Warnings about dangerous, unhealthy air also extended from Minnesota to New York as wildfires rage in Toronto

Extreme heat warnings are in place for large swaths of the United States this week, as an unusual weather pattern eclipses record temperature highs.

In Billings, Montana, residents experienced a sweltering 111F (43.9C) on Sunday, the hottest day in its history. Salt Lake City in Utah also hit an all-time record high on Sunday at 109F. Boston has seen more 90F days than average, according to NPR station WBUR-FM.

A burst pipe left me high, dry and desperate to wash my hair. But around me, everyone seemed stoic and unsurprised - no rolling of eyes, tutting or, God forbid, speaking ill of the water company

On Monday morning, the water coming out of my tap was but a dribble. Disappointing. I checked the water company website and there was something about some problem somewhere that was being resolved. It was sorted. Then Tuesday evening, uh-oh, not even a dribble. Not again, surely. Back to the water company website which, in its own way, is rather helpful. But only in the same way that train companies have got better at owning their shortcomings with the efficiency of the Delay Repay system. Nice as this is, it would be nice if they were as good at stopping problems happening as they are at keeping you across how they are supposedly solving them or, in the case of rail companies anyway, bunging you some money to cheer you up.

Here’s what the website said: “Our specialist team have located a large burst water pipe causing no water, low pressure and flooding to the road …” It was the “specialist team” bit that irritated me, perhaps unreasonably. Specialist as opposed to what? Generalist? A couple of blokes who happened to be in the office and set off with some divining rods for a look around? Pardon my irritation but I’d had my hair cut in the afternoon and, you know how it is, you need a shower otherwise it’s a long, itchy night. My mood wasn’t improved by a couple of American students from South Dakota we had staying (long story) who had never been out of the US before. They were having a bit of a whine about the water, but soon gave up, obviously pitying us living in such an obviously backward country.

We got our first feline hero in 1971 when Matthew Flinders’ heartfelt tribute to his pet Trim was discovered

In 1872, the city of Melbourne hosted its first cat show one year after London’s Crystal Palace debuted its first show. By 1885, “cats were seldom treated very well” in Australia, according to a writer in the Victorian Almanac that year – but they were pleased to report that Australians were starting to appreciate them more.

The colonial newspapers were also beginning to report on a curious fad: “the cult of the cat”, which saw the humble moggie, once viewed as a back-alley scavenger or nondescript companion of women and children, transformed into a fashionable commodity in places like London. Cat breeding became a popular and lucrative pastime for mainly upper- and middle-class women and men, with fancy breeds, like Persians, selling for hefty sums. As the cat economy picked up, British newspapers were filled with “pages of cat business” as cat-loving contributors shared regular updates on litters, feline purchases and ribbons acquired at prestigious shows.

Residents across party lines say Trump’s proposed wall threatens their homes, livelihoods and wilderness along the Rio Grande

Last February, 41-year-old Molly Walker posted an Instagram story: a photo of herself standing in the desert, sunglasses hooked over the front of her shirt, jeans slung low beneath her exposed midriff. She held a protest sign fashioned from a pizza box, a hand-drawn heart framing the words “Border Cultura”, with “NO WALL” scrawled beneath.

The text over the photo included a call to action: “… if you want to organize, DM me.”

The next great climate divide will be between countries that have the resources to adapt and those that don’t

This summer, much of the media’s attention has focused on record temperatures across Europe and the United States. Television coverage has been filled with familiar images: heat maps shaded deep red, schools closing, rail lines slowing, wildfires spreading and emergency rooms treating growing numbers of people with heat-related illnesses.

Public officials have responded with equally familiar advice: stay indoors, drink plenty of water and, if possible, turn on the air conditioning.

Peat bogs are essential to the environment, holding twice as much carbon as all the world’s forests. But in the UK, 80% are damaged, most of what is extracted is used in horticulture – and some campaigners fear the problem is getting worse

‘I don’t see how I can possibly do my job and eat mushrooms,” says Sally Nex, a campaign advocate for the Peat-Free Partnership. “An awful lot of the food you buy in the supermarket is grown in peat: field mushrooms and little button mushrooms, salads and many brassicas, herbs in pots … all of those have started in peat.”

I’m taken aback. I’ve bought peat-free compost for years, but I’d never considered “hidden” peat. “I would imagine that most people are buying peat-free compost at the moment – certainly, you only have to go into a garden centre to see the amount of peat-free options you now have,” says Nex. “But you may not realise that an awful lot – probably most – of the plants that are on sale in that garden centre are also grown in peat.”

In the newsletter: From avoiding flights to checking on vulnerable neighbours, there are steps we can all take to fight the effects of extreme heat

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From the comfort of a friend’s air-conditioned car last weekend, I watched a dozen sweaty men on a “beer bike tour” chug booze while pedalling through Berlin, as the city broke its temperature record with 39.2C heat. Few wore hats, and their tender pink necks showed signs of sunburn.

A few days later, I visited Coschen, the eastern German village that provisionally recorded the hottest temperature the country had ever seen, in a district where nearly every other voter backs a far-right party that denies basic climate science. One man who lives down the road from the station that reached the national record-breaking 41.7C high calmly told me “it was also warm” when he was young.

Indigenous groups organised mass protests over a series of deals by the president, Rodrigo Paz, that prioritise agribusiness and mining interests

From her home in the Bolivian Amazon, Vivian Palomequi walked for a month and more than 560 miles (900km) to the capital, La Paz. She arrived in late April to protest over a law she fears would open the door to accelerated deforestation and land privatisation. “We declared a state of emergency and started marching,” says Palomequi, who leads a peasant farmers’ union. “We had no other choice.”

The march was part of a wave of pushbacks against the environmental policies of Bolivia’s new government, which has staffed ministries with former agroindustry leaders, struck deals to open protected areas to mining and criminalised environmental defenders.

Canadian scientists visit remains of polar exploration vessels in ‘golden era for shipwreck investigating’

Moments after devouring the final glimmers of light, the seafloor offered nothing but darkness and silt. Then the bow appeared.

More than 1,000ft (305 metres) below the surface of the Labrador Sea, off the coast of Canada, the skeleton of the final ship used by the famed polar explorer Ernest Shackleton appeared in its silty grave.

Vulnerable people more at risk as research finds only half of local authority plans require cooling strategies

England risks constructing a new generation of “death trap” buildings that can fatally overheat unless the government tightens standards and prioritises climate safeguards, planning experts have said.

Fears are growing about the plight of vulnerable people in heatwaves, with research this week suggesting that 2,700 people had died in the May and June heatwaves in England and Wales. Yet only about half of local plans being drawn up by councils and local authorities require new buildings to have a cooling or ventilation strategy to prevent overheating, according to findings from the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) and the Town and Country Planning Association (TCPA).

EV owners were sent hefty PCNs but say some signs in private car parks fail to warn of fees to park and recharge car

Does refuelling your car class as parking? The answer appears to be yes if it’s an electric vehicle. Guardian Money has been contacted by several readers who were fined after charging their cars away from home.

The motorists report being caught out by signs that fail to make clear that charging points are subject to parking tariffs or to store opening times. Also, they have found some chargers being advertised as available for use when it would be a breach of the car park’s terms and conditions to use them.

Anyone eating Lanmaoa asiatica could have visions for days of tiny people running and jumping around

Lanmaoa asiatica is a bolete mushroom, prized for its delicious taste and hugely popular in Yunnan province, China, where it is found growing in a symbiotic relationship with pine trees. But anyone eating the mushroom needs to be careful because it also gives hallucinations of lots of tiny people about 2cm tall wearing brightly coloured clothes, all jumping, running, climbing and being generally playful, but in a normal, real-world setting.

The hallucinations are reminiscent of the small people in the hit BBC series Small Prophets, although without their psychic powers. Despite the powerful visions it brings, Lanmaoa is completely unrelated to Psilocybes, or “magic mushrooms”, which give wide-ranging hallucinations for a few hours triggered by the chemical psilocybin.

Annual State of the UK Climate analysis finds last four years in UK are in top five hottest on record

The UK’s climatic extremes are becoming increasingly normal, a report has found, with last year the hottest on record and further “unprecedented changes” likely to break the record again soon.

Data stretching back to 1884 shows the UK has never experienced a year as hot as 2025, according to the annual State of the UK Climate report, with temperatures pushed to dizzying heights by carbon pollution clogging the atmosphere.

Around the world, climate-sceptic parties are exploiting floods and fires to make political capital. Without urgent changes, this deadly spiral will continue

Recent unprecedented heatwaves in the UK may have killed thousands of people. Children are suffering in overheating schools. NHS trusts are straining under record-breaking demand. This all comes after climate extremes have even affected national security, with three of Britain’s five worst harvests coming since 2020, impairing food security.

This is what life looks like in the “adaptation gap”.

Laurie Laybourn is executive director of the Strategic Climate Risks Initiative

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

El Niño climate phenomenon heating waters off Mexico but incidents with humans remain a rarity

California is set to see one of its sharkiest summers in a decade, with large numbers of juvenile great whites already on a reverse vacation from the warm waters of Mexico to cooler pastures along the western United States.

The marine predator has become more common along the west coast in recent years, with stories of surfers seeing underwater behemoths closer to shore and scientists saying swimmers and ocean-lovers alike are probably already sharing their favorite beaches with great whites, whether they know it or not.

Chinese tourism is booming in Laos and the illegal wildlife trade is booming with it. Pangolin scales, rhino horn and elephant ivory are all being sold at secret shops and restaurants as a new high-speed rail line brings millions of visitors to the country. Working with Chinese activists, the Guardian goes undercover to investigate the criminal networks profiting from this trade and to reveal how wildlife trafficking is pushing the critically endangered pangolin ever closer to extinction

From scientific tricks to stop turtle traffickers to stranded seals and displaced workers, these images all scooped prizes at this year’s Earth Photo awards

Every few decades mass blooming in Mizoram’s forests causes a rodent boom – and devastation to crops. The cycle is well-known, so why aren’t farmers and authorities better prepared?

In the hills of Mizoram state in north-east India, the first thing that farmers notice are the swarms of stink bugs, known locally as thangnang. It can mean only one thing: the rats are coming. And with them, famine.

As dawn breaks in Mamit district, Maunsanga, a 62-year-old farmer, walks across his plot, stopping where his rice crop once stood. He bends down to examine a broken stalk.

The desert rain frog, native to a narrow coastal strip of south-west Africa, has been classified as vulnerable on the IUCN red list, as its habitat is threatened by mining

The desert rain frog is one of the most unusual amphibians on the planet. With a rotund body and stumpy legs that dig rather than jump, it has evolved to survive not in wetlands or rainforests, but in the unforgiving dunes of the southern African desert.

This week the species was declared to be threatened with extinction by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)’s red list, which classified it as vulnerable. Without conservation efforts, its population is expected to decline by 20% in the next decade, the IUCN warns.

This week’s best wildlife photographs from around the world

Western Europe has been scorched by its hottest June on record, scientists have said, as the UK enters its third heatwave of the year and wildfires ravage France and Spain

• Western Europe records hottest-ever June as heatwaves intensify

‘Sea cures’ are not new but the idea that exposure to oceans, rivers and lakes can be medicine for the brain is gaining traction

Watching the waves break across the vast, roaring ocean in front of him, Dave Phillips felt out of options standing on the cliff’s edge in Cornwall several years ago. The former British army corporal had lost a number of loved ones in quick succession, and the compounding effects of untreated post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from his military tours had become all-consuming.

“I’m from a generation where we didn’t talk,” says Phillips, 67. “I tried dealing with it myself and ended up standing on a cliff edge thinking, ‘Yeah, this is the way.’”

Huge numbers of blackchin tilapia, a fish native to west Africa, are wreaking havoc among Thailand’s river ecosystems. Experts – and some chefs – are seeking sustainable solutions

The menu at Kor-Tae seafood restaurant, in Thailand’s Samut Prakan province, is filled with Thai classics – from tom yum talay, a fragrant hot and sour soup, to spicy larb salads. But the restaurant’s chef is also experimenting with a more controversial ingredient: blackchin tilapia.

“People are hesitant, but once they try it – [they say] it’s delicious,” says owner Adisorn Jamsuksaward, who has been offering the non-native fish free of charge to friends who request it.

An eight-month expedition will set off soon from Norway on a mission to find new species before the climate crisis and pollution changes the northern ocean for ever

Six scientists and six crew will travel next month to Kirkenes, a remote Arctic town in Norway near the Russian border, to begin an odyssey to one of the most inhospitable, inaccessible and least-studied regions on Earth. There, they will climb onboard a futuristic, floating laboratory – the French-built Tara polar station.

They will enter a harsh and isolating environment: months of complete darkness and temperatures as low as -50C (-58F). Arriving in Norway on 14 August, they will await good conditions and an icebreaker to open a route for them before setting off on an eight-month voyage, overwintering through long, intense polar nights onboard a 26-metre-long, 16-metre-wide vessel built to be frozen into the pack ice, which will drift slowly over the north pole to Greenland.

Cornwall's housing crisis is forcing young people to live in vans. As second homes and short-term holiday lets drive up house prices, a growing number are turning to van life to stay in the place they love. The Guardian meets young people who say their van brings them freedom but also uncertainty, as they struggle to find water, safe places to park and secure a future

• ​’It can flip quickly from being idyllic’: the reality of life in Cornwall for young van dwellers priced out of the housing market

Some details in this film have been changed for safety reasons