UK PM says it is time for the world to ‘grow up’ and ‘listen to scientists’ in speech to general assembly
Cop26 must be a “turning point for humanity” in just 40 days’ time, Boris Johnson has urged in a call to arms to fellow global leaders ahead of the climate summit in Glasgow.
Addressing the UN general assembly in New York on Wednesday evening, Johnson warned it was time for humanity to “grow up”.
Continue reading...Every time we postpone change we make it harder to transition to the low-carbon economy we need to help prevent global heating
Last week, New Zealand’s government announced a five-month delay to the emissions reduction plan (ERP) – its key programme for combatting climate change. This is gutting – climate decisions by many organisations and institutions have been delayed since 2017; first to wait for the Zero Carbon Act, then the advice of the Climate Change Commission, and now the ERP, which won’t be announced until the budget in May.
The postponement even requires an embarrassing legislative change to the Zero Carbon Act to get around the December 2021 deadline for the plan, which is currently enshrined in law. Every day of delay makes the transition we will have to make to a low-carbon Aotearoa – and the ability to make it fair for affected communities – more and more difficult.
Continue reading...Kais Saied says he is preparing to change the political system, prompting opposition from rivals
Tunisia’s president Kais Saied has declared that he will rule by decree and ignore parts of the constitution as he prepares to change the political system, prompting immediate opposition from rivals.
Saied has held nearly total power since 25 July when he sacked the prime minister, suspended parliament and assumed executive authority, citing a national emergency in a move his foes called a coup.
Continue reading...Analysis: Joe Biden has cleared the decks to focus on China. But how imminent is the danger?
It may have been an inelegantly, even ineptly, executed pivot, gratuitously alienating key allies, but by leaving Afghanistan and forming the Australian, US and UK security pact in the Indo-Pacific, Joe Biden has at least cleared the decks to focus on his great foreign policy challenge – the systemic rivalry with China.
Yet the concern now is how quickly this rivalry could escalate, especially in Taiwan. The linchpin of the US alliance system in south-east Asia, Taiwan is the biggest island in the “first island chain”, the group of islands that keeps China blocked in. It is China’s next target, and as the former British prime minister Theresa May pointed out, no one quite knows if the west is prepared to fight to save Taiwan or whether the new tripartite pact in some way places a new obligation on the UK to come to the country’s defence.
Continue reading...Study using DNA analysis reveals not only are statues on these distant islands connected, but inhabitants too
Easter Island’s famous megaliths have relatives on islands thousands of miles to the north and west, and so did the people who created them, a study has found.
Over a 250-year period separate groups of people set out from tiny islands east of Tahiti to settle Easter Island, the Marquesas and Raivavae – archipelagos that are thousands of miles apart but all home to similar ancient statues.
Continue reading...Boris Johnson has said French officials need to 'prenez un grip' amid continued anger at the US and UK's recent submarine deal with Australia. France recalled its ambassadors from both countries in response to Sunday's announcement. On Wednesday the prime minister said: 'It is not exclusive. It is not trying to shoulder anybody out. It is not adversarial towards China, for instance. It is there to intensify links and friendship between three countries'
Continue reading...Michael Fakhri says Thursday’s meeting will not be promised ‘people’s summit’ on tackling world’s nutrition crisis
The UN global food summit is “elitist and regressive” and has failed in its goal of being a “people’s summit”, according to the special rapporteur on food rights.
As world leaders prepare to attend the virtual event on Thursday, which aims to examine ways to transform global food systems to be more sustainable, Michael Fakhri said it risked leaving behind the very people critical for its success. In an interview with the Guardian, Fakhri said neither the worsening impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the right to food, nor fundamental questions of inequality, accountability and governance were being properly addressed by the meeting.
Continue reading...Draft document suggests new Germany rules would come into force from 11 October; French government says coronavirus situation improving
Global Covid cases have fallen in the past week, the World Health Organization (WHO) has confirmed.
There were 3.6 million new cases reported around the world last week, down from 4 million new infections the previous week.
Health authorities in Germany are planning new rules under which unvaccinated workers would not receive compensation for lost pay if coronavirus measures forced them to quarantine.
In a draft document seen by the Reuters news agency, it showed the rules would come into force from October 11 at the latest.
Why should others pay for someone who decides not to be vaccinated?
Continue reading...At least 10 bullets hit car carrying Serhiy Shefir with driver in surgery after being struck three times
A top adviser to the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has survived an assassination attempt that officials suggest is tied to a political battle with criminal and corrupt interests, including the countries’ oligarchs.
At least 10 bullets struck the car of Serhiy Shefir, an aide and longtime friend of Zelenskiy, on Wednesday as he travelled through the village of Lesnyky toward the capital, Kyiv.
Continue reading...Minsk accused of abandoning migrants at frontier in attempt to put pressure on EU
Four people stranded on the border between Poland and Belarus have died in recent days, officials have said, amid continuing allegations that Minsk is abandoning migrants at its frontier in an attempt to put pressure on the EU.
Polish authorities confirmed that three people, including an Iraqi man, were found dead, of hypothermia and exhaustion, on the Polish side of the border on Saturday, while the body of a woman was seen lying on the Belarus side on Sunday.
Continue reading...Analysis: Fear and uncertainty of the Obama years could return as Kim Jong-un revives nuclear ambitions
North Korea’s recent missile launches signal that the regime has reverted to familiar tactics to attract the attention of the US. Although the rest of the world will take little comfort from this return to “normality”, after a six-month pause Pyongyang last weekend launched what it claimed were new long-range cruise missiles capable of hitting Japan, followed hours later by the test launch of two ballistic missiles into the sea, apparently from a train.
Then came the clearest sign since its last nuclear test in 2017 that the North is not about to abandon its project to build a viable deterrent, with satellite images showing it was expanding a uranium enrichment plant at its main Yongbyon nuclear complex.
Continue reading...Six companies warned not to put profit before lives as report shows less than 1% of almost 6bn doses have gone to low-income countries
Amnesty International has accused six pharmaceutical companies that have developed Covid-19 vaccines of fuelling a global human rights crisis, citing their refusal to sufficiently waive intellectual property rights, share vaccine technology and boost global vaccine supply.
After assessing the performance of six Covid-19 vaccine developers – Pfizer and BioNTech, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca and Novavax – Amnesty International claims that all are failing to uphold their own human rights commitments and warns they should not be putting profit before the lives of people in the world’s poorest countries.
Continue reading...Marcelo Queiroga sat close to Boris Johnson and Liz Truss at New York meeting
Brazil’s health minister, Marcelo Queiroga, has tested positive for Covid and gone into isolation, 24 hours after meeting a maskless Boris Johnson and other British officials in New York.
Queiroga, who sat close to Johnson and the foreign secretary, Liz Truss, on Monday during their meeting with Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, announced his positive test on Twitter on Tuesday night.
Continue reading...Christian Democrat continuity candidate Armin Laschet is struggling to live up to his brief
Angela Merkel’s shoe size is 38, she revealed to a rain-sodden, momentarily confused audience at an election rally on the Baltic coast on Tuesday night. That is relatively small – 5.5 in UK sizes – which means her shoes should not be too hard to fill. “That’s manageable,” Merkel said.
As the German chancellor chuckled mischievously, she gestured towards the man on her left, a 33-year-old tax auditor who is running to inherit the north-eastern constituency she has held since it was created in 1990. But her comment also applied to the man on her right, Armin Laschet, who is meant to lead the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) into the post-Merkel era as her designated continuity candidate at Sunday’s national election.
Continue reading...Doses will help South Korea boost full vaccination rates, and UK will get same number back later in year
One million doses of the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine are being sent from the UK to South Korea as part of a swap deal.
South Korea will return the same “overall volume of doses” before the end of the year, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said.
Continue reading...As a child in Afghanistan, she pretended to be a boy in order to get an education, before starting her own women’s news agency. Now living in Britain, her fight continues
Just over a month ago, Zahra Joya left her house in Kabul to walk to her office, as she had been doing every day. From this small office, Joya, a journalist, ran Rukhshana Media, the news agency she founded last year to report on the stories of women and girls across Afghanistan. By the time she returned home in the afternoon, however, men with guns were on street corners and her sisters were shut inside their house, shaking with fear. In just a few hours, normal life had been obliterated.
“Right to the end, on that afternoon of 15 August, I couldn’t believe what was happening,” she says. “It was like a bad dream. Even on that day, it just seemed impossible that the Taliban could come to power so quickly, wipe away 20 years and drag us all back to the past.”
Continue reading...A team at the University of Oregon has begun a three-year study looking at the effects of poor air quality on cattle
Juliana Ranches drove to work in eastern Oregon in early September through wildfire smoke so thick that, for a moment, she thought it was just a grey, foggy day and it would soon start to rain.
Ranches is a livestock researcher relatively new to living in the area, and the conditions were unlike anything she had experienced before, leading her to ask questions about the animals that spend their summers in the smoke. Eastern Oregon has this year experienced regular wildfires since early July.
“We know there is a negative effect,” Ranches said, referring to the cows grazing outside in some of the most polluted air in the US. The area registered 160 on the air quality index (AQI) in early September after reports of a large number of wildfires, a level that can put human health at risk.
“There is a little bit of work out of California with [dairy and beef] producers and indirect impacts, reporting lower conception rates and birthrates, but we cannot say for sure because there are no studies in a controlled environment looking into that.”
Research into the impact on livestock bred for human consumption is limited, although it is known that particulate matter from the smoke is a significant health threat, especially when exposure is long-term.
According to new preliminary research from the University of Idaho, a sample of dairy cattle exposed to poor air quality and heat stress produced less milk – about 1.3 litres less than normal (just over two UK pints) – a day than average. Some cows had not fully recovered two weeks after the air quality improved. But because this observation was based on just one herd, the data does not yet translate into solid recommendations for ranchers and farmers. The work must be scaled up to explore larger patterns.
It is why Ranches, along with her colleague Jenifer Cruickshank, who specialises in dairy management, has begun a three-year study to collect more data on cows and the effects of wildfire and smoke, as part of which they have put nearly 30 cows out to pasture.
“I call them my smoke cows,” said Cruickshank. During a wildfire event that results in an AQI measure over 50, she takes daily milk samples and blood tests, which will be analysed as stress markers. The cows’ respiratory rate and body temperatures are also documented.
“We’re getting a finer-grained picture of what these cows are experiencing, through poor air quality associated with wildfires – a better understanding of the physiological effects on them, like is it mild? Is it severe? Is there diversity among the response in the cows? With that information, we can start to look at the negative effects and minimise the damage,” she said.
In the past few weeks more than 12,000 Haitians have arrived in Del Rio, Texas, gathering in a huge makeshift camp. Many have to cross the Rio Grande from Del Rio to Ciudad Acuña to seek food and supplies in Mexico to bring back to family members waiting in the US. Others are crossing back into Mexico to avoid deportation flights
Continue reading...Mariama Sonko is an unstoppable force who continued her work even when she was ostracised by her community in Senegal
Outside Mariama Sonko’s home in the Casamance region of southern Senegal pink shells hang on improvised nets that will be placed in mangroves to provide a breeding spot for oysters.
Normally, women collecting oysters chop at the branches – a method that can harm the mangroves. But these nets allow them to harvest sustainably, says Sonko, who is trying to revolutionise agriculture in west Africa.
Continue reading...US president outlines plan at Covid summit, bringing America’s global donation to over 1.1bn doses amid backlash over boosters
Joe Biden has announced that the US will donate an additional 500m Covid-19 vaccines to low- and middle-income countries around the world, bringing America’s total global donation to more than 1.1bn doses.
The US president outlined the plan on Wednesday at a virtual coronavirus summit where he urged world leaders to “go big” in tackling the pandemic and closing the vaccination gap with poorer nations.
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