Ukraine will get worse for isolated Russia, analyst says on state TV


Service members of pro-Russian troops stand guard in Mariupol


Tue, May 17, 2022
By Guy Faulconbridge

LONDON (Reuters) - One military analyst had a brutally frank message for viewers of Russian state television: The war in Ukraine will get much worse for Russia, which is facing a mass mobilisation supported by the United States while Russia is almost totally isolated.

Since President Vladimir Putin ordered the Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine, Russia state media - and especially state television - have supported the Kremlin's position. Few dissenting voices have been given air time.

That appeared to have changed on Monday night when one well-known military analyst gave a blunt assessment to Russia's main state television channel of what Putin casts as the "special military operation".

"You should not swallow informational tranquilizers," Mikhail Khodaryonok, a retired colonel, told the "60 Minutes" talk show on Rossiya-1 hosted by Olga Skabeyeva, one of the most pro-Kremlin journalists on television.

"The situation, frankly speaking, will get worse for us," said Khodaryonok, a regular guest on state TV who gives often candid assessments of the situation.

He said that Ukraine could mobilise 1 armed million men.

Khodaryonok, a military columnist for the gazeta.ru newspaper and a graduate of one of Russia's elite military academies, cautioned before the invasion that such a step would not be in Russia's national interests.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has killed thousands of people, displaced millions more and raised fears of the most serious confrontation between Russia and the United States since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

Khodaryonok and Skabeyeva could not be reached for comment.

SENSE OF REALISM

The war has also shown the post-Soviet limits of Russia's military, intelligence and economic power: despite Putin's attempts to bolster his armed forces, the Russian military has fared badly in many battles in Ukraine.

An encirclement of Kyiv was abandoned and Russia has turned its focus instead towards trying to establish control over Ukraine's eastern Donbas region. The West has supplied billions of dollars of arms to Ukrainian forces.

Losses are not publicly reported but Ukraine says Russian losses are worse than the 15,000 Soviets killed in the Soviet-Afghan war of 1979-1989.

"The desire to defend one's motherland in the sense that it exists in Ukraine - it really does exist there and they intend to fight to the last," Khodaryonok said before he was interrupted by Skabeyeva.

The biggest strategic consequences of Russia's invasion to date have been the unusual unity of the United States' European allies and bids by Sweden and Finland to join the U.S.-led NATO military alliance.

Khodaryonok said Russia needed to see the reality.

"The main thing in our business is have a sense of military-political realism: if you go beyond that then the reality of history will hit you so hard that you will not know what hit you," he said.

"Don't wave rockets in the direction of Finland for goodness sake - it just looks rather funny," he said.

Russia, he said, was isolated.

"The main deficiency of our military-political position is that we are in full geopolitical solitude and - however we don't want to admit it - practically the whole world is against us - and we need to get out of this situation."

(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Alison Williams)

YouTuber Emma Chamberlain’s Met Gala necklace, allegedly stolen from Indian royalty, sparks debat



Jane Nam
Mon, May 16, 2022,

Twitter users expressed divided opinions on popular YouTuber Emma Chamberlain’s Met Gala, Cartier-designed diamond choker, which was allegedly stolen by the British from India.

The necklace, lent to the vlogger for the event, reportedly disappeared from the Patiala royal treasury around 1948. Prior to that, it had belonged to Indian ruler Maharaja Bhupinder Singh of Patiala, one of the richest men in the world during his reign from 1900-1938.

In the center of the choker is a golf ball-sized, yellow 23.6 carat De Beers diamond, at one point the seventh-largest in the world. With an additional 2,930 diamonds, the necklace has a total carat weight of over 1,000.

The necklace reportedly resurfaced at a London store in 1998, where French luxury brand Cartier, which specializes in high-end jewelry, then acquired it.

Netizens commented throughout the week about the necklace, which Chamberlain, who has over 11.4 million YouTube subscribers, had worn to the Met Gala on May 2.



“Okay so nobody is gonna talk about Emma chamberlain wearing literally a necklace worn by a south Asian king at the met gala? When it comes to south Asians it’s always ignored and rejected SPEAK ABOUT THIS,” commented one user with the hashtag #culturalappropriation.

“This fills me up with rage, this level of disrespect is unacceptable,” wrote another user.



Others were not so impressed, arguing that Chamberlain was not to blame.

“Plz why did I just see someone say they think Emma Chamberlain should have kept the Maharaj's necklace and delivered it back to India... as if she had that much power.”

Some simply did not find the situation problematic, with multiple netizens claiming that “nobody cares.”

S. Vijay Kumar, founder of the India Pride Project, a citizens’ platform that traces India’s lost treasures, explained the difficulty of asserting ownership over stolen antiques.

He listed the Koh-i-Noor and Golconda Orlov diamond as other examples of smuggled jewels that have found their way to other countries, including the latter which is currently located in the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia.

“It’s a pity that India doesn’t assert its weight in seeking to stop the open auction and display of its plundered treasures,” he added.

Ambiguity in international laws make it nearly impossible to obtain stolen items, especially considering that many of them have no documentation that would make it possible to trace back their ownership history.

THE MOONSTONE, COLIN WILKIE

https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.202518

Why Urdu language draws ire of India’s right-wing


Zoya Mateen - BBC News, Delhi
Mon, May 16, 2022,

Urdu is a hugely popular and widespread language in India but some want to disown it

Who does Urdu belong to?

India's right-wing seems to think it's a foreign import, forced upon by so-called Islamic invaders.

The latest fracas happened in April when a reporter from a far-right news channel barged into a popular fast-food chain and heckled its employees for labelling a bag of snacks in what she thought was Urdu. The label turned out to be in Arabic, which many say underlines the broad-brush attempt to classify anything that has roots in Islamic culture as the same.

Last year, clothing retailer Fabindia was forced to withdraw an advert whose campaign title was in Urdu after protests from ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders.

In the past, politicians elected to state assemblies have been barred from taking oath in Urdu; artists have been stopped from painting Urdu graffiti; and cities and neighbourhoods have been renamed. Petitions have been filed seeking the removal of Urdu words from school textbooks.

Such attacks on Urdu, many believe, is part of a larger push to marginalise India's Muslim population.

"It clearly shows that there is a pattern of attack on symbols associated with Muslims," says Rizwan Ahmad, professor of sociolinguistics at Qatar University.

Is India waging a 'war' on Islamic names?

'Why a name change killed my city's soul'

Others say it also fits a broader right-wing agenda of the political rewriting of India's past.

"The only way that the political project of shackling Indian languages by religion can proceed is by cutting off modern Indians from a huge amount of their history," historian Audrey Truschke says.

"That severing may serve the current government's interests, but it is a cruel denial of heritage for everyone else."

The birth of Urdu can be traced to the late 18th Century

The BBC tried to reach out to three BJP leaders in connection with this story but met with no response.

A supple and expressive language, Urdu has been the preferred choice for some of India's most famous poets and writers. Some of India's most acclaimed writing has come from Urdu writers like Saadat Hassan Manto and Ismat Chughtai.

Urdu's elegance and emphasis on smooth diction have inspired both fiery nationalist poetry and romantic ghazals (semi-classical songs). It has also been the beating heart of Bollywood songs.

Opponents of the language say that Urdu belongs to Muslims whereas Hindus only speak Hindi. But history and lived experiences show quite the opposite.

What we know as Urdu today can be traced back to Turkish, Arabic, and Persian, all of which arrived in India through waves of trade and conquests.

"This common tongue was born out of the cultural hybridisation that happened in the Indian subcontinent," historian Alok Rai says.

"And it acquired different names over its evolution: Hindavi, Hindustani, Hindi, Urdu or Rekhta."

A rare Urdu book in a worn out state at a public library in Delhi

Dr Rai says that 'Urdu' - using quotes to differentiate it from its spoken forms - was the literary style invented in the last years of the Mughal dynasty in the late 18th Century by the aristocracy that clustered around the courts in Delhi.

This 'Urdu' was not seen as a Muslim language, as it is today, but had a class element - it was the tongue spoken by the elite of north India, which included Hindus as well.

'Hindi', on the other hand, was the literary style that developed in the late 19-20th Century in present-day Uttar Pradesh state, drawing from the same common base "but seeking to mark a difference".

While 'Urdu' borrowed words mostly from Persian - the elite lingua franca of medieval India - 'Hindi' took them from Sanskrit, the language of ancient Hindu texts.

"So both the languages rest on a shared grammatical base," Dr Rai explains, "but both Hindi and Urdu have also for political reasons developed myths of origin" .

What Dr Rai says is that speakers of both communities laid claim to what was a common language but ended up dividing it out of their anxiety of maintaining a separate identity.

"The whole situation would be slightly farcical if it didn't have such tragic consequences," he says.

The right-wing thinks Urdu belongs to Muslims whereas Hindus only speak Hindi - but that is far from the truth

The division was strengthened under the rule of the British, who began to identify Hindi with Hindus, and Urdu with Muslims. But the portrayal of Urdu as foreign is also not new in right-wing discourse.

Mr Ahmad says Hindu nationalists in the late 19th Century claimed legitimacy for Hindi as the official language of courts in north India. The British had changed the official language from Persian to Urdu in 1837.

The division reached its peak in the years leading to 1947 when India was partitioned into two separate states. "Urdu became one of the causes pursued by the Muslim League [which endorsed the idea of separate state for India's Muslims] and "an access to mobilisation for the demand of Pakistan", Dr Rai says.

Not surprisingly Urdu became an easy target - Uttar Pradesh banned it in schools and Dr Ahmad says that a lot of Hindus also abandoned the language at the time.

Collecting 'difficult memories' of partition's witnesses

The race to find India's hidden languages - BBC Future

Dr Truschke says that with Urdu, the right-wing has tried to create a past which doesn't exist: "If Urdu is suddenly supposed to be an exclusively Muslim language, are we never to speak again of the many Hindus who have written in Urdu or that some of our earliest Hindi manuscripts are in Perso-Arabic script?"

Schools in Uttar Pradesh state had banned Urdu in schools after Partition

Also, what about Urdu words which are liberally used in Hindi speech?

"The word jeb or pocket comes from Arabic via Persian. What is the Hindi equivalent? Probably none. And what about the timeless words like mohabbat (love) or dil (heart)?," Dr Ahmad says.

At the same time, languages are also markers of a faith, he adds.

"Urdu-speaking Muslims are more likely to use the word maghrib for sunset than Hindus. This is not different from how the language of upper caste Hindus shows difference from that of the lower caste in the same village - each language exists on a continuum."

Mr Rai says that attempts to remove Urdu from Hindi has "degraded" the latter.

"This Hindi is not the language of popular speech, it is sterile and devoid of emotional resonance."

NEOLIBERALISM SOLVES NO CRISIS EVER

Sri Lanka proposes privatizing national airline amid crisis

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Sri Lanka’s new prime minister on Monday proposed privatizing the country’s loss-making national airline as part of reforms aimed at solving the country worst economic crisis in decades.

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said in a message to the people that he plans to propose a special relief budget that will take the place of the development-oriented budget earlier approved for this year, He said it would channel funds previously allocated for infrastructure development to public welfare.

He said the country's financial health is so poor that the government has been forced to print money to pay the salaries of government workers and buy other goods and services.

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa appointed Wickremesinghe as prime minister last Thursday in a bid to quell the island nation’s political and economic crisis.

The president’s brother, Mahinda Rajapaksa, stepped down as prime minister on May 9 amid violence that left nine people dead and more than 200 wounded. Protesters have demanded the powerful Rajapaksa family resign to take responsibility for leading the country into the economic crisis.

For months, Sri Lankans have been forced to wait in long lines to purchase scarce imported essentials such as medicines, fuel, cooking gas and food because of a severe shortage of foreign currency. Government revenues have also plunged.

Wickremesinghe said Sri Lankan Airlines lost about $123 million in the 2020-2021 fiscal year, which ended in March, and its aggregate losses exceeded $1 billion as of March 2021.

“Even if we privatize Sri Lankan Airlines, this is a loss that we must bear. You must be aware that this is a loss that must be borne even by the poor people of this country who have never stepped on an airplane,” Wickremesinghe said.

Sri Lankan Airlines was managed by Emirates Airlines from 1998 to 2008.

Sri Lanka is nearly bankrupt and has suspended repayment of about $7 billion in foreign loans due this year out of $25 billion to be repaid by 2026. The country's total foreign debt is $51 billion. The finance ministry says the country currently has only $25 million in usable foreign reserves.

Wickremesinghe said about $75 billion is needed urgently to help provide people with essential items, but the country's treasury is struggling to find even $1 billion.

Shortages of medicines are so acute that it is difficult to buy anti-rabies medicines and drugs to treat heart disease, he said.

“I have no desire to hide the truth and to lie to the public. Although these facts are unpleasant and terrifying, this is the true situation. For a short period, our future will be even more difficult than the tough times that we have passed,” Wickremesinghe said.

“We will face considerable challenges and adversity. However, this period will not be long," he said, adding that countries with which he has spoken have pledged to help in the next few months.

Wickremesinghe is struggling to form a new Cabinet, with many parties reluctant to join his government. They say Wickremesinghe's appointment goes against tradition and the people's will because he was defeated in 2020 elections and joined Parliament only through a seat allocated to his party.

However, parties have said they will support positive measures by Wickremesinghe to improve the economy while they remain in the opposition.

The main opposition United People’s Force party has introduced a no-confidence motion against the president for "not having properly exercised, performed and discharged the powers of the president under the constitution.”

The motion, to be taken up Tuesday, accuses Rajapaksa of being responsible for the economic crisis by introducing untimely tax cuts and prohibiting the use of agrochemicals, which resulted in crop failures.

Passage of the motion would not legally bind Rajapaksa to quit, but his refusal to do so could intensify anti-government protests and rock negotiations with other countries on economic aid. A challenge of Wickremesinghe's appointment could also endanger the negotiations, which he leads.

Sri Lanka down to last day of petrol, new prime minister says

Peter Hoskins - Business reporter
Tue, May 17, 2022

Vehicles queue at a petrol station in Colombo

Sri Lanka's new prime minister says the country is down to its last day of petrol as it faces its worst economic crisis in more than 70 years.

In a televised address, Ranil Wickremesinghe said the nation urgently needs $75m (£60.8m) of foreign currency in the next few days to pay for essential imports.

He said the central bank would have to print money to pay government wages.

Mr Wickremesinghe also said state-owned Sri Lankan Airlines may be privatised.

The island nation's economy has been hit hard by the pandemic, rising energy prices, and populist tax cuts. A chronic shortage of foreign currency and soaring inflation had led to a severe shortage of medicines, fuel and other essentials.

Ravindu Perera, who lives in the capital Colombo, said he and his family had begun searching for fuel before daybreak on Monday.

"We went to several fuel stations and most of them were closed. At around 5.30am we took a chance and joined a queue at Townhall which is the station usually providing fuel for government vehicles," he told the BBC.

"It was less crowded - but the queue gradually grew to about 2km long. We were lucky enough to get fuel around 9.00am once fuel was delivered."

He said his friends outside the capital were having to wait even longer. "I'm working from home now to try and save fuel because who knows when I'll get a full tank again."

Sri Lanka's crisis explained

How the soaring cost of living is hitting Sri Lankans hard

How Sri Lanka's war heroes became villains

Auto rickshaws, the most popular means of transport in Colombo, and other vehicles have been queuing at petrol stations around the capital.

"At the moment, we only have petrol stocks for a single day. The next couple of months will be the most difficult ones of our lives," said Mr Wickremesinghe in Monday's address.

However, shipments of petrol and diesel using a credit line with India could provide fuel supplies in the next few days, he added.

Mr Wickremesinghe, who was appointed prime minister last Thursday, said the country's central bank would have to print money to help meet the government's wage bill and other commitments.

"Against my own wishes, I am compelled to permit printing money in order to pay state-sector employees and to pay for essential goods and services. However, we must remember that printing money leads to the depreciation of the rupee," he said.

He also proposed selling off Sri Lankan Airlines as part of efforts to stabilise the nation's finances. The carrier lost 45 billion Sri Lankan rupees ($129.5m; £105m) in the year ending March 2021.

In recent weeks, there have been large, sometimes violent, protests against President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his family.

Last week, the president's elder brother Mahinda resigned as prime minister after government supporters clashed with protesters. Nine people died and more than 300 were wounded in the violence.

On Friday, Mr Wickremesinghe told the BBC, that the economic crisis is "going to get worse before it gets better".

In his first interview since taking office, he also pledged to ensure families would get three meals a day.

Appealing to the world for more financial help, he said "there won't be a hunger crisis, we will find food".

Sri Lanka: The basics

Sri Lanka is an island nation off southern India: It won independence from British rule in 1948. Three ethnic groups - Sinhalese, Tamil and Muslim - make up 99% of the country's 22m population.

One family of brothers has dominated for years: Mahinda Rajapaksa became a hero among the majority Sinhalese in 2009 when his government defeated Tamil separatist rebels after years of bitter and bloody civil war. His brother Gotabaya, who was defence secretary at the time, is now president.

Now an economic crisis has led to fury on the streets: Soaring inflation has meant some foods, medication and fuel are in short supply, there are rolling blackouts and ordinary people have taken to the streets in anger with many blaming the Rajapaksa family and their government for the situation.

Climate change disrupting 'language of life' across all ecosystems



Rob Waugh
·Contributor
Mon, May 16, 2022,

Chemical signals - the language of life - are being disrupted by climate change.

Living beings don’t just communicate through sound – we also communicate through chemicals using smell to find mates, food and stay away from predators.

But climate change is disrupting these processes, which Hull University researchers describe as ‘the language of life’.

Most worryingly, the change, driven by warming temperatures, is affecting organisms not just in one place, but across land, rivers and oceans – in the same patterns.

It is the first time that researchers have demonstrated that climate change affects interactions between organisms in different realms in a similar way.

Read more: Melting snow in Himalayas drives growth of green sea slime visible from space

Chemical communication plays an essential role in ecosystems, enabling organisms to mate and interact with each other; locate predators, food and habitats; and sense their environment.

The opinion paper demonstrates the extent to which alterations in temperature, carbon dioxide and pH levels – that are created as a result of climate change – can affect every single step of this fundamental way that organisms communicate with each other.

Dr Christina C. Roggatz, research fellow in Marine Chemical Ecology at the University of Hull and lead author of the paper, said: “This is a wake-up call. We are heavily reliant on the Earth’s ecosystems and the chemical communications that regulate them.

“The predominantly negative effects that climate change has upon the language of life within terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems could have a range of far-reaching implications for the future of our planet and human wellbeing, for example by impacting food security and fundamental ecosystem services that make our planet habitable.

“Although a growing number of studies suggest that climate change-associated stressors cause adverse effects on the communication between organisms, knowledge of the underlying mechanisms remains scarce.

“We urgently need a systematic approach to be able to compare results and fully understand the potentially disruptive impact that climate change is having upon each step of this fundamental communication process. Understanding this means we are better equipped to predict and protect the future of our planet.”

Read more: A 1988 warning about climate change was mostly right

The paper reveals universal patterns of impacts from climate change across different realms.

It identifies key aspects that urgently need to be understood in order to improve our ability to predict and mitigate the effects of climate change.

The authors have also called for a systematic, universal framework approach to address highlighted knowledge gaps.

Dr. Patrick Fink, co-author and research group leader at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, said: “Chemical communication is the ubiquitous language of life on earth – but this is being jeopardised by global change.

“There's no talking with words for life under water, so aquatic organisms 'talk' in chemical signals. But this fine-tuned 'language' is in peril.

"Globally changing climate and water chemistry are causing acidification threats that may disturb chemical information exchange among freshwater and marine organisms.”

Climate change is heating up Florida. That could bring more wildfires, new report warns


Alex Harris

MIAMI HERALD
Mon, May 16, 2022

When Hurricane Michael tore through North Florida in 2018 as a Category 5 storm, it left more than 3 million acres of felled trees in its wake.

Those largely untouched trees were the perfect fuel for three simultaneous wildfires that raged through the region in March. The Chipola Complex fires turned the skies smoky and blood red, destroyed two homes, prompted the evacuation of a thousand more and consumed more than 30,000 acres of forest before firefighters got it under control.

Research from First Street Foundation released Monday suggests that as climate change warms the planet, the risk of wildfires like those in Florida could double by mid-century. Matthew Eby, executive director of the nonprofit climate research group, said its modeling shows Florida’s current 6% of properties at risk from wildfires could jump to 12% by 2052.

“Florida is already a hot place, and it’s seeing an increase,” he said. “What you end up with is a pronounced effect of the changes of wildfire risk.”

On the national map First Street created, most of the increased risk is — unsurprisingly — in the West. But Florida is a lone dark red spot on the East Coast. That’s partially because the state is expected to stay hotter for more days of the year with climate change, and also because Florida is so developed that it physically has more pieces of property at risk than in other states, where thousands of acres may count as one property.

These maps show the average risk of wildfire damage per property in 2022 and in 2052 with climate change turning up the temperature.

While Florida is better known for its floods from rainstorms, hurricanes and high tides, the state has a long history of wildfires. The report suggests that as the state gets hotter, it could make it more likely for more wildfires to form.

“The fires aren’t bigger, they just take off more often because it is drier and it is hotter,” Eby said.

In South Florida, researchers found the biggest risk is for homes near the eastern border of the Everglades. Earlier this month, ash and smoke from three separate Everglades fires were visible in Weston.

Florida’s Polk County was No. 5 on a national ranking of counties with the highest number of properties at risk of wildfire. By First Street’s math, 88% of the county’s 380,000 properties had a 1% chance of experiencing a wildfire in the next 30 years. Osceola and Pasco, although smaller counties, have similar percentages of properties at risk.

This map shows historic wildfires across Florida from roughly 1994-2020 using data from the monitoring trends in burn severity program (MTBS). New research from First Street Foundation suggests wildfire risk could double in Florida due to climate change.

Bryan Williams, a meteorologist with the Florida Forest Service, said First Street’s findings make sense to him. He sees an opportunity for more fires in Florida as the state gets hotter with climate change.

“Look at the past five years. Florida has basically been on the very warm side of things,” he said. “You’re seeing more drought, you’re seeing higher temps, and in April and May you’re seeing relative humidity getting pretty low. It’s kinda one of those trends that you look at and it’s concerning.”

Williams says fire season, like hurricane season, has a peak. And in Florida, that’s April and May. As of Monday, most of the state was ranked at “moderate” fire risk, the second-lowest level.

Florida fires are most commonly started by lightning, he said, and unlike in the West, where fire easily races uphill, in Florida, fires mainly spread by wind.

“We’ve had issues where a whole neighborhood gets smoked in by a fire if the wind is right that day,” Williams said. The next day, with a wind shift, they can be clear.

Three simultaneous wildfires in North Florida burned more than 34,000 acres, destroyed two homes and forced evacuations from more than a thousand homes in March. New research suggests climate change could double Florida’s fire risk in the next 30 years.

What’s your fire risk?

Unlike with flooding, there’s no nationally accepted standard for what counts as a property at risk from fire. So First Street made its own standard — about a 1 percent chance that a property could experience a wildfire within the next 30 years.

That means a home with fire risk has a far lower chance of experiencing a fire than a house that the federal government deems at flood risk, which is when a property has a 26% chance of flooding over a 30-year period.

Eby said that’s because the consequences of a fire are much more intense than a flood.

“When you think of fire, there’s no such thing as a little bit of wildfire in your home,” he said. “When you have a wildfire in your home, the structure is usually destroyed.”

This map shows the change in burn probability in all Florida counties over the next 30 years due to climate change. The percent increase indicates a range, so the darkest counties (like Collier) could see an increase of 133 to 170% in burn probability.

Along with the national report, First Street also launched a tool that lets users check the fire risk — now and in the future — for individual properties. It’s available on any real estate listing on Realtor.com, part of a collaboration that informs property buyers of the chance of climate change-driven floods and fires affecting their homes in the future.

Eby said the new fire section will go above the listing for nearby schools on the site, along with previous First Street data about flood risk.

“I think that speaks volumes to what they’re hearing from consumers and users as to the request and need for this,” he said.

Three simultaneous wildfires in North Florida burned more than 34,000 acres, destroyed two homes and forced evacuations from more than a thousand homes in March. New research suggests climate change could double Florida’s fire risk in the next 30 years.

Canada opens public consultations on national climate adaptation strategy


A male elk crosses the Yellowhead Highway in Jasper National Park, Alberta

Mon, May 16, 2022
By Nia Williams

(Reuters) - Canada launched the public consultation phase of a national climate adaptation strategy on Monday, aimed at developing its first-ever framework to help cope with increasing natural disasters and other severe impacts from global warming.

During the three-month consultation period Canadians are being asked for input on how communities and businesses should prepare for climate-related disasters like wildfires, rising sea levels and melting permafrost.

The climate in Canada is warming twice as fast as the global average, and the consultation comes as recent flooding displaces communities in Manitoba and the Northwest Territories.

"No corner of Canada is untouched, the costs of climate change are mounting in all parts of the country," Federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault told a news conference, adding that in the last few years the impacts of climate change had cost the country C$30 billion ($23.28 billion).

"An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure," he said.

Canada is aiming to cut climate-warming carbon emissions to net-zero by 2050. Guilbeault said the country needs to work simultaneously on reducing carbon pollution and preparing for the impacts of climate change as temperatures rise.

Recent extreme weather events include a series of atmospheric rivers that flooded British Columbia in November and a record-breaking "heat dome" in western Canada last summer that was followed by destructive wildfires.

Ottawa plans to release the final adaptation strategy by fall 2022. It will focus on long-term and short-term goals for Canada's economy, infrastructure, disaster resilience, natural environment and the health and well-being of Canadians.

Short-term priorities include enhancing food security, updating building codes and expanding Canada's network of trained responders for when natural disasters strike.

Analysts at the Canadian Climate Institute think tank said Canada is lagging other countries in preparing for the impacts of climate change, and the new strategy would help address the underinvestment to date.

($1 = 1.2884 Canadian dollars)

(Reporting by Nia Williams; editing by Jonathan Oatis)

Citizen science shows that climate change is rapidly reshaping Long Island Sound


Hannes Baumann, Assistant Professor of Marine Sciences, University of Connecticut

THE CONVERSATION
Sun, May 15, 2022,

Project Oceanology class retrieves a bottom trawl at the mouth of the

 Thames River. 

Anna Sawin, CC BY-SA

In the summer of 1973, Joe Hage was in the seventh grade. Together with his peers, he boarded the old Boston Whaler from Project Oceanology just as dawn began to shimmer from behind the trees of Bluff Point. He remembers how instructors led the crowd into knee-deep waters, the velvety green marsh, eel grass tickling their mud-stuck legs, the crabs and snails and fish that flailed around in a beach seine.

To Joe, this was heaven. He was hooked for life.

More than 45 years later, the nonprofit Project Oceanology continues its mission to teach schoolchildren about the ocean. The organization shows students how to measure temperature, pH and oxygen, and lets them sift through trawl catches of fish and crabs. Next year, Project Oceanology will welcome the millionth student on board its bright blue boats.

The project did more than teach students about the ocean: It routinely collected data for more than four decades. On every boat trip, on every excursion, students scribbled their measurements onto protocol sheets. These records went into steel cabinets, which obliviously guarded a growing treasure, waiting to be lifted.

My master’s student Jacob Snyder and I decided to do just that. We painstakingly entered every recording from every data sheet we found in those cabinets. To us, it felt a bit like historians piecing together an ancient manuscript, anxious for the time when the data would finally speak. And then they did.

Our study, published on March 21, shows how rapidly temperatures in eastern Long Island Sound have increased over the past four decades. At 0.45 degrees Celsius per decade, the sound is warming four times faster than the global ocean.

This warming trend is true for the larger Northwest Atlantic shelf, of which Long Island Sound is a part, where some areas have warmed faster than 99 percent of all ocean waters on Earth. The reasons for the extraordinary warming of the Northwest Atlantic shelf are not fully understood. Scientists believe that the warm Gulf Stream is pushing farther north and onto the shelf. Polar regions are warming more than low latitudes.

Another symptom of marine climate change is ocean acidification, measured as a slow pH decline in the ocean as the water swallows the increasing amounts of carbon dioxide from human emissions. In coastal waters, pollution with nutrients like nitrogen and phosphate can come from sewers, wastewater treatment plants and fertilizer runoff, making acidification even worse.

The Project Oceanology data revealed that pH declined much more rapidly in Long Island Sound than globally, which could imply worsening conditions for shellfish farmers.

But there also seemed to be some good news. Around the year 2000, pH levels began to stabilize and even slightly rise again. This fits the timing of efforts by New York and Connecticut to curb nutrient pollution in Long Island Sound. However, rapid warming and acidification in Long Island Sound have had serious consequences for this ecosystem.

Here, our trawl data were particularly telling, showing that coldwater species such as American lobster, rock crab and winter flounder became less frequent over time. This is exactly what long-time instructors at Project Oceanology said they had noticed, too. Lobsters once supported a proud fishery in Long Island Sound, but warmer, more acidic waters, shell disease and overfishing have now decimated them to nearly complete absence.

However, a winner of dubious qualities emerged, too. Over the past decades, spider crabs have moved into Long Island Sound from the south and are now the dominant crab species in the trawls. But spider crabs are no equivalent to lobsters, neither for humans who do not like to eat them nor for the ecosystem, as spider crabs eat much more plant-based food than lobsters.

Long Island Sound has been rapidly changing, and the data collected by generations of middle and high school students just confirmed this again. Other data from Norwalk Harbor and the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection have shown similar trends.

These changes are likely to continue. Lobsters are not likely to come back, because the waters are too warm now. Other species from the south, like black sea bass, will likely continue to establish populations in Long Island Sound.

Collectively, the data clearly show that marine climate change is happening right now in Long Island Sound. To better understand and anticipate the future of Long Island Sound, I feel that it is important that Project Oceanology and other groups continue their measurements.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Hannes Baumann, University of Connecticut.

Read more:

Restoring tropical forests isn’t meaningful if those forests only stand for 10 or 20 years


A cooler ocean predator than sharks? Consider the mantis shrimps


Climate change could alter ocean food chains, leading to far fewer fish in the sea

Hannes Baumann receives funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF-OCE 1536165) and Connecticut Sea Grant (PD-15-14).

Independent probe points to Israeli fire in journalist death

A mural of slain of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh is on display, in Gaza City, Sunday, May 15, 2022. Abu Akleh was shot and killed while covering an Israeli raid in the occupied West Bank town of Jenin on May 11, 2022.

 (AP Photo/Adel Hana) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)

JOSEF FEDERMAN
Sun, May 15, 2022

JERUSALEM (AP) — As Israel and the Palestinians wrangle over the investigation into the killing of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, several independent groups have launched their own probes. One open-source research team said its initial findings lent support to Palestinian witnesses who said she was killed by Israeli fire.

The outcome of these investigations could help shape international opinion over who is responsible for Abu Akleh's death, particularly if an official Israeli military probe drags on. Israel and the Palestinians are locked in a war of narratives that already has put Israel on the defensive.

Abu Akleh, a Palestinian-American and a 25-year veteran of the satellite channel, was killed last Wednesday while covering an Israeli military raid in the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank. She was a household name across the Arab world, known for documenting the hardship of Palestinian life under Israeli rule, now in its sixth decade.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Sunday said he had spoken to Abu Akleh's family to express condolences and respect for her work “as well as the need to have an immediate and credible investigation” into her death.

Palestinian officials and witnesses, including journalists who were with her, say she was killed by army fire. The military, after initially saying Palestinian gunmen might have been responsible, later backtracked and now says she may also have been hit by errant Israeli fire.

Israel has called for a joint investigation with the Palestinians, saying the bullet must be analyzed by ballistics experts to reach firm conclusions. Palestinian officials have refused, saying they don't trust Israel. Human rights groups says Israel has a poor record of investigating wrongdoing by its security forces.

After earlier saying they would accept an outside partner, the Palestinians said late Sunday that they would handle the investigation alone and deliver results very soon.

“We also refused to have an international investigation because we trust our capabilities as a security institution,” Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh announced. “We will not hand over any of the evidence to anyone because we know that these people are able to fasify the facts.” He stood with Abu Akleh's brother, Anton, and Al Jazeera's local bureau chief, Walid Al-Omari.

With the two sides at loggerheads over the Abu Akleh probe, several research and human rights groups have launched their own investigations.

Over the weekend, Bellingcat, a Dutch-based international consortium of researchers, published an analysis of video and audio evidence gathered on social media. The material came from both Palestinian and Israeli military sources, and the analysis looked at such factors as time stamps, the locations of the videos, shadows and a forensic audio analysis of gunshots.

The group found that while gunmen and Israeli soldiers were both in the area, the evidence supported witness accounts that Israeli fire killed Abu Akleh.

“Based on what we were able to review, the IDF (Israeli soldiers) were in the closest position and had the clearest line of sight to Abu Akleh,” said Giancarlo Fiorella, the lead researcher of the analysis.

Bellingcat is among a growing number of firms that use “open source” information, such as social media videos, security camera recordings and satellite imagery, to reconstruct events.

Fiorella acknowledged that the analysis cannot be 100% certain without such evidence as the bullet, weapons used by the army and GPS locations of Israeli forces. But he said the emergence of additional evidence typically bolsters preliminary conclusions and almost never overturns them.

“This is what we do when we don’t have access to those things,” he said.

The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem said it too is conducting its own analysis. The group last week played a key role in the military’s backtracking from its initial claims that Palestinian gunmen appeared to be responsible for her death.

The Israeli claim was based on a social media video in which a Palestinian gunman fires into a Jenin alleyway, and then other militants come running to claim they have shot a soldier. The army said that because no soldiers were hurt that day, the gunmen might have been referring to Abu Akleh, who was wearing a protective helmet and flak jacket.

A B’Tselem researcher went to the area and took a video showing that the Palestinian gunmen were some 300 meters (yards) away from where Abu Akleh was shot, separated by a series of walls and alleyways.

Dror Sadot, a spokeswoman for the group, said B’Tselem has begun gathering testimonies from witnesses and may attempt to reconstruct the shooting with videos from the scene. But she said at this point, it has not been able to come to a conclusion about who was behind the shooting.

Sadot said any bullet would need to be matched to the barrel of the gun. The Palestinians have refused to release the bullet, and it is unclear whether the military has confiscated the weapons used that day.

“The bullet on its own can’t say a lot” because it could have been fired by either side, she said. “What can be done is to match a bullet to the barrel,” she said.

The Israeli military did not respond to interview requests to discuss the status of its probe.

Jonathan Conricus, a former Israeli military spokesman and expert on military affairs, said reconstructing a gunfight in densely populated urban terrain is “very complex” and said forensic evidence, such as the bullet, is crucial to reach firm conclusions. He accused the Palestinian Authority of refusing to cooperate for propaganda purposes.

“Without the bullet, any investigation will only be able to reach partial and questionable conclusions,” Conricus said. “One might assume that the strategy of the Palestinian Authority is exactly that: to deny Israel the ability to clear its name, while leveraging global sympathy for the Palestinian cause.”

Meanwhile, Israeli police over the weekend launched an investigation into the conduct of the officers who attacked the mourners at Abu Akleh's funeral, causing the pallbearers to nearly drop her coffin.

Newspapers on Sunday were filled with criticism of the police and what was portrayed as a public relations debacle.

“The footage from Friday is the very opposite of good judgment and patience,” commentator Oded Shalom wrote in the Yediot Ahronot daily. “It documented a shocking display of unbridled brutality and violence.”

Nir Hasson, who covers Jerusalem affairs for the Haaretz daily, said the problems run much deeper than Israel's image.

“This was one of the most extreme visual expressions of the occupation and the humiliation the Palestinian people experience,” he wrote.

___

Associated Press writers Tia Goldenberg in Tel Aviv, Israel, and Matthew Lee in Berlin contributed to this report.