An elderly California man accused of menacing his neighborhood for almost a decade with a slingshot and ball bearings has died a day after bonding out of jail.

Prince King, 81, pleaded not guilty on Tuesday to a number of vandalism charges relating to what authorities said was a nine-year reign of terror in which he would maliciously smash windows of homes and vehicles in his Azusa community.

On Wednesday, the Los Angeles county department of medical examiner said, Prince died at a private residence. According to California’s ABC7, no immediate cause of death was determined for Prince.

The senior, however, did suffer from a number of ailments – including heart issues and nerve problems in his leg and back – and took medication for some of them.

Lt Jake Bushey of the Azusa police department told reporters on Saturday that detectives learned most of the ball bearings were shot from the suspect’s backyard – and that he broke numerous car windshields as well as the windows of nearby residences.

“During the course of nine to 10 years, dozens of citizens were being victimized by a serial slingshot shooter,” the department said in a statement, adding that several people narrowly avoided being injured by ball bearings propelled at them.

Bushey told the Southern California News Group: “It’s been ongoing for many years because we just didn’t identify who the suspect was. We’re not aware of any kind of motive other than just malicious mischief.”

A search of Prince’s residence turned up a slingshot and metal ball bearings, though police did not say exactly how many.

Prince was released from custody after an initial court appearance on Tuesday, at which he was ordered to stay 200 yards away from affected homes and not contact any alleged victims. He had been due to attend his next hearing on 17 June.

The world has enough fossil fuel projects planned to meet global energy demand forecasts to 2050 and governments should stop issuing new oil, gas and coal licences, according to a large study aimed at political leaders.

If governments deliver the changes promised in order to keep the world from breaching its climate targets no new fossil fuel projects will be needed, researchers at University College London and the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) said on Thursday.

The data offered what they said was “a rigorous scientific basis” for global governments to ban new fossil fuel projects and begin a managed decline of the fossil fuel industry, while encouraging investment in clean energy alternatives.

By establishing a “clear and immediate demand” political leaders would be able to set a new norm around the future of fossil fuels, against which the industry could be held “immediately accountable”, the researchers said.

Published in the journal Science, the paper analysed global energy demand forecasts for oil and gas, as well as coal- and gas-fired electricity, using a broad range of scenarios compiled for the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that limited global heating to within 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.

It found that in addition to not needing new fossil fuel extraction, no new coal- and gas-fired power generation was needed in a net zero future.

The paper is expected to reignite criticism of the UK’s Conservative government, which has promised to offer hundreds of oil and gas exploration licenses to boost the North Sea industry, a policy that has emerged as a key dividing line with the opposition Labour party before the 4 July general election.

Labour has vowed to put an end to new North Sea licences if it comes to power, and also plans to increase taxes on the profits made by existing oil and gas fields to help fund investments in green energy projects through a new government-owned company, Great British Energy.

Dr Steve Pye, a co-author of the report from the UCL Energy Institute, said: “Importantly, our research establishes that there is a rigorous scientific basis for the proposed norm by showing that there is no need for new fossil fuel projects.”

“The clarity that this norm brings should help focus policy on targeting the required ambitious scaling of renewable and clean energy investment, whilst managing the decline of fossil fuel infrastructure in an equitable and just way,” Pye said.

The report expanded on work by the International Energy Agency (IEA) which has warned in recent years that no new fossil fuel projects were compatible with the global goal to build a net zero energy system.

The IEA ruled out any new investment in long-lead time fossil fuel projects, but acknowledged that continued investment would be required in existing oil and gas assets and already approved projects.

Dr Fergus Green, from the department of political science at UCL, said: “Our research draws lessons from past shifts in global ethical norms, such as slavery and the testing of nuclear weapons. These cases show that norms resonate when they carry simple demands to which powerful actors can be held immediately accountable.

“Complex, long-term goals like ‘net zero emissions by 2050’ lack these features, but ‘no new fossil fuel projects’ is a clear and immediate demand, against which all current governments, and the fossil fuel industry, can rightly be judged.”

The outgoing head of the UK’s Committee on Climate Change, Chris Stark, said last month that the concept of net zero had become a political slogan used to start a “dangerous” culture war over the climate, and may be better dropped.

“If it is only a slogan, if it is seen as a sort of holding pen for a whole host of cultural issues, then I’m intensely relaxed about dropping it,” Stark said. “We keep it as a scientific target, but we don’t need to use it as a badge that we keep on every programme.”

Green said a political stance on supporting new fossil fuel projects should “serve as a litmus test” on whether a government was serious about tackling the climate crisis. “If they’re allowing new fossil fuel projects, then they’re not serious,” he added.

Mike Johnson, the speaker of the US House of Representatives, is planning a sweeping ideological legislative drive that aims to make Donald Trump “the most consequential president of the modern era” if the Republicans win power in November.

A far-reaching bill containing a range of policy priorities at once – including tax cuts worth trillions, border security and rolling back Obamacare – is being prepared to avoid the mistakes the GOP believed happened early in Trump’s first term, when Johnson says the party wasted time because its victory over Hillary Clinton took it by surprise.

In an interview with Semafor, Johnson said he had already spoken to Trump about introducing an omnibus package immediately after he retakes office.

“I told him that I believe he can be the most consequential president of the modern era, if we are focused on a policy and agenda-driven administration and Congress – and that’s our intention,” Johnson said.

“We don’t want to make the mistake that we made in the past. Back in the 2017 timeframe and in previous years, we Republicans kind of took a single-subject approach. We did one round of healthcare reform, one round of tax reform. But for [fiscal year 2025], we want to have a much larger scope, multiple issues to address in addition to the expiration of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.”

The ambitious vision has been thrashed out in recent weeks in meetings with up to nine Republican congressional committee chairs, producing a “transformational” legislative wishlist. The plans have been communicated across the entire Republican conference, as Johnson seeks to heal the bitter divisions with the party’s hard right that has seen his own speakership challenged.

The Republicans’ wafer-thin House majority meant that he needed the votes of Democrats to save his job from a motion tabled by the hardline Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, making Johnson’s radical vision for the future of his speakership all the more startling.

“A lot of this has to do with communication and coordination and we’ve learned a lot of lessons along the way on both of those things,” he told Semafor. “When you have a historically small majority as we do right now, those are really necessary components to building consensus. And we’ve already begun that process.”

In a separate interview with Punchbowl, Johnson – who became speaker last October after an internal GOP coup toppled his predecessor, Kevin McCarthy – said he had analysed the legislative calendar to ensure the radical reform package would pass in the event of the Republicans capturing both House and Senate, as they did when Trump won in 2016.

“We’re very carefully analysing the number of calendar days that we’ll have to work, floor time, all the rest – everything that will be required to achieve all these big goals that we have,” he said.

First on the agenda is expected to be renewing Trump’s enormous 2017 tax cuts, due to expire next year. Their restoration would cost trillions of dollars.

Johnson did not commit to fully repealing Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, passed in 2022.

He also said “no coordinated policy” had been established towards Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, dubbed Obamacare. But he signalled an intention to tackle the issue by saying that “innovation and change is desperately needed” in healthcare.

Trump tried to replace the act in the early months of his presidency in 2017 but failed to get his alternative legislation past the Senate.

Johnson is also close to sending an invitation to the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to address a joint session of Congress, an event he has predicted will happen before it goes into recess in August.

The invitation letter has already been signed by Johnson and Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate majority leader, who has criticised Netanyahu’s prosecution of the war in Gaza and said Israel needs fresh elections and new leadership.

Having already secured the approval of Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate minority leader, Johnson has passed the letter to the Democratic House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, for review in an effort to present the invitation as bipartisan and bicameral.

Nevertheless, with the progressive wing of the Democratic party fiercely critical of Israel’s Gaza offensive – which has so far killed more than 36,000 Palestinians – Netanyahu’s appearance in Washington in an election season is likely to further exacerbate and expose deep Democratic divisions over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, presenting a boon to Republicans.

On the legislative package, which would also include energy policy, Johnson said there were multiple priorities that could survive the “Byrd rule”, named after the late Democratic senator Robert Byrd and which prohibits non-budgetary provisions being included in reconciliation legislation brought before the Senate.

“We’re just looking at it from a very different, much more comprehensive approach,” he said. “And I think there’s a lot of interest among House Republicans – and the outside groups of course – about what that can look like and what the potential is.”

20. Every Which Way But Loose (1978)

Against all advice, Clint Eastwood switched direction with a knockabout comedy that would be one of his biggest hits. He plays a bare-knuckle fighter who falls for a country singer, though the real romantic chemistry is between him and Clyde the orangutan. Barroom brawls aplenty! Ruth Gordon (as “Ma”) v Nazi bikers!

19. Million Dollar Baby (2004)

In a role that fits him like a comfy old overcoat, Eastwood plays a curmudgeonly boxing trainer who reluctantly takes on a waitress and soon-to-be surrogate daughter (Hilary Swank). But disaster strikes … Eastwood also directed, and the film won multiple Oscars, despite (or perhaps because of) its controversial ending.

18. Kelly’s Heroes (1970)

Dirty Dozen-lite meets The Italian Job as Eastwood leads his platoon in a heist comedy set in France in 1944. Eastwood is solid, but gets comprehensively upstaged by Donald Sutherland’s stoned tank commander. Jolly good fun, though the slapstick sometimes sits awkwardly with the horrors of war.

17. Space Cowboys (2000)

Eastwood directed this amiable geriatric riposte to Armageddon, and reunited with Sutherland, alongside James Garner and Tommy Lee Jones, to play retired test pilots launched into space to save the world from obsolete satellite tech. Plot, dialogue and brawling are all 100% predictable, which only adds to its charm.

16. Gran Torino (2008)

“Get off my lawn!” Septuagenarian Eastwood directs himself as a racist Korean war veteran who bonds with his Asian neighbours in blue-collar Detroit. The action and dialogue are a little clunky, but viewed in light of his long career, even the clunkiness becomes rather moving.

15. Where Eagles Dare (1968)

Eastwood and Richard Burton co-star in a cracking Alistair MacLean action pic in which they infiltrate a Schloss in the Bavarian Alps. Result: explosions, stunts galore and Nazis falling like ninepins. All this gung ho budgetary extravagance inspired Eastwood to found the parsimonious Malpaso Productions.

14. High Plains Drifter (1973)

Eastwood’s first western as a director was a gothic homage to Sergio Leone and Don Siegel, the film-makers who shaped his early career. As “The Stranger”, he rides into a frontier town to wreak semi-supernatural vengeance on the townsfolk, using methods that include getting them to paint the town red – literally.

13. Escape from Alcatraz (1979)

After a production dispute, this taut fictionalisation of a real-life 1962 escape attempt would be Siegel and Eastwood’s final collaboration. Clint plays Frank Morris, banged up on the notorious prison island in San Francisco Bay, ruled by Patrick McGoohan as an unyielding warden. Filmed on location in Alcatraz itself.

12. Tightrope (1984)

Richard Tuggle gets the credit, but Eastwood allegedly ended up directing most of this underrated thriller himself. In one of his most fearlessly uningratiating performances, he subverts his own macho persona as New Orleans cop Wes Block, whose sexual kinks are uncomfortably similar to those of the serial murderer his department is hunting.

11. In the Line of Fire (1993)

Eastwood never balked at acting his age, and visibly gets short of breath as a veteran Secret Service agent, still depressed by his failure to protect JFK, who is forced into a battle of wits against John Malkovich. Smart directing from Wolfgang Petersen lifts this into almost-classic thriller territory.

10. Two Mules for Sister Sara (1970)

After Coogan’s Bluff, Eastwood’s second film for Siegel was this spaghetti-adjacent western with an Ennio Morricone score, filmed in Mexico. Clint plays an American mercenary who rescues a nun (Shirley MacLaine) from bandits. They join up with Mexican revolutionaries to fight the occupying French forces. Breezy fun with an action-packed finale, and you’d never guess Clint and Shirley weren’t best mates on set.

9. The Bridges of Madison County (1995)

Eastwood’s no-nonsense directing style is perfectly suited to this Brief Encounter-type romance, adapted from a bestselling novel. He plays a peripatetic photographer who stops taking pictures of Iowa’s historic bridges long enough to have a passionate affair with a local housewife (Meryl Streep in frumpy frocks). Acting-wise, Eastwood wisely leaves most of the emoting to his co-star, with results that are genuinely affecting.

Michael Cimino made his directing debut with this likable buddy caper movie set in rural Montana. Eastwood gives one of his most underrated performances as a fugitive bank robber who teams up with Jeff Bridges’ cocky young drifter. Knockabout comedy rubs shoulders with brutal violence, new Hollywood-style, as a getaway goes horribly wrong and the typically 1970s ending is a heartbreaker.

7. The Beguiled (1971)

With three releases cementing and subverting his tough guy persona, 1971 was a watershed year for Eastwood. In Siegel’s unnerving southern gothic thriller (remade in 2017 by Sofia Coppola), he plays a wounded Yankee soldier trapped in an all girls’ school in rural Mississippi, where his attempts to manipulate the women’s emotions only result in him being systematically unmanned.

6. Play Misty for Me (1971)

Sixteen years before Fatal Attraction, Eastwood made his directing debut with a psychological thriller in which his strapping DJ is reduced to a nervous wreck by a slip of a woman (Jessica Walter AKA Arrested Development’s Lucille Bluth) as their initially casual relationship leads to jealousy, stalking and scissor attacks. Filmed in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, where, from 1986 to 1988, Clint would serve as mayor.

5. A Fistful of Dollars (1964)

Hitherto best known as Rowdy Yates from TV’s Rawhide, Eastwood took a risk in playing a poncho-clad anti-hero, The Man With No Name, in a low-budget Italian production with a Morricone score. The gamble paid off. Leone’s unauthorised remake of Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo (itself a reworking of Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest) gave birth to the spaghetti western subgenre. And a screen icon was born.

4. The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976)

Eastwood controversially ousted Philip Kaufman to take over directing on one of his most enjoyable westerns. A farmer hunts down the soldiers who murdered his family, but vengeance is deferred while he acquires a surrogate family of misfits, including Chief Dan George as the Cherokee who can’t sneak up, and Sondra Locke in the first of six films she made with Clint, her real-life partner.

3. Dirty Harry (1971)

Eastwood added another signature role to his repertoire in the first of five films featuring poster boy for police brutality Inspector Harry Callahan, as he goes after the psychopath terrorising San Francisco. Director Siegel keeps it gritty and exciting, and Clint, road testing a 1970s pompadour, makes Harry cool, instead of just a vigilante thug.

2. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)

The final part of Leone’s Dollars Trilogy adds Eli Wallach as comic foil to the dream team of Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef, who last met in For a Few Dollars More (1965). All three play scumbags on the trail of buried treasure, set against an epic American civil war backdrop. The squinty showdown in the cemetery, choreographed to Morricone’s score, is peak cinema.

1. Unforgiven (1992)

Eastwood stars in this Oscar-winning western as William Munny, a widowed pig-farmer who thinks his bounty hunting days are over (“I ain’t like that any more”) until he hears about a $1,000 reward on the heads of men who slashed a sex worker’s face. But first he has to get past Sheriff Gene Hackman. With the director-star completely in control of his screen persona and drawing on his history of playing violent men, he builds without irony towards a showdown that is more tragic than cathartic.

Once a week the citizens of Bogotá take back the streets of their city. Every Sunday, between 7am and 2pm, many of the biggest roads are shut to cars and left open to bikes, skates and feet.

“Ciclovía is really cool because there is a lot more space for us,” says seven-year-old Oliver Rojas, who is out cycling with his parents and is baffled to hear that this innovative scheme does not exist in the rest of the world.

Like many other children in the city, Rojas learned to ride a bike on the roads during the calm of Ciclovía and has been out on them nearly every Sunday since.

“Normally it’s really annoying because we don’t get any space with all the cars and motorbikes. It’s really noisy. Sundays though are really fun. I get to see new parts of the city with my family and all my friends are out so I bump into them. We stop at the big parks. And I get to do spins.”

The weekly event was born out of a one-day protest in 1974 against cars taking over the world’s streets. It now covers 127 km (79 miles) of streets in the city and, on average, 1.5 million Bogotanos use the Ciclovía every Sunday. It has spread to most other Colombian cities and has been copied by mayors across the world, from Buenos Aires to Bengaluru, who hope the initiative can help get people in shape, improve mental health, reduce car usage and help fight climate change in the way that it has in Colombia.

“Ciclovía’s impact has been truly amazing,” says Gil Peñalosa, a city planner in Canada who promoted the expansion of Ciclovía when he was Bogotá’s commissioner of parks and recreation in the 1990s. “If you had asked 40 years ago about Bogotá or Colombia around the world, people would have said coffee or drugs. Now people say Ciclovía. It’s got to be one of the best exports to come out of the country.”

Part of the attraction is the fun and the family-friendly atmosphere. Bogotá’s cycleways are punctuated with aerobics classes, people selling fresh juices, and the sound of salsa; it’s a space for the exercise-obsessed to stretch their legs and their lungs uninhibited by cars, but it’s also a safe place to teach the young the benefits of exercise.

As men in Lycra zoom past on $1,000 street bikes, children wobble cautiously around on their first bicycles. It’s hard to measure how many people have taken up cycling as a result of Ciclovía, as the scheme has been running on a large scale since the turn of the century, but surveys suggest it encourages people to learn to ride a bike or to get back on the saddle for the first time in decades.

People who use Ciclovía are twice as likely to also use a bicycle in the week and 58% of Ciclovía users say the scheme has motivated them to ride bikes more frequently, studies show.

The impact is larger for women, who are more put off riding a bike due to safety fears. While only 12% of Bogotá’s women use cycle lanes, 29.9% of women use the Ciclovía.

“It’s a difficult phenomenon to study but I believe that Ciclovía got a whole generation, particularly women, who would not have otherwise used a bike, to get into cycling,” said Olga Lucia Sarmiento, a professor at the School of Medicine at Bogotá’s Andes University.

Bogotá’s cycle lane network has expanded in the past decade to around 600km. Gil attributes the rapid growth in part to the popularity of Ciclovía, which puts pressure on politicians to build cycle lanes.

People are often put off cycling in their cities as they believe it will take a long time to get from A to B by bike, Gil says. “But when one is gliding along empty main roads during Ciclovía, rather than crawling in snarling traffic jams, the metropolis feels a lot smaller.”

“People suddenly realise their city is smaller than they think it is, so as soon as good cycle lanes are offered people take them up,” Gil says.

The event brings down pollution. On a regular weekday, the level of PM 2.5 particles on the main road through Bogotá feels heavy on the lungs and is dangerously high at 65 µg/m3. During Ciclovía, however, that number falls to 5 µg/m3 on the same stretch of road – 13 times less and in line with the WHO’s recommendations for the tiny, harmful particles. Noise levels are seven times lower.

“It’s really important to reduce these harmful chemicals, as when people exercise they pull more air into their lungs. But it’s also a big contribution to climate change, as for 52 days a year, plus public holidays, the air pollution plummets,” Sarmiento says.

Harder to measure but equally important is the impact on mental health and the community, and the way Bogotanos see their city. There is undoubtedly a strangely uplifting feeling when running down a six-lane major road usually dominated by cars, say regulars.

“It’s not just about the body, exercise or health,” says 42-year-old Norma Conde who began cycling on the Ciclovía when she was a young girl and now brings her 10-year-old son, who whizzes ahead confidently in a Sonic the Hedgehog jacket. “It’s about the mind and the soul too. Breaking up the monotony, the stress of work, the hostility of all the cars and the chaos. There’s something about the tranquility and how it frees you. You can really feel it.”

“The physical changes that Ciclovía has on the streets are limited to one day a week, but it can change people’s perceptions of these spaces for ever. It allows people to conceive of new uses for urban space, changing people’s behaviours and what their perception of the city is,” says Sergio Montero, a geography professor at the University of Toronto Scarborough. “I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Bogotá today is the city with the most bike lanes in Latin America.”

Perhaps the most important part of Ciclovía, however, is that it builds a sense of community, says 47-year-old teacher, César Rojas.

“There is so much inequality in Bogotá. One thing that allows people to feel Bogotano is the Ciclovía because no matter how rich you are, and whether you are from the south or the north, the west or the east, you can go down any road and you will not be excluded,” Rojas said.

Some of the world’s most profitable – and most polluting corporations – have invested in carbon offset projects that have fundamental failings and are “probably junk”, suggesting industry claims about greenhouse gas reductions were likely overblown, according to new analysis.

Delta, Gucci, Volkswagen, ExxonMobil, Disney, easyJet, and Nestlé are among the major corporations to have purchased millions of carbon credits from climate friendly projects that are “likely junk” or worthless when it comes to offsetting their greenhouse gas emissions, according to a classification system developed by Corporate Accountability, a non-profit, transnational corporate watchdog

Some of these companies no longer use CO2 offsets amid mounting evidence that carbon trading do not lead to the claimed emissions cuts – and in some cases may even cause environmental and social harms.

However, the multibillion-dollar voluntary carbon trading industry is still championed by many corporations including oil and gas majors, airlines, automakers, tourism, fast-food and beverage brands, fashion houses, banks, and tech firms as the bedrock of climate action – a way of claiming to reduce their greenhouse gas footprint while continuing to rely on fossil fuels and unsustainable supply chains.

Yet, for 33 of the top 50 corporate buyers, more than a third of their entire offsets portfolio is “likely junk” – suggesting at least some claims about carbon neutrality and emission reductions have been exaggerated according to the analysis. The fundamental failings leading to a “likely junk” ranking include whether emissions cuts would have happened anyway, as is often the case with large hydroelectric dams, or if the emissions were just shifted elsewhere, a common issue in forestry offset projects.

“These findings add to the mounting evidence that peels back the greenwashed facade of the voluntary carbon market and lays bare the ways it dangerously distracts from the real, lasting action the world’s largest corporations and polluters need to be taking,” said Rachel Rose Jackson, Corporate Accountability’s director of research.

The fossil fuel industry is by far the largest investor in the world’s most popular 50 CO2 offsetting schemes. At least 43% of the 81m CO2 credits purchased by the oil and gas majors are for projects that have at least one fundamental flaw and are “probably junk”, according to the analysis.

The transport industry, which accounts for about a fifth of all global planet-warming emissions, has also relied heavily on carbon offsetting projects to meet climate goals. Just over 42% of the total credits (55m) purchased by airlines and 38% purchased by automakers (21m) for the top 50 projects are likely worthless at reducing emissions, the analysis found.

The new analysis, shared with the Guardian, builds on a joint investigation last year into the top 50 CO2 offset projects – those that have sold the most carbon credits in the global market. The vast majority of the most popular 50 offset projects were classified as likely or potentially junk due to one or more fundamental failing that undermines its promised emission cut, according to the criteria and classification system applied to the analyses.

The top 50 projects include forestry schemes, hydroelectric dams, solar and wind farms, waste disposal and greener household appliances schemes across 20 (mostly) developing countries, according to data from AlliedOffsets, the most comprehensive emissions trading database, which tracks projects from inception. They account for almost a third of the entire global voluntary carbon market (VCM), suggesting that junk or overvalued carbon credits that exaggerate emission reduction benefits could be the norm.

The VCM industry works by carbon credits being tradable “allowances” or certificates that allows the purchaser to offset 1 ton of carbon dioxide or the equivalent in greenhouse gasses by investing in environmental projects anywhere in the world that claim to reduce carbon emissions.

Climate experts say that the carbon trading market has failed to produce the promised planetary benefits, delayed the transition away from oil, gas and coal, and caused harm to forests and communities in developing countries where most offset projects are located.

On Tuesday, the Biden administration published new guidelines on responsible participation in VCMs which they say will drive credible and ambitious climate action. But critics argue that offsets are fundamentally flawed.

“Overall, carbon offsets are, according to most expert analyses, neither credible nor scalable to the urgency and scale of the carbon dioxide problem,” said Richard Heede, co-director of the Climate Accountability Institute, a nonprofit research and education group.

“This report documents the prevalence of ‘worthless’ or ‘likely junk’ carbon offsets in the global Voluntary Carbon Market, and undermines the corporate rationale for claiming emissions reductions based on such credits,” Heede added.

The new sector-by-sector analysis found:

Fossil fuel firms and airlines

Oil and gas majors are among the largest corporate buyers of likely junk offsets. Almost half (49%) the 3.7m carbon credits purchased by ExxonMobil are for two projects classified as likely junk or worthless. Internal company documents show that scientists at Exxon, which is one of the world’s worst greenhouse gas emitters, were accurately predicting the impact of fossil fuels on the climate in the 1970s.

A spokesperson for ExxonMobile said: “Carbon offsets are a viable way to [reduce emissions and reach net zero], which is why we continue to evaluate them. We’re working to verify the claims cited in this analysis.”

With the exception of fossil fuel firms, Delta has purchased more carbon credits than any other corporation. Just over 35% of the 41m carbon credits purchased by Delta were from 11 offset projects which are likely worthless or junk, according to Corporate Accountability.

In California, a 2023 civil class-action alleged that Delta misrepresented itself as carbon-neutral as the company’s reliance on the carbon trading market renders its climate friendly representations as false and misleading. The judge reduced the scope of the lawsuit last month after Delta rejected the allegations and filed a motion to dismiss. The case continues.

A spokesperson said the company is investing in sustainable aviation fuel, more fuel-efficient aircraft and reducing fuel use through operational efficiencies in a bid to reach “net zero” by 2050. “We have shifted away from carbon neutrality and offsets.”

Meanwhile almost 72% of the 11m carbon credits ever purchased by easyJet, a popular low-cost European airline, were for projects classified as likely junk. In 2022, the airline announced plans to transition away from offsetting in favor of a “roadmap to net zero” emissions by 2050 through more fuel-efficient aircraft and perational efficiencies as well as sustainable aviation fuel and carbon capture and storage – technologies which scientists have warned could exacerbate the climate crisis.

An easyJet spokesperson said: “In the short period we did offset customer emissions, we had robust due diligence processes in place, with all projects recommended by expert partners and all required to meet the highest standards available.”

A 2021 joint investigation by the Guardian revealed that major airlines including Delta and easyJet were using unreliable “phantom” carbon credits to claim their flights were carbon neutral.

Car makers, entertainment giants, luxury goods

Almost half (46%) of the 11m CO2 credits purchased by Volkswagen from the top 50 projects were likely junk, according to the analysis. The German carmaker recently announced a joint venture to develop its own carbon credit projects and said they increasingly rely on on-site inspections, due diligence and audit processes to verify projects. VW aims to reduce its emissions by 90% compared to 2018 by converting its energy supply and increasing energy efficiency among other measures.

In the world of entertainment, almost 62% of the 5.8m carbon credits retired by Disney are from two offset projects which have been classified as likely junk or worthless.

The analysis also found that 75% of the 4.4m carbon credits purchased by the Italian luxury fashion house Gucci have been for projects classified as likely junk. Gucci, which was once a high-profile proponent of offsetting, last year dropped its carbon neutral claim amid growing evidence that the rainforest projects it relied on were likely junk and potentially harmful. Gucci is finalizing new climate commitments with a greater focus on cutting absolute emissions through its supply chain.

The food and drinks industry is a major climate polluter – and investor in carbon markets, with 37% of the industry-wide credits purchased from projects classified as likely junk.

Food and drinks industry

The analysis found that almost 36% of the 2.2m carbon credits purchased by Nestlé, the world’s largest food and beverage company, were from five offset projects which have been classified as likely junk. Nestlé said that it stopped purchasing credits from these projects in 2021/2022. “Reaching net zero emissions at Nestlé does not involve using offsetting: we focus on GHG emissions reductions and removals within our value chain to reach our net zero ambition.”

While some corporations have signaled a shift away from carbon offsetting, the VCM is still valued between $2 and $3bn – despite warnings that the industry is a false solution delaying the world’s transition away from oil, gas and coal.

“This research once again shows that big corporate polluters claiming climate credentials are the main buyers of junk credits. But racking up carbon credits doesn’t make you a climate leader. Cutting fossil fuels does. We can’t offset our way to a safe climate future,” said Erika Lennon, senior attorney at the Centre for International Environmental Law (Ciel).

“For all the talk about carbon credits accelerating climate action, they are actually greenwashing climate destruction.”

Fire ants have been found on the Sunshine Coast as the super pest continues to spread beyond a containment zone in Queensland’s south-east corner.

It’s the latest in a series of so-called outlier detections of the hyper aggressive invasive species that Australia has been fighting to eradicate for decades.

The latest find was made at a development site at Nirimba on Monday, the National Fire Ant Eradication Program said.

A member of the community reported two nests that have now been destroyed, and broadscale treatment is under way in the surrounding area.

Fire ant campaigners have long warned the Sunshine Coast was at risk due to patchy resourcing to attack the pest.

“This was probably inevitable,” said Reece Pianta, from the Invasive Species Council.

“It’s something we’ve been concerned about for a very long time because there were only resources to treat fire ants in effectively less than half of the outer eradication boundary.”

Earlier this year the ants were also found at Caboolture, between Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast.

They have also been found west of the Great Dividing Range and on the islands offshore from Brisbane.

Pianta said the Nirimba find, at a site that had been prepared for development, suggested there might be a link to the movement of organic materials, like soil and turf, that can carry fire ants.

The movement of those materials is restricted but the Invasive Species Council said enforcement was crucial.

Fire ants have also recently been detected in NSW at South Murwillumbah and Wardell, south of Ballina, with those infestations stamped out. Authorities remain on high alert.

Nobody does rock star like Lenny Kravitz. He pads into the recording studio like a tranquillised tiger. It’s dark in here, but he is wearing shades. He’s got on a leather jacket, skinny black jeans, a T-shirt made from metallic shards. His dreadlocks reach way down his back and are as black as his designer stubble. Kravitz, who has spent much of his adult life topless, has a 28in waist and an eight-pack that could double as a xylophone. Last Sunday, he celebrated his 60th birthday and he’s every bit as gorgeous as he was when he made his name in the late 80s; possibly more so. The consensus seems to be that he’s the hottest 60-year-old man on the planet.

I can’t believe you’re 60, I say. “I can barely believe it myself. But it’s beautiful,” he says. Is it in the genes? “It’s a combination of genes, self-care, hard work and discipline.”

Kravitz is instantly recognisable, his songs less so. Take away the few big hits (American Woman, It Ain’t Over ’Til It’s Over, Are You Gonna Go My Way, Fly Away) and many of us would struggle to name a song of his. It’s 26 years since he last had a Top 10 hit in the UK and 24 years in the US. And he’s hardly prolific. Blue Electric Light, released this month, is only his 12th studio album in 35 years. Yet Kravitz remains huge, worth an estimated $90m (£70m). He writes and produces for other musicians (notably Madonna’s Justify My Love, although this takes us back 34 years), acts (The Hunger Games, Precious, The Butler) and works as a successful interior designer.

Blue Electric Light is a classic Kravitz mix of funk, soul, pop and heavy rock. His voice is honeyed, he is a gifted multi-instrumentalist and he has a fine ear for writing songs that sound as if they’ve already been written by someone else. The album is sunny and sexy, at various points echoing Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, Prince, Elvis Costello and Miguel.

Then there is the outrageous song TK421. Named after the Star Wars character, it also seems to be a euphemism for Kravitz’s you-know-what. (“Come on, baby, get on the one / Can you feel it, oh, my TK421!”) The accompanying video is every bit as raunchy as the lyrics. It’s his first nude scene and he pulls it off with aplomb.

Kravitz, who lives in France, the Bahamas and Brazil, grew up in New York. His mother was the actor Roxie Roker, who starred in the sitcom The Jeffersons; his father, Sy Kravitz, was an NBC television news producer. Roxie was black with Bahamian ancestry, while Sy was white and Jewish.

By the time he was in his teens, his mother was a household name – and wealthy with it. But she was adamant she wouldn’t spoil Kravitz, who showed promise in music – choral, classical and pop. Despite that, he ended up at the brattish Beverly Hills High in Los Angeles, which inspired the TV series Beverly Hills 90210. “On their 16th birthday, you’d see the kids driving in their BMWs. The teachers’ parking lot was full of Chevys and Fords and the student parking lots were Porsches and Ferraris. It was pretty funny,” he says.

Did you have a car? “Hell no!” So how did you get to school? “Bus or a carpool with friends.” But your parents could have afforded to buy you one? “Of course. My mother was on a No 1 TV show for 11 fucking years. But that would not be raising her boy to become a man. We had no maid – on Saturday morning, she’s scrubbing toilets. She was the most amazing human being.”

His relationship with his father was fraught. When Kravitz was 15, he was desperate to go to a jazz concert, to see the drummer Buddy Rich. Although his father had introduced him to jazz, he told his son he’d been out enough that week and couldn’t go. Kravitz said he was going – and that he was also leaving home.

Today, he says he must have put his mother through so much pain. There was no internet, no mobile phones. If he didn’t have change or there was no working phone box, he couldn’t get in touch with her. And often he didn’t. He was homeless; sometimes living in a car, sometimes depending on the kindness of strangers. “It’s a miracle I survived, that I wasn’t abused,” he says.

Hold on, I say – I thought you said in your memoir that you were abused by a woman in her 20s when you were 13? Ah, he says, that was different. “Yes, she did do that, but that wasn’t …” He comes to a stop. “In today’s world, yes, that was abuse and assault. It was this chick who saw this young teenager and thought I was cute and I’m going to give him some. Any young boy would have taken that opportunity and enjoyed the hell out of it.”

Did you have sex with her? “No. She began and I stopped her.” Why? “I had a girlfriend.” What did she think when you stopped her? “She thought it was comical – ‘You have a girlfriend?!’” Were you a virgin? He nods. I ask if he’s talked about it to his daughter, the actor Zoë Kravitz, and whether she regards it as abuse. He doesn’t answer directly. “I mean, she stopped, and I can’t speak for everyone, but that would have been a fantasy for so many kids. But, for me, it’s not what I wanted.”

Kravitz initially struggled to secure a record deal. He was told he was too black to play rock’n’roll, despite the fact that Little Richard and Chuck Berry had helped invent it 40 years earlier. He straightened his hair, wore blue contact lenses and became Romeo Blue. Where did that come from? “I had a lot of girlfriends, so they nicknamed me Romeo.” Blue was a tribute to the guitarist Adrian Belew.

He was Romeo Blue in 1985 when he met the Cosby Show actor Lisa Bonet, four years his junior. When she turned 20, they eloped. A year later, they had Zoë and the dynasty was extended (Zoë is a star in her own right). Bonet and Kravitz split up when Zoë was four and are often cited as role models for bringing up a child harmoniously post-divorce.

In his memoir, he writes of the time he overheard his father on the phone talking to a woman and realised he was having an affair – one of many. Kravitz was devastated and told him so. His father replied that he’d end up doing the same thing – as though it was some kind of curse.

Was his father right? “He became right,” he says. “After the marriage, I became more like him. I was becoming a player.” How did you feel about it? “I didn’t like it. I didn’t want to be that guy. So I had to tackle that and it took years.” How did you tackle it? “By taking responsibility. Discipline. Not letting my own desires take over.”

Kravitz tells me he’s not been in a serious relationship for nine years. Were you serious when you said a while ago that you wanted to be celibate until you found the right woman? “Yes. It’s a spiritual thing.” He says he’d love to be in a relationship now, but he thinks he might struggle. “I have become very set in my ways, in the way I live.”

By 1989, Kravitz had embraced his real name and released his first album. What was wrong with it in the first place? He looks embarrassed. “I thought ‘Lenny Kravitz’ sounded ridiculous. I’ve got nothing against my Jewish heritage, but it sounded like a Jewish lawyer or a doctor. I didn’t think it was very rock’n’roll. How wrong I was.”

It didn’t take long for him to come to his senses. “I cut the processed hair, grew dreadlocks and became myself. It was a wonderful exercise in finding my way home.”

Did you not realise you were gorgeous back then? “Not. At. All. I never thought that and still don’t think that.” Really? “I’m telling you the truth. I have grown to accept myself and be comfortable with myself, but I have never been one to look in a mirror and go: ‘Ooh yeah, look at that! You’re so beautiful.’ And especially not back then, as a teen. Absolutely not.”

The video for TK421, which features plenty of mirrors, would suggest otherwise. “I can’t take credit for that,” he says. “I hired this young Ukrainian woman director, Tanu. She had this idea: we’re going to come to your house, you’re going to wake up and open the curtains, get ready for your day … I thought that sounds like the most boring thing ever. Then, when she gets there, she says: ‘So you sleep in the nude, yeah?”

Kravitz says it could have backfired, but tells me why it worked. “We’re having fun, I’m singing into a toothbrush, dancing around the bathroom. It wasn’t the energy of: ‘Ooh, let’s be sexy.’”

I hate to disappoint you, I say, but it is a sexy video. Someone has written a comment below it: “OMG, 60 is the new 30, Lenny just proved it.” He nods. “OK. Well, that’s OK. I’m not going to say there were no sexy elements.”

And another comment: “Great! Now I’m pregnant!”

“Oh God! It was fun and it was cool and it was sexy,” he concedes.

A big spliff features prominently in the video, too. I’d heard that he used to be a heavy smoker. Is it true that he hired somebody to roll his joints? “Erm, yes. A junior high school friend. He had other jobs, too, but one of them was to roll joints.” What other jobs? “Just assisting me. I wanted my buddy with me.” Were you rubbish at rolling or too busy? “No, I was actually very good at it. But if I’m in the studio, playing all the instruments, running around …” Were you a mega spliffhead? “Oh yeah!” I ask if he could compete with George Michael, who told me he smoked about 25 spliffs a day. “Erm, I’d say even more. I was Bob Marley level.” Did it worry you? “No. I’d been smoking weed since I was 11. I stopped years ago. Maybe I’ll have a hit every now and then – as you saw in the video – but I’m talking about every now and again.”

He swapped grass for the gym and took his new hobby every bit as seriously. Could all 60-year-olds look like you? What about somebody like me, who’s got a zero-pack? He looks me up and down. “Right …” he says in a way that doesn’t inspire confidence. “Well, there’s a lot of hard work and discipline in being healthy for me. That means when I want to eat junk, I don’t do it.”

How do you resist? “Take last night. I worked all day, interviews, rehearsing into the night, get home at 11pm. I need to eat something. Now it’s 1am. I didn’t get my workout. So I went to the gym and I did a 90-minute workout at 2am. I don’t want to be in the gym at 2am, but I know that I must.” Why? “Because it’s part of my discipline – it’s about body, mind and spirit. I want all of those three elements aligned. If my body’s in shape and my spirit and mind are not, then it’s just something nice to look at or to boast about. Who cares? For me, all of it has to be aligned. And I have to do the work it takes to have all of those in alignment so my being can be at its maximum.”

The thing is, I explain to Kravitz, I love eating KitKats, about four of them, followed by a bag of crisps with salted peanuts poured into it. He laughs, sympathetically. “I love a KitKat, especially when it’s been kept in the refrigerator.”

I’m a year older than Kravitz. Does he think there’s hope for me? He gives me another once-over. Now I’m convinced all he can see is a human KitKat. “Absolutely. Ab-so-lute-ly. But it takes discipline. You have to change your thinking and do the work. I do it completely naturally. I’m on no hormones, no testosterone. I do this 100% by food and action.”

Have you ever been a slob? “A slob?” he repeats, as if it’s a foreign language. You know, a little bit lazy? “There are a couple of times I stayed in Paris for six months in between tours and I got a little poochy. I drank wine, I ate croissants. I just enjoyed myself and then I was like: oh shit! But that’s only happened once or twice.”

Today, Kravitz is almost as famous for an incident that happened nine years ago as he is for his music. He was rocking so hard on stage that his leather trousers split open at the crotch. He wasn’t wearing underpants. Do you think that boosted your career? “Nooooooah. Absolutely not.” Were you embarrassed? “You just have to go with it. What can you do?” Did you consider wearing underpants after that? “No, I just made sure the pants I had were working.”

Photos recently emerged of Kravitz working out in the gym in leather trousers. Was that for real? “Yep. If I’m coming from somewhere and my trainer says we can get it in now, then I’ll come as I am. A lot of the time I’m in street clothes, which people think is funny.” Kravitz doesn’t. It’s just what you do when you’re dedicated to getting body, spirit and mind in alignment.

My time is up. Kravitz stands up and his mobile rings. It’s on speakerphone. “Hey, what’s up, Rock Star?” says a voice at the other end.

Kravitz is chatting enthusiastically in a side room as I leave. I put my head in the door to say goodbye. He waves. I ask who calls him Rock Star. He grins. “It’s my cousin. He’s being facetious.”

Israel is in effective control of Gaza’s entire land border after taking control of a buffer zone along the border with Egypt, Israel’s military has said, a move that risks complicating its relationship with Egypt.

In a televised briefing on Wednesday, chief military spokesperson Daniel Hagari said Israeli forces had gained “operational” control over the Philadelphi Corridor, using the Israeli military’s code name for the 14km-long corridor along the Gaza Strip’s only border with Egypt.

Hagari did not spell out what “operational” control referred to, but an Israeli military official earlier said there were Israeli “boots on the ground” along parts of the corridor. The border with Egypt along the southern edge was Gaza’s only land border that Israel had not controlled directly.

“The Philadelphi Corridor served as an oxygen line for Hamas, which it regularly used to smuggle weapons into the area of the Gaza Strip,” Hagari said, claiming that troops had “discovered around 20 tunnels” in the area.

Egypt’s state-linked Al-Qahera News reported a “high-level Egyptian source” as saying that Israel was using claims of tunnels under Egypt’s border with Gaza as cover for its Rafah offensive.

“There is no truth to Israeli media reports of the existence of tunnels on the Egyptian border with Gaza,” the source told Al-Qahera, which is linked to state intelligence. “Israel is using these allegations to justify continuing the operation on the Palestinian city of Rafah and prolonging the war for political purposes.”

Egypt has previously said it has destroyed hundreds of cross-border tunnels with Gaza since 2013.

White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said seizure of the Philadelphi Corridor would be consistent with the “limited” ground operation Israeli officials briefed President Joe Biden’s team on for the city of Rafah.

“When they briefed us on their plans for Rafah it did include moving along that corridor and out of the city proper to put pressure on Hamas in the city,” Kirby told reporters on Wednesday.

The Philadelphi corridor is part of a larger demilitarised zone along both sides of the entire Israel-Egypt border. Under a peace accord, each is allowed to deploy only a tiny number of troops or border guards in the zone. At the time of the accord, Israeli troops controlled Gaza.

Earlier this month, Israel and Egypt became embroiled in a diplomatic row after the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) seized control of the Rafah crossing. The capture of the corridor signals that Israel has deepened its offensive in southern Gaza and further threatens relations with Egypt.

Elsewhere on Wednesday, Israel sent tanks on raids into Rafah, after moving into the heart of the city for the first time on Tuesday despite an order from the top United Nations court to immediately halt the assault on the city.

As Israel expanded its offensive in Rafah, a top Israeli official said that Israel’s war with Hamas is likely to last through to the end of the year.

National security adviser Tzachi Hanegbi told Kan public radio he was “expecting another seven months of fighting” to destroy the military and governing capabilities of Hamas and the smaller Islamic Jihad militant group.

“The army is achieving its objectives but [it] said from the first days it was presenting its plan to the cabinet that the war will be long,” he said. “They have designated 2024 as a year of war.”

Reuters, Agence France-Presse and the Associated Press contributed to this report