Australia's High Court dismissed MACH Energy's appeal on Wednesday, upholding an earlier ruling that approval for the expansion of the Mount Pleasant coal mine in New South Wales was unlawful. According to Positive News, retired teachers Wendy Wales and Tony Lonergan had brought the legal challenge, arguing that extending the mine's life by 22 years and doubling its output ran counter to national efforts to reduce emissions. The New South Wales Court of Appeal had already ruled in 2025 that planners had failed to consider the climate impacts of burning the coal. The ruling sets a legal precedent for fossil fuel approvals across the country.
This year's Nobel prizes honour discoveries in science and literature. The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel for optogenetics, a method that uses light to influence how neurons function. According to Nobel committee chair Per Svenningsson, the technique opens up ways of mapping the brain that we once could only dream of. The Nobel Prize in Physics went to Francis Halzen for studies of “ghost particles” in space, while Henri Kagan and Kenso Soai shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Anne Carson.
The Nobel-winning research provided the basis for an experimental treatment for retinitis pigmentosa, a condition that causes blindness through the death of photoreceptors. The treatment combines gene therapy with light-emitting glasses to make surviving retinal cells respond to light. In a study involving ten participants, six showed a “clinically meaningful increase in light sensitivity”. Although the treatment did not restore normal vision and patients could not read or recognise faces, several were able to locate objects, find a door or follow a line while wearing the glasses. Experts described it as a “significant milestone for optogenetic vision restoration”.
Researchers described the results of a small trial of the Parkinson's drug SNT-4728 as encouraging. The drug was tested in 30 people with isolated REM sleep behaviour disorder (iRBD), a condition that usually precedes Parkinson's, while 11 participants received a placebo. In the trial conducted by Australia and the UK, those who received SNT-4728 showed an improvement in movement compared with the control group. The change was “statistically significant” 12 weeks after they stopped taking it. Dr Lindsey Bilsland of the charity Parkinson's UK said the data showed real promise and that larger trials were expected.
In Scotland, doctors performed a pioneering testicular tissue transplant on a 19-year-old, raising hopes that boys left with impaired fertility by chemotherapy could one day have children of their own. The patient had testicular tissue removed and frozen in 2023 before undergoing a bone marrow transplant for a serious blood disorder. Three years later, tests showed that his semen contained no sperm. Doctors announced that they had transplanted some of the frozen tissue back into him, hoping it would begin producing sperm. It is only the second such transplant worldwide and the first in the UK. Professor Rod Mitchell of the University of Edinburgh said it was a major step for the future fertility of boys facing cancer treatments.
A new Rewilding Britain report challenges the claim that restoring natural ecosystems increases wildfire risk. The authors analysed all 285 rewilding projects larger than 40 hectares in the UK's Rewilding Network and found that only one had been affected by wildfires this year. A spatial analysis of burned areas from 2016 to 2026 showed that monocultures, such as grasslands, were more likely to burn than restored natural habitats. Rewilding Britain chief executive Rebecca Wrigley said drained land, commercial plantations and artificially dry landscapes were the countryside's real “powder kegs”. According to her, replacing monocultures with wetlands, less flammable broadleaf trees and naturally grazed clearings reduces fire intensity by up to a factor of five.
The World Wide Fund for Nature's (WWF) Living Planet Report 2026 opens with a discouraging finding: monitored vertebrate populations have declined by an average of 73% since 1970. However, the report highlights the recovery of four species — tigers, turtles, tuna and elephants — as evidence that losses can be reversed. It also identifies the rapid adoption of green energy as a “positive tipping point”, stressing that similar changes must happen in agriculture. Researcher Dr Steve Smith of the University of Exeter said that, just as solar energy went from marginal to mainstream within a generation, nature's decline is not inevitable but the sum of our choices — and those choices can be reversed.
In New Zealand, the native wētāpunga insect, considered the world's heaviest insect and weighing as much as a mouse, is returning from the brink of extinction. The species had been classified as “nationally endangered” after disappearing from the mainland because of invasive predators. A breeding programme released more than 11,000 individuals into the wild, and a study found that the reintroduced populations were thriving. The insect was introduced to ten sites on predator-free islands over 15 years and is now listed as “nationally increasing”. Dr Chris Green of New Zealand's Department of Conservation said the species' future looked bright and that many more threatened invertebrates could benefit from similar programmes.
Finally, a toolkit was launched in the UK to help communities build resilience to extreme weather and cyberattacks. Ready Together, created by the National Emergencies Trust, was launched in Ilminster, Somerset, an area that has experienced floods and fires in recent years. The Prince of Wales, the charity's patron, met residents who had worked together to help those affected. Actor Ross Kemp, an ambassador for the charity, said people were good at coming together during a crisis, but it would be much better if they were prepared.
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