti announced that Rose had agreed to a lifetime ban from baseball, a decision that in 1991 the Hall of Fame would rule left him ineligible for induction. Rose attempted to downplay the news, insisting that he had never bet on baseball and that he would eventually be reinstated.

But the ban remained in place and Rose never made it to the Hall in his lifetime. His status was long debated. Rose’s supporters including Donald Trump, who in 2015, the year before he was elected President, tweeted: “Can’t believe Major League Baseball just rejected @PeteRose_14 for the Hall of Fame. He’s paid the price. So ridiculous — let him in!”

Meanwhile, Rose’s story changed. In a November 1989 memoir, Rose again claimed innocence, only to reverse course in 2004. He desperately wanted to come back, and effectively destroyed his chances. He would continue to spend time at casinos, insisting he was there for promotion, not gambling. He believed he had “messed up” and that his father would have been ashamed, but he still bet on baseball, albeit legally.

“I don’t think betting is morally wrong. I don’t even think betting on baseball if morally wrong,” he wrote in Play Hungry, a memoir released in 2019. “There are legal ways, and there are illegal ways, and betting on baseball the way I did was against the rules of baseball.”

His disgrace was all the harder because no one seemed to live for baseball more than Rose. He remembered details of games from long ago and could quote the most obscure statistics about players from other teams. He was as relentless in spring training as he was in the postseason, when he brawled with the New York Mets’ Buddy Harrelson during the 1973 NL playoffs.

Rose the man was never inducted into Cooperstown, but his career was well represented. Items at the Baseball Hall include his helmet from his MVP 1973 season, the bat he used in 1978 when his hitting streak reached 44 and the cleats he wore, in 1985, on the day he became the game’s hits king.

The US National Transportation Safety Board on Monday said more than 40 foreign operators of Boeing 737 airplanes may be using planes with rudder components that may pose safety risks.

The NTSB last week issued urgent safety recommendations about the potential for a jammed rudder control system on some Boeing 737 airplanes after a February incident involving a United flight.

The NTSB also disclosed on Monday that it had learned that two foreign operators suffered similar incidents in 2019 involving rollout guidance actuators.

“We are concerned of the possibility that other airlines are unaware of the presence of these actuators on their 737 airplanes,” NTSB chair Jennifer Homendy said Monday in a letter to Federal Aviation Administration chief Mike Whitaker.

The NTSB is investigating an incident in which the rudder pedals on a United Boeing 737 Max 8 were “stuck” in the neutral position during a landing at Newark. There were no injuries to the 161 passengers and crew.

Boeing shares fell 2.7% on Monday.

The NTSB said 271 impact parts may be installed on in-service aircraft operated by at least 40 foreign air carriers; that 16 may still be installed on US-registered aircraft; and up to 75 may have been used in aftermarket installation.

Homendy said she was concerned the FAA “did not take this issue more seriously until we issued our urgent safety recommendation report”.

The FAA said it was taking the NTSB recommendations seriously and scheduled to do additional simulator testing in October.

An FAA corrective action review board met Friday and the agency said it “is moving quickly to convene a call with the affected civil aviation authorities to ensure they have the information they need from the FAA including any recommended actions”.

United said last week the rudder control parts at issue were in use in only nine of its 737 aircraft originally built for other airlines, and the components were all removed earlier this year.

The NTSB said on Thursday no 737s on US airlines are operating with the affected actuators, which were installed in some 737 Max and prior-generation 737 NG planes that included an optional landing system.

Boeing said in August it informed “affected 737 operators of a potential condition with the rudder rollout guidance actuator”. It did not immediately comment on Monday.

Australia was a different place in 2011. Julia Gillard’s Labor government, the Greens and a couple of country independents were rewriting the country’s climate policies, including introducing a world-leading carbon pricing system and creating three agencies to back it up.

Those organisations – the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, the Australian Renewable Energy Agency and the Climate Change Authority – have survived and help shape the investment and policy landscape. The carbon pricing system – falsely described as a tax – famously didn’t.

Under the Tony Abbott-led Coalition, Australia became the first country to abolish a functioning carbon price following a campaign that his chief-of-staff, Peta Credlin, later admitted was based on a lie. More than a few people who wanted it scrapped in 2014 quietly regret that decision now, reasoning that a policy based on an unarguable truth – that carbon dioxide emissions have a cost on all of us, and that the cost should be included in the price of goods that pump out CO2 – would have been far better than the uncertainty and mess of the past decade.

Who could possibly have foreseen that? Again, more than a few people. But here we are.

A less-heralded consequential clean energy shift around this time was the decision to split the national renewable energy target in two. Created in 2001 by the Howard government, the target was significantly expanded after Labor was elected later that decade. In January 2011 it was divided into separate schemes to support large-scale renewable energy, which required the creation of solar and wind power stations, and small-scale household installations.

Both have been successes, but it’s the latter – driving Australia’s household rooftop solar boom – that sets the country apart.

It’s difficult to overstate how rapidly Australians have embraced solar power, and how much it has exceeded expectations. In 2011, the forecast was that rooftop solar would eventually contribute 4 terawatt hours of electricity. In the context of the Australian grid, this was next to nothing – barely 2% of total generation. For some, it raised the question of whether it was really worth the cost.

More than a decade on, that number has been eclipsed more than six times over in the five eastern states connected by the country’s main power grid. Rooftop solar panels connected to the National Electricity Market generated 24.6TWh over the last year of data.

Put another way, homes have contributed 11.6% of electricity – nearly as much as windfarms, comfortably more than large-scale solar farms or hydro plants, and twice as much as gas-fired power.

More than 3.7m households and small businesses have solar systems. It means more than one in three homes across the country generate their own power when the sun is out.

Data released by the Clean Energy Regulator last week suggests Australians will install 3.1 gigawatts of rooftop solar capacity this year, roughly continuing the recent pace. Industry group the Clean Energy Council points out that, in capacity terms, Australia now has more rooftop solar than coal-fired power.

It is a wild, globe-leading success story that, as we’ve pointed out before, was something of a happy accident – the result of uncoordinated policies across federal and state governments. There were some initial stumbles, but the most important measure – an upfront national rebate that is processed by and paid to the installer that is progressively wound back as solar becomes more affordable – maintains wide support, including from both major political parties.

The rebate has helped bring down the cost to a level where a system can be effectively paid off via reductions in power bills, over about five years (with some variation depending on where you live). Combined with significant jumps in the cost of large-scale fossil fuel electricity – driven by Russia invading Ukraine, and gas and coal shortages and outages – it has made solar a financial no-brainer for home- and mortgage-owners who can pay the initial cost. Some states offer loans to make that easier.

The rooftop solar expansion will continue, with an expectation there will be more than 70GW connected by 2050. A key question is what lessons the country takes from how it got here.

One must be that any continual expansion needs to be equitable. With home ownership increasingly out of reach for many, Australia needs to consider innovative ways to make the benefits of solar available to renters and people in social housing. There have been some initial steps in this direction, but more will be required.

Another should be a reckoning on the role that household batteries will play in our future electricity supply. Batteries have not received the wave of government incentives that boosted solar. With some exceptions, they mostly still do not make financial sense for households. But analysts have pointed out the lesson from the solar success is that going hard early can bring unanticipated benefits, even while you adjust as you go.

As with the flood of solar energy in the middle of the day, an increase in household batteries – both standalone batteries and those in electric vehicles, which can be used in a similar way – will require changes in how power grids operate and are paid for.

Consumers are likely to be paid less for the electricity they feed into the grid and may be blocked from selling their excess power at peak times. On the upside, electricity use would become more flexible and more efficient.

Given we still run on a system designed to power homes and businesses from a few large generators, the change will be a regulatory challenge, and energy companies may resist significantly more control over energy use being placed in consumers’ hands.

But we live in politically populist times, and the experience with solar suggests a further shift in this direction would be widely welcomed.

Crossbench MPs have already joined Rewiring Australia’s Saul Griffith in calling for a rapid move in this direction, and both major parties have signalled they are considering household energy packages before the next election. The question now is how far they will go.