What happened
Prince Harry has touched down in Britain for a series of engagements in London and Birmingham after saying an invitation to stay at Buckingham Palace was cancelled shortly before his visit. The Duke of Sussex is spending five days in the UK without Meghan or their two children. He had arranged his own security before confirming that he would take up the accommodation offer over the weekend. However, the invitation was later withdrawn ahead of an expected court ruling in his legal action against the publisher of the Daily Mail.

Who said what
A spokesperson for the duke said Harry had only accepted the offer of accommodation after securing alternative protection arrangements, describing the withdrawal as “disappointing”. The King is “understood to have asked for an answer from Harry about staying at the palace by last Friday, but he was still flip-flopping over the weekend”, said the Daily Mail. “The prince had initially declined his father’s olive branch before changing his mind and attempting to accept it just hours later.”

What next?
Palace sources said staffing and hospitality arrangements were no longer in place and that the ongoing court proceedings had also raised constitutional sensitivities for the King. A judgement in the case is expected today.

What happened
Wildfires burning across southern Europe have forced thousands to flee their homes.

More than 10,000 people have been ordered to leave at least a dozen small towns and villages in the foothills of the French Pyrenees, while hundreds of firefighters are tackling blazes that have burned through almost 20,000 hectares in Portugal, Spain, other parts of France and Greece.

Who said what
In France, “conditions are ⁠deteriorating again”, according to the country’s Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez. He added that twice as much land had burned in France so far this season compared with the same time last year.

“It came within 300 metres (984ft) of the houses. We were shocked by how fast it spread, it was staggering – bordering on panic,” Patrice, from Trévillach in southern France, told the AFP news agency at the site of one blaze.

Strong wind gusts “are forecast to fan the flames and temperatures are expected to rise again this week”, said The Guardian. Portugal’s Interior Minister Luís Neves described the conditions there as a “powder keg”.

What next?
Temperatures could once again reach 40C in south-west France this week and have already exceeded 40C in parts of Portugal and Spain.

The ancient Moa Eggshell Cave in New Zealand contains the remains of several extinct animal species lost approximately a million years ago. The find sheds light on an understudied period of ecological history and hints at more environmental factors that could have driven the extinction of species over time.

Scientists discovered the fossils of 12 ancient bird species and four frog species in the cave, according to a study published in Alcheringa: An Australasian Journal of Palaeontology. Of the fossils found, “about 33-50% of species went extinct during the million years before humans arrived”, said a statement about the research. These extinctions were likely “driven by relatively rapid climate shifts and cataclysmic volcanic eruptions”. Some of the notable species found include a “now-extinct ancestor of the takahe (a flightless swamphen native to New Zealand) and an ancient pigeon species closely related to Australia’s bronzewing pigeons, which were not around in the million years before humans arrived”, said The Economic Times.

These discoveries are changing the way researchers view extinctions. “For decades the extinction of New Zealand’s birds was viewed primarily through the lens of human arrival 750 years ago,” said Associate Professor Trevor Worthy of Flinders University, the lead author of the study. But this “proves that natural forces like super volcanoes and dramatic climate shifts were already sculpting the unique identity of our wildlife over a million years ago”. This “isn’t a missing chapter in New Zealand’s ancient history,” said study co-author Dr Paul Scofield, senior curator of natural history at the Canterbury Museum in Christchurch. “It’s a missing volume.”