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大象的DNA里可能藏着抗击癌症、延年益寿的秘密，哪怕为了人类自身，我们也该好好对待大象。(翻译：子明/chinadialogue)

• Why the Guardian is publishing its elephant reporting in Chinese
  

现在或许正是大象种群最黑暗的时代。中国正在取缔国内象牙贸易，欧盟也将着手对付象牙走私，但偷猎者们还在继续他们的血腥交易。与此同时，森林正遭到破坏，象群的迁徙路线被截断，人类和大象之间围绕土地、食物和水源的竞争愈演愈烈。

所以，现在必须让大家明白：保留大象的生存空间对人类自身益处多多。并且人类根本不需要特别做什么，大象自会找到自己的领地。

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A waste disposal firm claims that plastic drinking straws are "the ultimate in human wastefulness".

One is up a river estuary, the other is awaiting removal from a beach.

Experts are warning against feeding and getting too close to wild animals after a sea lion pulled a young girl underwater.

The nest in the Cairngorms in which three osprey chicks had hatched now appears to have been abandoned.

What does it say about the Trump administration that the president was fooled by a dumb, long-debunked climate myth?

As Politico reported, Trump’s deputy national security adviser, KT McFarland, gave him a fake 1970s Time magazine cover warning of a coming ice age. The Photoshopped magazine cover circulated around the internet several years ago, but was debunked in 2013. Four years later, McFarland put the fake document in Trump’s hands, and he reportedly “quickly got lathered up about the media’s hypocrisy … Staff chased down the truth and intervened before Trump tweeted or talked publicly about it”.

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The Arnavon Islands are the largest rookery for the critically endangered hawksbill turtle in the South Pacific.

Tammi Riedl and her partner believe ‘chemtrails’ are damaging our health. They prove conspiracies have gone mainstream – and aren’t just for the right wing

Standing between beds of golden beets and elephant garlic in the garden of Lincoln Hills, a small organic farm in Placer County, California, Tammi Riedl looks up and points to a stripe of white haze running across a cloudless blue sky.

“See that?” she asks, raising her eyebrows. “What do you think that is?”

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Agency says it has not received a submission on the rail line from Queensland government and has not conducted any cost-benefit analysis

Infrastructure Australia has not identified a proposed rail line linking the controversial Adani coalmine with the Abbot Point port as a priority, and it has not consulted the body which is expected to stump up a concessional loan.

The chief executive of Infrastructure Australia, Philip Davies, told a Senate estimates hearing on Monday that the rail line – which has been pushed assiduously by the federal resources minister, Matt Canavan – was not “something we’ve currently identified” as a priority project.

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Australia has numerous opportunities to cut emissions at a “cost saving” to investors, including distributed solar PV, fuel efficiency and forestry.

Clougha Pike, Forest of Bowland Once forbidding and forbidden, ringfenced for shooting, this is still a secret, silent place

Find a big map and you’ll see there’s a monstrous, heart-shaped blank in the middle of north-west England. You’ve passed it probably, but the big roads skirt it with such circuitous subtlety you don’t notice you’re orbiting something. For years, unless you paid to shoot things, it might well have remained more a brooding feeling than a sight, its extent out of view beyond this brow or that.

But then wildest Bowland became the poster-place for the second access revolution. The first was Kinder Scout, for its trespass in 1932,which legitimised the case for national parks. Bowland epitomised the unfinished business: the Countryside Rights of Way Act.

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The energy rule-maker's dystopian view of our immediate energy future underlines the growing divide on the future of renewables. There are those who see them as key to a smarter, cheaper, cleaner and more reliable grid. And other who simply believe it can't be done.

Futures pricing tells us that the 4GW of large scale renewables now being built will arrive too late to soften prices next summer, and the Portland bailout has likely added around $20 to pool prices.

UBS says the total cost of consumer EV ownership can reach parity with combustion engines from 2018.

The world’s largest floating PV power plant, with the capacity of 40 MW is now connected to the grid.

After a record-breaking year for the solar market, the total global installed base of operational PV systems surpassed 300 gigawatts.

Flow battery storage manufacturer Redflow abandons bulk home battery market due to price issues, to focus on bigger installations in commercial, industrial and off-grid sector.

Make science and research a priority in Brexit talks, says Russell Group.

Natimuk pre-schoolers go bush for outdoor kinder; Miriwoong man David Newry goes searching for native bananas; an Irish lass swaps Belfast for an outback pub; and we go to an alpaca handling school.

AGL Energy, Trasngrid among energy majors to join auto companies and others to form Electric Vehicle Council, as pressure mounts for better policy support for EV uptake.