Exclusive: Ambitious emissions reductions target would increase the country’s chance of winning rights to host Cop31 in 2026, Christiana Figueres says

• Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast

A former UN climate chief has urged the Australian government to set a greenhouse gas emissions reduction target of at least a 75% cut by 2035, backing calls from a group of more than 350 businesses that it would be better for the economy than a lower goal.

The intervention by Christiana Figueres, an architect of the 2015 Paris agreement when she was the executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, comes before discussions about Australia’s commitment, due to be announced next month.

Film-maker Beau Miles set himself the challenge of planting 1,440 trees and shrubs in one day. Four years later the result is ‘totally worth it’

• Sign up for climate and environment editor Adam Morton’s free Clear Air newsletter here

On a patch of paddock in West Gippsland stands a small forest, which wasn’t there before.

Flowering gums and she-oaks reach up nine metres tall, birds nest in their branches, while a giant tiger snake slides through the grass below.

Sign up to get climate and environment editor Adam Morton’s Clear Air column as a free newsletter

Toni Jordan’s mother gambled fast, ferociously, without any sense of fun. The author has come to realise she was dreaming of a bigger life

My mother, Margaret, died in 2018 at 75. It was a good death, all things considered. The very end was savage, as endings often are, but she was in her own home and on her own two feet until the final week. For a woman who’d smoked two packs a day all her adult life, who’d never exercised or even walked to the shops, who refused to drink water (“I’d spew!”) and lived on Coca-Cola, paté on toast, jubes and green olives from a jar – considering all that, she did OK.

During my mother’s final days, I had it easy. My sister, Lee, lived closer and is, to be honest, a more nurturing person. She’s caring. Patient. Lee is also better with money than me, but I thought I should at least attempt to help – so at the end, I took charge of Mum’s bank accounts. She lived on the pension and died with a run-down brick veneer villa unit in an over-50s complex, an old car worth close to nothing, and a small amount of cash.

When Sashi Perera and her boyfriend Charlie were marooned in a hotel room in Punta Arenas, she realised they balanced each other out perfectly

• Find more stories from The moment I knew series

In May 2018, I was scrolling through prospective dates on Bumble when I saw Charlie’s profile. I could tell we had a lot of immediate connections. He had worked for human rights organisations, travelled a lot and even had interesting profile pictures. I swiped right.

Later that day, we met at a small bar close to my work in Melbourne for a drink. Even though it was a good first date, I decided I didn’t have the energy for more dates straight away and cancelled our second one. I think he thought I was a bit of a time waster.

The comedian and actor on what she has learned at clown school, showing her Austin costar Michael Theo around London and the weirdest thing she has done for love

What do people approach you about most: Smack the Pony, Bridget Jones, Alan Partridge or shoving cake into Alex Horne’s armpits?

I profile them as they come up. If it’s a man about my age, it would normally be Alan Partridge. If it’s a man in his 30s, it might be Taskmaster or Veep. If it’s a woman, it’s harder to tell. Smack the Pony seems to be having a revival among women in their 20s but it could easily be Bridget Jones and Miranda. It’s starting to happen with Austin, too, which seems to be something that families watch together.

Injury-hit Arsenal face an ill-at-ease champions struggling to fit the new cogs in their hitherto well-oiled machine

The mechanisms of a football team are delicate. You win the league then add nearly £300m of talent and it doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll win it again, doesn’t necessarily make you better, even if you’re not doing something as obviously likely to cause imbalance as adding Kylian Mbappé to a Real Madrid team already stacked with left-sided attackers.

Liverpool go into Sunday’s home game against Arsenal having won two out of two in the Premier League and scored a healthy seven goals. But those aren’t the statistics that tell the whole story. If you include the Community Shield, Liverpool have conceded two goals in each of their three games so far. The defensive problems are obvious and the return of Ryan Gravenberch at Newcastle on Monday did not magically solve them.