The Guardian

Rescue workers in Mumbai are searching for people feared trapped beneath a collapsed building following two days of torrential rain in India’s commercial hub. At least 1,200 people have died across south-east Asia as a result of flooding caused by heavy monsoon rains, and millions of people are estimated to have been affected

• Mumbai building collapses in monsoon rains as South Asia floods wreak havoc
  

Skipjack tuna from the western Pacific is common on supermarket shelves, but a new coalition argues its certification as sustainable is illusory

Consumers of tuna from the world’s biggest fishery are are being “betrayed” over its sustainability, according to a coalition of scientists, retailers, politicians and campaigners, including Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.

The vast Western and Central Pacific fishery provides about half of the world’s skipjack tuna, the type most commonly found in cans on supermarket shelves. Some is certified as sustainably caught by the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) and carries the group’s “blue tick” logo. But the same boats can also use, at other times, unsustainable methods to catch uncertified fish, a contradiction seen as unacceptable by the new On The Hook coalition.

Llanbedr, Gwynedd With sadness I realised a proposed road, improving access to the planned spaceport, would cut across the floodplain I had just explored

The train along the Cambrian coast route stops at Llanbedr only by request, and on this occasion I was the only passenger to alight. To the west fields of wet grassland, divided by drainage channels brimming with rushes, spread towards the sea.

Related: Snowdonia fears impact of UK spaceport decision

Australian government’s draft Reef 2050 Water Quality Improvement Plan provides new water quality targets, but has very few other concrete changes

Australia’s draft plan to improve water quality on the Great Barrier Reef has ignored official government scientific advice, which was published by the Queensland and federal governments alongside the new plan this week.

The draft Reef 2050 Water Quality Improvement Plan is an update to the plan released in 2013, and provides new water quality targets for specific parts of the reef, but has very few other concrete changes overall.

Judge says president Michel Temer went beyond his authority in issuing decree to dissolve Renca, after fury from activists

A Brazilian court has blocked an attempt by the president, Michel Temer, to open up swaths of the Amazon forest to mining companies after an outcry by environmental campaigners and climate activists.

The federal judge Rolando Valcir Spanholo said the president went beyond his authority in issuing a decree to abolish Renca, an area of 46,000 sq km (17,760 sq miles) that has been protected since 1984.

Critics say authorisation of supplementary culls shows the programme, which began four years ago, is not working

Another 1,000 badgers are set to be killed this autumn and winter in the two UK counties where the controversial cull began four years ago.

Natural England confirmed on Wednesday that supplementary culls had been authorised in Gloucestershire and Somerset.

Are American lives simply worth more, wonder Lynne Edwards, Peter Williams, and Susan Howe. Plus letters from Bob Pike and Sheila Rigby

While I have the greatest sympathy for those who have lost friends, family, pets or property in the Texas floods (Report, 30 August), I am disgusted at the relative number of column inches and amounts of airtime devoted to its coverage. During precisely the same period huge areas of Bangladesh, Nepal and India are suffering an even greater catastrophe, with 1,200 plus lives lost and millions made homeless. Let’s get some balance here. America is a rich country and will cope, despite inept leadership. Or are we saying that American lives are worth more?.
Susan Howe
Ross on Wye, Herefordshire

• The contrast between the coverage of floods in Texas and floods in South Asia is stark. Live updating of trivia as well as important events from Houston; the odd report from India, Nepal, Bangladesh and elsewhere. There are probably many more people of South Asian heritage in this country than American. The implicit message is that they, and their relatives, are far less important than a pet in Houston. I don’t want Texas coverage reduced, but please take more notice of the rest of the world.
Lynne Edwards
New Quay, Ceredigion

After being criticised by Canberra, South Australia is leading the race, with ACT and Tasmania close behind, says Climate Council

Australian states and territories are powering ahead, developing policies that will meet the federal government’s internationally agreed greenhouse gas emission targets, with South Australia, the ACT and Tasmania leading the race.

Despite being chastised by the federal government for unilateral action, South Australia is leading the race, with the ACT and Tasmania not far behind, according to a report by the Climate Council.

Beulah Johnson, an evacuee, films the inside of a shelter in Houston that has been overwhelmed by water in the wake of tropical storm Harvey, forcing about 100 weary people to retreat to bleacher seats with their belongings. Marcus McLellan of Jefferson County sheriff’s office said on Wednesday that the Bowers Civic Center in Port Arthur had been inundated overnight, owing to rainfall and an overflowing canal nearby

• Tropical storm Harvey – live updates
  

Campaigners urge court of appeal to overturn communities secretary’s decision to allow Cuadrilla to drill in Lancashire

The communities secretary, Sajid Javid, “misunderstood key local and national planning policies” when he gave the green light to fracking in Lancashire, campaigners have told the court of appeal.

Leading judges were urged on Wednesday to overturn a government decision to approve a fracking site at Preston New Road in Lancashire.

Houston has experienced an unexpected side-effect of the floods that have hit the Texan city – floating islands made up of thousands of venomous fire ants. The naturally aggressive ants are able to survive the rising water by forming rafts with their own bodies, and can survive for weeks before breaking up

Flotillas of fire ants add new layer of horror to post-Harvey flood havoc

每头大象都是巨大的象群数据库和信息网络的一个神秘入口，让我们守护这份自然的奇迹。

• Elephant 2.0. - nature’s invisible information architecture
  

大象有着一 副如此悲伤的面孔，很难现象任何人会去伤害它们。它们有着苍白的嘴唇和下垂的肩膀；它们的姿态悠长而松弛，眼睛若有深意，可以让罪过者动容。但似乎单凭负 疚感并不能拯救大象。八年前，非洲象和亚洲象的种群总数大约有600万到900万头。如今，大约只剩50万头。日复一日，大象距离灭绝越来越近。

也许我们需要一些新的观念。也许是时候从新的角度考虑我们为什么需要保护大象。对于我们来说，珍贵的或许并不是它们的身体，而是它们共享的记忆和经验。这就是我在这篇文中想要提出的观点。

St Dennis, Cornwall From the moss-coated fort, spoil heaps dominate the view but close by sits the waste energy plant and a bog has become a nature reserve

From the ancient vantage point of Carne Hill, china-clay works dominate the landscape with vegetated spoil heaps, older conical tips and the whiteness of an open-cast pit at Fraddon.

The curved roofs and twin stacks of the Cornwall Energy Recovery Centre are close by, and lower down, to the north, rows of pylons slung with cables stretch along the flat expanse of Goss Moor towards the electricity substation.

Images of ants swarming together in ‘rafts’ and riding on top of floodwaters alarm Texans

There is a new threat to the millions of people in Texas affected by ex-hurricane Harvey: large “rafts” of fire ants that have been spotted floating in floodwaters.

Displaced by record flooding, the insects have responded by creating rafts built on top of dead ants to stay on the top of water and keep dry.

‘Last-chance tourism’ spurs on other visitors but there has been lull in bookings after coral bleaching, senators told

Overseas tourists have begun to doubt the value of a trip to the ailing Great Barrier Reef and it is getting increasingly difficult to “show people what they expect to see”, a dive operator has told a federal Senate inquiry.

A Port Douglas operator, John Edmondson, said “last-chance tourism” was spurring on other visitors but there had been a “weird” lull in bookings this year after back-to-back mass bleaching events made dead coral an unavoidable sight on reef visits.

At least 14 people have died and tens of thousands evacuated as Houston continues to be battered by catastrophic rainfall. Can we decode the disaster?

• Tropical storm Harvey – live updates
  

A tropical storm that is on course to break the US record for the heaviest rainfall from a tropical system. Meteorologists say the 120cm-mark set in 1978 could be surpassed on Tuesday or Wednesday.

Protesters hope appeal court will uphold council’s decision to reject planning consent for Cuadrilla, which was overturned by Sajid Javid

A last-ditch legal challenge to prevent fracking in Lancashire is being launched at the court of appeal.

The case brought by anti-fracking protesters, to be heard on Wednesday and Thursday, seeks to overturn planning consent that was granted to Cuadrilla by the communities secretary, Sajid Javid, last October.

Haze that led to 150 people seeking treatment caused a pollution spike and ‘might have been caused by a ship venting’

Authorities investigating the cause of Sunday’s chemical cloud are working on the assumption that it came from a ship in the Channel after environmental monitoring sites picked up a localised spike in pollution levels.

The Maritime and Coastguard Agency is working with the Environment Agency to establish the source of the cloud, which left 150 people seeking medical treatment and caused the evacuation of Birling Gap beach in East Sussex.

Canada has a hand in the misery Haitians are fleeing. Asylum should serve as reparations

The minders of Canadian PM Justin Trudeau’s brand are surely displeased. He’s spent two years cultivating an image of Canada’s refugee system as the political equivalent of airport hugs and teddy-bears. And now the pressure is on him to act like that were remotely the truth.

The image of the country as a welcome haven was pitched to win the support of millions of people in Canada who rightly feel two things: compassion for the plight of refugees and disgust for the antics of Donald Trump. But refugee rights advocates had warned what would come to pass: desperate people would take Trudeau at his word.

Floridians have long recognised the threat of climate change to their homes. Amid the latest disaster, home buyers may increasingly look to higher ground

• Tropical storm Harvey – live updates
  

If Florida gleaned anything from Hurricane Andrew, the intensely powerful storm that tore a deadly trail of destruction across Miami-Dade County almost exactly 25 years to the day that Hurricane Harvey barrelled into the Texas coastline, it was that living in areas exposed to the wrath of Mother Nature can come at a substantial cost.

At the time the most expensive natural disaster ever to hit the US, Andrew caused an estimated $15bn in insured losses in the state and changed the way insurance companies assessed their exposure to risk for weather-related events.