Thursday, November 4, 2021

Six In The Morning Thursday 4 October 2021

 

Humanity needs to ditch coal to save itself. It also needs to keep the lights on.



Updated 1509 GMT (2309 HKT) November 4, 2021

On a quiet Sunday morning, an ear-splitting roar reverberated across the English village of Eggborough as four giant concrete cooling towers imploded and crashed to the ground, transformed to clouds of debris in a matter of seconds.

Just moments after their demolition, it became hard to imagine the structures were ever there, so out of place they were, jutting 90 meters into the sky among the green fields surrounding the River Aire.
The Eggborough power station is just one of 14 coal plants the United Kingdom has laid to rest over the past decade. In 2012, 40% of the UK's power came from coal. By 2020, it was below 2%. Last year, the country went for 67 days without using any coal for power at all.


Russia expels Dutch journalist Tom Vennink



‘Surprise’ expulsion of de Volkskrant reporter follows that of the BBC’s Sarah Rainsford in August


 in Moscow


Russia has expelled a Dutch reporter, his newspaper has said, as Moscow continues its crackdown on domestic and foreign journalists in the country.

De Volkskrant journalist Tom Vennink said his visa was revoked and he was given three days to leave the country after difficulties renewing his journalist accreditation.

The expulsion is the second of a foreign journalist in recent months, following Russia’s decision in August to ban the BBC reporter Sarah Rainsford from the country as a “security threat”.




Cleo Smith: Man, 36, charged with abducting four-year-old girl in Australia


Youngster found safe by police 18 days after disappearing from family’s tent at remote campsite




A man has been charged over the abduction of four-year-old Cleo Smith, who went missing from a remote campsite in Western Australia.

Terry Kelly, 36, was charged with a string of offences including forcibly taking a child under 16.

He appeared at Carnarvon Magistrates’ Court on Thursday and is due to appear again on 6 December.

Police said the man was twice taken to hospital for self-inflicted injuries before being interviewed and charged with various offences related to the abduction.



China censors tennis star’s sex assault claims against former vice premier

China’s online censors Thursday scrubbed out a tennis star’s reported allegations that a powerful politician sexually assaulted her, the first time that the #MeToo movement has reached the highest echelons of the ruling Communist Party.

Peng Shuai, an ex-world number one doubles player, purportedly made the claim about former vice premier Zhang Gaoli in a post on the Twitter-like Weibo on Tuesday.

Peng reportedly alleged that Zhang, who is now in his seventies, had “forced” her into sex and they had an on-off relationship that lasted several years.


A year on, Ethiopia decimated by civil war


The anniversary of Ethiopia’s brutal and expanding conflict finds the country in a seemingly inescapable quagmire.




On November 4, 2020, the Ethiopian military was deployed to Tigray to squash forces loyal to the northern region’s governing party, the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), in response to what the government said was an attack on federal army camps.

The operation was meant to be swift but a year later, the conflict has expanded beyond the region’s frontiers, causing a full-blown humanitarian crisis and leaving the country in a seemingly inescapable quagmire as the rebels claim to have made advances towards the capital, Addis Ababa.

Since hostilities began, there have been mass rapes and massacres of civilians on a large scale. As far back as January, aid agencies were sounding alarms about how much worse the situation could get. Continued fighting, bureaucratic hurdles and aid blockades have since led to a continuing famine affecting hundreds of thousands of people. More than two million people have been displaced from their homes and tens of thousands more have died.

Climate change: Facebook fails to flag denial, study finds


By Rachel Schraer & Kayleen Devlin
BBC Reality Check

Climate change denial is spreading unchecked on Facebook, two studies by disinformation researchers have found.

The Center for Countering Digital Hate and the Institute for Strategic Dialogue said less than 10% of misleading posts were marked as misinformation.

And the CCDH researchers linked the majority of these to just 10 publishers.

Facebook said this represented a small proportion of climate change content.






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