Capital in waiting: trepidation in corner of Borneo earmarked as the new Jakarta

Plan formally announced in August will see 1.5 million people move to new capital, but residents and conservationists have expressed deep concerns

Sugio’s orchard is his life’s work and a great source of pride for the 79-year-old resident of Tengin Baru village in Indonesia’s East Kalimantan. The orchard sits back from the main road, which in places is no more than a potholed track that cuts through jungles and villages. The plot of land is tranquil and filled with birdsong.

For 42 years Sugio has cultivated his hectare, diligently planting a variety of colourful fruits and vegetables. He points out corn, durian, rambutan, pepper and sweet potato plots; ducks and chickens wander around in the afternoon sun. “We have everything we need here,” he says. “Our family can’t even eat everything before it spoils, so we sell it at the market. Our life is already perfect.”

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‘It can kill you in seconds’: the deadly algae on Brittany’s beaches

Activists say stinking sludge is linked to nitrates in fertilisers from intensive farming

André Ollivro stepped carefully down the grassy banks of an estuary in the bay of Saint-Brieuc, Brittany, not far from his beachfront cabin. The pungent smell of rotting eggs wafting from decomposing seaweed made him stop and put on his gas mask. It was a strange sight in what is usually a tourist hotspot.

“You can’t be too careful,” said the 74-year-old former gas technician, who is leading the fight against what has come to be known as France’s coastal “killer slime”.

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Driven to despair: road toll charges take centre stage in Norway vote

Gilets jaunes-style movement has threatened to bring down national government

Regional elections in Norway on Monday are being billed as a referendum on the country’s environmental policies, with the country split over road toll rises that have already threatened to bring down the national government.

A sharp increase in motorway toll and congestion charges in recent years has helped fuel a political movement that is proving a threat to mainstream parties in a number of major cities.

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Out of the jungle and into a death trap: the fate of Malaysia’s last nomadic people

The Batek started to die after being forced from their land. Were they poisoned by the plantations and mines that replaced their homes? The government is in no hurry to find out…

It swept over the settlement like a plague. First came a fever, then their throats swelled up, their eyes became bloodshot and their lungs rattled with coughing. And then they began to die.

Over two weeks in May, 15 members of Malaysia’s last nomadic people, the Batek, were killed by this mysterious disease, while more than 100 were hospitalised. By the end, only about 20 of the 186 people in the tribe living in their Kuala Koh settlement were left untouched.

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Country diary: this stone is a tabernacle of folk memory

Lledr valley, Snowdonia: Birdsong scatters like elegies here where once an old woman screamed her curses

This split rock with the wizened rowan growing from its cleft – I was first made aware of it by the old butcher from Dolwyddelan who gave me a lift along the valley one wet day when I was a young teenager on my first walking tour through Wales. He drew his Morris van to a halt, gestured towards it and gave me its name: Maen yr hen wraig sy’n melltithio – the stone of the old cursing woman.

In some earlier time, he told me, a woman would stand on top of it and scream imprecations at passersby. He showed me a kind of cave behind it. “Some say she used to live in there,” he added. He knew no more than those folk memories, which have hovered in my mind for 60 years.

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‘It’s all gone’: shattered Bahamas counts cost of Hurricane Dorian’s destruction

Lashing rain, 185mph winds – the ferocious storm has left 43 dead and hundreds missing. Oliver Laughland reports from the rubble of Grand Bahama

As Erica Roberts clung to a tall mango tree, the winds and sea water churned up by Hurricane Dorian pounding her face, a single thought ran through her head: “I will not die like this.”

Related: 'I thought no one was coming to rescue us': Abaco Islanders flee Dorian's destruction

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Malaysia complains of smog from Indonesian forest fires

Residents inhaling smoke from peat and trees burned hundreds of miles away

An increase in Indonesian forest fires – the sharpest rise since 2015 – has infuriated neighbouring Malaysia, where residents are inhaling smoke from peat and trees burned hundreds of miles away.

More than 14 megatonnes of carbon dioxide were discharged from the blazes on 5 September, more than triple the average on this day over the previous 15 years, according to satellite data from the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service.

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Amazon fires are a shameful indictment of our lust for excess

The flames engulfing the world’s biggest rainforest are a human tragedy as well as an environmental one. We are all to blame

The scale of the devastation caused by the wildfires still raging in the Amazon is hard to comprehend. This is a rainforest that provides one-fifth of the world’s oxygen; it is hard not to feel powerless and despairing in the face of the disaster overtaking the region.

But however strong – and bitter – the feeling about this as an environmental catastrophe, we must never lose sight of the fact that it is also a human tragedy.

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‘Sea-borne invasion’ of wild boar swamps mystical Malaysian island

Fishermen report seeing ‘snouts in the dark’ on Malacca Strait, one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes

A mystical Malaysian island is grappling with a “sea-borne invasion” of wild boar, which some believe are swimming kilometres across one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes before destroying crops.

“The sea-borne invasion of wild boars leaves us in despair as the animal population is increasing,” said Norhizam Hassan Baktee, chairman of the Malacca agriculture committee, of the influx on the island of Pulau Besar.

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Loch Ness monster could be a giant eel, say scientists

Otago University researchers confirm the loch contains no monster – or dinosaur – DNA

The Loch Ness monster could be a giant eel, according to a fishy new theory that will keep Highland tourists guessing.

In one of the biggest DNA studies of its kind, a team of scientists from New Zealand’s Otago University found the presence of about 3,000 species in the deep murky waters of the Scottish loch.

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Amazon fires are ‘true apocalypse’, says Brazilian archbishop

Erwin Kräutler says he expects next month’s papal synod to denounce destruction of rainforest

The fires in the Amazon are a “true apocalypse”, according to a Brazilian archbishop who expects next month’s papal synod at the Vatican to strongly denounce the destruction of the rainforest.

The comments by Erwin Kräutler will put fresh pressure on the Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, following criticism from G7 leaders last month over the surge of deforestation in the world’s biggest terrestrial carbon sink.

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‘Most renewable energy companies’ linked with claims of abuses in mines

Corporate watchdog urges clean-up of supply chains as analysis finds weak regulation and enforcement has led to lack of scrutiny

Most of the world’s top companies extracting key minerals for electric vehicles, solar panels and wind turbines have been linked with human rights abuses in their mines, research has found.

Analysis published by the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre (BHRRC), an international corporate watchdog, revealed that 87% of the 23 largest companies mining cobalt, copper, lithium, manganese, nickel and zinc – the six minerals essential to the renewable energy industry – have faced allegations of abuse including land rights infringements, corruption, violence or death over the past 10 years.

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Democratic 2020 hopefuls split over tackling climate crisis

Candidates warn of ‘irreparable damage’ in marathon town hall but can’t agree on how aggressively to tackle problem

Democrats vying for president revealed a fundamental split over how aggressively the US should tackle climate change in a seven-hour town hall meeting on Wednesday.

Bernie Sanders painted an apocalyptic future wreaked by the climate crisis and pledged to wage war on the fossil fuel industry. A high-energy Elizabeth Warren urged optimism for building a better America and the former vice-president Joe Biden, who has a pitched a more moderate proposal, said he would push other nations to recommit to stronger action.

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After bronze and iron, welcome to the plastic age, say scientists

Plastic pollution has entered the fossil record, research shows

Plastic pollution is being deposited into the fossil record, research has found, with contamination increasing exponentially since 1945.

Scientists suggest the plastic layers could be used to mark the start of the Anthropocene, the proposed geological epoch in which human activities have come to dominate the planet. They say after the bronze and iron ages, the current period may become known as the plastic age.

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Hurricane Dorian bears down on Georgia and Carolinas – live updates

The monster storm is expected to bring intense rainfall and flooding after causing devastation in the Bahamas

A handy guide from the Federal Emergency Management Agency on dealing with the storm:

If you're sheltering from #Dorian & the power goes out:

Unplug appliances & electronics to avoid damage from electrical surges

❄ Keep the refrigerator & freezer closed so food lasts longer

⚠ Only use generators outside, away from windows

Tips: https://t.co/xGiYRfN5oB pic.twitter.com/fFbx1CeF3o

Approximately 396,000 residents are under mandatory evacuation orders, according to North Carolina’s joint information center spokeswoman Laura Leonard.

On Monday Henry McMaster, the governor of South Carolina, ordered 830,000 to leave areas likely to be effected by the storm. Charleston was among the mandatory evacuation zones, along with parts of counties to the north.

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How do the 2020 Democrats stack up on climate?

Environmental groups rate Democrats’ plans and records ahead of CNN’s town hall focusing on the climate crisis

Democrats will pit their climate plans against each other on Wednesday at a seven-hour CNN town hall, as world scientists warn the window is narrowing to prevent catastrophe.

With the planet already about 1C warmer than before industrialization, the United Nations’ climate panel says that keeping the increase to 1.5C would require “rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society”.

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‘It’s scary’: wildlife selfies harming animals, experts warn

Concern in New Zealand that trend of taking photographs with penguins and other creatures is having impact on feeding, breeding and birth rates

At the International Penguin Conference in New Zealand, the experts were worried. Among sobering discussions about the perils of the climate crisis and habitat loss, the unlikely issue of wildlife selfies photobombed the agenda, with increasing concern that the celebrity-fuelled search for that perfect shot is affecting animal behaviour.

Professor Philip Seddon, the director of Otago University’s wildlife management programme, said: ‘We’re losing respect for wildlife, we don’t understand the wild at all.”

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Fracking protesters ‘priced out’ of Cuadrilla legal challenge

Judge denies costs protection over injunction restricting protests at Lancashire site

An environmental group has been forced to withdraw its legal challenge to a wide-ranging injunction by the fracking firm Cuadrilla after being “priced out of court”.

Three fracking protesters are facing court action after the energy company obtained the injunction restricting protests at its shale gas exploration site in Lancashire.

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Corporations pile pressure on Brazil over Amazon fires

Asset managers, pension funds and companies halt deals and stop buying bonds

Financial pressure is growing on Brazil over fires in the Amazon and the far-right president’s belligerent response to them.

Asset managers, pension funds and companies have issued warnings, halted deals and stopped purchases of government bonds.

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