One of the world’s biggest environmental groups is suing the Norwegian government for opening up its seabed for deep-sea mining, claiming that Norway has failed to properly investigate the consequences of this move.

WWF-Norway says the government’s decision has breached Norwegian law, goes against the counsel of its own advisers, and sets a “dangerous precedent”.

“We believe the government is violating Norwegian law by now opening up for a new and potentially destructive industry without adequately assessing the consequences,” said Karoline Andaur, the CEO of WWF-Norway. “It will set a dangerous precedent if we allow the government to ignore its own rules, override all environmental advice, and manage our common natural resources blindly.”

In January, Norway became the first country in the world to give the go-ahead to commercial deep-sea mining after parliamentary approval. This was despite warnings from scientists of “catastrophic” consequences for marine life, and growing opposition from the EU and the UK, which support a temporary ban on environmental grounds.

The proposal, which relates to Norwegian waters in the sensitive Arctic region, will expose an area of 280,000 sq km – larger than Britain. Mining the deep sea involves the extraction of metals and minerals from the seabed and is being pursued because of their use in the transition to green energy, particularly electric car batteries.

WWF-Norway said that the assessment by the Norwegian energy ministry, which underpins the government’s decision to go ahead with deep-sea mining, fails to meet the minimum requirements of the Seabed Minerals Act and has no legal basis.

The Norwegian Environment Agency, which advises the government, has also said the impact assessment does not provide a sufficient scientific or legal basis for deep-sea mining.

Commenting on the lawsuit, Astrid Bergmål, the secretary of state at the Ministry of Energy, said: “We believe that a thorough process has been carried out with broad involvement, and that the applicable requirements have been followed. I note that WWF wants to try the case in court, and they have the right to do so. At this time, we have no further comment on the lawsuit.”

Last year, a Norwegian study said it had found a “substantial” amount of metals and minerals on its seabed.

In February, the European parliament expressed concern over Norway’s decision to open areas of the Arctic for deep-sea mining and called on member states to support a moratorium, including at the International Seabed Authority. The authority is expected to meet later this year, to ratify rules on mining in international waters.

So far, 25 countries, including France, Germany, Spain, Palau, Mexico and Sweden, have asked for a pause, moratorium or ban on mineral extraction of the seabed.

Five members of Letzte Generation, Germany’s equivalent to Just Stop Oil, have been charged with “forming a criminal organisation”, a move civil rights campaigners say could in effect criminalise future support for the climate campaign.

Mirjam Herrmann, 27, Henning Jeschke, 22, Edmund Schulz, 60, Lukas Popp, 25, and Jakob Beyer, 30, were charged under section 129 of the German criminal code. It is believed to be the first time the law has been applied to a non-violent protest group.

According to prosecutors in the state of Brandenburg, the charges relate to more than a dozen “attacks” against oil refineries, the Berlin-Brandenburg airport and the Museum Barberini, in Potsdam, between April 2022 and May 2023.

The incidents include protests in which supporters of the group attempted to switch off oil pumping stations leading to the refinery, blocked airport runways and threw mashed potatoes at an oil painting by Monet.

Prosecutors said the charges applied to a subgroup of Letzte Generation, a Germany-wide campaign that has led to thousands of arrests in the past two years.

“There is sufficient suspicion that the five accused agreed with other members of this subgroup to commit crimes together over a long period of time,” they said. “The association of people was not only intended to last for a longer period of time, but also served to pursue an overarching common interest.”

The activists say all their protests were open, accountable and non-violent, and contested the use of such a draconian law against them.

“This is the first time in German history that a climate protest group that uses measures of peaceful civil disobedience is charged as a criminal organisation,” Herrman said.

“This charge is especially dangerous for democracy and the right to peaceful protest because the charge turns the constitutional right of protest, freedom of speech and political assembly into a crime simply because some laws were broken in course of civil disobedient protest.

“This charge is meant for mafia and organised crime. This charge criminalises every act of support towards the group Letzte Generation. This creates an immense chilling effect on all climate protests in Germany.”

The charges, brought by the public prosecutor’s office in the town of Neuruppin, come after a two-year investigation into the activities of Letzte Generation, involving dawn raids on supporters’ homes, wiretaps on their phones and even seizing the organisation’s website.

According to Amnesty International Germany, a guilty verdict for even one of the defendants could turn Letzte Generation into a proscribed organisation by criminalising any activity that promotes it or its purposes, whether financially, logistically, politically, legally or in the media.

“With the indictment, the criminalisation of climate protest in Germany reaches a new level of escalation,” Paula Zimmermann, an expert on freedom of expression and freedom of assembly at Amnesty International Germany, said.

“Paragraph 129 of the German criminal code is to combat organised crime. Its application to non-violent protest criminalises civic engagement and thus restricts democratic freedoms.

“Delegitimising and intimidating unpopular protest using criminal law is contrary to freedom of expression and freedom of assembly, as enshrined in human rights and the German constitution.

“We are very concerned about this development and call on the criminal justice system to respect freedom of expression and assembly in its decisions.”

Prosecutors in Munich and Flensburg are carrying out similar investigations into members of Letzte Generation, the newspaper Der Spiegel reported.

The American steer Romeo was just 10 days old when the owners of an animal sanctuary in Oregon saved him from being slaughtered.

And during the six years since married couple Misty and Robert Moore afforded him mercy, Romeo has grown into the tallest living animal of his kind. The once tiny Romeo now ingests 100lbs of hay, 15lbs of grain and an entire bathtub full of water daily to remain adequately fed and hydrated at a height of 6ft 4.5in (1.94 meters), the steer’s owners said in an interview published on the Guinness World Records site.

The organization verified Romeo as the world’s tallest living steer, seizing the title from his 6ft 1in (1.87 meter) tall predecessor Tommy of Cheshire, Massachusetts.

The Moores told the organization known for curating a database of more than 40,000 world records – including the one held by Romeo – that their unprecedentedly tall steer calls attention to the harsh realities of business at dairy farms.

Unable to produce milk because of their sex, “male calves like Romeo are often deemed as mere byproducts” and face a life marked by confinement in a veal crate as well as eventual processed meat slaughter, “their destinies predetermined by profit margins”, Misty of Welcome Home Animal Sanctuary in Creswell, Oregon, told Guinness.

“But fate had a different plan for Romeo.”

Misty recounted how she was at her sanctuary – which provides life-long care to vulnerable animals – when she received a call from someone who was interested in having Romeo rescued.

She said her team “could tell that he was longing for a fulfilled life”, so the sanctuary welcomed the steer “with open arms and boundless love”.

“It became our mission to grant him that life – a life filled with safety, compassion and unwavering affection,” Moore said.

The steer’s affinity for cuddles from humans inspired the Moores’ sanctuary to name him after one of the protagonists of the famous William Shakespeare love story Romeo and Juliet.

He quickly showed how “he delights in both expressing affection and receiving it”, Misty added. And he has also demonstrated smarts that some may not instinctually associate with bovines of his size, figuring out how to drink rainwater from a spout in his shelter at the sanctuary without getting wet.

Feeding him the eight-plus stone (112lbs) in hay and grain that Romeo needs daily – along with the dozens of gallons of water to wash it all down – strains the Moores’ finances to the point that they resort to fundraisers for some relief in that area.

It can also be challenging to find him the right veterinarian care because not every animal hospital has the right equipment for creatures that big. And eventually, Romeo may have to grapple with musculoskeletal and digestive problems, along with other health issues.

But for now, the fact that Romeo has lived beyond the 24 months that those of his ilk usually get gave him time to grow as tall as many professional basketball players – and the Moores the opportunity to submit him for Guinness World Record consideration.

Other activities to which Romeo has devoted himself are sunbathing, scratching himself against trees, exploring the sanctuary’s pasture and accompanying humans as they carry out repairs at his home facility.

“He knows his name, loves to play and sometimes attempts to jump in our arms with pure excitement,” Moore told Guinness World Records. “Romeo is a gentle giant overflowing with affection and playfulness.”

It’s 3.40pm on a Thursday and Penguin 999.000000007425712 has just returned to the Stony Point penguin colony in Betty’s Bay, South Africa, after a day of foraging. She glides elegantly through the turquoise waters before clambering comically up the rocks towards the nest where her partner is incubating two beige eggs. She doesn’t realise it, but a rudimentary knee-high fence has funnelled her towards a state-of-the-art weighbridge. When she left the colony at 6.45am this morning she weighed 2.7kg. Now, after a full day of hunting, she has gained only 285g.

Eleanor Weideman, a coastal seabird project manager for BirdLife South Africa, is concerned. “In a good year they come back with their stomachs bulging,” she says. Penguins can put on up to one-third of their body weight in a single day of foraging. “But there’s just no fish out there any more.”

Tomorrow, Penguin 999.000000007425712 and her partner will swap roles: she will stay on the nest and he will go out to forage for food. If all goes well, they will be able to raise two clutches of two eggs this season. But at the current rate they may have to abandon this nest and give up on breeding for the year.

The number of African penguins has declined by more than 99% in the past 120 years. At the current rate of decline (7.9% per year), the species – African’s only penguin – will be extinct in the wild by 2035.

Not only would this be an ecological disaster – penguins are an indicator species for the entire ecosystem – but it would also be devastating for the South African tourism industry. A 2018 study on the colony at Boulders Beach in Cape Town showed that it contributes 311m rand (£13m) a year to the local economy.

Now, in an unprecedented attempt to stop this from happening, two NGOs – BirdLife South Africa and Southern African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds – have taken South Africa’s minister of forestry, fisheries and the environment, Barbara Creecy, to court claiming she has failed to implement “biologically meaningful closures” to fishing around six penguin colonies which are home to 76% of the global African penguin population.

The decision to petition the courts came after the minister chose not to follow some of the key recommendations made by an international review panel she appointed.

Alistair McInnes, who heads up the Seabird Conservation Programme at BirdLife South Africa and is the author of the founding affidavit in the court papers, says that the desired fishing bans would apply only to commercial vessels using purse-seine nets to target small pelagic [open seas] species such as sardines and anchovies. Purse-seine nets are like giant drawstring bags that target entire shoals. African penguins are specialist feeders and predominantly eat these species – and South Africa’s sardine and anchovy stocks are at all-time lows.

Penguins are not the only ones who stand to benefit from such a ban. Cape cormorants (another endangered bird species) also feed predominantly on small pelagic fish. And small-scale handline fishers have welcomed the proposals, as many of the species they target feed on sardines and anchovies.

The panel of experts appointed by Creecy delivered a report in July 2023, stating that targeted fishing closures around penguin colonies “would be likely to benefit penguin conservation”.

While the minister took some of the report’s recommendations on board, she stuck with existing, but more limited, closures.

In the Stony Point colony, for example, the area closed to purse-seine fishing is three times smaller than it would be if the expert panel’s recommendations were followed – so it’s little wonder that Penguin 999.000000007425712 is having a hard time finding food. And it’s a similar situation in three other colonies where 50% or less of the penguins’ core foraging area is protected under existing rules.

The potential impact of extended fishing closures on the purse-seine industry is hard to quantify, but the body representing fishers says the court action is misguided. “Contrary to environmental NGOs’ statements in the media that the main driver is the purse-seine fishing industry, the impact of fishing [on penguin numbers] is small,” the South African pelagic fishing industry association said in an email to the Guardian. It said the “environmental NGOs” had delayed a “process that is tasked with establishing what are the main drivers causing the decline in penguin numbers”.

Creecy’s office did not respond to requests for comment and the “record of decision”, which the state attorney representing the minister filed in April gave little insight into why she followed some of the panel’s recommendations and did not apply others.

Fishing is not the only driver of population declines. “African penguins are probably the most studied seabird in Africa,” says McInnes. “Loads of research has been done into various threats to their survival.”

These include the climate crisis (extreme heat and heavy rain can both prove disastrous during nesting season); land predators (leopards, caracals and honey badgers have all broken into colonies); and the localised threat of noise pollution from “bunkering” (a ship-to-ship refuelling process) at the St Croix colony near Gqeberha.

Nevertheless, prey availability is an important determining factor for the survival of any specialist predatory species, McInnes says, not to mention their ability to reproduce. It is perhaps telling that the only penguin colony in South Africa with a relatively stable population – Boulders near Cape Town – is in an area where purse-seine fishing has been banned for decades.

As McInnes, who has been studying the African penguin for more than a decade, says: “I haven’t met a penguin scientist who doesn’t believe that carefully demarcated closures are part of the solution.”

All Penguin 999.000000007425712 wants to know is where her next meal will come from.

Through a ruined doorway in the wall, behind the birdsong of Maytide, there is a fragile silence of broken things and the green light of woods coming closer. The ruins of Llanforda, just north of Oswestry, are the remains of an estate first built and planted in the 17th century. In 1640, it was described as having walks, pleasure gardens, and a wilderness and fountain to rival any grand garden in the county.

During the 18th and 19th centuries the garden and parkland was further developed in the grand manner of a Shropshire country house, but in 1940, Llanforda Hall was demolished. Local legend has it that an obsession for plants and gardening made the estate go bust.

Something of that all-consuming passion still haunts this place and is felt in the plants themselves. A once-manicured hornbeam hedge, now liberated, has thrown out arching boughs to form a tunnel. Ferns festoon piles of bricks. Once cordon and espalier pear trees lean against garden walls. Roots grapple with tumbled masonry. Silted fishponds flash white with water starwort flowers. Precious trees are besieged by sallow and laurel.

In the experiments with plantings (to compare what was possible to grow here in the Marches with London), the seeds of the garden’s own destruction were sown. Llandforda is what happens after the novel about the rise and fall of its creators has ended. The characters, the plot and its setting are scattered, and the place has absorbed what remains of the story. It is not just that this story is fragile; the language to tell it is weak.

Without those human dramas of ambition, privilege, love and death, the narrative is undone by more-than-human forces: weather, time and the ecological power of life. Words such as “abandoned” and “derelict” seem wrong now. The occupation has been replaced by the green genius of this place with a language of its own. It can be heard in the great oaks that have survived centuries; in the peacock butterfly that overwinters in the stones; in bluebells, nettles and wrens. Once familiar, now mythical, the view through the walled garden doorway shows where our obsessions end and magical life begins.

There is an urgent need for farming to curb its greenhouse gas emissions, with farmers also under pressure to be more sustainable. One suggestion could help with both problems: spreading crushed volcanic (basalt) rocks on fields to help capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

It is a sustainable fertiliser; basalt is rich in minerals, so the rock powder increases soil fertility by feeding nutrients needed for plant growth. Trials at the universities of Newcastle and Sheffield have shown that crop yields are improved, without any ill-effects on the environment or the plants.

This process of capturing CO₂ mimics a geological process called weathering. When it rains, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is absorbed by the falling rain, and when the rainwater reaches the ground it reacts with basalt rocks to form inert carbonates, which are eventually washed into the sea where the carbon stays permanently locked away on the seabed.

Many parts of the UK are rich in volcanic rocks, which can be easily ground up into powder and scattered over fields. But this is no magic bullet to solve the climate crisis, as drastic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions are still needed.

Charlie Colin, bassist and founding member of the US pop-rock band Train, best known for their hits Drops of Jupiter and Meet Virginia, has died aged 58.

Colin’s sister Carolyn Stephens confirmed her brother’s death to the Associated Press on Wednesday. He died after slipping and falling in the shower while house sitting for a friend in Brussels, Belgium, the celebrity website TMZ.com reported.

Colin grew up in California and Virginia. He played in a group called Apostles after college with guitarist Jimmy Stafford and singer Rob Hotchkiss. The band eventually dissolved and Colin moved to Singapore for a year to write jingles.

Eventually all three moved to San Francisco where Train formed in the early 90s with singer Pat Monahan. Colin brought in drummer Scott Underwood to round out the group, according to an interview with Colin and Hotchkiss in Berklee’s alumni magazine.

As a founding member of Train, Colin played on the band’s first three records, 1998’s self-titled album, 2001’s Drops of Jupiter and 2003’s My Private Nation. The latter two releases peaked at No 6 on the Billboard 200 chart.

Meet Virginia, from Train’s debut album, broke the top 20 of the Billboard Hot 100 but it was their sophomore album, Drops of Jupiter, that confirmed the band’s success.

The eight-times platinum title track Drops of Jupiter (Tell Me) – which features the Rolling Stones’ session pianist Chuck Leavell and Leonard Cohen’s string orchestrator Paul Buckmaster, and was written about the death of Monahan’s mother – hit No 5. It also earned two Grammys, for best rock song and best instrumental arrangement accompanying vocalist(s).

Colin left Train in 2003 due to substance abuse. “Charlie is one incredible bass player, but he was in a lot of pain, and the way he was dealing with it was very painful for everyone else around him,” Monahan told NBC San Diego.

In 2015 he reunited with Hotchkiss to start a new band called Painbirds, alongside Tom Luce. In 2017 he formed another band, the Side Deal, with Sugar Ray’s Stan Frazier and the PawnShop Kings’ Joel and Scott Owen.

On Wednesday a tribute to Colin appeared on the official Facebook and X social media pages for the band Train. “When I met Charlie Colin, front left, I fell in love with him. He was THE sweetest guy and what a handsome chap,” it reads. “Let’s make a band that’s the only reasonable thing to do.

“His unique bass playing a beautiful guitar work helped get folks to notice us in SF and beyond. I’ll always have a warm place for him in my heart. I always tried to pull him closer but he had a vision of his own. You’re a legend, Charlie. Go charm the pants off those angels.”

Before his death, Colin documented his time in Brussels, writing “Officially my favorite city” in a March Instagram post.

The owners of two mushroom farms in northern California where a disgruntled employee shot and killed seven people last year will pay a total of more than $450,000 in back wages and damages to 62 employees.

In an announcement released on Monday following an extensive investigation, the US labor department said the payment is an element of administrative settlements reached by the department’s wage and hour division with California Terra Garden and Concord Farms.

The government’s announcement comes after the incident in which the accused gunman, 67-year old Chunli Zhao, opened fire on two farms in Half Moon Bay, a small community approximately 30 miles south of San Francisco, on 23 January 2023, killing seven workers and injuring another.

Speaking to investigators, Zhao said that prior to the shooting, he had had an argument with a supervisor who insisted he pay $100 in repairs following a forklift incident that Zhao said was not his fault. According to Zhao, a co-worker intentionally hit the forklift with a bulldozer, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. Zhao, a Chinese citizen, has pleaded not guilty to multiple murder charges.

Zhao worked at Concord Farms previously and was later an employee at California Terra Garden.

The deadly shooting and the labor department’s investigation revealed the hazardous working conditions that many migrant farmworkers have been subjected to in San Mateo county.

“Our investigators found workers at California Terra Gardens and Concord Farms housed in sickening conditions, forced to sleep near garbage and with insects all around,” Alberto Raymond, the labor department’s wage and hour division assistant district director, said in a statement.

At California Terra Garden, investigators found that 39 workers were housed in cramped cargo containers, garages and dilapidated trailers, were forced to sleep on filthy mattresses and were exposed to insects and trash. According to the labor department, the farm’s owners, Xianmin Guan and his wife, Liming Zhu, illegally deducted money from workers’ pay for the substandard housing.

At Concord Farms, investigators found that its owner, Grace Tung, housed workers in moldy, makeshift rooms in a greenhouse infested with bugs. Tung also violated federal regulations by shortchanging workers who were not paid appropriate overtime, the labor department said.

As part of the settlements, California Terra Garden has agreed to pay totals of $84,074 directly to 39 workers to recoup the employers’ illegal housing deductions, and $42,494 in civil money penalties to resolve its housing, wage-disclosure and record-keeping violations.

Meanwhile, Concord Farms has agreed to pay a total of $370,107 in overtime wages and liquidated damages to 10 workers, as well as a total of $4,242 in late wages to 23 workers. It has also agreed to pay $29,049 in civil money penalties to address its various violations.

The civil penalties are in addition to the more than $450,000 in back wages and damages to be paid to the 62 employees from both farms.

Another type of provocative flag that was flown during the breach of the US Capitol by extremist supporters of Donald Trump on 6 January 2021 was reportedly flown outside a summer residence of US supreme court justice Samuel Alito – following a similar, prior incident outside his main residence.

Last summer, the “Appeal to Heaven” flag, which originates from the Revolutionary war and has in recent years become a symbol of far-right Christian extremism, was flown outside Alito’s summer home in Long Beach Island, New Jersey, the New York Times reported on Wednesday.

According to photographs obtained by the outlet and interviews with multiple neighbors and passersby, the flag was flown last July and September. The newspaper reported that the flag was visible in a Google Street View image from late August. It remains unclear whether the flag was flown consistently throughout last summer.

The New York Times report comes just days after it reported that an upside-down American flag was flown outside Alito’s Virginia home just days after the January 6 Capitol riots.

The Appeal to Heaven flag, also commonly known as the Pine Tree flag, was spotted among other controversial flags waved in Washington on 6 January 2021 when rioters and insurrectionists stormed the US Capitol, encouraged by Trump, then the president, over the false belief that the 2020 election had been won by him and not the actual victor, Joe Biden.

The Capitol attack was aimed at stopping the official certification by Congress of Biden’s victory, which was delayed by the violence but finally happened in the early hours of the following morning.

The Pine Tree flag was originally used on warships commanded by George Washington during the Revolutionary war. It has since been adopted by Christian nationalists who advocate for an American government based on Christian teachings.

The first report of the Stars and Stripes being flown upside-down outside an Alito residence provoked outrage about the further politicization of the supreme court, but Alito simply said his wife had done it and it was displayed only briefly.

The Guardian contacted the supreme court for comment on the latest report but did not receive an immediate response.

A Michigan dairy worker has been diagnosed with bird flu – the second human case associated with an outbreak in US dairy cows, after a case emerged in Texas earlier this spring.

The new patient had mild eye symptoms and has recovered, US and Michigan health officials said in announcing the case on Wednesday afternoon. The worker had been in contact with cows presumed to be infected, and the risk to the public remains low, officials said.

A nasal swab from the person tested negative for the virus, but an eye swab tested positive, “indicating an eye infection”, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in a statement.

The first case happened in late March, when a farm worker in Texas was diagnosed in what officials called the first known instance globally of a person catching this version of bird flu from a mammal. That patient also reported only eye inflammation and recovered.

The CDC said “similar additional human cases could be identified” given high levels of the virus in raw milk from infected cows, and the extent of the spread in dairy cows.

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) said it believes unpasteurized milk is the primary vector for transmitting the virus among cows, though officials do not know exactly how it spreads.

To limit transmission in cattle, the USDA in late April started requiring dairy cows to test negative before being shipped across state lines.

“It’s likely that there will be several cases that emanate from exposure to infected cows and their milk amongst farm workers,” said Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease expert at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in Baltimore, Maryland.

“The key thing is to make sure that testing is wide enough to capture them,” he added.

Since 2020, a bird flu virus has been spreading among more animal species – including dogs, cats, skunks, bears and even seals and porpoises – in scores of countries. The detection in US livestock earlier this year was an unexpected twist that sparked questions about food safety and whether it would start spreading among humans.

That has not happened, although there has been a steady increase of reported infections in cows. As of Wednesday, the virus had been confirmed in 51 dairy herds in nine states, according to the US agriculture department.

Fifteen of the herds were in Michigan. Health officials there have declined to say how many people exposed to infected cattle have been tested or monitored.

The virus has been found in high levels in the raw milk of infected cows, but government officials say pasteurized products sold in grocery stores are safe because heat treatment has been confirmed to kill the virus.

The new case marks the third time a person in the United States has been diagnosed with what is known as type A H5N1 virus. In 2022, an incarcerated person in a work program picked it up while killing infected birds at a poultry farm in Montrose county, Colorado. His only symptom was fatigue, and he recovered. That predated the virus’s appearance in cows.

The Associated Press contributed reporting