A freshwater lake that attracts more than 30,000 swimmers a year is under threat of closure from an Environment Agency (EA) plan to reduce flooding that will channel in polluted river water, according to campaigners.

Almost 50,000 people have signed a petition calling on the EA and Surrey county council to reroute the flood channel away from the lake, which is a site of nature conservation. But the EA and Surrey council seem likely to press ahead with the 50-metre wide channel, bisecting the lake and feeding river floodwater into its centre.

Ferris Meadow Lake hosts an annual 24-hour charity swim for Level Water, raising money to provide access to swimming for disabled children across the UK. Bathing water quality is regularly tested and is excellent.

Emma Pattinson, whose family have owned the lake since the 1960s, opened it up for swimming in 2010. By 2024 the lake had hosted a quarter of a million swims, as swimming in nature grew in popularity, with research showing how beneficial it is to mental health.

“People love swimming here because they are surrounded by nature, and because the water is healthy and supports wildlife and a varied ecosystem. It is a massive boost to people’s mental health,” said Pattinson. “Our water quality is always excellent. Surfers Against Sewage have tested the water quality in the River Thames next door to the lake and these tests show high levels of enterococci and coliform bacteria.

“If this channel is cut through the middle of our lake it will bring in sewage pollution but also contaminate the water with metals and PFAS chemicals. We are talking about a lake, not a flowing body of water, so the pollution will just sit there.

“I would just not be happy running the lake as a swimming location in that case because I won’t be able to account for the water quality.”

Pattinson said digging into the lake would also disrupt the delicate ecosystems that have built over decades. Her family have owned the lake since it was a gravel pit, and won nature awards for its restoration when it was filled in. The lake is now a site of nature conservation.

Pattinson said she had been consulting with the EA since the plan was first dicussed in 2009 and by 2014 it was clear it wanted to channel flood water into the lake. “They really treated us as insignificant the whole way along,” she said. “They dismissed us. When they saw how many people swim here, they were a bit shocked and then they saw the size of the petition and they agreed to do a second consultation on the chosen route of the channel.

“That has just closed but they are still insisting that the channel has to come through the lake. We believe there are other options which can avoid the lake, but the EA is fixed on this because it has been so long in the planning and they are reluctant to look at this again.”

The River Thames scheme has been designed with two channels to divert flood water and help protect 11,000 homes. It involves digging two new river channels to divert flood water, one of which, the Spelthorne channel, will bisect Ferris Meadow Lake.

The UK has very few inland bathing water areas compared with other European countries.

An EA spokesperson said: “The River Thames scheme represents a landmark opportunity to manage flood risk while enhancing the environment for generations to come. Through integrating green infrastructure, we are committed to creating a sustainable solution that benefits both people and nature.”

Dramatic pictures have emerged of the first floods in the Sahara in half a century.

Two days of rainfall in September exceeded yearly averages in several areas of south-eastMorocco and caused a deluge, officials of the country’s meteorology agency said in early October. In Tagounite, a village about 450km(280 miles) south of the capital, Rabat, more than 100mm (3.9 inches) was recorded in a 24-hour period.

Satellite imagery from Nasa showed Lake Iriqui, a lake bed between Zagora and Tata that had been dry for 50 years, being filled up.

“It’s been 30 to 50 years since we’ve had this much rain in such a short space of time,’ Houssine Youabeb, an official of Morocco’s meteorology agency told the Associated Press.

Such rains, which meteorologists call an extratropical storm, may change the weather conditions in the region in the coming months and years. As the air holds more moisture, it promotes evaporation and provokes more storms, Youabeb said.

The flooding in Morocco killed 18 people last month, with the impact stretching to regions that had been affected by an earthquake last year. There were also reports of dammed reservoirs in the south-east region refilling at record rates throughout September.

The Sahara, which measures at 9.4m sq km (3.6m sq miles) is the world’s largest hot desert, stretches across a dozen countries in north, central and west Africa. Recurring drought has been a problem in many of these countries as extreme weather events are on the rise due to global heating. That has led to predictions from scientists that similar storms could happen in the Sahara in the future.

Celeste Saulo, the secretary general of the World Meteorological Organization, told reporters on Monday that water cycles across the world were changing with increasing frequency.

“As a result of rising temperatures, the hydrological cycle has accelerated. It has also become more erratic and unpredictable, and we are facing growing problems of either too much or too little water,” she said.

A group of young Kenyans are working on an unusual solution to the problems of food waste and fish feed produced unsustainably from wild-caught fish stocks: maggots.

The larvae of the black soldier fly are now devouring unwanted food in projects around the world. Their excrement, known as frass, can be used as a fertiliser for land-based crops, and their protein-rich bodies, harvested before they turn into flies, can be fed to livestock.

In Kenya, the environmentalists behind Project Mila, which in Swahili means tradition, are employing the larvae to clean up food waste, as well as nurture mangroves and feed fish in coastal farms.

Project Mila’s team of volunteers collect organic waste from households, markets and restaurants in the south-eastern coastal city of Mombasa, and feed it to voracious larvae, which produce frass while helping to clean up the city.

Nusra Abed, co-founder of Project Mila and a community health promoter, says she was “perturbed by the number of sanitation-related infections within the community due to poor waste management, and wanted to be part of the solution”.

According to a report by the UN Environment Programme, Kenya has some of the highest levels of household food waste in the world, producing 40-100kg per person annually.

Apart from alleviating the problem of food waste, the frass fertiliser has also been helping small-scale farmers in the Mombasa area increase their crop growth and diversity. It can enable farmers to diversify away from planting coconuts – a commonly grown crop which is slow to mature – into fast-growing produce including onions, tomatoes and other fruits. This offers them the opportunity to earn extra income through farming that’s sustainable and organic, and selling their surplus harvest in markets, says Roselyne Mwachia, a marine and fisheries researcher working with Project Mila.

The use of frass in farming has also made the activity less harmful for the environment and improved the catch of nearby fishers, say the team. In areas like Mariakani and Mazeras, 24 miles west of Mombasa, upstream smallholder farmers were using chemical-based fertilisers before the switch to frass, which polluted the marine ecosystem when washed into the water after storms, says Mwachia. “This affected … marine species, as well as caused bleaching of coral reefs and death of mangroves, seagrass and seaweeds.”

“Coral reefs are fertile breeding grounds for marine species, and when bleaching happens, it means breeding will be impacted and marine stocks will reduce,” she adds. But with farmers shifting to frass, Mwachia says that “fishers around areas where we have worked are reporting reduced coral bleaching and increased fishing fortunes due to reduced pollution”.

Globally, aquaculture has gained a bad reputation for its unsustainability, especially relating to the widespread practice of turning wild-caught fish into food for captive-bred fish. But making fish feed out of fly larvae can potentially reduce dependence on traditional fishmeal derived from wild stocks, notes Mary Opiyo, a senior aquaculture research scientist at KMFRI, a state body.

“This is one way of promoting sustainable aquaculture and reducing overreliance on marine stock,” she says.

Kigen Compton is the founder of BioBuu, a company producing fish feed from black soldier fly larvae in Kenya and Tanzania. He says: “With easily accessible, available and affordable feeds, many farmers are shifting to sustainable aquaculture and moving away from wild fishing.”

The larvae have been catching on with aquaculture workers in other countries, too. In Colombia, rural populations are earning sustainable livelihoods through frass-fed insects that are being used as feed in fish farming, while a company in Finland says producing fish feed from the larvae is the “perfect solution” for future aquaculture. Researchers in the US recently made some calculations regarding the country’s aquaculture industry. They found that if soldier fly protein was fed to salmon, trout and shrimp to the maximum extent without impairing the fish, 40,843 tonnes of wild fish could be spared every year in the US alone.

There are some concerns about disease. David Mirera, a senior research scientist at KMFRI, says there are risks if proper hygiene guidelines are not followed during the production of the feed. “We do not have a clear regulatory framework and controls on black soldier fly rearing, and this might compromise the quality of feeds being produced, especially by those who are not professionals in the sector of feed formulation and production,” he says.

But many fish farmers in his country are already firm fans of the flies, citing their convenience and secure yields. Juma Mashanga is one of them. He helps lead a group of community fishers who are farming fish in cages in the Indian Ocean near Kwale, a town 19 milles south-west of Mombasa.

“With cages, there is a guarantee of harvesting at maturity, and the returns are good,” he says. “Sustaining the cages and feeding the fingerlings is manageable because we can process our [black soldier fly] protein feeds at home.”

Barack Obama made his first appearance on the campaign trail for Kamala Harris on Thursday, speaking at a rally in Pennsylvania and at an event for Black voters, where he urged men in particular to support the vice-president.

In comments directed specifically to Black men in the swing state during an event at one of Harris’s campaign offices, Obama questioned their unwillingness to vote for her – a September NAACP poll showed that over one quarter of Black men under 50 say they will vote for Donald Trump.

“We have not yet seen the same kinds of energy and turnout in all quarters of our neighborhoods and communities as we saw when I was running. Now, I also want to say that that seems to be more pronounced with the brothers,” Obama said.

“You’re coming up with all kinds of reasons and excuses. I’ve got a problem with that.

“Part of it makes me think that, well, you just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president, and you’re coming up with other alternatives and reasons for that.”

He added: “When we get in trouble and the system isn’t working for us, they’re the ones out there marching and protesting.”

Later in the evening, at the Fitzgerald Field House in Pittsburgh, where thousands appeared to be in attendance, the Democratic party leader called on residents of the crucial swing state to vote for Harris – and down-ballot for other Democratic candidates like Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey.

“We need a president who actually cares about solving problems and making your life better, and that’s what Kamala Harris will do,” Obama said. “And to help her do it, she will need a Senate full of serious public servants like Bob Casey.”

With 19 electoral college votes, Pennsylvania is essential for either candidate to win the election. Recent surveys released by Quinnipac University showed Harris leading in Pennsylvania, but polling between the vice-president and Donald Trump has been close.

The state may also determine control of the Senate: Casey, for example, is up for re-election and facing a well-funded Republican opponent.

Obama and Harris have long been supporters of each other’s campaigns, and at the Democratic national convention in August the former president and his wife sought to cast Harris as the heir to their movement. Harris was an early supporter of Obama’s long-shot bid against Hilary Clinton, starting in 2007 when she knocked on doors for him ahead of the Iowa caucuses. In 2010, when Harris ran for attorney general of California, Obama backed her campaign – calling her “a dear, dear friend of mine”.

In Pittsburgh on Thursday, Obama acknowledged American voters’ frustrations with inflation, the Covid recovery and other issues – while denouncing Trump and praising Harris’s platform.

“This election is going to be tight because there are a lot of Americans who are still struggling out there,” Obama said. “I get it why people are looking to shake things up. I mean, I am the hope-y, change-y guy. So I understand people feeling frustrated. We can do better. What I cannot understand is why anybody would think that Donald Trump will shake things up in a way that is good for you.

“The good news is, Kamala Harris – she doesn’t have concepts for a plan. She has an actual plan to make your life better.”

Harkening back to the message he shared with Black voters earlier in the day, Obama later added: “I’m sorry, gentlemen, I’ve noticed this, especially with some men who seem to think Trump’s behavior of bullying and putting people down is a sign of strength. And I am here to tell you: that is not what real strength is. It never has been.

“Real strength is about helping people need it and standing up for those who can’t always stand up for themselves, that is what we should want for our daughters and for our sons, and that is what I want to see a president of the United States of America.”

Before the former president took the stage, Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, who was among those shortlisted to be Harris’ running mate, touted the Democratic party’s work in the state to expand universal free breakfast and gun violence prevention efforts, while criticizing Republican party leadership on the national level. He specifically encouraged attendees to vote to re-elect Casey.

Casey himself spoke, laying out the stakes for the upcoming election and denouncing his rival, David McCormick. McCormick, a businessman, ran the world’s largest hedge fund while it managed and advised funds holding hundreds of millions of dollars in Russian debt, documents obtained by the Guardian show.

“These out-of-state billionaires [are] spending more than $100m to defeat me in this race. Well, I got news for those billionaires. I’m going to beat David McCormick, and I’m going to beat those billionaires,” Casey said.

Obama’s appearance comes as Democratic surrogates are campaigning for Harris in swing states across the country. This week, the Harris campaign confirmed that vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz will campaign in Wisconsin, former president Bill Clinton will tour the southern states of Georgia and North Carolina, and Vermont senator Bernie Sanders will host events in Michigan. Meanwhile, former first lady Michelle Obama has relaunched Party at the Polls, a program of her non-partisan voting initiative When We All Vote.

At the same time, Republican vice-presidential candidate JD Vance held a town hall Thursday evening in Greensboro, North Carolina, shortly after Trump spoke in Detroit.

A US Coast Guard helicopter crew rescued a man who was left clinging to an ice box in the Gulf of Mexico after his boat was stranded overnight in waters roiled by Hurricane Milton.

The man was aboard a fishing vessel that became disabled on Wednesday off Madeira Beach, Florida, hours before the hurricane made landfall, said coast guard press officer Nicole Groll. The man, who was not identified, was able to radio the coast guard station in nearby St Petersburg before contact was lost about 6.45pm.

But on Thursday searchers located the man about 30 miles (48km) off Longboat Key, Florida, clinging to an open cooler chest, a video clip provided by the coast guard shows. In the video, a coast guard diver was lowered from a helicopter and swam to the man to pick him up.

“This man survived in a nightmare scenario for even the most experienced mariner,” coast guard official Dana Grady said.

Rescue teams continued pull Florida residents from the wreckage of Hurricane Milton throughout Thursday, after the storm smashed through coastal communities, where it tore homes into pieces, filled streets with mud and spawned a barrage of deadly tornadoes. At least six people were dead.

Among the most dramatic rescues, Hillsborough County officers found a 14-year-old boy floating on a piece of fence and pulled him on to a boat.

Despite the destruction, many people expressed relief that Milton wasn’t worse. The hurricane spared Tampa a direct hit, and the lethal storm surge that scientists feared never materialised.

At least 340 individuals and 49 pets have been rescued in ongoing efforts, Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, said on Thursday afternoon.

Arriving just two weeks after the misery wrought by Hurricane Helene, the system also knocked out power to more than 3 million people, flooded barrier islands, tore the roof off a baseball stadium and toppled a construction crane.

The man rescued off the coast clinging to the ice box was taken to Tampa general hospital for medical treatment, the coast guard said. The agency estimated he had survived winds of 75-90mph (121-145km/h) and waves up to 25 feet (7.6 meters) high during his night on the water. The fate of his boat was unknown.

A brown bear that underwent brain surgery in the first operation of its kind in the UK is doing well but is “not out of the woods” yet, a charity has said.

Boki went under the knife on Wednesday after an MRI scan revealed he had hydrocephalus, a buildup of fluid in the brain.

The two-year-old mammal, who had been suffering from seizures and related health issues, is awake and said to be doing well after the surgery.

A specialist wildlife veterinary surgeon, Romain Pizzi, carried out the operation, which aimed to drain fluid from the bear’s brain, at Wildwood Trust, a wildlife park near Canterbury in Kent.

It was the first time a procedure of this kind has been carried out in the UK. Pizzi previously became the first surgeon to perform a similar operation on a black bear in Asia.

The Wildwood Trust said on Thursday: “We are very pleased to report that Boki is awake and is doing as well as can be expected following his brain surgery yesterday.

“We are, of course, not out of the woods but he has been checked over this morning by Romain Pizzi and our vet, Elliott Simpson-Brown, from IZVG (International Zoo Veterinary Group) and they are happy with his recovery so far.

“The team at Wildwood will continue to monitor him closely to make sure he is responding to treatment.”

Pizzi said: “You’re always a little bit nervous when you come in a day after an unusual or big operation, and there’s a lot that could have given us problems with Boki, but the good news is he’s actually doing really well this morning.

“He was a little bit sorry for himself, and any animal is going to have a little discomfort after an op, but he’s bright and alert and very mentally active and he’s taking his medication. So far so good.”

The conservation charity is fundraising for Boki’s surgery and immediate aftercare costs, which is expected to be about £20,000.

Donald Trump’s decision to hold a rally in the heart of Manhattan on 27 October, nine days before election day, has been slammed by New York Democrats, with one comparing the booking to an infamous Nazi rally held at the same venue in the lead-up to the second world war.

But it has also triggered a backlash to such sentiments, with Republicans saying such rhetoric heightens tensions even more in a presidential election campaign which has already seen two attempts on Trump’s life.

The Democratic state senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal, whose district includes much of the west side of Manhattan where a date on Trump’s “arena tour” rally has been booked at Madison Square Garden, called on venue owners to cancel the event.

“Let’s be clear,” Hoylman-Sigal wrote on X. “Allowing Trump to hold an event at MSG is equivalent to the infamous Nazis rally at Madison Square Garden on February 20, 1939.”

Hoylman-Sigal was referring to a pro-Hitler rally, organized by the German American Bund, that was attended by more than 20,000 people and featured a portrait of George Washington flanked by swastikas. Many attendees came from Yaphank, Long Island, where the Bund was headquartered and had a summer camp teaching Nazi ideology.

In 2019, Hillary Clinton used a speech at the same venue to decry “an assault on the rule of law and the foundations of our democracy”, referring to the infamous Bund rally.

But New York Republicans denounced the comparison.

“Referring to a peaceful rally for the leading candidate for President of the United States as a ‘Nazi Rally’ is not only a disgusting comparison, it is a gross escalation of the dangerous rhetoric in the wake of two direct attempts on President Donald Trump’s life,” state senator Rob Ortt said in a statement.

In his post, Hoylman-Sigal tried to downplay the comparison he had made. “I’m not calling anyone a Nazi,” he said. “I’m pointing out a historic similarity.”

The state senator added: “I was talking about the venue and many of his followers who are white supremacists and have demonstrated hatred and vitriol toward minority groups, including Jews, people of color and the LGBTQ community.”

Halie Soifer, the CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, told Politico that Trump had refused to condemn white supremacy, incited rightwing extremists to engage in an insurrection, and aligned with and dined with Holocaust deniers and neo-Nazis.

“If ever there was a moment to make such a comparison, it’s now, which is why the vast majority of American voters are opposing Donald Trump in this election,” Soifer said.

The dispute comes as the major political parties are locked in an expensive battle for control of New York’s suburban districts that flipped Republican in 2022, depriving Democrats of a majority in Congress.

But it also comes as Jewish voters in New York City weigh their traditional Democratic alignment over the widening Middle East conflict. Trump has said Jews who vote for Vice-President Kamala Harris “should have their head examined”.

Members of Democrats’ progressive wing have been accused of antisemitism over their statements criticizing Israeli actions and for their support of pro-Palestinian protests at university campuses across the city.

Earlier this week, Trump held a remembrance event to mark the first anniversary of the deadly Hamas-led attack on Israelis on 7 October 2023. He called the attack on Israel a “nightmare” and went on to say that the rise of antisemitism in the US was a result of Democratic leadership.

Trump has previously said he had hoped to hold a rally at Madison Square Garden, home to sports teams such as the New York Knicks and the Rangers, and the most prestigious rock venue in the country.

“We’re going to be doing a rally at Madison Square Garden, we believe,” Trump said in April. “We think we’re signing Madison Square Garden to do. We’re going to have a big rally honoring the police, and honoring the firemen, and everybody. Honoring a lot of people, including teachers by the way.”

The dispute over a Trump rally at the venue comes as Democrats have broadly toned down their comparisons between Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement and Nazi ideology.

In May, Joe Biden accused Trump of using “Hitler’s language” in May after the former president temporarily shared a video referencing a “unified reich” to Truth Social.

The Trump campaign press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said comments by Hoylman-Sigal “is the same type of dangerous rhetoric that led to two assassination attempts on President Trump’s life and has divided our country” and called on the senator to resign.

The Republican state senate candidate Vito LaBella said on X that Hoylman-Sigal’s comments would alienate voters. “All polls show about half this country supporting this man. It’s OK that you hate Trump. You just called 150 million voters Nazies [sic]. Shame on you.”