Breaking Waves: Ocean News

Carlos Mazón resists calls to step down, saying floods that killed 216 in his area were unprecedented and ‘apocalyptic’ The regional president of Valencia, who is under mounting pressure over his handling of the catastrophic floods that killed 216 people in the area, has conceded mistakes were made but refused to step down, claiming the unprecedented and “apocalyptic” scale of the disaster simply overwhelmed the system. A total of 224 people lost their lives – all but eight of them in Valencia – when torrential rains and floods hit eastern, central and southern parts of Spain on Tuesday 29 October, drowning people in their homes and cars and sending torrents of water through cities, towns and villages. Continue reading...

The best of this week’s wildlife photographs from around the world Continue reading...

At least 123 oil and gas bosses and staff invited as ‘guests’ by Azerbaijani government and given host country badges, the Guardian has learned According to an interesting piece in the Africa Report, African countries at Cop are wary of alienating China. But this year, the main issue at stake in the negotiations is the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG). In the jargon of climate finance, this is the amount that developed countries will have to provide to vulnerable countries to help them adapt to climate change. When they signed the Paris Agreement in 2015, the developed countries undertook to allocate $100bn a year from 2020 onwards – via loans and grants – to finance projects that enable developing countries to adapt to climate change (rising sea levels, drought, etc.) or help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This amount was not reached until 2022, but is due to be renegotiated upwards this year. The developed countries are also lobbying to broaden the base of contributing countries to include the “new polluters”: China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, among others. “The African Group will not be supporting this proposal, as it is too sensitive and we don’t want to alienate China,” says an African negotiator. The African countries are also members of the G77, the group of developing countries to which China belongs. Continue reading...

Baby spiders collected from egg sacs via Australian Reptile Park’s yearly callout are vital to creating lifesaving antivenom Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast Hunting for potentially deadly, silky spider burrows in the back yard may not be on every Sydneysiders’ bucket list. But that’s the request of the Australian Reptile Park (ARP) as breeding season begins for funnel-webs, encouraging residents to search shoes, piles of laundry, pools and garden debris for spiders and their egg sacs. Continue reading...