Raise taxes on the rich to tackle inequality, IMF says
'Our research shows that marginal tax rates can be raised without sacrificing economic growth', fund's chief says

It comes as the IMF shifts its attention away from the tax-cutting advice of previous years

Vincent Wood
Wednesday 8 January 2020 19:08 

Increasing the taxes on the rich can help tackle inequality while having little to no impact on the economic growth of a nation, the chief of the IMF has said in a rebuttal to the trickle-down economics favoured by the likes of Donald Trump and Boris Johnson.

Both the US president and the British prime minister have previously advocated for tax cuts for the richest to stimulate the economy – with Mr Johnson later backtracking on this approach in the 2019 election when a pledge to ease the tax burden on the wealthiest remained absent from the party’s manifesto.

However the International Monetary Fund’s managing director Kristalina Georgieva has said in a blog post that “progressive taxation” was required to fix the financial inequality that has steadily seen wealth accumulated by the world’s richest.

She added the money could then be reinvested in supporting less advantaged communities, while new technologies could limit corruption and increase the cash available to governments.

Ms Georgieva wrote: “Progressive taxation is a key component of effective fiscal policy. At the top of the income distribution, our research shows that marginal tax rates can be raised without sacrificing economic growth.

“Utilising digital tools in tax collection can also be part of a comprehensive strategy to boost domestic revenue. Reducing corruption can both improve collection and increase trust in government.

“Most importantly, these strategies can secure the necessary resources to invest in expanding opportunities for communities and individuals that have been falling behind”.

Huge global carbon tax hike needed to avert climate disaster, says IMF
It comes as the IMF shifts its attention away from the tax-cutting advice of previous years, spurred on by weak economic growth across the planet and the emergence of greater concentrations of wealth.

Last year an Oxfam study revealed the world’s richest 26 people – a group including Amazon boss Jeff Bezos and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg – owned as much as the poorest 3.8 billion people on the planet.

The Bulgarian economist went on to advocate for gender budgeting to tackle inequalities between women and men.

She added: “While many countries recognise the need for gender equality and women’s empowerment, governments can use gender budgeting to structure spending and taxation in ways to advance gender equality even further—increasing women’s participation in the work force and, in turn, boosting growth and stability.”

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A mysterious radio signal is coming from a nearby galaxy, scientists say.

And that galaxy looks surprisingly like our own, the astronomers have announced.

Together, the findings could help solve the mystery of fast radio bursts – unexplained, very intense blasts of energy that are being sent through the universe, and could be the result of anything from unknown natural phenomena to alien life, scientists have speculated.

Astronomers have been hunting for the source of fast radio bursts, or FRBs, for more than a decade. Over that time they have detected hundreds of signals, though pinpointed very few.

The search is difficult in part because they last for just miliseconds and could come from anywhere in the sky, making detailed examination of them incredibly difficult.

Astronomers have so far managed to find the precise sources of four of the bursts. Now they have managed to locate another, in a nearby galaxy, taking the total to five.

But they are perhaps more excited about the nature of the galaxy that is sending them out. It appears to be similar to our own, they say.

Are aliens sending us messages from light years away?

"Identifying the host galaxy for FRBs is critical to tell us about what kind of environments FRBs live in, and thus what might actually be producing FRBs," said Sarah Burke-Spolaor, assistant professor of physics and astronomy and co-author on a new paper in Nature.

"This is a question for which scientists are still grasping at straws."

That discovery adds further mystery to the question of where FRBs are coming from. The first of the blasts came from a tiny galaxy made up of metals and newly formed stars, which led scientists to suggest they might be the result of the kind of stars found there – but that would not apply to the newly found galaxy.

That means astronomers will have to consider other explanations of how FRBs are generated, and might suggest there are multiple origins.

The newly discovered source, named FRB ​180916, is only half-a-billion light years from Earth and much nearer than other bursts that have been found in the past. It is seven times closer than the only other repeating burst that has been tracked down.

That could allow for further study of the burst that could give further clues about where the bursts are coming from, scientists said.

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Uri Geller applies to work for Boris Johnson after advert calling for ‘super-talented weirdos’
Entertainer pledges to use ‘psychic powers’ to help Conservative government
Conrad Duncan
Self-proclaimed psychic Uri Geller has applied for a job with the UK government after Dominic Cummings sent out an invitation for “super-talented weirdos” to work in Downing Street.

In a a bizarre blog post earlier this month​, Boris Johnson’s top adviser asked for unusual people to apply for roles ahead of a planned shake-up of the civil service.

Mr Geller has apparently accepted that invitation and pledged to use his alleged psychic abilities to assist Mr Johnson’s administration.

“You say you want someone on the ‘frontiers of the science of prediction’? Well look no further,” he wrote to Mr Cummings.

“I have genuine psychic powers – just ask Mossad, the CIA and the Pentagon.”

The Israeli-British entertainer told Mr Cummings he has contacts with “world leaders and top CEOs”, and more than 20 years of experience in espionage and intelligence.

Mr Geller said he had worked for the FBI and the CIA on a range of projects including “using Mind Power to erase KGB computer files, tracking serial killers and attending nuclear disarmament negotiations.”

“The CIA concluded that I demonstrated paranormal perception ability in a ‘convincing and unambiguous manner,’” he added.

Uri Geller vows to stop Brexit telepathically if Theresa May does not
Last month, Mr Geller claimed he had assisted Mr Johnson’s election victory by giving his team a spoon energised with positive energy.

The spoon was apparently part of his strategy to use “mind power” to prevent Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn from becoming prime minister.

A source close to Mr Geller told The Telegraph that he was “100 per cent serious” about working in the government.

“He is particularly keen on using his powers to tackle growing tensions in the Middle East,” the source said.

Although Mr Geller is currently in Israel organising the opening of a museum about himself, he said he would “consider a move back to Britain for the right position.”

Mr Cummings’ job advert has been criticised by employment law experts and the head of Britain’s biggest civil servants’ union, who said his comments implied he “wants to hire and fire at will”.

“I’ll bin you within weeks if you don’t fit – don’t complain later because I made it clear now,” the political adviser wrote on his blog.

Mr Cummings was also criticised for using a standard Gmail account to collect CVs for government roles.

Iran plane crash may have been ‘shootdown event’, aviation experts say
Ukraine initially said plane crash was result of technical failure, before retracting statement

Doubts have been cast over Iranian assertions that a deadly Ukrainian plane crash near Tehran was the result of technical failures, with independent aviation operations experts saying a “shootdown” was the most likely explanation.

Iranian officials said technical issues were behind the Ukrainian International Airlines (UIA) crash, which happened shortly after take-off from Imam Khomeini International airport on Wednesday morning, killing all 176 people on board.

The Ukrainian embassy in Tehran initially echoed this stance, but later retracted its statement, and instead said it was for an official commission to determine the cause of the accident.

While some aviation experts said it was too early to speculate, the OPS group, an aviation risk-monitoring group, said: “We would recommend the starting assumption to be that this was a shootdown event, similar to MH17 – until there is clear evidence to the contrary,” highlighting photos of the crash site which they said “show obvious projectile holes in the fuselage and a wing section.”

UIA has also discounted the possibility of technical problems, insisting there was “nothing wrong” with the three-year-old Boeing 737-800, which had undergone a scheduled technical check only two days earlier.

“We guarantee the safety of our aircraft and the high qualification of our crews,” a spokesperson said.

People and rescue teams are pictured amid bodies and debris
One of the engines

Vadim Lukashevich, an independent Russian aviation expert, told The Independent that from evidence in the public domain, it was clear that there was some sort of fire on board, and that the plane broke up upon impact. The rest, he said, was “conjecture”. 

“In any air accident, there are usually three factors: human, weather and mechanical. Here you can add a fourth – the political. We know that a few hours before the crash, Iran sent missiles over to US targets in Iraq. They were expecting a response by air. We know they were on full alert.” 

It is too early to rule out an external strike, he said – even if Iranian claims that one of the engines caught fire turned out to be true. 

“An engine fire does not exclude the possibility that it was caused by a missile strike,” he said. “The fact that Iran immediately discounted all explanations bar mechanical is suspicious.” 

In light of the obvious political tensions in the area, it was a criminal error not to close off airspace to civil aviation, Mr Lukashevich added. “At a minimum, the Iranians tugged a tiger by his ear and didn’t run away.”

Iran has said it will not be handing over the plane’s black box recorder to US plane manufacturer Boeing.

Philip Baum, the editor of Aviation Security International magazine, said it was too early to speculate.

He told The Independent the incident was notable “given the fact it was in Iran and the timing, and if you associate two states with shootdowns, as victims, then Ukraine springs to mind purely because of MH17,” and Iran, given the 1988 US shooting down of an Iranian civilian plane.

But, he added, it could just be “a bizarre coincidence that it should happen at this moment of time”.

“I just think there is nothing to indicate that it was a shootdown, and if it was shot down then by whom?”

Watch more

Everything we know about the Ukraine Boeing 737 crash in Iran
Zeev Sarig, the former head of Ben Gurion airport in Israel, said a technical failure could be behind the plane crash, or an explosive device on board. 

Speaking to Russian news agency RIA, he said that while a full investigation was necessary, the two main possibilities were, “a bomb on board that runs on a timer or altitude monitor, exploding when the plane reaches a certain height” or “a technical malfunction about which we don’t know anything yet. Unfortunately from what I see that looks less likely.”

Qassem Biniaz, a spokesperson for Iran’s road and transportation ministry, said the pilot “lost control of the plane” after a fire broke out in one of its engines.

The aircraft is a predecessor to the Boeing 737 Max 8, which has been grounded for 10 months following the Lion Air crash in 2018 and the Ethiopian Airlines crash in 2019. 

Faulty flight-control software on board those two Boeing 737 Max 8 airliners resulted in the planes nose-diving, leading to the deaths of 346 people.

Airline officials said most of the passengers were en route to the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, transiting through there to other destinations.

Three Britons were among those who died.

On Wednesday morning, Iranian missiles hit US military bases in Iraq, in response to last week’s targeted US killing of top Iranian general, Qassem Soleimani.

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Fox News books then ‘cancels’ Geraldo Rivera after says he will urge Trump to show restraint over Iran

'Supporters of Donald Trump have to have the guts to tell him this war is a stupid idea'

Conservative talk show host Geraldo Rivera has claimed his Fox News appearance was cancelled after he said he would urge Donald Trump to show restraint in the ongoing political crisis with Iran.

 Fox News' Sean Hannity has floated the idea of bombing oil refineries in Iran to create 'major poverty' for its people

In a sign of a split at the network over how to respond to the president’s escalation of tensions, Mr Rivera suggested he was pulled from Sean Hannity’s show over his opposition to military action.

The talk show host, who is a regular Fox News contributor, has repeatedly called for Mr Trump to act as a peace maker in the conflict and avoid another war in the Middle East.

“Supporters of @realDonaldTrump have to have the guts to tell him this war is a stupid idea,” Mr Rivera tweeted on Tuesday.

Fox News’ regular commentators have been deeply split over how Mr Trump should respond to Iranian threats of retaliation after the killing of general Qassem Soleimani.

Host Tucker Carlson has criticised conservatives who have pushed for military conflict with Iran, while contributor Pete Hegseth has cheered on the president's confrontational approach.

The right-wing network is thought to be one of Mr Trump's main sources of news and has been noted as a key guide for his decision-making on political issues.

On Friday morning, a discussion between Mr Rivera and Brian Kilmeade on the channel descended into chaos when Mr Kilmeade said he would “cheer on” military attacks against Iran.

“Then you, like [senator] Lindsey Graham, have never met a war you didn't like,” Mr Rivera told the Fox & Friends presenter.

Fox News has been approached for comment on the alleged cancellation.

Mr Hannity’s show on Tuesday, sans Mr Rivera, included a discussion with senator Ted Cruz, in which Mr Hannity floated the idea of bombing oil refineries in Iran to create “major poverty”. 

“They have three major refineries in Iran, senator. Three,” Mr Hannity said.

“I would imagine those refineries blew up one day, they got themselves a hell of a domestic problem, because that's going to result in major poverty for the people of Iran.”

The Fox News host then suggested the US could encourage regime change in the country by arming citizens who want to take down the Iranian government.

“If they want regime change, that's up to them. Maybe we could help them with arms and help them, you know,” he said.

The political crisis in the Middle East escalated again on Wednesday after Iran launched missile strikes against two US-Iraqi airbases.

Mr Trump tweeted in response that “all is well” following the attack and said assessments of casualties and damages were “so far, so good”.

Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister, has suggested the attack is the only retaliation planned for the killing of Soleimani and could signal the end of the conflict.  

“We do not seek escalation or war, but will defend ourselves against any aggression,” Mr Zarif said in a statement.

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It may be a sign of public discontent with returning to work after Christmas that news of supposed plans for a four-day week in Finland spread so rapidly around the world yesterday.

Reports from national publications across Europe, regrettably including this website, noted support from Sanna Marin, Finland’s prime minister, for the introduction of a shorter working week.

The only problem is a four-day week is not part of the Finnish government's plans and is not expected to be government policy in the near future.

An official from Ms Marin’s office told The Independent that the policy was “more of a future vision and a potential future goal for the Social Democratic Party (SDP)”.

Nevertheless, the story spread so widely that the government was forced to issue an official correction on social media, pointing out that there are no mentions of a four-day week in the government’s programme and insisting the issue is not on their agenda.

Even Päivi Anttikoski, the Finnish government’s communication director, has said it is “a complete mystery” how the story ended up being published by so many websites.

Here’s where the story came from and how it spread around the world.
1Where did the four-day week story come from?

There is a small amount of truth to the reports, in the sense that Finland’s prime minister is supportive of a four-day week in theory.

When Ms Marin was the minister of transport and communications in August 2019, she made a brief comment in support of the idea during a panel discussion at the SDP's 120th anniversary event.

“A four-day work week, a six-hour workday. Why couldn’t it be the next step? Is eight hours really the ultimate truth?” she said, according to the Helsinki Times newspaper.

“I believe people deserve to spend more time with their families, loved ones, hobbies and other aspects of life, such as culture. This could be the next step for us in working life.”

Ms Marin also tweeted about the idea after the panel and said “shorter working hours can and should be discussed.”

“A 4-day week or a 6-hour day with a decent wage may be a utopia today, but may be true in the future,” she said.

These comments, which were briefly reported on in Finland at the time, appear to be the entire basis of all the news stories that have emerged in recent days.
2How did the story end up being published in the UK?

The claim appears to have been misconstrued as it was recirculated.

There was understandably a renewed interest in Ms Marin’s political views after she was elected as Finland’s prime minister in December 2019 at the remarkably young age of 34.

A Huffington Post profile soon after her election made a passing reference to her comments, although it incorrectly combined the four-day week and six-hour day ideas to make a 24-hour working week.

The story then floated around the internet for a few weeks, popping up on an Austrian website called Kontrast (on 16 December) and a website called New Europe (on 2 January).

The latter story framed Ms Marin’s suggestion as a “call” for policy change.

According to the website News Now Finland, its opening paragraph said: “Sanna Marin, Finland’s new Prime Minister since early December, has called for the introduction of a flexible working schedule in the country that would foresee a 4-day-week and 6-hours working day.”

The spread of the story then increased rapidly when MailOnline, one of the most visited news websites in the world, published a story entitled “Finland to introduce a four-day working week and SIX-HOUR days under plans drawn up by 34-year-old prime minister Sanna Marin”.

From there, Ms Marin’s comments spread, with varying degrees of scepticism, to news outlets across the world. These outlets included The Independent.
3Is Finland going to have a four-day week?

Ms Marin’s comments were simply stating an aspiration - so in short, you shouldn’t plan on moving to Finland if you’re looking for shorter working hours.

In August, her suggestion was met with opposition from some politicians, such as Arto Satonen (from the centre-right National Coalition Party) who tweeted in response: “Does the SDP live in the real world?”

Similarly, Antti Kurvinen, an MP for the Centre Party, said he did not believe a shorter working week was “a realistic idea in the short or medium term”.

“It does feel difficult to fund our well-being while reducing working time. Our problem is rather that there’s too much unemployment and working doesn’t pay,” Mr Kurvinen told the Finnish newspaper Uusi Suomi.

Most importantly, the government has made it very clear that it is not planning on introducing a four-day week in the near future.

Ms Marin is also unsurprisingly not going to comment on the issue again any time soon, according to Mr Anttikoski.

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How Hollywood star Jean Seberg was destroyed by the FBI

As a biopic about the troubled actor arrives in UK cinemas, Geoffrey Macnab looks back at one of the strangest and most contradictory film careers of the postwar year

Jean Seberg on a phone call during the filming of ‘Joan of Arc’

, directed by Otto Preminger, in 1957, in London ( AFP/Getty )

The circumstances of Jean Seberg’s death 40 years ago in late August 1979 were squalid and pathetic. The American star’s body lay decomposing in a car on a street in Paris for 10 days before the French police discovered it. There was a bottle of barbiturates and a suicide note beside the corpse. As the press reported, her body had “baked in the sun” and the odour was “unimaginably foul”. This was the actress who, at the start of her career, was described as “so unimaginably fresh” by her colleagues.

Paris was the city with which Seberg was most closely associated. Every film lover remembers her in Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless (1960) in her white New York Herald Tribune T-shirt, selling newspapers and gallivanting around the streets with her co-star, Jean-Paul Belmondo.

Seberg had one of the strangest and most contradictory careers of any Hollywood star during the postwar years.

“She was so misunderstood. It’s not like you need to hero-worship a celebrity, they are just people you want to look at. The fact that people stared at her and fixated on things that were not real, projections: that really ultimately destroyed her,” Kristen Stewart, who plays her in the new film, Seberg, commented of the ill-fated actress in a Vanity Fair interview. As an actor who has worked on both big Hollywood productions like Twilight and in independent French arthouse features, Stewart seems perfectly qualified to play her.

Seberg, out in UK cinemas this Friday, isn’t a straight biopic. Its focus is its subject’s deadly entanglement with the FBI. Days after her suicide, the FBI admitted that its agents had plotted to ruin her reputation as part of their counter-intelligence programme, Cointelpro, authorised by FBI founder, J Edgar Hoover himself. Seberg’s crime, in Hoover’s eyes, was her involvement in political causes and her support of the Black Panther Party. In particular, they were suspicious of her close links with Black Power leader, Hakim Jamal (played in the film by Anthony Mackie).

Kristen Stewart as Jean Seberg in Benedict Andrews’s film ‘Seberg‘ (Amazon Studios)

In 1970, the FBI planted the false rumour that Seberg was pregnant by a Black Panther Party member in order to “cause her embarrassment” and “cheapen her image” with the American public. Their plan worked. It was dispiriting but inevitable that some gossip columnists followed the false leads that the FBI dangled in front of them. From the FBI’s point of view, she was involved in radical politics, had contributed financially to the Black Panthers and was therefore fair game. The story was picked up by gossip columnist, Joyce Haber, who referred obliquely to it in the Los Angeles Times. Newsweek also wrote about it and named Seberg.

“Under the ruthless gaze of the FBI, the threads of Jean’s life come apart,” Benedict Andrews, the director of Seberg, pointed out. The assault on her reputation set in motion the events that led to her death a decade later. At the time of the leak, Seberg had indeed been pregnant. In the wake of reading the false stories about herself, she went into labour. Her baby was born prematurely and died a few days later.

The woman Hoover set out to crush was the quintessential young American, “the golden sunflower girl” from the midwest, as she was characterised. A pharmacist’s daughter who had grown up in Marshalltown, Iowa, she had won Hollywood’s version of the Lottery by landing the lead role in Otto Preminger’s George Bernard Shaw adaptation, Saint Joan (1957). The autocratic Preminger had launched a nationwide talent hunt for a new Joan of Arc. A reported 18,000 girls had sent in pictures and resumes and 3,000 had been given personal auditions. Seberg got the part. She was the one, as TV show host Ed Sullivan put it, who had “caught lightning in a bottle”. It was the equivalent of Vivien Leigh being cast as Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind (1939).

Seberg and Jean-Paul Belmondo in Jean-Luc Godard’s 

‘Breathless’ (Films Around The World)

Preminger was the perfect gentleman off-set but, when the cameras began to roll, he turned into a bad-tempered ogre. He used every ruse at his disposal to publicise the film and its new young star. It would have made the perfect story about overnight stardom if it hadn’t been for the fact that the film didn’t turn out very well. By her own admission, Seberg wasn’t obvious casting. She talked about being burnt at the stake twice, first in making the movie and then by the critics. Preminger cast her in a second film, Bonjour Tristesse (1958) but then discarded her. “He used me like a Kleenex and then threw me away”, is how she described her treatment at his hands.

The irony is that Preminger had been right all along. Seberg really was a special talent. She had a spontaneity, mischief and lambent grace on screen that immediately enraptured the young critics and would-be filmmakers from Cahiers du Cinéma in France. “When Jean Seberg is on the screen, which is all the time, you can’t look at anything else,” Francois Truffaut enthused about her performance in Bonjour Tristesse. Godard and Claude Chabrol were equally smitten with her.

In one of the more bizarre transformations in Hollywood history, the midwestern girl-next-door type became the sacred muse of the French Nouvelle Vague.

Seberg was wryly humorous about the effect she exercised on French male directors. “I was their new Jerry Lewis, I suppose,” she told journalist Rex Reed, comparing herself to the American comedian who made goofy films with Dean Martin and was treated with near contempt by American critics but revered as “Le Roi du Crazy” by their French counterparts. “Godard is like a Paul Klee painting, always hiding behind those funny dark glasses,” she suggested, going on to call the French auteurs who worshipped her “very strange little men”.
Read more

A reminder of just how unsettling Polanski still is

Why are British films not angrier about the state of the country?

How ‘Manhattan’ anticipated Woody Allen’s behaviour

Thanks to Breathless, Seberg also became more highly valued back in Hollywood. Director Robert Rossen, who cast her in one of her greatest roles as the beautiful schizophrenic opposite Warren Beatty and Peter Fonda in Lillith (1964) spoke of her “flawed American girl quality, sort of like a cheerleader who’s cracked up”. She had prominent roles in all-star blockbusters like Airport (1970) and successfully held her own against such scene-stealers as Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood in Paint Your Wagon (1969).

That, though, was the period before Hoover and the FBI set about destroying her just as surely as Otto Preminger had tried to create her as a star in the late Fifties in the first place.

Preminger and Hoover bookend her career. The media colluded with those two patriarchs, building her up and then knocking her down.

Elements of Seberg’s story are utterly heartbreaking. As Alistair Cooke told British listeners in one of his Letters from America broadcasts the week after her death, she took her prematurely born baby’s corpse back home to Iowa “in a glass coffin as a glaring proof that the baby was white – an excessive reaction perhaps but in 1970, she knew that the FBI could and did destroy hundreds of radicals and non radicals”.

On each anniversary of the baby’s death, her then-husband Romain Gary later revealed, she had attempted suicide.

Seberg as the beautiful schizophrenic who starred opposite \Warren Beatty and Peter Fonda in ‘Lillith’ (1964) (Glasshouse/Rex)

Seberg continued to work throughout the 1970s, making an experimental film with Philippe Garrel and collaborating on projects with her third husband, Dennis Berry. She wrote to Ingmar Bergman, the great Swedish director, telling him that she looked a little like Bibi Andersson, who had starred in Bergman films from The Seventh Seal (1957) to Persona (1966), and expressing her fervent desire to work with him. The letter is kept in Bergman’s archives. He received it and read it – but didn’t deign to reply to it.

If Seberg was feeling marginalised and paranoid in her final years, you could hardly blame her given the FBI harassment, the upheaval in her private life and the alarming way her career had begun to creak. As her biographer David Richards notes, she was putting on weight, drinking too much and seemed to be in a state of permanent “psychological siege”. By the late 1970s, she was close to being forgotten. Her death, though, put her right back on the front pages. The public was reminded of just how abominably she had been treated both by Hollywood and by the FBI. There was a sense of frustration over talent that had never been properly fulfilled. Then again, as is pointed out in Mark Rappaport’s dramatised documentary, From The Journals of Jean Seberg (1995), most of her films may have been “mediocre”, but she made one or two “great ones” and that is more than in most careers. Now, with Stewart portraying her on screen (and already being talked up for awards), Seberg is likely to be rediscovered all over again

Seberg is released in UK cinemas on 10 January

Environment
2019 was second hottest year in Earth's recorded history, says EU's climate monitoring service

Scientists say climate change findings are ‘unquestionably alarming’

Jon StoneBrussels @joncstone

Wildfires rage under plumes of smoke in Bairnsdale, Australia, 30 December, 2019. ( AP )


Last year was Earth’s second hottest year on record, with the decade as a whole the warmest in history, the European Union’s climate monitoring service has said.

Data released by the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) found that the average temperature in 2019 was only a few hundredths of a degree below the record 2016 level.

In Europe specifically, 2019 was the hottest year on record, the EU‘s climate service said. Within the decade, Copernicus also found that the five last years were the hottest on record for the planet.

“These are unquestionably alarming signs,” Copernicus director Jean-Noel Thepaut said.

Global temperatures in 2019 were 0.6 Celsius hotter than the average in 1981-2010. Additionally the last five years were 1.1C-1.2C warmer than the pre-industrial era.

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“2019 has been another exceptionally warm year, in fact the second warmest globally in our dataset, with many of the individual months breaking records,” said Carlo Buontempo, head of C3S.

2016’s temperatures were boosted by a once-in-a-century strength El Nino, but despite this 2019 was just 0.04C cooler, suggesting a continued rising underlying trend.


The service also found that atmospheric carbon concentrations that drive higher temperatures continued to rise in 2019, reaching their highest levels on record across the planet.

Scientists at the United Nations have said that manmade greenhouse gas emissions need to be cut by 7.6 per cent each year until 2030 to limit temperature rises to 1.5C – a path current pledges do not match.

While global warming of 1.5C will still have significant negative effects, the effects are less pronounced than if warming reached 2.0C. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says.
2019 also saw a rise in climate protest movements (Angela Christofilou/The Independent)

Human activities are estimated to have already caused 1.0C warming, with 1.5C likely to be hit between 2030 and 2052 if human activities continue at the current rate. The UK government policy is currently to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050.



The IPCC says the difference between 1.5C and 2.0C warming will reduce the risk of catastrophic droughts, extinction, sea level rises, and that “climate-related risks to health, livelihoods, food security, water supply, human security, and economic growth” would be less extreme

Climate change: Decade's defining issue in pictures
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Crucially, scientist say that the changes that will still be needed to cope with 1.5C warming will be less extreme than at 2.0C warming and that people will have more time to implement them.

While climatologists are wary of linking specific weather events to climate change, 2020 began with a series of natural disasters that appear to be linked to hotter temperatures, such as wildfires in Australia and deadly flooding in Indonesia. Similar catastrophes are expected to become even more frequent as global temperatures rise.

The European Commission’s new president Ursula von der Leyen has made a Green Deal her flagship policy, with the aim of taking the European Union to net zero emissions by 2050. She has described climate change as an “existential threat”.

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DR Congo measles outbreak: 6,000 killed as disease claims three times as many lives as Ebola

‘Thousands of Congolese families need our help,’ aid workers say in plea for assistance

Measles has killed three times as many people as Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in what the World Health Organisation (WHO) described as “the world’s worst measles epidemic”.

More than 6,000 people have died following the measles outbreak, with more than 310,000 cases reported in the country since the beginning of 2019. The WHO warned the outbreak would continue if more funding was not made available.

And despite $27.6m (£21m) having been mobilised in order to tackle the problem, the organisation said a further $40m was needed for a six-month vaccination programme that would protect children between the ages of six and 16.

“We recognise the government’s engagement in the efforts to end the outbreak and we are grateful for the generosity of our donors. But we still need to do more,” said Dr Amedee Prosper Djiguimde, the officer in charge of the WHO office in the DRC.

“Thousands of Congolese families need our help to lift the burden of this prolonged epidemic from their backs. We cannot achieve this without adequate finances.”

s well as needing additional funding to finance a vaccination programme in the county, health workers in DR Congo also face problems with infrastructure in-country that hampers the uptake of vaccinations – which have been available for several decades – while vaccination use is also low in areas of the country where armed groups are active.

“We are doing our utmost to bring this epidemic under control,” said Dr Matshidiso Moeti, the WHO regional director for Africa. “Yet to be truly successful we must ensure that no child faces the unnecessary risk of death from a disease that is easily preventable by a vaccine.
It comes as health resources in the country are also under strain from the Ebola outbreak that has become the second-worst in history, resulting in the deaths of more than 2,231 people since August 2018.

Additional reporting by AP

Shareholders call on Barclays to end fossil fuel investment in landmark climate crisis resolution

Lender found to be Europe's biggest funder of fossil fuel projects since 2015 Paris Climate Agreement

Barclays is being formally challenged by shareholders to stop financing fossil fuel companies that are driving the climate crisis, in the first resolution of its kind filed against a European bank.
Eleven pension funds managing £130bn have filed the motion calling on Barclays to bring its activities into line with the Paris Climate Agreement.
The resolution is set to be voted on at Barclays’ annual meeting in May, and would require the bank to stop funding any company that has not aligned itself with the Paris goals, which aim to limit global warming to 1.5C.
Since the agreement was signed in 2015, Barclays has provided $85bn (£65bn) of funding to fossil fuel firms and carbon-intensive projects.
That record makes it Europe’s biggest financier of fossil fuels and the sixth-largest in the world.
The shareholder resolution is the latest example of a growing movement for large investors to apply pressure on companies and banks seen as damaging to the environment amid mounting concern about the climate crisis.
It comes days after Bank of England governor Mark Carney said that financial firms had been too slow to reduce investment in fossil fuels. He warned that many assets were at risk of being rendered “worthless” by the climate crisis.
Under Mr Carney’s leadership, the Bank recently announced plans to conduct “stress tests” designed to forecast how well financial firms would cope with various future climate change scenarios. Those that fail to pass the tests could be required to hold more capital or get rid of assets.
Jeanne Martin, campaign manager at ShareAction, which organised the shareholder resolution, said: “The message is clear. Piecemeal changes in energy policy will no longer cut it. 
“For too long, minor policy improvements have provided cover for the banking sector, while failing to halt fossil fuel financing. 
“We know what needs to happen. Banks must align their lending with the science. If Barclays supports the Paris Agreement, it will support this resolution.”
Barclays’ board does not have to act in line with the resolution, even if a majority of shareholders vote in favour of it. But it is likely to face unwelcome publicity and growing pressure to change tack.
Other European banks have begun to take steps to align with the Paris Agreement. In June, French lender Crédit Agricole committed to fully phase out its exposure to the coal industry by 2030 for EU and OECD countries; 2040 for China; 2050 for the rest of the world.  
BNP Paribas committed in 2017 to no longer do business with companies focused on oil and gas from tar sands, one of the most damaging forms of fossil fuel extraction. 
The bank will also no longer finance projects that are mainly involved in the transportation and export of oil and gas from tar sands. 
Laura Chappell, chief executive of Brunel Pension Partnership, which is backing the Barclays resolution, said: “Brunel Pension Partnership Limited believes climate change poses significant risks to global financial stability and could thereby create climate-related financial risks to our own business operations, portfolios and client partner funds, unless action is taken to mitigate these risks.”  
“The lending practices of many banks poses a serious threat to the goals to the Paris agreement. As such, we welcome ShareAction’s call to the world’s largest banks to integrate climate change risk assessment and to set and disclose adequate phase-out targets in response. We hope the Barclays Board formally supports this resolution.”
A spokesperson for Barclays said: “We are working to help tackle climate change, and we meet with Share Action and other shareholders regularly to update them on our progress.”
Under Mr Carney’s leadership, the Bank recently announced plans to conduct “stress tests” designed to forecast how well financial firms would cope with various future climate change scenarios. Those that fail to pass the tests could be required to hold more capital or get rid of assets.
“For too long, minor policy improvements have provided cover for the banking sector, while failing to halt fossil fuel financing. 
“We know what needs to happen. Banks must align their lending with the science. If Barclays supports the Paris Agreement, it will support this resolution.
Barclays’ board does not have to act in line with the resolution, even if a majority of shareholders vote in favour of it. But it is likely to face unwelcome publicity and growing pressure to change tack.
Other European banks have begun to take steps to align with the Paris Agreement. In June, French lender Crédit Agricole committed to fully phase out its exposure to the coal industry by 2030 for EU and OECD countries; 2040 for China; 2050 for the rest of the world. 
 BNP Paribas committed in 2017 to no longer do business with companies focused on oil and gas from tar sands, one of the most damaging forms of fossil fuel extraction. 
The bank will also no longer finance projects that are mainly involved in the transportation and export of oil and gas from tar sands. 
Laura Chappell, chief executive of Brunel Pension Partnership, which is backing the Barclays resolution, said: “Brunel Pension Partnership Limited believes climate change poses significant risks to global financial stability and could thereby create climate-related financial risks to our own business operations, portfolios and client partner funds, unless action is taken to mitigate these risks.”  
“The lending practices of many banks poses a serious threat to the goals to the Paris agreement. As such, we welcome ShareAction’s call to the world’s largest banks to integrate climate change risk assessment and to set and disclose adequate phase-out targets in response. We hope the Barclays Board formally supports this resolution.”
A spokesperson for Barclays said: “We are working to help tackle climate change, and we meet with Share Action and other shareholders regularly to update them on our progress.”

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