Browsed by
Author: From elsewhere

U.S. oil and gas production set to break record in 2023 despite UN climate goals

U.S. oil and gas production set to break record in 2023 despite UN climate goals

The Guardian reports: The United States is poised to extract more oil and gas than ever before in 2023, a year that is certain to be the hottest ever recorded, providing a daunting backdrop to crucial United Nations climate talks that hold the hope of an agreement to end the era of fossil fuels. The US’s status as the world’s leading oil and gas behemoth has only strengthened this year, even amid warnings from Joe Biden himself over the unfolding…

Read More Read More

Biden calls climate change ‘the ultimate threat to humanity’ but won’t be attending latest UN summit

Biden calls climate change ‘the ultimate threat to humanity’ but won’t be attending latest UN summit

The New York Times reports: President Biden will not attend a major United Nations climate summit that begins Thursday in Dubai, skipping an event expected to be attended by King Charles III, Pope Francis and leaders from nearly 200 countries, a White House official said Sunday. The official, who asked to remain anonymous to discuss the president’s schedule, did not give a reason Mr. Biden will not make an appearance at the two-week summit, known as COP28. But senior White…

Read More Read More

Undercover filming highlights Saudi plan to artificially raise oil demand

Undercover filming highlights Saudi plan to artificially raise oil demand

  Channel 4 News: An undercover sting operation has highlighted a Saudi Arabian government plan to artificially raise global oil demand, Channel 4 News can reveal in an investigation released just days before climate crisis talks begin in the UAE. Officials from Saudi Arabia’s Oil Sustainability Programme (OSP) have admitted the country’s state-backed plan to target Africa and Asia with petrol, oil and diesel products, under a public programme from its Ministry of Energy. The operation was conducted by the…

Read More Read More

COP28: UAE planned to use climate talks to make oil deals

COP28: UAE planned to use climate talks to make oil deals

BBC News reports: The United Arab Emirates planned to use its role as the host of UN climate talks as an opportunity to strike oil and gas deals, the BBC has learned. Leaked briefing documents reveal plans to discuss fossil fuel deals with 15 nations. The UN body responsible for the COP28 summit told the BBC hosts were expected to act without bias or self-interest. The UAE team did not deny using COP28 meetings for business talks, and said “private…

Read More Read More

‘World’s first net zero transatlantic flight’ might not be so green after all

‘World’s first net zero transatlantic flight’ might not be so green after all

Open Democracy reports: Virgin Atlantic and the UK government have been accused of misleading the public over what they claim will be “the world’s first net zero transatlantic flight” ahead of next week’s COP28 summit. The Department for Transport said the flight, scheduled for Tuesday, was “ushering in a new era of guilt-free flying” because it will run entirely on so-called “sustainable aviation fuel” (SAF). But openDemocracy revealed concerns earlier this year that SAF production in the UK may be…

Read More Read More

‘We were treated like dogs’ – freed Palestinians complain of mistreatment

‘We were treated like dogs’ – freed Palestinians complain of mistreatment

  Sky News’ Dominic Waghorn speaks to Palestinian prisoners in East Jerusalem freed from an Israeli jail as part of a deal with Hamas. The Israeli military had refused to let journalists speak to those who have been let out – and Palestinians had also been threatened with fines for celebrating the releases.

Trump has a master plan for destroying the ‘deep state’

Trump has a master plan for destroying the ‘deep state’

Donald P. Moynihan writes: I study government bureaucracies. This is not normally a key political issue. Right now, it is, and everyone should be paying attention. Donald Trump, the former president and current candidate, puts it in apocalyptic terms: “Either the deep state destroys America or we destroy the deep state.” This is not an empty threat. He has a real and plausible plan to utterly transform American government. It will undermine the quality of that government and it will…

Read More Read More

White House grapples with internal divisions on Israel-Gaza

White House grapples with internal divisions on Israel-Gaza

The Washington Post reports: Earlier this month, a group of about 20 distressed White House staffers requested a meeting with President Biden’s top advisers, as Israel’s war in Gaza entered its sixth week. The diverse group of staffers had three main issues they wanted to discuss with White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients, senior adviser Anita Dunn and deputy national security adviser Jon Finer: They wanted to know the administration’s strategy for curbing the number of civilian deaths, the…

Read More Read More

‘Soldiers started shooting at my feet’: Palestinians describe fleeing northern Gaza

‘Soldiers started shooting at my feet’: Palestinians describe fleeing northern Gaza

The Guardian reports: Dogs biting at a human corpse. An exhausted, heavily pregnant woman carrying a toddler on her back. A seemingly lifeless body pushed on a cart. The sights of the Salah al-Din road, the main highway that runs like a spine through Gaza, remain with those who’ve walked it. “What we experienced cannot be seen in horror movies,” said Nahla from Beit Lahia in northern Gaza. Under siege, hungry, thirsty, and encircled by Israeli troops, her family had…

Read More Read More

A troubling Trump pardon for a drug smuggler linked to the Kushners

A troubling Trump pardon for a drug smuggler linked to the Kushners

The New York Times reports: Even amid the uproar over President Donald J. Trump’s freewheeling use of his pardon powers at the end of his term, one commutation stood out. Jonathan Braun of New York had served just two and a half years of a decade-long sentence for running a massive marijuana ring, when Mr. Trump, at 12:51 a.m. on his last day in office, announced he would be freed. Mr. Braun was, to say the least, an unusual candidate…

Read More Read More

To beat Trump, Nikki Haley is trying to speak to all sides of a fractured GOP

To beat Trump, Nikki Haley is trying to speak to all sides of a fractured GOP

The New York Times reports: To beat former President Donald J. Trump in the coming months, Nikki Haley, his former ambassador to the United Nations, must stitch together a coalition of Republicans: Mr. Trump’s most faithful supporters, voters who like his policies but who have grown weary of him personally, and the smaller but still vocal contingent who abhor him entirely. It’s a challenge that will test what political strategists and those who have observed Ms. Haley’s ascent from her…

Read More Read More

Republicans across the South are on a crusade against LGBTQ+ rights

Republicans across the South are on a crusade against LGBTQ+ rights

The Guardian reports: For five months this year, homosexuality was prohibited in a Tennessee college town. In June, the city council of Murfreesboro enacted an ordinance outlawing “indecent exposure, public indecency, lewd behavior, nudity or sexual conduct”. The rule did not explicitly mention homosexuality, but LGBTQ+ people in the town quickly realized that the ordinance references 21-72 of the city code, which categorizes homosexuality as an act of indecent sexual conduct. The ordinance was essentially a covert ban on LGBTQ+…

Read More Read More

At Meta, millions of underage users were an ‘open secret,’ states say

At Meta, millions of underage users were an ‘open secret,’ states say

The New York Times reports: Meta has received more than 1.1 million reports of users under the age of 13 on its Instagram platform since early 2019 yet it “disabled only a fraction” of those accounts, according to a newly unsealed legal complaint against the company brought by the attorneys general of 33 states. Instead, the social media giant “routinely continued to collect” children’s personal information, like their locations and email addresses, without parental permission, in violation of a federal…

Read More Read More