Florida Keys residents say they feel a strong sense of community and see a fast recovery as restaurants reopen and cleanup crews remove debris caused by the powerful storm that struck the state on September 10.

Capybaras, monkeys and penguins are just some of the animals stepping onto the scales as London Zoo carries out its annual weigh-in, part of the keepers' regular checks of the health and well-being of the site's inhabitants. "It's a very busy day," says head keeper Dan Simmonds, who explains that keepers will be weighing and recording data from early in the morning until late in the evening, with "thousands and thousands of animals across nearly 400 species" to get through.

Every morning Harka Man Gharti slices into the blue water of a swimming pool in Nepal's capital Kathmandu, chasing a dream that stretches far beyond its 25 metres. The 21-year-old is training with three other disabled swimmers who will represent Nepal in the Asian Para Games in Japan in October, chasing medals despite limited resources in the Himalayan country. "I want to give everything, every possible thing for that medal," says Gharti.

England's dry weather has revealed the remains of a former village, flooded in the 1970s to create a reservoir. It is located within the East Midlands, one of the many regions under drought after England and Wales experienced their driest July on record.

In an effort to tackle severe droughts that plague the country, Kazakhstan has turned to cloud seeding, using special aircraft to disperse a substance that sticks to cloud droplets, making them heavy enough to fall as rain. Kazakh authorities are betting on the technique to reduce the impact of drought and water shortages in its southern Turkestan region, the country's leading cotton-growing region. "We are not creating the cloud," explains Adnan Yarmohammed, an Emirati official involved in the initiative, adding, "We are just enhancing the cloud that's already available."

A leading UK conservation charity is crowdfunding £30 million to buy a swathe of rolling moorlands and woodlands, in the largest land sale in England for three decades. The estate hosts thousands of hectares of "rare beauty" owned by an English lord and could become one of the UK's biggest sanctuaries for biodiversity. "This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and we can't let this go," says Peter Batchelor, the project's managing director at The Wildlife Trusts.