The Guardian

• Two buses, three hours and 13 miles: how Americans in ‘transit deserts’ get groceries without cars

  As Covid-era funding dries up and bus services are cut, a food insecurity crisis is brewing from Tennessee to Rhode Island

  Zen’Yari Winters’ job, at a pet shop in East Memphis, Tennessee, should be a 20-minute trip from her house. She leaves herself three hours to get there. “The bus is always, always late,” she said – if it shows up at all.

  It’s not just her work commute that’s affected by the time-consuming guessing game that is riding with the Memphis Area Transit Authority (Mata). The only full-service grocer in the Chelsea-Hollywood area where she lives closed in 2025.To shop for food in person, she could take two buses for a 13-mile (20km) trip to Walmart. But she risks waiting at bus stops for hours with perishables – or shelling out about $24 for an Uber back.

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• Rescuers release humpback whale that was stranded off German coast

  Calf was transported by water-filled barge in operation deemed ‘inadvisable’ because of low chance of survival

  Rescuers have released a young humpback whale that became a national sensation after it was beached in shallow waters off the coast in Germany, although marine experts have said its chances of survival are low.

  The whale, variously nicknamed Timmy or Hope, was released into the North Sea off Denmark after being transported there in a water-filled barge by rescuers.

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• Could Santa Marta climate talks mark ground zero in push to ditch fossil fuels?

  Colombia hosted nearly 60 countries at pivotal time on world stage for fight to transition to a clean energy future

  Looking out to sea from the grey sandy beaches of Santa Marta, on Colombia’s Caribbean coast, it is never hard to spot evidence of the country’s thriving fossil fuel export trade. Oil tankers ride at anchor on the horizon and sometimes, locals say, lumps of coal wash up on the shore, blown off the collier ships that carry cargos from the nearby mines.

  It was here, on Wednesday evening, that the Colombian government took a bold step to shift its economy – and that of the rest of the world – away from dependence on coal, gas and oil and into a new era of clean energy. With the first ever conference on “transitioning away from fossil fuels”, the host joined nearly 60 countries determined to loosen of the grip of petrostates on the world’s future.

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• To give young people wings: The Lost Words duo reunite for book of birds

  Jackie Morris and Robert Macfarlane give the Guardian exclusive extracts as they aim to open eyes to the wonder of Britain’s declining and endangered species

  When the artist Jackie Morris collaborated with the writer Robert Macfarlane to celebrate the names of plants and animals controversially removed from the Oxford Junior Dictionary, they never imagined their book, The Lost Words, would become a cultural phenomenon.

  Grassroots crowdfunding ensured the book was bought and donated to more than three-quarters of primary schools in England, Wales and Scotland and to every hospice in the country.

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• Country diary: The farm is mourning Moss, 14 years old and alert to the end | Andrea Meanwell

  Tebay, Cumbria: While new life begins up on our hills, down at the farmstead I say goodbye to a dear companion

  Lambing is still in full swing here, and each evening I start my last rounds at 8.30pm, as by 9.30pm it will be too dark to see the sheep without the headlights of the quad bike. Our main flock of sheep lamb outside, and when the time comes they take themselves off away from the others, usually at dusk or dawn. I know that two sheep have gone up towards the railway line, so I drive along to check them as darkness falls.

  From up here I can see both north and south, with the lights of the trucks of the M6 reminding me that the motorway is there. I do not process the sound of the motorway any more, and during the daytime I forget that it is there. A train speeds past with lights on inside, and I think about the thousands of people who pass through this valley every day without stopping or thinking about our lives here.

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