Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Up to 100 more homes face flooding after mayor orders high-risk plan to open floodgates on the Ross River dam
One hundred homes could be flooded in Townsville after the city’s mayor sanctioned the high-risk release of dam water to save the area from more widespread inundation following more than 1.1 metres of rain.
Announcing the emergency measure for the Ross River dam on Friday, the mayor Jenny Hill said there were no guarantees the plan would work. Between 90 and 100 homes downstream from the dam were being evacuated, she added.
Progressives are preparing to take on Starbucks CEO Howard Shultz — who is considering a run for president in 2020 as an independent — hoping to arm themselves with information about the billionaire’s governmental dealings.
Axios reports that Democratic super PAC, Priorities USA, has requested documents from roughly 70 national and state agencies who may have connected with Shultz or his coffee company over the last 3 decades:
The group is gathering as much potential opposition research as they can on Schultz and his business in anticipation of his decision to possibly run for president as an independent. This is yet another example of liberals trying to push Schultz out of the 2020 race before he begins, in part because they view his candidacy as a “threat” that could be “a major step toward re-electing Donald Trump,” Priorities USA communications director Josh Schwerin told Axios”.
A new poll released by Monmouth University says more than 60% of Americans think the president knew that high-ranking members of his campaign lied to investigators and half believe he asked them to do it.
The survey also found that there’s still significant concern among the electorate that Russia has influence over Trump, and that not enough has been done to stop the Kremlin from meddling into elections.
Was Trump aware of campaign associated trying to mislead investigators or Congress?
62% Yes 32% No
Do you think Trump personally asked people to mislead investigators or Congress?
50% Yes 42% No
Monmouth poll
‘Views of the president’s ties to Russia look like almost any other aspect of public opinion related to Trump. Very few Republicans believe anything negative about him and nearly all Democrats are inclined to accept damaging information, while independents are almost evenly split’, said Murray.
Just over half of Americans (51%) feel that the special counsel’s investigation into Russian election interference and possible links to the Trump campaign should continue. Another 45% say this investigation should be brought to an end. Support for continuing the special counsel investigation has hovered between 52% and 54% in polls taken between April and November 2018. Prior to that, about 6-in-10 Americans supported continuing the investigation (60% in March 2018 and 62% in July 2017)“.
Treasurer says climate change is real and Scott Morrison’s government takes emissions reduction ‘very seriously’
Josh Frydenberg has defended the Coalition’s record on climate change and says he will work hard to earn the trust of his constituents in the face of a challenge from long-time Liberal and now independent Oliver Yates.
Yates, a former Macquarie banker and head of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, confirmed on Wednesday he would run in Kooyong at the coming federal election, declaring Frydenberg deserved to be challenged because of a lack of action on the environment.
A technique developed by a Jesuit priest is producing bigger harvests – and reducing emissions of a crop responsible for 1.5% of greenhouse gases
The fragrant jasmine rice growing on the left side of Kreaougkra Junpeng’s five-acre field stands nearly five feet tall.
Each plant has 15 or more tillers, or stalks, and the grains hang heavy from them. The Thai farmer says this will be his best-ever harvest in 30 years and he will reap it four weeks earlier than usual.
Thai capital has been shrouded in murky haze for weeks, forcing residents to don masks and sparking criticism of government
Toxic smog forced Bangkok authorities to issue an unprecedented order to shut nearly 450 schools on Wednesday as authorities struggled to manage a pollution crisis that has stirred widespread concern.
The Thai capital has been shrouded in murky haze for weeks, forcing residents to don masks and sparking social media criticism of the uneven response by the government.
Water resources are tapped with often reckless abandon and poor regulation. And it looks set to go on under new president
The Brazilian government has been urged to step up punishments for environmental crimes after the deadliest mining disaster in decades.
The torrent of mud and iron ore tailings that engulfed the community of Brumadinho on Friday continues to inflict a toll on residents, river systems and freshwater species.
Rescue workers in Brazil waded through treacherous mud looking for bodies as pressure mounted on the mining company responsible for a dam that burst and spilled a flood of iron-ore waste
National park saw ‘irreparable’ damage including vandalism, ruined trails and trees cut down, says former superintendent
The former superintendent of Joshua Tree national park has said it could take hundreds of years to recover from damage caused by visitors during the longest-ever government shutdown.
“What’s happened to our park in the last 34 days is irreparable for the next 200 to 300 years,” Curt Sauer said at a rally over the weekend, according to a report from the Desert Sun. Sauer retired in 2010 after running the park for seven years.
Commissioner to find $13bn plan to restore river took into account factors other than the environment’s needs when it set the amount of water needed to be bought back from irrigators
The Murray Darling Basin Plan is likely in breach of the commonwealth act that underpins it – the Water Act 2007, the South Australian royal commission into the plan is expected to find.
The report of the royal commission into the Murray Darling Basin Plan is being handed to the state governor on Tuesday but it is up to the SA government when it is released.
Minas Gerais locals recall another dam collapse involving mining firm Vale as hunt continues for 292 people still missing
The dirt road which once led to the Nova Estância guesthouse and a handful of nearby farms now ends in a slew of sticky, acrid sludge that stretches as far as the eye can see, a deep red gash across the green of the rolling Brazilian countryside.
The road, a small bridge it once crossed, the guesthouse and hundreds of people were all swallowed by mud when a tailings dam at the Córrego de Feijão mine collapsed on Friday, unleashing a torrent of liquid waste.
Three-year-old Casey Hathaway said a bear helped him survive two nights in the woods but animal experts say it would be a first
The story of a three-year-old boy who said he survived two nights alone in the woods due to the assistance of a friendly bear should not encourage people to seek out their own relationships with bears, a leading ursine expert has warned.
The gang stop and stare, attention spiked by our car doors slamming. Ten pairs of eyes flit between our backpacks and our faces. Is it worth mugging us? Do our bags contain bananas or useless, inedible wallets and cameras? The monkeys of Kuala Lumpur’s Ampang district decide against it and head further down the road in the hunt for victims. The morning joggers here run with sticks.
“Twenty years ago this was jungle,” says Viswa Hattan, an accountant jogging in the area. Gated high-rises loom ahead of us, the roads leading to them flanked by forest too dense to enter without machetes. Four macaques, babies clinging to their chests, loiter on a metal road barrier uphill from a construction site. “This was their area,” says Hattan as a nearby male macaque begins vigorously masturbating. “We’ve taken it from them.”
Comins Coch, Aberystwyth: Remnants of ancient volcanoes still dominate the skyline, though much less sharply than in La Palma’s younger landscape
The path up to the old quarry was wet and bordered by clumps of coarse grass, droplets of dew still hanging on to each blade. Beyond the line of trees that marks the edge of the field, dark and skeletal in their winter stasis, the sky was mottled with cloud that looked distinctly untrustworthy, with the stillness to the air that often presages showers.
Exposed on the steep back wall, grey and tarnished with flecks of iron, the ancient mudstones are too soft and easily fractured for fine building work, but the quarry served as a useful source of stone for local roads. Now abandoned, it has been out of use for long enough that mature oak trees have grown from the rounded heaps of spoil, banks of gorse – already in flower – adding bright yellow highlights.
Warning that ‘We are like passengers on the Titanic, ignoring the iceberg ahead’ in face of nuclear arms and climate change threats
The risk to global civilisation from nuclear weapons and climate change remains at an all-time high, according to a group of prominent US scientists and former officials, who said the world’s predicament had become the “new abnormal”.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announced that its symbolic “doomsday clock”, unveiled every year, was stuck at two minutes to midnight, the same as last January. The only other time the Bulletin has judged the world as being this close to catastrophe was 1953, in the early volatile stages of the cold war.
As ice melts and shipping lanes open up, geopolitical tensions are growing and old cold war bases are being reopened
The climate crisis is intensifying a new military buildup in the Arctic, diplomats and analysts said this week, as regional powers attempt to secure northern borders that were until recently reinforced by a continental-sized division of ice.
That so-called unpaid sentry is now literally melting away, opening up shipping lanes and geo-security challenges, said delegates at the Arctic Frontiers conference, the polar circle’s biggest talking shop, who debated a series of recent escalations.
Phased out vehicles often end up back in use in developing countries – a form of dumping with serious environmental consequences
In a sparsely furnished office overlooking dozens of buses at the Zone 21 depot in Guatemala City, Jorge Castro flips through photographs on his mobile phone. He settles on one.
“There’s the bus when I bought it in Maryland,” he says proudly. It is a blue and white bus emblazoned with the words “Ride On”, the name of Montgomery County’s public transit system.
Police investigating discovery of animal’s remains warn of organised crime threat to Thailand’s tiger population
Thai authorities investigating the discovery of the remains of a wild tiger in a taxi have warned that organised crime gangs are behind the capture and slaughter of Thailand’s endangered tiger population.
Police, acting on a tip-off from a cab driver, arrested two men suspected of being members of a Vietnam-based syndicate involved in the trafficking of animal parts. The tiger was found in their luggage along with mobile phones containing photographs of the animal being killed.