Six years in the making, jaw-dropping new film The Grab shows a secret scramble by governments and private firms to buy up global resources

In 2013, the US food conglomerate Smithfield Foods – the country’s largest pork producer and maker of the famous holiday ham – was sold to a Hong Kong-based company called WH Group in a deal worth $7.1bn . It was the largest ever Chinese acquisition of an American company; virtually overnight, WH Group, formerly called Shuanghui International, gained ownership of nearly one in four American pigs. Such a massive business deal did not go unnoticed; news coverage and an eventual congressional hearing questioned the sale with a mix of good, old-fashioned American xenophobia and reasonable concern for the nation’s food supply. But in the eyes of most people, and certainly most American consumers, the Smithfield Foods sale remained just that: a one-off business deal, if they were aware of it at all.

For Nate Halverson, a journalist with the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) out of Emeryville, California, the Smithfield deal was the first point in a much wider and concerning pattern – though the company’s CEO, Larry Pope, assured Congress that the Chinese government was not behind WH Group’s purchase, Halverson found evidence to the contrary on a reporting trip to the company’s headquarters: a secret document, marked not for distribution in the United States, detailing every dollar of the deal, and the state-run Bank of China’s “social responsibility” in backing it for “national strategy”.

‘Sheep are Annie’s passion. She won an award with this north country cheviot. It’s put on a stand to keep it still’

I moved back home to rural North Yorkshire in 2016, where I met my partner, a farmer. When you spend a lot of time on a farm, you end up helping out. I’m not from a farming background so I joined a Facebook group for women in farming to feel a bit more supported. You can ask about practical things – no question is a stupid one.

I was photographing working-class women in agriculture when I started a residency with the Maltings in Berwick for my series Daughters of the Soil . I put out a call in that Facebook group asking if any women there would be up for being involved. Only five responded but there was a snowball effect: each one directed me to someone else.

Stephen Kwikiriza is one of 11 campaigners against EACOP targeted by authorities in past two weeks, rights group says

A man campaigning against the controversial $5bn (£4bn) east African crude oil pipeline (EACOP) is recovering in hospital after an alleged beating by the Ugandan armed forces in the latest incident in what has been called an “ alarming crackdown ” on the country’s environmentalists.

Stephen Kwikiriza, who works for Uganda’s Environment Governance Institute (EGI), a non-profit organisation, was abducted in Kampala on 4 June, according to his employer. He was beaten, questioned and then abandoned hundreds of miles from the capital on Sunday evening.

Cocaine traffickers have put two-thirds of Central America’s key habitats for threatened birds under threat, study finds

Cocaine consumption is threatening rare tropical birds as narco-traffickers move into some of the planet’s most remote forests to evade drug crackdowns, a study has warned.

Two-thirds of key forest habitats for birds in Central America are at risk of being destroyed by “narco-driven” deforestation, according to the paper , published on Wednesday in the journal Nature Sustainability.

Move would trigger duties of more than €2bn a year and probably prompt a trade war

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The EU is expected to notify Beijing on Wednesday it intends to impose tariffs of up to 25% on imports of Chinese electric vehicles, triggering duties of more than €2bn (£1.7bn) a year and probably prompting a trade war with China.

The tariffs would be applied provisionally from next month in line with World Trade Organisation rules which would give China four weeks to challenge any evidence the EU provides justify the levies on imported EVs.

Letters revealed under FoI laws show council asked environment secretary to investigate plan

The government has been accused of quietly shelving a delayed plan to restore the polluted River Wye after letters from the government show it is incomplete with no publication date in sight.

Letters revealed to the Guardian under freedom of information (FoI) laws show the then environment secretary, Thérèse Coffey, told stakeholders in August that the government was “close to finalising” the plan to save the Wye and measures would be published within three months.

Highly diverse and charismatic, these creatures deserve recognition as a sixth great extinction dawns

We are prone to obsessing over ourselves and over animals like us. But most of the life on Earth is not like us at all. Barely 5% of all known living creatures are animals with backbones. The rest – at least 1.3 million species, and many more still to be discovered – are spineless.

All hail the invertebrates, animals of wondrous diversity, unique niches and innovative and interesting ways of making a living on this planet. They include insects (at least a million), arachnids, snails, crustaceans, corals, jellyfish, sponges and echinoderms.

Our natural history writer Patrick Barkham will make the case for 10 of our island’s best spineless wonders and we’re asking readers to nominate theirs

Though we love to focus on the vertebrates, more than 95% of the world’s known living creatures – at least 1.3m species – are spineless. These amazingly diverse animals include insects (at least a million), arachnids, snails, crustaceans, corals, jellyfish, sponges and echinoderms.

And now we want you to help us celebrate them.

Fall to 14.4p comes after shareholders said they were unwilling to inject further funds

A bond issued by Thames Water’s parent company has fallen to record lows as the embattled company scrambles to secure its future, and the government signalled it is “ready to step in if necessary”.

The £400m bond, issued by the water supplier’s parent company, Kemble, has slumped to only 14.4p after shareholders indicated that they were unwilling to inject further funds into the heavily indebted utility company.