Six In The Morning Friday 12 November 2021

 

Nations have their say as climate talks go to wire

New draft is just ‘mumbo-jumbo’ , says Filipino activist

Stepping away from the stocktake for a bit - as nations continue to share their thoughts on how things are going...

BBC Minute reporter Mora Morrison bumped into Mitzi Jonelle Tan, a prominent young activist from the Philippines, who’s protesting with others on the streets of Glasgow.

She’s critical of the latest agreement draft, which countries could sign at the end of COP26 talks.

She describes the latest text as little more than a “bunch of words”. And she feels that debates over the exact language used in the document are distracting from the urgent need for action.

British troops sent to Poland to assist with Belarus border situation

MoD says small team of military personnel deployed after agreement with Polish government

Dan Sabbagh Defence and security editor

Fri 12 Nov 2021 15.43 GMT

Britain has sent a team of about 10 soldiers to Poland to help Warsaw strengthen its border with Belarus, where groups of migrants have been stranded attempting to cross into the EU.

The troops arrived on Thursday and are expected to spend a few days in the country, including visiting the border at the request of the Polish government to work out if they can repair or toughen the fencing.

The Ministry of Defence said the mission was focused only on “engineering support”, and insiders said there was no additional plan for British troops to police the border. Whitehall sources said it was appropriate to consider helping given that “it is Belarus that is pushing migrants towards the border”.

Myanmar court sentences US journalist Danny Fenster to 11 years in jail

Fenster awaits verdict for two additional charges of sedition and terrorism

Shweta Sharma

US journalist Danny Fenster has been sentenced to 11 years in jail by a Myanmar military court for allegedly spreading false or inflammatory information, his lawyer said on Friday.

Fenster, who was the managing editor of the online magazine Frontier Myanmar, was also found guilty of contacting illegal organisations and violating visa regulations, lawyer Than Zaw Aung said.

The 37-year-old was detained at Yangon international airport in May following a military coup in February. He is one of dozens of local journalists who have been detained by the current military-led government in Myanmar.

Afghanistan: Can the Taliban avert a food crisis without foreign aid?

The UN's World Food Program has warned that half of Afghanistan's population is facing an acute hunger crisis, with millions forced to choose between "migration or starvation" amid drought and economic collapse.

More than half the population of Afghanistan will face high levels of "acute food insecurity" from November to March, according to a recent report from the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Program (WFP).

The report said the acute food insecurity is expected to last through the post-harvest "lean season," during which harsh winter weather threatens to "cut off areas of the country where families desperately depend on humanitarian assistance to survive the freezing winter months."

UN rep slams Lebanon central bank chief over economic crisis

A UN expert blasted the country’s banking sector for failing to recognize its role in the country’s crippling economic crisis.

By Kareem Chehayeb

Published On 12 Nov 2021

United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights Olivier De Schutter on Friday blasted    Lebanese Central Bank Governor Riad Salameh for not recognizing the bank’s role in the country’s crippling economic crisis.

“The role of commercial banks and the Central Bank [BDL] has been very problematic,” De Schutter told Al Jazeera.

For years, the central bank bolstered its foreign currency reserves – and enabled the government to spend beyond its means- by paying out exorbitant interest rates to entice commercial banks to lend it US dollars.  In order to stay flush with dollars, commercial banks would in turn offer their depositors ever-higher interest rates.

This Colorado community was proof an all-electric, net-zero future is possible. Now that vision is under siege

By Rachel Ramirez, CNN
Photos and video by Julian Quinones

Updated 0013 GMT (0813 HKT) November 12, 2021

Dar-Lon Chang once held out hope that the fossil fuel industry would pivot to clean energy.

As a former engineer at an oil company in Houston, Chang said he conducted research on natural gas -- then considered a "bridge fuel" to transition to renewables -- and found cleaner ways to extract and use fossil fuels. Chang worked there for more than 15 years but said not only was his research on cleaner extraction not used, his concerns about the climate crisis were dismissed.

"So all these things got me thinking of leaving," Chang told CNN. "But more than that, I wanted to leave Houston because my daughter was born just a couple months before Hurricane Ike in 2008."

Japan to remove spectator limit for large-scale events even in virus state of emergency

Japan plans to remove the spectator attendance limit for large-scale events and allow venues to be filled to capacity even under a COVID-19 state of emergency by using a system to check whether visitors have been vaccinated or have tested negative for the virus, government sources said Friday.

Under the current guidelines, attendance at large-scale events such as professional sports games and concerts is capped at 5,000 spectators or 50 percent of venue capacity, whichever is larger.

As new and serious COVID-19 cases have sharply fallen across the country recently, the government will revise the guidelines after hearing the opinions of coronavirus experts possibly on Nov 19, the sources said.