Breaking Waves: Ocean News

Simon Birmingham contradicts Nationals’ leader, saying renewables are ‘an important part of the mix’ while Queensland LNP leader rules out nuclear Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates Get our morning and afternoon news emails, free app or daily news podcast The federal Coalition’s climate and energy policy is in disarray, with a senior Liberal contradicting the Nationals’ anti-renewables push and the Queensland LNP leader ruling out allowing nuclear energy in that state. After the Nationals further undermined the push for net zero by 2050 by claiming the Coalition would “cap” investment in large-scale renewable energy, the Liberal leader in the Senate, Simon Birmingham, declared on Tuesday it is an “important part of the mix”. Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup Continue reading...

Housing is at the centre of an otherwise restrained state budget Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates Get our morning and afternoon news emails, free app or daily news podcast New South Wales has been promised 30,000 new homes including 8,400 public housing dwellings under what the treasurer, Daniel Mookhey, says is the state’s largest ever investment in housing. The Minns Labor government has revealed in its second budget that it will make what it describes as an “unprecedented intervention in the housing market” by using surplus public land for 21,000 new homes and spending $5.1bn on public housing that will be built and managed by Homes NSW. Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup Continue reading...

Investigation finds assessors providing inaccurate EPCs and unhelpful advice to homeowners The consumer group Which? has called for an overhaul of the energy performance certificates (EPC) system after an investigation found assessments riddled with inaccuracies and unhelpful advice that could cost homeowners thousands of pounds. The investigation, which included Which? securing EPC assessments for 12 homeowners, found in one case an assessor had failed to mention a property’s solar panels or wood burning stove in their final assessment, while the cost of upgrades recommended to another owner would not have been recouped for 29 years. Continue reading...

In more than one image from 1900s Japan, they look hungover Get our weekend culture and lifestyle email We had gone to Japan, we told our daughter, to get her a maneki-neko: the good luck or beckoning cat. She is almost three. She would stay home with my mother, her grandmother. There is a maneki-neko that lives at the till of a manicure shop near our house, and she likes to stop and greet it. Japanese folklore has cats for many things, and we were grateful for this one. Before we left, we wrote letters outlining our progress towards this goal. I put the letters in envelopes for my mother to give to her, one each day. As the week passed, we would meet a mouse in the street, travel to Kyoto to catch goldfish in the river, buy a pizza – extra cheese – for the keeper of the cats. Why we had actually gone there was to be cats ourselves: to do precisely what we felt like doing whenever we felt like doing it. We roamed the streets, we sat in sunny cafe windows. We hung out at an onsen, which cats would probably not do. We went to an exhibition about animals in arts and crafts and learned that in the late 1800s, people in Japan would affectionately greet cats and dogs using the honorific -san, like Mr or Miss. Sign up for a weekly email featuring our best reads Continue reading...