The make-or-break climate summit: here’s what’s at stake at Cop26
Cop26 may involve dozens of world leaders, cost billions of pounds, generate reams of technical jargon and be billed as the last chance to prevent calamitous global heating, but at its simplest the climate conference in Glasgow is a debate about dialling up or dialling down risk.
Dialling up
1.1C
The world has already heated up by about 1.1C since the Industrial Revolution. Even at this level, delegates no longer need to read scientific studies to understand how 200 years of emissions, exhaust fumes and tree burning have destabilised the climate. All they have to do is look out the window or read recent local and global headlines. The host city, Glasgow, has just sweltered through its hottest summer on record. Globally, in the summer of 2021 there were record temperatures, fires and floods across the world, killing hundreds in the north-western Americas, choking swathes of Siberia, inundating cities in Germany and drowning subway commuters in China.
World is failing to make changes needed to avoid climate breakdown, report finds
Every corner of society is failing to take the “transformational change” needed to avert the most disastrous consequences of the climate crisis, with trends either too slow or in some cases even regressing, according to a major new global analysis.
Across 40 different areas spanning the power sector, heavy industry, agriculture, transportation, finance and technology, not one is changing quickly enough to avoid 1.5C in global heating beyond pre-industrial times, a critical target of the Paris climate agreement, according to the new Systems Change Lab report.
Women on death row: How being a ‘bad mother, bad wife and bad woman’ became a death warrant
Melissa Lucio was just six years old the first time she was molested by her mother’s live-in boyfriend.
At 16, she became a child bride, marrying an older man in what she said was a desperate effort “to escape” a childhood plagued by rape and physical violence.
Her dreams of a better life failed to become a reality, however, as she found herself again the victim of abuse – this time at the hands of her alcoholic husband.
COP26: Has demonizing Big Oil backfired?
Fossil fuels will be with us for decades, no matter what pledges are made at the UN climate summit in Glasgow. With banks and pension funds cutting investment, who will control oil, gas and coal supply in the future?
One of the world's largest pension funds has announced plans to dump some €15 billion ($17.5 billion) in fossil fuel holdings. The decision by ABP of the Netherlands comes ahead of the upcoming COP26 climate talks in Glasgow, Scotland, and is part of a strategy to invest in projects that are better for the planet.
The pension giant is the latest financial institution to pledge to divest from fossil fuels. Over the past decade, about 1,500 institutional investors overseeing a combined $39.2 trillion of assets have already committed to similar promises, according to a recent report by the environmental group Stand Earth.
Saudi-led coalition says killed 95 Yemen rebels near Marib
The Saudi-led coalition backing Yemen's government said Thursday it had killed 95 Huthi rebels in air strikes near the strategic city of Marib, as fighting pushes more people into displacement.
That would bring to around 2,000 the number of Huthis the coalition says it has killed around Marib in strikes it has reported almost daily since October 11.
The Iran-backed rebels rarely comment on losses, and AFP could not independently verify the toll.
A statement said the coalition carried out 22 operations targeting rebels in two districts near Marib that "killed 95 terrorists and damaged 11 military vehicles".
Sudan army sacks six envoys as coup condemnation grows
Sudan’s ruling military has sacked six ambassadors and security forces have tightened their crackdown on pro-democracy protesters, even as international pressure against this week’s coup grows.
The decision, announced late on Wednesday on state media, included Sudan’s ambassadors to the United States, the European Union, China, Qatar, France and the head of the country’s mission to the Swiss city of Geneva, apparently over their rejection of the military takeover.
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