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'The idea is that art can help': how Art Basel Miami tackled the climate crisis
But beyond the silliness, sustainability was a dominating theme this year at the 17th edition of the week-long art event, which always draws art lovers to over 300 exhibitions, a dozen art fairs and hundreds of VIP parties. Which is ironic, considering Miami art week is probably the most excessi…
Chinese activist detained after calling Xi Jinping 'clueless' on coronavirus crisis
Xu Zhiyong, a former law lecturer and founder of the social campaign New Citizens Movement, was taken away by police on Saturday evening while he was seeking refuge at the home of a lawyer in the southern city of Guangzhou, activists Ye Du and Hua Ze said.
His host Yang Bin, her husband …
RFS denies sacking volunteer firefighter Paul Parker, who swore at Scott Morrison
Paul Parker told Channel Ten’s The Project on Sunday that he was chastised by the RFS for directing the expletive toward Scott Morrison and that he had been booted from the organisation, contrary to reports from the time that he had been stood down due to exhaustion.
“Another captain fro…
Disabled teenager in China dies at home alone after relatives quarantined
A 17-year-old boy with cerebral palsy from a rural village in China’s Hubei province has died because his relatives were unable to care for him after being quarantined as a result of the coronavirus outbreak, the state-run Beijing Youth Daily newspaper has reported.
The boy, Yan Cheng, w…
The US government claims I'm a 'domestic terrorist'. Am I? | Ken Ward
I was acting as part of the “Valve Turners” direct action against climate change. Five of us, in locations across four states, succeeded in shutting down all five pipelines carrying Canadian tar sands oil into the US for a day. We were careful, transparent, civil and nonviolent. We put a premium…
France moves to ban mass live-shredding of male chicks
Guillaume said he hoped a method would be found soon that would allow farmers to determine the gender of a chicken embryo in the egg before it hatched. Researchers have been working on devising a viable method for years, but to date, the science requires each egg to be pierced to take samples – …
Jeff Bezos hack: Amazon boss's phone 'hacked by Saudi crown prince'
It may also lead to renewed scrutiny about what the crown prince and his inner circle were doing in the months prior to the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, the Washington Post journalist who was killed in October 2018 – five months after the alleged “hack” of the newspaper’s owner.
Saudi Arab…
If defending life on Earth is extremist, we must own that label | George Monbiot
It’s not an “error” or an “accident”, as the police now claim. It’s a pattern. First, the Guardian revealed that counter-terrorism police in south-east England have listed Extinction Rebellion (XR) and the youth climate strikes as forms of “ideological extremism”. Then teachers and officials aro…
UN report: half a billion people struggle to find adequate paid work
In a study published as world leaders fly into the Swiss ski resort of Davos to voice concerns over inequality and the climate crisis, the UN’s International Labour Organization (ILO) said more than 473 million people around the world lacked the employment opportunities to meet their needs.
…Big oil is the new big tobacco - and Congress must use its power to investigate | Naomi Oreskes and Geoffrey Supran
Wildfires there have been raging for more than a month and now span an area larger than Switzerland. The situation bears all the hallmarks of a hot new world: lives lost, livelihoods ruined and species pushed towards extinction, accompanied by government inaction, industry PR spin, abetting righ…
From depression to dementia, inflammation is medicine’s new frontier | Edward Bullmore
Unlikely as it may seem, #inflammation has become a hashtag. It seems to be everywhere suddenly, up to all sorts of tricks. Rather than simply being on our side, fighting infections and healing wounds, it turns out to have a dark side as well: the role it plays in causing us harm.
It’s n…
The plastic polluters won 2019 – and we're running out of time to stop them
The beach at Muncar on the island of Java was revolting. The 400-yard wide, mile-long stretch of sand was feet deep in foul-smelling sauce sachets, shopping bags, nappies, bottles and bags, plastic clothes and detergent bottles. Bulldozers had cleared away and buried some of the huge mat of plas…
1.9 billion people at risk from mountain water shortages, study shows
The first inventory of high-altitude sources finds the Indus is the most important and vulnerable “water tower” due to run-off from the Karakoram, Hindu Kush, Ladakh, and Himalayan mountain ranges, which flow downstream to a densely populated and intensively irrigated basin in Pakistan, India, C…
FAA let Boeing 737 Max continue to fly even as review found serious crash risk
The FAA analysis, dated 3 December 2018, was released on Wednesday during a House committee hearing into US’s top aviation oversight of the aircraft’s certification. The review predicted 15 fatal crashes were possible if no changes were made to flight-control software, which has been implicated …
Queensland school runs out of water as commercial bottlers harvest local supplies
Trucks sent by the Queensland government carrying emergency supplies to the school, including Mount Tamborine bottled water, have been passing trucks heading in the opposite direction taking local water to bottling plants for beverage giants such as Coca-Cola.
Residents said the situatio…
Global heating driving spread of mosquito-borne dengue fever
Across Asia the scale of outbreaks has been taking communities by surprise. In Pakistan one city hospital in Rawalpindi admitted more than 2,000 dengue patients in a single weekend in October. Across the country a record-breaking 47,000 people have been infected this year, almost double the prev…
EU ministers to vote on move to expose firms' tax avoidance
The proposed rule is designed to shine a light on how large companies avoid paying an estimated $500bn a year in taxes around the world by shifting their profits from higher-tax countries such as the UK, France and Germany to zero-tax or low-tax jurisdictions such as Luxembourg, Ireland and Malt…
Ex-White House counsel Don McGahn must testify in impeachment inquiry, judge rules
A federal judge has landed a damaging blow on Donald Trump in the US president’s ongoing fight with Congress, ruling that the former White House counsel Donald McGahn must testify in the impeachment hearings despite claims that he had “absolute immunity” as a top presidential adviser.
Th…
Hologram-like device animates objects using ultrasound waves
A demonstration of the display showed a butterfly flapping its wings, a countdown spelled out by numbers hanging in the air, and a rotating, multicoloured planet Earth. Beyond interactive digital signs and animations, scientists want to use it to visualise and even feel data.
While the i…
Renewables meet 50% of electricity demand on Australia's power grid for first time
Data on the sources of power in the National Electricity Market showed that at 11.50am on Wednesday, renewables were providing 50.2% of the power to Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia – the five states served by the market.
Dylan McConnell, of the Univers…
Thailand wants to ban these three pesticides. The US government says no | Carey Gillam
Thailand’s leaders have said that as of 1 December, a ban will take effect on the use of the following farming chemicals: chlorpyrifos, an insecticide made popular by Dow Chemical that is known to damage babies’ brains; Syngenta’s paraquat, a herbicide scientists say causes the nervous system di…
Heineken ditches plastic rings and shrink wrap in eco makeover
Plastic pack rings, known in the industry as hi-cones or yokes, are used to hold together multipacks of canned drinks, particularly beer. A standard packaging device for more than 50 years, they have contributed to growing plastic pollution in the oceans and pose a major threat to marine life.…
Nasa's Voyager 2 sends back its first message from interstellar space
Twelve billion miles from Earth, there is an elusive boundary that marks the edge of the sun’s realm and the start of interstellar space. When Voyager 2, the longest-running space mission, crossed that frontier more than 40 years after its launch it sent a faint signal from the other side that s…
Footage leaked of Israeli officer shooting Palestinian in the back
Channel 13 News reported that the man was stopped as he tried to enter Israel from the occupied West Bank. In what appears to be a cameraphone video, published on Saturday evening, the unidentified man is seen being ordered by a female border police officer to leave.
Some gut bacteria may increase bowel cancer risk, research suggests
“We are trying to do a lot in terms of cancer prevention. Despite the fact the microbiome could be at play there is a lot more that is needed, and interdisciplinary research that is needed, to try and help in that field,” said Dr Kaitlin Wade, a researcher at the University of Bristol who is pre…