Six in The Morning Friday June 5

The coal boom choking China



Ningxia Province, China
Dirty development

Chinese miners last year dug up 3.87bn tonnes of coal, more than enough to keep all four of the next largest users – the United States, India, the European Union and Russia – supplied for a year.

The country is grappling with the direct costs of that coal, in miners' lives, crippling air pollution, expanding deserts and “environmental refugees”.

Desire for change contends with fears that cutting back on familiar technology could dent employment or slow growth, and efforts to cut consumption do not always mean a clampdown on mining.

‘Slow-down’ in climate change never happened, says major review

When the figures are properly calibrated it becomes clear that the warming has continued as fast or even faster than before, the scientists said

STEVE CONNOR 

 

SCIENCE EDITOR

A major review of global temperatures by a leading US Government agency has failed to find support for the view that global warming has slowed down since 1998, as many climate sceptics have repeatedly claimed over the past two decades.

The prestigious US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has re-evaluated its surface temperature records over land and sea and concluded that the rate of global warming has been just as fast at the start of this century as it was at the end of the last.

NOAA scientists believe that the global warming “hiatus” highlighted in the last report of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – and exploited by sceptics to undermine climate change policy – is nothing more than an illusion resulting from artefacts in the data.

'Bellingcat Report Doesn't Prove Anything': Expert Criticizes Allegations of Russian MH17 Manipulation

Interview Conducted By Benjamin Bidder

The research group Bellingcat has accused Russia of manipulating satellite images from the MH17 disaster. But German image forensics expert Jens Kriese has criticized the analysis. He says it is impossible to say with any certainty whether Moscow is lying.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Bellingcat made headlines around the world this week when it claimed on Sunday night it had proven that Russia's Defense Ministry conducted forensic manipulations. The allegation is focused on images of the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flt. MH17 in eastern Ukraine last spring.

Kriese: The term "forensic analysis" is not a protected one. From the perspective of forensics, the Bellingcat approach is not very robust. The core of what they are doing is based on so-called Error Level Analysis (ELA). The method is subjective and not based entirely on science. This is why there is not a single scientific paper that addresses it.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: What's the hitch?

Kriese: Forensic scientists use computer procedures that allow for the clearest possible conclusions: Has it been manipulated -- yes or no? Contrary to what Bellingcat claims, Error Level Analysis does not provide clear results. The conclusion is always based on the perspective of humans, on their interpretation.

South China Sea disputes: the biggest incidents

June 5, 2015 - 5:17PM

Chris Zappone

News editor, foreign desk

China's island building has brought the South China Sea back to the world's attention. Brunei, China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Taiwan all have claims to the sea. But tensions between the nations are hardly new in a region that suffers from an unenviable blend of sketchy governance, conflicting history and local rivalries. 

Throw into the mix the economic value of fishing rights and undersea oil and gas, and it's not entirely surprising China has claimed the whole of the sea with its so-called Nine Dash Line (see map), a move the rest of the countries are contesting. 

If that's not complicated enough, the South China Sea has been a key area of the US's Navy's 7th fleet operation since the 1940s when the fleet was first formed (in Australia, for the record).

So with these complications in mind, here is a look at the most notable dust-ups in the South China Sea in recent years.

Five suspects charged over Kenya university massacre

Defendants plead not guilty in Nairobi court and claim they were tortured by police for 10 days to force confessions.

05 Jun 2015 06:50 GMT

Kenyan police have charged five men in connection with the attack by the armed group al-Shabab on a university in eastern Kenya in April in which 148 people were killed.

The five men pleaded not guilty to 152 counts of committing acts of terrorism in a Nairobi court on Thursday.

Four al-Shabab gunmen stormed the Garissa University College at dawn on April 2. The attack went on for hours before it was finally ended by a specialised police unit and the four men were killed.

The prosecution alleges that the five suspects colluded to carry out the attack, but have not said what their roles were.

India regulator calls Nestle India's noodles 'unsafe'

5 June 2015

India's food safety regulator has said tests have found that Nestle India's instant noodle products are "unsafe and hazardous".

The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India accused Nestle of failing to comply with India's food safety laws.

Nestle withdrew the Maggi brand from stores, after regulators found higher-than-allowed levels of lead in some packets.

Nestle's global chief executive promised to return Maggi to stores.

Paul Bulcke told reporters in New Delhi: "I am confident that we are going to come back very soon."

Mr Bulcke also asked to see the results of the laboratory tests.