Elon Musk’s ex-girlfriend Grimes questions Mark Zuckerberg’s credentials to run Metaverse

Elon Musk’s ex-girlfriend Grimes attacked Mark Zuckerberg and took to Twitter to say he is "wildly under qualified" to run the Metaverse.

India Today Web Desk New Delhi

August 28, 2022



Elon Musk with Grimes. (Photo: Reuters)

Canadian singer-songwriter and record producer Grimes attacked Mark Zuckerberg on Saturday and said he is under qualified to run the Metaverse.

She expressed her disdain over Zuckerberg’s plans to expand the company formerly known as Facebook into a metaverse pioneer, according to Page Six.

Grimes, who previously dated Elon Musk, slammed the Facebook founder’s Metaverse avatar and wrote on Twitter, “If Zuck ‘oversees the Metaverse’ it is dead and people who care about art and culture are building something else. Also this is bad art,”

She also shared the image of Zuckerberg’s metaverse avatar and criticised it saying, “The quality of this image alone speaks to how wildly under-qualified he is to build alternate reality, literally every indie game looks better.”

Zuckerberg directed a companywide shift toward the metaverse in 2021 and rebranded Facebook’s corporate name to Meta. This took place even as Facebook contends with a series of scandals over its business practices and internal policies.


According to ANI, the image Grimes criticised on Twitter was posted by Zuckerberg on Facebook last week. He later shared a different version of the avatar amid heavy

 criticism.

Brazil records worst day for Amazon fires in 15 years


By AFP
Published August 25, 2022

This photo taken on October 01, 2019 shows a fire near Itaituba, Para state, Brazil, in the Amazon rainforest - Copyright AFP PETER PARKS

The number of forest fires in the Brazilian Amazon hit a nearly 15-year high this week, according to official figures that provided the latest warning on the advancing destruction of the world’s biggest rainforest.

Satellite monitoring detected 3,358 fires on Monday, August 22, the highest number for any 24-hour period since September 2007, according to the Brazilian space agency, INPE.

The number was nearly triple that recorded on the so-called “Day of Fire” — August 10, 2019 — when farmers launched a coordinated plan to burn huge amounts of felled rainforest in the northern state of Para.

Then, fires sent thick gray smoke all the way to Sao Paulo, some 2,500 kilometers (1,500 miles) away, and triggered a global outcry over images of one of Earth’s most vital resources burning.

There is no indication that Monday’s fires were coordinated, said Alberto Setzer, head of INPE’s fire monitoring program.

Rather, they appear to fit a pattern of increasing deforestation and burning, he said.

Experts say Amazon fires are caused mainly by illegal farmers, ranchers and speculators clearing land and torching the trees.

In Brazil, the so-called “arc of deforestation” has been advancing.

“The regions where the most fires are occurring are moving farther and farther north,” Setzer told AFP.

“The ‘arc of deforestation’ is undoubtedly evolving.”

August is typically when fire season starts in earnest in the Amazon, with the arrival of drier weather.

This has been a worrying year so far for the forest, a key buffer against global warming: INPE detected 5,373 fires last month, up eight percent from July last year.

And with 24,124 fires so far this month, it is on track to be the worst August under President Jair Bolsonaro — though well below the 63,764 fires detected in August 2005, the worse for the month since records began in 1998.

Bolsonaro, an agribusiness ally, faces international criticism for a surge in Amazon destruction on his watch. Since he took office in January 2019, average annual deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has increased by 75 percent compared to the previous decade.

The far-right president rejects that criticism.

“None of those who are attacking us have the right. If they wanted a pretty forest to call their own, they should have preserved the ones in their countries,” he wrote on Twitter Thursday.

“The Amazon belongs to Brazilians, and always will.”

But with Bolsonaro running for reelection in October, the destruction risks accelerating, said Ane Alencar, director of science at the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM).

“We know from previous years that there is a link between elections and deforestation,” with officials and enforcement agencies distracted by the campaign, she said.

This year, “we have high rates of deforestation… and there are still lots of felled trees waiting to burn.”

SERIOUSLY?!

Finns urged to take fewer saunas amid energy crunch


By AFP
Published August 26, 2022

With an estimated three million saunas for 5.5 million people, the steam bath is a traditional Finnish institution - Copyright AFP/File Daniel ROLAND

Finns are being urged to turn down their thermostats this winter, take shorter showers and spend less time in their beloved saunas, as Europe faces an energy crunch following Russia’s war in Ukraine.

The nationwide power saving campaign was announced this week Russia has cut gas supplies to Finland and other European countries in recent months, causing energy prices to soar.

Called “A degree lower”, the campaign will be launched on October 10, Kati Laakso, a spokeswoman at state-owned company Motiva which promotes sustainability, told AFP on Friday.

The company is behind the campaign together with the Finnish government and energy authority.

In addition to lowering their heating and taking shorter showers, Finns will be encouraged to cut back on sauna time.

With an estimated three million saunas for 5.5 million people, the steam bath is a traditional Finnish institution. Bathers gather together in the nude in temperatures of around 85 degrees Celsius (185F).

With energy prices soaring, the campaign will also urge Finns to spend less time on entertainment electronics, turn off garage heating and save on petrol by driving slower.

“These are just some options. We hope that people will voluntarily follow the recommendations and understand the situation, that we are heading into a difficult winter,” Laakso said.

“Maybe people don’t need to turn on the sauna everyday. Maybe just once a week”, she added.

This is the first time an energy saving campaign has been introduced in Finland since the 1970s oil crisis.

In May, Russian energy giant Gazprom halted supplies to neighbouring Finland after Helsinki refused to pay its bill in rubles, which Moscow had demanded in a bid to side-step financial sanctions and force European energy clients to prop up its central bank.

In 2021, Gazprom supplied about two thirds of the country’s gas consumption but only eight percent of its total energy use.

Gasum, Finland’s state-owned energy company, said it would use other sources, such as the Balticconnector pipeline, which links Finland to fellow EU member Estonia.

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M; GNOMES OF ZURICH
Diamond magnate appeals Swiss corruption verdict


By AFP
Published August 27, 2022

Steinmetz, previously sentenced to five years behind bars for corruption linked to mining rights deals in Guinea, insists he is the victim of a "big injustice" -

 Copyright AFP/File Christophe ARCHAMBAULT

Nina LARSON

French-Israeli diamond magnate Beny Steinmetz will be back in court in Switzerland on Monday to appeal against a corruption sentence linked to mining rights in Guinea.

A Geneva court convicted the 66-year-old businessman in January 2021 of setting up a complex financial web to pay bribes to ensure his company could obtain permits in an area estimated to contain the world’s biggest untapped deposits of iron ore.

He was sentenced to five years in prison and also ordered to pay 50 million Swiss francs ($52 million) in compensation to the canton of Geneva.

Steinmetz maintained his innocence throughout that trial and immediately appealed against the ruling, decrying it as a “big injustice”.

Two of his alleged co-conspirators, who were slapped with shorter jail terms, are also appealing.

Steinmetz has changed his legal and communications team for the appeal, and they are preparing to argue that the lower court had not fully heard his arguments and had misunderstood the situation.

The first trial had painted Steinmetz in a way that “does not at all correspond to reality,” his spokesman Marc Comina said in a document detailing the diamond magnate’s case.

Far from being corrupt, Beny Steinmetz Group Resources (BSGR) had legitimately obtained the mining rights in question, and had striven in difficult and complex circumstances to set up an operation that would have benefited Guinea’s national interests, the document said.

– ‘Pact of corruption’ –

Swiss prosecutors painted a far different picture during the first trial, which was the culmination of a drawn-out international investigation that kicked off in Switzerland in 2013.

They accused Steinmetz and two partners of bribing a wife of the then Guinean president Lansana Conte and others in order to win mining rights in the southeastern Simandou region.

The prosecutors said Steinmetz obtained the rights shortly before Conte died in 2008 after about $10 million was paid in bribes over a number of years, some through Swiss bank accounts.

Conte’s military dictatorship ordered global mining giant Rio Tinto to relinquish two concessions to BSGR for around $170 million in 2008.

Just 18 months later, BSGR sold 51 percent of its stake in the concession to Brazilian mining giant Vale for $2.5 billion.

But in 2013, Guinea’s first democratically-elected president Alpha Conde launched a review of permits allotted under Conte and later stripped the VBG consortium formed by BSGR and Vale, of its permit.

To secure the initial deal, prosecutors claimed Steinmetz and representatives in Guinea entered a “pact of corruption” with Conte and his fourth wife Mamadie Toure.

Toure, who has admitted to having received payments, has protected status in the United States as a state witness.

She and a number of other key witnesses in the case failed to appear in the first trial, and it remained unclear if they would attend the appeal.

– ‘Totally false’ –

Steinmetz, who lived in Geneva during the years when the bribes were allegedly paid, continues to maintain that the bribery allegations are “totally false”, according to the document released by his team.

It insisted that Rio Tinto had lost the rights to half of its concessions in Simandou over its failure to develop them, in accordance with Guinean mining laws, and that BSGR later legitimately bid for and obtained the rights.

There was “nothing illegal or arbitrary” about that decision, the document said.

It also argued that the lower court had misunderstood the nature of the deal with Vale, and that BSGR had wanted to create a lasting partnership and business in Guinea.

“BSGR never intended to leave Guinea once the partnership with Vale was signed,” it said.

“Had it not been driven out of the country, BSGR would still be operating in Guinea today and would be a major player in the country’s economic rise.”

Steinmetz, who was granted a legal free-passage guarantee in order to participate in the first trial, left Switzerland without serving his sentence.

He will be back in the Geneva court from Monday to argue his case after receiving another free-passage, with the appeal hearing due to last through September 7. The verdict will come at a later date.

In Poland, Where Coal is King, Homeowners Queue for Days to Buy Fuel

August 27, 2022 
Reuters

Truck drivers rest in the shade in front of the Bogdanka coal mine 

while they wait for coal to be loaded, in Bogdanka, Poland, Aug. 26, 2022.

WARSAW/BOGDANKA, POLAND —

In Poland's late summer heat, dozens of cars and trucks line up at the Lubelski Wegiel Bogdanka coal mine, as people fearful of winter shortages wait for days to stock up on heating fuel in queues reminiscent of communist times.

Artur, 57, a pensioner, drove up from Swidnik, some 30 kilometers from the mine in eastern Poland on Tuesday, hoping to buy several tons of coal for himself and his family.

"Toilets were put up today, but there's no running water," he said, after three nights of sleeping in his small red hatchback in a crawling queue of trucks, tractors towing trailers and private cars.

"This is beyond imagination; people are sleeping in their cars. I remember the communist times, but it didn't cross my mind that we could return to something even worse."

Artur's household is one of the 3.8 million in Poland that rely on coal for heating and now face shortages and price hikes, after Poland and the European Union imposed an embargo on Russian coal following Moscow's invasion of Ukraine in February.

Poland banned purchases with an immediate effect in April, while the bloc mandated fading them out by August.

While Poland produces over 50 million tons from its own mines every year, imported coal, much of it from Russia, is a household staple because of competitive prices and the fact that Russian coal is sold in lumps more suitable for home use.

Soaring demand has forced Bogdanka and other state-controlled mines to ration sales or offer the fuel to individual buyers via online platforms, in limited amounts. Artur, who did not want to give his full name, said he had collected paperwork from his extended family in the hope of picking up all their fuel allocations at once.

The mine planned to sell fuel for some 250 households Friday and would continue sales over the weekend to cut waiting times, Dorota Choma, a representative for the Bogdanka mine told Reuters.

The limits are in place to prevent hoarding and profiteering, or even selling spots in the queue, Choma said.

Cars and trucks queue for more than a kilometer to pick up coal in front of the Bogdanka mine in Bogdanka, Poland, Aug. 26, 2022.

Like all Polish coal mines, Bogdanka typically sells most of the coal it produces to power plants. Last year, it sold less than 1% of its output to individual clients so it lacks the logistics to sell fuel directly to retail buyers.

Lukasz Horbacz, head of the Polish Coal Merchant Chamber of Commerce, said the decline in Russian imports began in January when Moscow started using rail tracks for military transport.

"But the main reason for the shortages is the embargo that went into immediate effect. It turned the market upside down," he told Reuters.

A spokesperson for the Weglokoks, a state-owned coal trader tasked by the government to boost imports from other countries declined to comment, while the climate ministry was not available for comment. Government officials have repeatedly said Poland would have enough fuel to meet demand.

In recent years, Poland has been the most vocal critic of EU climate policy and a staunch defender of coal that generates as much as 80% of its electricity. But coal output has steadily declined as the cost of mining at deeper levels increases.

Coal consumption has held mostly steady, prompting a gradual rise in imports. In 2021, Poland imported 12 million tons of coal, of which 8 million tons came from Russia and were used by households and small heating plants.

In July, Poland ordered two state-controlled companies to import several million tons of the fuel from other sources including Indonesia, Colombia and Africa, and introduced subsidies for homeowners facing a doubling or tripling of coal prices from last winter.

"As much as 60% of those that use coal for heating may be affected by energy poverty," Horbacz said.

Back at Bogdanka, Piotr Maciejewski, 61, a local farmer who joined the queue Tuesday, said he was prepared for a long wait.

"My tractor stays in line, I'm going home to get some sleep," he said.

Poland faces a winter of discontent as energy poverty looms

AFP
Published August 27, 2022

Poland uses 10 million tons of coal annually to heat households – a whopping 87 percent of all coal used in EU households in 2019.

According to an independent think tank, Warsaw-based Forum Energii, about half of this is extracted domestically, while Russia used to make up about 40 percent, or 3.9 million tons a year.

However, Poland and the European Union imposed an embargo on Russian coal following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February. That means about 3.8 million homes in Poland that rely on coal for heating in the winter are now facing shortages and price hikes.

Reuters reports that even now, in Poland’s late summer heat, dozens of cars and trucks line up at the Lubelski Wegiel Bogdanka coal mine, as householders fearful of winter shortages wait for days and nights to stock up on heating fuel in queues reminiscent of communist times.

Artur, 57, a pensioner, drove up from Swidnik, some 30 km (18 miles) from the mine in eastern Poland on Tuesday, hoping to buy several tonnes of coal for himself and his family.

“Toilets were put up today, but there’s no running water,” he said, after three nights of sleeping in his small red hatchback in a crawling queue of trucks, tractors towing trailers, and private cars.

“This is beyond imagination, people are sleeping in their cars. I remember the communist times but it didn’t cross my mind that we could return to something even worse.”

Energy discontent and coal shortages

It may seem hard to believe that in coal-rich Poland, some 3 million households are facing a winter of energy discontent as the coal shortage grows and prices soar.

But there is a very good explanation for what is happening in Poland. It began back when Poland reluctantly agreed to phase out coal in order to meet the EU’s carbon emissions targets. In November 2021, Poland also made a pledge to the COP26 Climate Conference in Glasgow to exit coal and stop building or investing in new capacity, according to Deutsche Welle.

Polish coal is expensive to mine because it is buried so deep, this making Russian coal much more affordable, and it is sold in lumps more suitable for home use.

Aleksandra Gawlikowska-Fyk of Forum Energii said Russian coal is also used by heating plants in the eastern part of Poland where it cannot be simply swapped for Polish coal. Russian coal is of higher quality containing less sulfur, she told DW.

Read more: https://www.digitaljournal.com/world/poland-faces-a-winter-of-discontent-as-energy-poverty-looms/article#ixzz7dFeex4B1

China’s jobless youth left in the lurch


China's slowing economy has left millions of young people fiercely competing for an ever-slimming raft of jobs and facing an increasingly uncertain future 

By AFP
Published August 28, 2022

China’s slowing economy has left millions of young people fiercely competing for an ever-slimming raft of jobs and facing an increasingly uncertain future.

Official data released this month showed one in five young people in Chinese cities was out of work in July — more than three times the national average and the highest recorded since January 2018.

Nearly 11 million graduates entered China’s bleak job market this summer with the economy growing at 0.4 percent in the second quarter, the weakest in two years.

Zhao Yuting, 22, told AFP companies were reluctant to hire as the economy cools — and that experienced workers were now jostling for entry-level jobs, elbowing out green hands such as her.

Since graduating in July, she submitted her CV to dozens of companies.

Only a handful called her back for an interview, only to turn her down saying she lacked experience.

Armed with a degree in English, Zhao thought she could earn a living as a tutor until she found full-time work.

But recent crackdowns on the tech and education sectors, which usually absorb fresh talent, have evaporated such jobs.

“I’ve been job hunting for two or three months but the prospects of being hired look slim,” said Zhao, who has been forced to move back in with her parents while she hunts for work.

“The longer it takes, the greater the pressure.”

– Slim prospects –

Analysts blame a slowing economy crippled by Covid lockdowns, as well as the large cohort entering the labour force during the graduating season in July and August, for the slim prospects facing China’s youth.

Official data does not track unemployment among rural youth, and the real jobless population could be more than double the official number, estimated Zhuang Bo, an economist at research group TS Lombard.

Blue-collar workers, too, are struggling to find work as growth in the manufacturing and construction sectors cools.

“The reality is more serious than what the data shows,” said Ho-fung Hung, who specialises in China’s political economy at Johns Hopkins University.

“If the problem continues without remedy, it will easily spread social disorders.”

At a job fair in the tech hub Shenzhen, long lines of anxious parents and young graduates waited for a chance to chat with recruiters.

But headhunters at the fair said they were cherry-picking graduates from top universities, because only a few positions were available.

“My goal was to work in Shenzhen, in China’s Silicon Valley,” Luo Wen, a computer science graduate, told AFP.

“But after more than four months of searching, I’m ready to work even in a smaller city, for less pay.”

– ‘I can’t see the future’ –

Graduates who managed to find work this year were offered salaries that were on average 12 percent less than last year, data from online recruitment firm Zhaopin showed.

And while some job seekers were lowering their ambitions, others were biding their time pursuing further studies.

Experts warned that this may lead to “degree inflation”, where employers demand higher and higher qualifications for jobs that do not necessarily require them.

Analysts blamed government policies that saw a rapid rise in college students over the past decade as the economy failed to accommodate more knowledge workers.

“The pandemic and lockdowns simply aggravated the problem,” Hung said.

The government has pledged to shore up employment by offering tax relief for small businesses and more start-up funding.

Premier Li Keqiang has said China’s employment crisis is “complex and grave” and called on state-owned companies to step up to stabilise the economy.

And as growth in the private sector slows, job seekers have flocked to cram schools to prepare for highly competitive civil service exams.

A record-breaking two million people signed up for the national civil service exam last fall.

A recent survey by 51job, one of China’s biggest job search services, found that 40 percent of respondents preferred stable state jobs over corporate careers.

But for Zhao, who cannot afford to study further and does not have the connections to secure a government job, few options remain.

“I feel that I can’t see the future,” she said.

“I haven’t made any progress. It’s miserable.”

CRIMINAL CYBER CAPITALI$M
Facebook agrees to settle Cambridge Analytica privacy suit

By AFP
Published August 28, 2022

Facebook has reached a preliminary agreement in a long-running lawsuit seeking damages from the social network for allowing third parties, including the company Cambridge Analytica, to access users’ private data.

According to a document filed Friday in a San Francisco court, Facebook says it is submitting a draft “agreement in principle” and has requested a stay of proceedings for 60 days finalize it.

The social network did not indicate the amount or terms of the agreement in the class action.

When asked by AFP, Facebook’s parent company Meta did not respond on Saturday.

The deal comes as Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg and former chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, who announced her resignation in June, were due to testify in court in September as part of the scandal.

In a lawsuit initiated in 2018, Facebook users accused the social network of violating privacy rules by sharing their data with third parties including the firm Cambridge Analytica, which was linked to Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Cambridge Analytica, which has since shut down, had collected and exploited, without their consent, the personal data of 87 million Facebook users, to which the platform had given it access.

This information was allegedly used to develop software steering US voters in favor of Trump.

In 2019, federal authorities fined Facebook $5 billion for misleading its users and imposed independent oversight of its personal data management.

Since the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke, Facebook has removed access to its data from thousands of apps suspected of abusing it, restricted the amount of information available to developers in general, and made it easier for users to calibrate restrictions on personal data sharing.

UN high-seas biodiversity treaty struggles to leave port

Many had hoped that the fifth session of negotiations on a marine biodiversity treaty for international waters, which began on August 15, 2022 at the United

Nations headquarters in New York, would have been the last - 


By AFP
Published August 27, 2022

A two-week negotiating session on a treaty to protect the high seas wrapped up Friday. After 15 years, including four prior formal sessions, negotiators have yet to reach a legally binding agreement to address the growing environmental and economic challenges involving the high seas, also known as international waters — a zone which encompasses almost half the planet.

Many had hoped that this fifth session, which began on August 15 at the United Nations headquarters in New York, would be the last and yield a final text on “the conservation and sustainable use of marine biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction,” or BBNJ for short.

But a new version of the treaty — distributed to delegates on Friday morning just hours before the official end of negotiations, and seen by AFP — still included many paragraphs open to negotiations.

A meeting scheduled for noon (1600 GMT) was canceled to allow consultations to continue, which observers suggest could run into Saturday.

One of the most sensitive issues revolves around the sharing of possible profits gained from developing genetic resources in international waters, where pharmaceutical, chemical and cosmetic companies hope to find miracle drugs, products or cures.

Such costly research at sea is largely the prerogative of rich nations, but developing countries do not want to be left out of potential windfall profits drawn from marine resources that belong to no one.

The new draft text seems to still side with the developing nations, with a requirement that two percent of all future sales be redistributed, eventually rising to eight percent.

Greenpeace’s Will McCallum accuses the EU, United States and Canada of rejecting the proposal.

“It’s not even real money. It’s just hypothetical money one day. That is why it is really frustrating,” he told AFP.

The EU pushed back on that characterization, with one European negotiator telling AFP: “We are willing to contribute to the BBNJ agreement through various funding sources, which in our view shall include a fair sharing of benefits from marine genetic resources globally.”

Similar issues of equity between the Global North and South arise in other international negotiations, such as on climate change, where developing nations feel outsized harms from global warming and try in vain to get wealthier nations to help pay to offset those impacts.

– ‘Too close to fail’ –

Some are hopeful for an agreement.

“This is the final stage and delegates are working hard to come to an agreement,” said Liz Karan with the NGO Pew Charitable Trusts.

Jihyun Lee, a youth ambassador with conservation group the High Seas Alliance, said: “We’re too close to fail.”

The high seas begin at the border of nations’ exclusive economic zones (EEZs) — which by international law reach no more than 200 nautical miles (370 kilometers) from each country’s coast — and are under no state’s jurisdiction.

Sixty percent of the world’s oceans fall under this category.

And while healthy marine ecosystems are crucial to the future of humanity, particularly to limit global warming, only one percent of international waters are protected.

One of the key pillars of an eventual BBNJ treaty is to allow the creation of marine protected areas, which many nations hope will cover 30 percent of the Earth’s ocean by 2030.

“Without establishing protections in this vast area, we will not be able to meet our ambitious and necessary 30 by 30 goal,” said US State Department official Maxine Burkett at a press conference.

But delegations still disagree on the process for creating these protected areas, as well as on how to implement a requirement for environmental impact assessments before new activity on the high seas.

“I think they have made a lot of progress in the last two weeks on issues that were very controversial,” said Klaudija Cremers, a researcher at the IDDRI think tank, which like multiple other NGOs has a seat with observer status at the negotiations.

She told AFP that the final talks Friday “could be the push to get an agreement.”

Global warming is cooling many of the world’s economies

By Dr. Tim Sandle
Published August 27, 2022


File photo: The heat from the Dixie Fire bent street lights to the ground, as the blaze tore through Greenville, California. — © AFP/File

Climate change affects much of the Earth and the way we interact with it. This is not just in relation to biology but also to the way economies develop. We look at three research areas that provide an alternative look at the climate change problem.

Global warming cools economies

Economies are sensitive to persistent temperature shocks over at least a 10-year time frame and with the recent increases in global temperatures, the climate changes have impacted economic growth across many nations.

A study from University of California – Davis has analysed the effect of global rising temperatures and climate change on Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The outcome of the economic assessment is that nearly a quarter of the countries studied are sensitive to such impacts.

Taking one example, the El Niño Southern Oscillation is a 3 to 7-year temperature fluctuation in the Pacific Ocean that affects temperature and rainfall in many parts of the world. The GDP effects of these types of lower-frequency oscillations are also significant and long lasting on many nations within this region.

The research appears in the journal Environmental Research Letters, titled “Persistent effect of temperature on GDP identified from lower frequency temperature variability.”

Global warming triggers diseases

A comprehensive assessment of scientific literature has uncovered empirical evidence that more than 58 percent of human diseases caused by pathogens, such as dengue, hepatitis, pneumonia, malaria, Zika and more, have been–at some point–aggravated by climatic hazards.

Pathogenic diseases are primarily transmitted by vectors, plus waterborne, airborne, direct contact and foodborne transmission pathways. Overall, 218 out of 375, of known human pathogenic diseases had been affected at some point, by at least one climatic hazard, via 1,006 unique pathways.

The research appears in the journal Nature Climate Change titled “Over half of known human pathogenic diseases can be aggravated by climate change.”

Risk assessment

The above two areas indicate the need for careful planning and risk management. Here studies show that simultaneous extreme heat and drought events have consequences in a variety of areas, such as the economy and medicine, as indicated above; but also overall health and food production.

In addition, due to complex socio-economic connections, these more frequent extreme events can cause knock-on effects. Therefore, University of Zurich scientists conclude, more systematic risk assessments are needed to make affected regions more resilient and to enable governments to plan better.

The research appears in the journal PLOS Climate Change, titled “Towards improved understanding of cascading and interconnected risks from concurrent weather extremes: Analysis of historical heat and drought extreme events.”

Google searches for ‘Remote jobs’ hit their highest level

AFP
Published August 27, 2022


A typical office desk. Image: Mattes / Wikimedia / Public Domain (CC0 1.0)

Searches in the UK for ‘remote jobs’ has hit their highest ever level during August of 2022, more than two years after the very first COVID-19 lockdown. This shows that the working cultural changes initiated by the behavioural changes triggered by the pandemic continue to resonate.

A new study, which comes from document management company SmallPDF reveals that Google searches for remote jobs hit their highest ever level since searches began being recorded in 2004.

According to the UK government, searches for ‘remote IT jobs’ also hit their highest level ever, indicating a demand in the industry for working from home opportunities.

For many, working at home remains a new development. For example, 56 percent of those currently working remote have only been doing so since the onset of the 2020 coronavirus pandemic.

There is a class divide with the types of occupations that are permitted to work from home. People who earn under £20,000 per year, for example, have a less than 5 percent chance of being able to work remotely. The ability to request remote work is something that is more common to the professional-managerial class.

There are also variations in terms of demographics. With these, the 25–34 year-old age group are the most likely to be working remotely.

Linking back to the SmallPDF data, the proportion of working adults who did any work from home in 2020 increased to 37 percent on average from 27 percent in 2019. This assessment also found that those workers living in London were those most likely to homework, either permanently or through a hybrid approach.

Hybrid working varies. The most common hybrid working pattern that workers undertake is working mostly from home, and sometimes from their usual place of work.

A spokesperson from SmallPDF has told Digital Journal: “As train strikes continue, interest in remote work is at an all-time high, with many people looking for home working jobs due to the uncertainty of further strike action. This is accompanied with the pandemic sparking a never before seen influx of opportunities to work from home, meaning interest in remote working may continue to rise over the next decade.”

In addition, it is noted: “It’ll be interesting to see how this demand for remote working affects certain industries, and the thinking of corporate management in their future hiring processes.”