Climate change: Where we are in seven charts and what you can do to help
Representatives from nearly 200 countries are gathering in Poland for talks on climate change - aimed at breathing new life into the Paris Agreement.
The UN has warned the 2015 Paris accord's goal of limiting global warming to "well below 2C above pre-industrial levels" is in danger because major economies, including the US and the EU, are falling short of their pledges.
But scientists at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - the leading international body on global warming - last month argued the 2C Paris pledge didn't go far enough. The global average temperature rise actually needed to be kept below 1.5C, they said.
'The candles sell very well': the quest to be the last video store standing
The passionate owners of Perth’s remaining video rental shops have innovative ways to stay open against all odds
“If I’m the last DVD store, am I something?” wonders Melanie McInerney, the ebullient owner of Network Video in Mount Hawthorn, Western Australia.
The DVD rental game isn’t exactly thriving these days thanks to online streaming, but she reckons there might be spoils for the final brick-and-mortar store left standing in the state.
And her strategy is right out of the Steven Bradbury playbook: just don’t fall next.
Baby It's Cold Outside pulled by US radio station after listeners complain lyrics at odds with #MeToo
'In a world where #MeToo has finally given women the voice they deserve, the song has no place,' presenter saysTom Embury-Dennis
A US radio station has removed Christmas classic Baby It’s Cold Outside from its playlist after listeners complained it was at odds with the #MeToo movement.
Glenn Anderson, a host at Star 102 Cleveland, in Ohio, confirmed the station had pulled the song over what he said were the “manipulative and wrong” lyrics.
"The world we live in is extra sensitive now, and people get easily offended, but in a world where #MeToo has finally given women the voice they deserve, the song has no place,” Mr Anderson wrote in a blog.
Leaders ailing and failing, vulnerable regimes
Maghreb rulers cling on
by Akram Belkaïd
Algeria has an aged, ailing president; Morocco, a king in poor health who is abroad much of the time; and Tunisia, a president so old and frail he spends just a few hours a day on state business. These men rule over 90 million people, 60% of them under 30 years old. Despite tough living conditions due to multiple socioeconomic problems, including an unemployment rate of 15-20%, the energy of the younger generations of these countries contrasts with the decrepitude of their leaders clinging on to power.
I Quit Google Over Its Censored Chinese Search Engine. The Company Needs to Clarify Its Position on Human Rights.
Jack Poulson
JOHN HENNESSY, THE chair of Google’s parent company, Alphabet Inc., was recently asked whether Google providing a search engine in China that censored results would provide a net benefit for Chinese users. “I don’t know the answer to that. I think it’s — I think it’s a legitimate question,” he responded. “Anybody who does business in China compromises some of their core values. Every single company, because the laws in China are quite a bit different than they are in our own country.”
Hennessy’s remarks were in relation to Project Dragonfly, a once-secret project within Google to build a version of its search engine that meets the demands of the ruling Chinese Communist Party — namely, that Google proactively censor “sensitive” speech and comply with China’s data provenance and surveillance laws.
Magazines explore the inevitability of death and taxes
BY MARK SCHREIBER
CONTRIBUTING WRITER
From this week, beneath the glitter of tinsel and glimmer of outdoor seasonal illumination, the bonenkai (year-end party) season begins in earnest.
Amidst these distractions, however, one comes away with the impression that the magazines are devoting more pages to health advisories for staying alive — or the financial implications of dying — with less space being devoted to schadenfreude over lapses among the luminaries, such as Nissan’s ousted chairman, Carlos Ghosn.
No comments:
Post a Comment