The following are headlines from today’s news:
- Introducing the Cost of Climate Change
- How killer viruses and seaweed diets could drastically reduce methane emissions
- G20 pledge climate action but make few commitments
- Barclays boss Jes Staley in shock exit angry at Epstein probe
- Queen tells Cop26 in video address it is ‘time for action’ on climate
- Republican senator Josh Hawley worries feminism has driven men to ‘pornography and video games’
- Narendra Modi pledges India will reach net zero emissions by 2070
- Scott Morrison tells Cop26 Australia will exceed 2030 target in bid to fend off criticism
- Nigeria: Several killed in Lagos building collapse
- Israel approves Palestinian homes after advancing settlements
- COP26: How to close the emissions gap and keep global warming to 1.5 C
- Hague tribunal aims to investigate journalist killings
- A Southwest pilot is under investigation for the divisive phrase 'Let's go, Brandon'
- 10,000 Schools Reopen
This is an open thread where everyone is welcome, especially night owls and early birds, to share and discuss the happenings of the day. Please feel free to share your articles and stories in the comments.
C/NET
"I think you should sell your home. It's only going to get worse," I urged my mom on the phone. "What are you waiting for?"
My parents, both in their 60s and living in Northern California, were hiding indoors with air purifiers on max to avoid inhaling the smoke and air pollution caused by nearby wildfires. It wasn't the first time.
I worry about their safety and mobility in a part of the country that's been hard hit by the effects of our warming planet. In the last few years, drought, extremely hot temperatures and wildfires have become more frequent in their region. Conditions only seem to be intensifying, and I wonder: What financial moves today can lead them to a more sustainable life in the future?
C/NET
A cow's gut is an utterly alien world. Within the bovine digestive tract, dozens of organisms jockey for position, digesting and fermenting the grass and feed that passes through. Some of these microbes convert sugars into other molecules, others hoover up carbon dioxide and hydrogen and, as a result, produce methane.
Cows, and other ruminants, belch out that methane -- a particularly troublesome problem on a warming planet. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, with even more warming potential than carbon dioxide. The vast majority of methane emissions come from human activities like burning fossil fuels and via consumer waste, but ruminant emissions are a significant contributor, accounting for about 15%.
BBC
The leaders of the world's richest economies have agreed to pursue efforts to limit global warming with "meaningful and effective actions".
Host nation Italy had hoped that firm targets would be set before the COP26 summit in Glasgow, which has now begun.
UK PM Boris Johnson, who is hosting COP26 said leaders' promises without action were "starting to sound hollow".
"These commitments... are drops in a rapidly warming ocean," Mr Johnson said.
BBC
Barclays boss Jes Staley is "shell-shocked, angry and upset" at the conclusion of a probe into his links to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein which has led to his sudden exit from the bank.
Insiders close to Mr Staley said he was surprised by City regulators' findings.
They have been investigating if Mr Staley's links with the dead financier were closer than first thought.
Barclays said it had been made aware of the conclusions of the probe and "Mr Staley's intention to contest them".
At the heart of Mr Staley's departure is apparently a perceived inconsistency between his account to his own board of his relationship with Epstein and evidence seen by the regulators.
Mr Staley insists that while Epstein was an important client of JP Morgan, where Mr Staley worked for a number of years and as such they were in contact regularly, their dealings were well within the grounds that could be described as professional.
The Guardian UK Edition
The Queen has expressed her hope that world leaders would “rise above the politics of the moment, and achieve true statesmanship” in tackling the climate crisis as she welcomed Cop26 delegates to Glasgow in a recorded video address.
“I, for one, hope that this conference will be one of those rare occasions where everyone will have the chance to rise above the politics of the moment, and achieve true statesmanship,” she said.
The Guardian US Edition
The effort to combat toxic masculinity in the US has led men to consume more pornography and play more video games, the Missouri senator Josh Hawley claimed in a speech to a group of Republicans.
Speaking at the National Conservatism Conference in Orlando, Florida, Hawley addressed the issue of “manhood”, which he said was under attack, and called for men to return to traditional masculine roles.
The Donald Trump supporter who notoriously raised a fist in support of a mob outside the US Capitol on 6 January appeared to echo talking points made by the likes of the Proud Boys, a far-right group that opposes feminism and believes men are under attack from liberal elites.
The Guardian US Edition
India will meet a target of net zero emissions by 2070, the country’s prime minister has told the Cop26 global climate summit.
Speaking at the world leaders’ summit at the UN conference in Glasgow, Narendra Modi made five key pledges for how India would decarbonise over the next few decades. India, a developing country of more than 1.3 billion people, is the world’s third largest emitter of carbon dioxide after the US and China.
India was one of the last remaining major economies that had held out on a net zero commitment, despite months of pressure from the US, and Modi’s announcement marked one of the most significant moments of the summit’s opening day.
The Guardian Australia Edition
Scott Morrison has used his national statement at the Cop26 to emphasise that Australia will probably over-achieve on its 2030 emissions reduction target in an effort to blunt international criticism about his government’s lack of ambition.
While the lead-up to the Glasgow summit was dominated by Morrison’s negotiations with the National party to land a net-zero commitment by 2050, the United Nations-led event is focused on ambition for the 2030s.
Australia – part of a block of big emitters and exporters at last weekend’s G20 summit in Rome attempting to water down commitments in the final communique to phase out coal – has been criticised for not increasing its ambition in the critical decade.
Al Jazeera
At least three people have been killed after a high-rise building under construction collapsed in Nigeria’s commercial capital Lagos, officials said, with dozens of others feared trapped inside.
A yellow excavator pushed away concrete slabs in the search for people in the rubble of the 21-floor building on Monday in Lagos’s Ikoyi district.
Rescue officials said many workers were caught inside the building when it crumbled though they could not confirm the number of people trapped.
Lagos Police Commissioner Hakeem Odumosu confirmed three deaths, but added that three survivors had been pulled from the rubble in Ikoyi by Monday evening.
Al Jazeera
Israel has advanced plans to build slightly more than 1,300 homes for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, an official said, days after endorsing more than 3,000 homes in illegal settlements.
The Civil Administration’s high planning committee gave final approval to 170 homes and initial endorsement for another 1,133 residences for Palestinians, a spokesman for the military body that oversees civilian matters in the occupied Palestinian territories told the AFP news agency.
The units approved were scattered throughout a large swathe of the West Bank known as Area C, where Israel exercises military and planning control.
Palestinians and rights groups said the newly authorised homes met only a small fraction of the need in the 60 percent of the West Bank that is under full Israeli control. Military permits for Palestinian construction are rarely granted and unauthorised structures are often demolished.
Deutsche Welle
World leaders meeting for a conference this week could set policies that would stop dangerous changes to the climate and keep ecosystems from collapsing further.
So far they have failed to do so.
The gap between what countries are doing to slow global warming and what they need to do to will hit about 28 gigatons of CO2 a year by 2030, according to a United Nations report published last Tuesday. The disparity is enough to warm the planet 2.7 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures by the end of the century.
That would break the promise world leaders made at the Paris climate conference in 2015 — in a bid to stave off unprecedented weather extremes like heat waves and cyclones — to limit warming to 1.5 C. They are instead burning so much coal, oil and gas that the world will likely cross that threshold as early as next decade.
Deutsche Welle
In his last column for the Mexican regional newspaper Notiver, Miguel Angel Lopez Velasco wrote about femicide, nepotism and contaminated drinking water.
Lopez Velasco, who was the deputy director of the Veracruz-based media outlet and used the pen name "Milo Vera," said the authorities had promised to deal with the problems. "And if not," he wrote, "we will remind them here."
It never came to that. A few hours later, the 55-year-old was dead.
In the early hours of June 20, 2011, his murderers came to the journalist's home under the cover of darkness while he was sleeping, smashed the front door and shot him dead, along with his wife, Agustina, and their youngest son, Miseal. They fired more than 400 bullets.
The police, stationed just one block away, did not even dispatch a patrol car. Ten years later, prosecutors have yet to find the perpetrators and a clear motive. Lopez Velasco's two older children have gone into exile in fear of their lives.
NPR
A Southwest Airlines pilot is under an internal investigation after signing off from a flight using the phrase "Let's go, Brandon," the airline said in a statement provided to NPR.
With its origins at a NASCAR race in Alabama in October, the phrase "Let's go, Brandon" has become common in conservative circles as a way of saying, "F*** Joe Biden." It started as a meme that has now widely spread to Republican members of Congress and has even been said on the House floor.
The Associated Press reported that the pilot used the phrase on a flight from Houston to Albuquerque, N.M., and that there were audible gasps from passengers.
Southwest says it does not condone its employees sharing personal political opinions while working.
NPR
The Supreme Court appeared inclined Monday to allow abortion providers to challenge a controversial Texas law that in effect bans all abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, which is before most women know they are pregnant.
In more than three hours of oral arguments, the court heard two separate challenges from the U.S. Justice Department and abortion providers over the law. The court's conservative majority appeared skeptical of the Biden administration's challenge to the law.
The court was considering the following two questions:
- whether "the state can insulate from federal-court review a law that prohibits the exercise of a constitutional right by delegating to the general public the authority to enforce that prohibition through civil action";
- and can "the United States bring suit in federal court and obtain injunctive or declaratory relief against the State, state court judges, state court clerks, other state officials, or all private parties to prohibit S.B. 8 from being enforced."
Bangkok Post
About 10,000 schools resumed on-site classroom teaching on Monday, with the government giving an assurance students will not face across-the-board or regular antigen tests for Covid-19.
Deputy Education Minister Khunying Kalaya Sophonpanich said about 10,000 schools reopened for most normal activities, with about 20,000 others to restart classes before the end of the month.
Those that had already opened were small schools and boarding schools, she said.
Apisamai Srirangson, spokeswoman for the Centre for Covid-19 Situation Administration, said students would not face across-the-board or regular antigen tests for Covid-19.
The crew of the Overnight News Digest consists of founder Magnifico, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, Chitown Kev, eeff, Magnifico, annetteboardman, Rise above the swamp, Besame and jck. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) Interceptor 7, Man Oh Man, wader, Neon Vincent, palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse (RIP), ek hornbeck (RIP), rfall, ScottyUrb, Doctor RJ, BentLiberal, Oke (RIP) and jlms qkw.