‘Greece has derailed’: tens of thousands of protesters ‘rage’ over train disaster

Helena Smith in Athens
Wed, 8 March 2023 

Photograph: Louisa Gouliamaki/AFP/Getty Images

Tens of thousands have staged protest rallies in Greece as anger over a train disaster that plunged the country into mourning a week ago intensified amid widespread industrial action.

In cities nationwide, as workers staged a 24-hour general strike, demonstrators voiced fury over an accident that left 57 dead when two locomotives collided head on and at high speed outside the town of Tempe. It was the deadliest train crash on record in Greece.

“There is a lot of anger, a lot of rage,” said Sofia Amorianou, 60, as she walked around Athens’ main Syntagma square holding a banner emblazoned with the words “Their profits, our dead.”

“In a minute, the narrative of development and growth, of Greece progressing, totally collapsed. In a minute our children died. People feel very vulnerable, very shocked.”

Many of those killed in the 28 February collision, when the Thessaloniki-bound night train rammed into a freight train using the same track, were students returning from a three-day holiday. The front carriages of the passenger train, which had set out from Athens with 350 on board, exploded on impact.

The arrest of a stationmaster, accused of making the wrong point switch that put the trains on the same track, has done little to assuage public conviction that the accident could have been averted if proper safeguards were in place. Instead, revelations of staff shortages and substandard equipment, in particular the poor signalling system, have shone a light on the parlous state of the Greek rail network, and an outpouring of outrage has put the centre-right government on the defensive.

Wednesday’s protests drew crowds of more than 60,000 in Athens and the northern Greek capital of Thessaloniki, according to authorities. In both cities, violent clashes erupted when police, firing stun grenades and teargas, responded to hooded, black-clad youths hurling stones and firebombs.

With so many heeding the calls of unions and student groups to take to the streets, the prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, had been forced to take immediate remedial action and delay general elections, well-placed sources told the Guardian. Polls that had been due to take place early next month “will likely” be rescheduled for 21 May.

Five days into his new role Giorgos Gerapetritis, the new transport minister, pledged to have the railroads, whose services have been suspended, up and running again, saying it was vital that the public regain its trust in a mode of travel that was both popular and inexpensive “even though that may sound like a luxury when we have mourned so many lives”.

Experts with the EU railways agency flew into Athens as the embattled administration has promised a root-and-branch overhaul of the rail network in the hope of tempering passions. A judicial inquiry has also been fast-tracked.

But in an atmosphere that has become ever more febrile, it is clear that the tragedy has shaken MPs and heightened the prospect of political instability.

“This is more than a train collision and a tragic railway accident. You get the sense that the country has derailed,” said Nasos Iliopoulos, a spokesperson for Greece’s main leftwing opposition party, Syriza.

Mitsotakis, who initially attributed the crash to “tragic human error”, has since apologised for a collision that he, too, has acknowledged could have been prevented if proper security measures had been enforced. In a statement, he described the Greek rail system as not only flaw-ridden, but the worst expression of a country that otherwise attracts millions of foreign visitors every year.

Since 2014, the EU has injected €700m (£624m) into 16 transport projects across Greece, the vast majority of which were linked to upgrading the rail network.

The judicial investigation currently under way is looking into why EU contracts that had been signed and sealed with the bloc were never implemented. Mitsotakis had hoped to clinch the forthcoming election on the back of what his government has seen as its most enduring legacy: economic recovery, wholesale reforms and effective crisis management. Digital governance and modernisation of the ailing public sector had been widely perceived as the administration’s greatest achievements. Four years later, the rail disaster has taken a wrecking ball to that legacy.

In the eight days since the tragedy, protests have been led by student organisations able to identify with victims. For a generation raised during the country’s debt crisis – a drama that eviscerated the middle class – before enduring the rigours of lockdown with the pandemic’s prolonged closure of schools, the crash appears to be the last straw.

“This has been a disaster that has mainly affected the young,” said professor George Pagoulatos, director of the Eliamep thinktank in Athens. “It could affect the way they see the political system as not delivering and thus feed into an anti-systemic vote or widespread abstention.”

Boundaries between West Bank factions blur as resistance to Israeli occupation grows


Bethan McKernan and Sufian Taha in Jenin
Wed, 8 March 2023 

The streets of the occupied West Bank city of Jenin were awash with black-clad men wearing balaclavas and toting M-16 rifles, a model apparently favoured because the ammunition is cheap. The crack of near-constant gunfire was deafening, almost drowning out chants of: “We will teach Tel Aviv a lesson.”

On Wednesday, the bodies of two militants killed in an Israeli army raid the day before were wrapped in Palestinian flags and carried through the centre towards the refugee camp on the city’s western edge. The huge number of armed men, and the mingling of flags belonging to several different militias – Hamas, Fatah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad – spoke to a new dynamic in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In defiance of the West Bank’s semi-autonomous governing body, the Palestinian Authority (PA), armed resistance to the Israeli occupation is growing, and the boundaries between factions are blurring as their interests begin to merge.

“The PA are against us, they arrest and torture us. They sold out for money while we protect this land with our blood,” said a 25-year-old wearing a silver headband and the insignia of Fatah’s al-Aqsa Brigades, who spoke on the condition he was not named. “I have come from Nablus today to support our brothers. We face the occupation wherever it is. You can see by our numbers, look how many are here today. For every martyr they kill, 10 take his place.”

People stage a protest in Hebron after six Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire during a military raid on Tuesday in the West Bank city of Jenin.

 Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Six men – three affiliated with Hamas, one from Islamic Jihad, one from Fatah, and one man who was apparently a defecting member of the PA’s security forces – were killed in a rare daylight Israel Defence Forces (IDF) raid on Jenin camp on Tuesday afternoon targeting the Palestinian gunman who killed two Israelis in the West Bank town of Huwara last week. That attack had triggered a revenge rampage by nearby settlers living illegally on Palestinian land that even IDF officials described as a “pogrom”.

Related: ‘They ransack our village for sport’: one farmer’s story of Israeli settler violence

At the scene of the fighting, a car had slammed into the front of the targeted house, its bonnet crumpled like paper; witnesses said a shoulder-launched rocket fired by Israeli troops had thrown it forward by several metres, as well as blasting iron gates off their hinges and sending breezeblocks from destroyed walls tumbling to the ground.

Pools of dark red blood, still wet, shimmered in the sunlight. Inside the building, the orange and white kitchen, remarkably intact, looked at odds with the carnage on the other side of the missing living room wall.

“When we heard the soldiers shouting in Hebrew, we knew a raid was starting,” said 30-year-old Islam Fayed, who lives next door.

“We are worried about the impact of all of this on the children. They don’t sleep any more, they keep waking up from nightmares.”

Last spring, the IDF launched Operation Breakwater, a campaign of near-nightly raids across the West Bank mainly targeting the northern cities of Jenin and Nablus, in response to a wave of Palestinian terror attacks in Israel. A year later, not only have terrorist attacks targeting Israeli civilians increased, but the campaign’s soaring Palestinian death toll has galvanised a new generation of Palestinian fighters.

Signs are emerging that the groups of young men who organised in their home towns to fight back against the Israeli incursions are beginning to coordinate across different cities: that the Huwara shooter, a Hamas member from Nablus, chose to hide out in Jenin’s refugee camp, where he was sheltered by local fighters, suggests those links are strengthening. Such coordination lays the groundwork for a return to full-scale conflict with Israel, even if the PA, and half of its divided ruling Fatah faction, is against it.

I think this is worse than the second intifada

Overnight in both Nablus and Jenin, imams broadcast a message from Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails asking the people to rise up together in solidarity, a missive met with cheers and fireworks. The two cities, as well as the West Bank’s administrative capital, Ramallah, observed a general strike on Wednesday in protest against the militants’ deaths in Jenin – the kind of collective action the weak and corrupt PA can only dream of inspiring.

For the residents of these cities, war has already returned. About 70 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces so far in 2023, around half militants and half civilians, according to rights groups. Over the same period, Palestinian “lone wolf” attacks have killed 14 Israelis, all but one of them civilians. The bloodshed follows 2022, which was the deadliest year on record in Israel, Jerusalem and the West Bank since the second intifada, or Palestinian uprising, in the 2000s.

Mourners attend the funeral of Palestinians killed in an Israeli raid.

 Photograph: APAImages/Rex/Shutterstock

“I think this is worse than the second intifada. Now, every time [the Israelis] enter, they kill. They don’t distinguish between civilians and militants,” said Nadja, a 55-year-old resident of Jenin camp.

Originally a shelter for Palestinians who fled their homes during the war surrounding Israel’s creation in 1948, Jenin camp today, along with 18 others like it across the West Bank, resembles a ghetto: jobs are scarce, guns are plentiful, and resistance to the occupation has always been strong.

In the 30 years since its creation, the PA has done nothing to improve living standards here. If anything, recently matters have become worse, as the Israeli army has secured agreement to find the militants the PA’s own forces are too weak, or ambivalent about, to apprehend themselves.

As the Palestinian death toll steadily climbs, and settlers commit violence like that seen in Huwara with impunity, the little respect the PA still enjoys is evaporating. In videos circulated on social media on Tuesday night, frustrated Palestinians praised what they described as “the heroism of the martyrs”, while berating the PA as collaborators.

The near future does not bode well. The holy Muslim month of Ramadan, when tensions often boil over, starts on on 23 March. Itamar Ben-Gvir, the extremist national security minister in Israel’s new far-right government, appears likely to pour fuel on the fire during the febrile period by pushing ahead with orders to demolish Palestinian homes in occupied East Jerusalem and visiting the city’s sensitive Temple Mount complex.

“I am not afraid to die,” a 20-year-old fighter from the camp said. “There is no life here anyway. Every day, there are incursions by the army or the PA, and people die.”

US carbon pipeline faces setback as residents refuse to cede land rights

Thu, March 9, 2023 
By Leah Douglas

(Reuters) - Navigator CO2 Ventures’ proposed carbon pipeline project in the U.S. Midwest is struggling to secure a site to store millions of tons of greenhouse gas it hopes to collect from the region’s ethanol plants, as residents refuse to give up land rights over fears the underground reservoirs could leak, according to documents reviewed by Reuters.

The issue could slow the project, one of three carbon pipelines planned in the Midwest that aims to help the ethanol industry reduce its climate footprint in line with federal government efforts to decarbonize the U.S. economy. The projects are a major test of the viability of carbon capture and storage as a climate solution.

In Illinois, Navigator has restarted the permit process for its Heartland Greenway pipeline in part due to difficulty getting land rights from residents living above the underground formations where it hopes to store up to 15 million metric tons annually of carbon dioxide, according to a Reuters review of the state regulatory docket and interviews with landowners along the proposed route.

Residents along the proposed route of the pipeline, as well as along the routes of two other carbon pipelines proposed by Iowa-based Summit Carbon Solutions and Denver-based Wolf Carbon Solutions, have expressed concern about damage to their farmland from installing the pipeline and safety risks if the pipeline were to leak.

Some living above Navigator's proposed sequestration site are also worried that carbon dioxide stored 5,800 feet underground could seep upward and contaminate their groundwater with carbonic acid, which is formed when carbon dioxide meets water.

Acidification of groundwater can kill plants or sub-soil animals and increase concentration of metals in drinking water, according to research by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The Department of Energy in 2021 invested $4 million for research on the issue.

In January, Navigator withdrew its initial permit application with the Illinois Commerce Commission. This came two months after a senior ICC engineer recommended that the commission deny the company's application because it had not secured the necessary sequestration site, the commission's docket shows.

Navigator must secure land rights within an 11-month window from submitting the application, according to state law.

In a new permit application filed in late February, Navigator added 42 miles of pipeline leading to a second sequestration site - an underground geologic formation where it would store captured carbon dioxide - in a county neighboring where it had initially proposed to store carbon.

The company also pushed back its expected timeline for receiving federal, state, and county approvals by several months.

Navigator Vice President of Government and Public Affairs Elizabeth Burns-Thompson told Reuters in an interview on Monday that the company is on track to break ground on the pipeline on its original mid-2024 timeline and that it withdrew and resubmitted its application to accommodate adding the new pipeline branch.

Burns-Thompson also said Navigator is selecting sequestration sites specifically for their ability to permanently retain captured carbon dioxide.

The company did not share the number or percent of easements it has secured over its proposed sequestration sites.

Karen Brocklesby lives over the pore space Navigator initially proposed in Christian County. She was quick to reject the company's easement offer when they approached her last year and helped to form an Illinois community group that opposes the pipeline.

"It was easy to come together as a group that said no, we don’t want this," she said.

'GUINEA PIGS'

Elsewhere along its proposed route - which crosses Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Minnesota, in addition to Illinois - Navigator could seek eminent domain authority from regulators in cases where landowners refused to sign easements.

But Illinois law does not address the use of eminent domain above underground pore space, meaning Navigator may need to get every landowner living over the sequestration area to agree to sell off a portion of their land rights.

Christian County officials don't believe residents will be more receptive to Navigator's second permit attempt.

"There’s nothing like this in the world," said county board chairman Bryan Sharp. "We don’t want to be the guinea pigs."

The two other major carbon pipeline projects are working to secure underground carbon storage space.

Summit has negotiated easements with landowners for more than 85% of its sequestration site in North Dakota, the company told Reuters.

Wolf, which is partnered with grain processor Archer-Daniels-Midland Co (ADM.N), declined to provide updated information but said last year that it plans to store captured carbon at a site already owned by ADM.

(Reporting by Leah Douglas; editing by Diane Craft)

UK

The lesson from Matt Hancock’s WhatsApps is this: these clowns can’t govern, their only skill is covering tracks

Zoe Williams

THE GUARDIAN
Wed, 8 March 2023 

Photograph: Leon Neal/Getty Images

What is the public interest value of Matt Hancock’s huge cache of WhatsApp messages? They tell us a fair amount about him and his vanity. He has a laser-like focus on claiming credit. “I CALLED FOR THIS TWO MONTHS AGO,” he writes in shouty caps, to an aide, about the plan to cut the approval time for a vaccine. “This is a Hancock triumph.” His tone is jokey and casual, his response to criticism querulous and brittle. “What a bunch of absolute arses the teaching unions are,” Hancock texts, to which the then education secretary, Gavin Williamson, replies: “I know they really really do just hate work.” Hancock replies with two laughing emojis and a bullseye. They do not sound remotely like government ministers making high-stakes decisions: they sound like the thick two out of The Inbetweeners, moaning about their head of year and backslapping each other for their bons mots.

Hancock has a pretty high tolerance for situations that should have been intolerable to a health secretary: the “eat out to help out” policy, for example, was thought to have been driving infections – but not to worry, because he’d “kept it out of the news”. There is plenty to tease out about the man’s character, but how much of it didn’t we know already from I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here? He’s already said that he won’t be seeking re-election; his fitness for public office is now a footnote.

The professionalism and impartiality of the head of the civil service, Simon Case, have been called into question, and Michael Gove’s giant ego marvelled at. The banter, the callousness, the internecine rivalries, the chaos: it all suggests a general contempt for the public. Would we have wished it otherwise? Sure, government by mature public servants would have been more reassuring. Given what we already knew, however, from the Downing Street parties to the test-and-trace fiasco, little of this comes as a huge surprise. It’s hardly a smoking gun that Case called Boris Johnson a “nationally distrusted figure” – that distrust was palpable and often voiced.

We may see it all as our clearest view yet into the operating practices of government in this Tory era. The WhatsApps leaked to the Daily Telegraph do seem to confirm all the dark fears we had that the superficial, press clipping-driven approach apparent in public also underpinned the way inadequate ministers did their jobs in private during one of the most challenging periods of recent history.

Yet the medium really is the message, here: when policy is made over WhatsApp and transparency is delivered via a leak, a democratic debt opens up that cannot be easily be repaid. It can be serviced only by counterleak, by more gossip.

This has put the entire narrative in the hands of a newspaper fascinated by the rights and wrongs of lockdown, and whether the messaging around that time was fair or fearmongering (realistically, probably both – there was plenty to fear). Of course there are lessons to learn about the balance between civil liberties and public health, but this isn’t the way to hold Johnson and his ministers to account. Nobody was asking them to meet a completely unprecedented pandemic with perfect judgment on abstruse and novel questions such as “How serious is this new strain of the virus?”, or “Should non-cohabiting couples be allowed to see one another?”. What we could legitimately ask for was probity, coherence and the proper use of public funds, and those questions have been lost in the cacophony of a rightwing editorial agenda.

It doesn’t matter so much whether Hancock did “snogging and heavy petting” with Gina Coladangelo, or whether he broke his own social distancing rules. It’s far more important to follow the money: did the government break its own rules on procurement, and to what purpose – was it simple chumminess that saw vast sums finding their way to the likes of Michelle Mone or Pharmaceuticals Direct, a firm linked to the Conservative donor Samir Jassal? What were the criteria to get into the “VIP lane”, whether to supply PPE or focus group services?

Related: A (partial) defence of Matt Hancock: leaders must be free to discuss policy in private | Simon Jenkins

What will it take to get full details of all government Covid-related contracts? Without those, it simply isn’t possible to inquire into the pandemic response, either informally by the press or formally by committee. We don’t know whether the contractors were qualified, and we can’t gauge the quality of what they supplied; we won’t know whether NHS staff, carers and other public sector workers could have been better protected had PPE been supplied in better time, and been of better quality. We know money was wasted, of course, but we have no way of knowing how much. We can’t easily tell the difference between incompetence and corruption.

“The use of private communications,” wrote the Good Law Project, seeking an appeal hearing in the supreme court, “has not only put our national security at risk, but led to the deletion of crucial records and information that should be available for public scrutiny.” That case was denied in December, when the court of appeal ruled that courts should not control ministers’ use of private phones and messaging services, even when they were using those to negotiate commercial deals with VIPs, in breach of their own policy.

The Lockdown Files delivered one important lesson, but not for us, unfortunately: rather for cabinet ministers, who are now purportedly putting their WhatsApps on auto-delete, prompting a warning from the information commissioner . Far from opening up the pandemic period to greater scrutiny, Hancock’s messages have merely flagged to his colleagues the importance of evading it.

Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist

UK
Tory MP lobbied NHS chief on behalf of firm that paid him £1,600 a month

The Lockdown Files Team
Wed, 8 March 2023 

Brine message

The chairman of the health select committee lobbied the head of the NHS on behalf of a firm paying him £1,600 a month, The Telegraph can reveal.

Steve Brine, a former health minister, told Michael Gove he had been “trying for months” to convince the NHS to hire anaesthetists through Remedium, a recruitment company he worked for.

A WhatsApp message seen by the Telegraph reveals Mr Brine contacted Simon Stevens, then chief executive of NHS England, as well as the Department of Health to suggest they use the company, in an apparent breach of two lobbying rules.

The message, which was forwarded to Matt Hancock by Mr Gove on Feb 2, 2021, said:

MPs condemned Mr Brine’s conduct as “disgraceful” on Wednesday and called for his resignation from the health committee.

It has previously been reported that, earlier in the pandemic, Mr Brine suggested that Mr Hancock use Remedium to hire staff to work in Nightingale Hospitals.

At the time in March 2020, he was working as an ad-hoc consultant for the firm, at a rate of £800 per day.

Mr Brine denied any wrongdoing and said he had merely passed on a letter to the then health secretary, and had not lobbied him.

The letter was dated six months and 15 days after his last payment from Remedium, which placed him outside of the restricted lobbying period for MPs.

However, in July 2020, the firm then began paying him £1,600 for eight hours' work each month – an arrangement that continued until the end of December 2021.

Steve Brine

The latest revelations from the WhatsApp message show Mr Brine claimed he had spent “months” trying to persuade both the Department of Health and Lord Stevens that they should use Remedium to hire anaesthetists.

He has since been elected chairman of the health and social care select committee in Parliament.

The message could mean Mr Brine has breached two different lobbying rules.

Under the first rule, set by the Government, former ministers are banned from using contacts from their time in government to lobby for two years after they return to the backbenches.

When Mr Brine requested advice on the role from the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments, the lobbying watchdog for former ministers, he was told that for two years after leaving office in March 2019, he should not “become personally involved in lobbying the UK Government/NHS organisations on behalf of Remedium Partners” or use “Government and/or Whitehall contacts…to secure business on behalf of Remedium Partners”.

Under the second rule, set by Parliament, MPs are not allowed to lobby for an organisation from which they are receiving “a reward” for six months after receiving a payment.

The message shows that Mr Brine was lobbying in favour of the firm to both ministers and NHS organisations within this period.
Request passed to NHS England

Separate messages between Mr Hancock and his team show that Mr Brine's request was passed to NHS England via Allan Nixon, the health secretary’s special adviser:

“I told him team were sorting it and he hasn’t come back to me about it since,” Mr Nixon said.

The adviser then appeared to complain about the volume of requests Mr Brine had sent to the Department of Health.

“Steve’s being a nob right now and I’ve no idea why. Been chasing my tail trying to sort loads of stuff for him (not least his hospital) and he still acts like this.”

The next day, Feb 3, 2021, Mr Nixon said that “Prerana’s team” had been in contact with David Green, the CEO of Remedium.

It is thought Mr Nixon was referring to Prerana Issar, the NHS’s Chief People Officer.

Anneliese Dodds, chairman of the Labour Party, said: "While NHS heroes and other key workers battled the virus, and the British people did their bit by staying at home, it's disgraceful that a Conservative MP appeared more interested in making a fast buck out of the pandemic.

"If Steve Brine has broken lobbying rules he must face the consequences. Rishi Sunak has been too weak to stand up to his party or his Cabinet. Will he take the appropriate action in this case?"

Daisy Cooper, the Liberal Democrat health spokeswoman, said Mr Brine should resign from the committee pending an investigation.

"These messages suggest Steve Brine was desperate to help his corporate employers whilst the country was pulling together during a pandemic and leaves him with serious questions to answer,” she said.

"Frankly, the whole thing stinks. Rishi Sunak should launch an independent investigation into this damning evidence immediately."

Mr Brine told the Telegraph: "This was about responding in the national interest to an urgent public call from ministers and the NHS in a national crisis even if, ultimately, it led nowhere let alone secure any business for Remedium.”

The rule against MPs lobbying is regulated by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, who can recommend sanctions, including suspension from the House of Commons for a fixed period.

The rules on paid advocacy were broken in a widely publicised way by Owen Paterson, the former MP for North Shropshire, who received support from Boris Johnson, then prime minister, after the commissioner recommended he be suspended for 30 days.

The incident resulted in a major debate over standards in public life and caused a rift between Mr Johnson and his backbenchers that precipitated his downfall.

Hancock ‘told to tone down China Covid lab leak claims’

Gavin Cordon
Wed, 8 March 2023 

Matt Hancock

Matt Hancock was instructed by the Cabinet Office to tone down claims in his memoir that the Covid-19 pandemic originated from a laboratory leak in China, according to leaked correspondence.

Officials warned it would “cause problems” if he repeated the claim in his Pandemic Diaries and insisted he must make clear he was not reflecting the Government’s view, The Daily Telegraph reported.

The changes to the book were made after he submitted the manuscript to the Cabinet Office for review last year – a procedure all former ministers are obliged to follow.

According to the Telegraph, which has obtained tens of thousands of the former health secretary’s messages, Mr Hancock had wanted to say that “given how cagey the Chinese have been” their official version of events should be treated with “considerable scepticism”.

“Global fear of the Chinese must not get in the way of a full investigation into what happened,” he wrote in the original manuscript.

In response, the Cabinet Office wrote: “This is highly sensitive and would cause problems if released.

“Must be clearer that it is supposition rather than revealing any confidential information received from inside government. Should also be clear that this is not HMG views or beliefs.”

It also expressed concern about proposed comparisons in the book between the Wuhan Institute of Virology – in the city where the virus first emerged – and the Ministry of Defence’s research laboratories at Porton Down.

Mr Hancock originally wrote it was “just too much of a coincidence” that the pandemic started in the same city as the institute.

“The only plausible alternative is that the virus was brought to Wuhan to be studied, and then escaped,” he wrote in one passage.

“The Chinese denials are a bit like us claiming that a random virus just happened to break out near a little place called Porton Down, perhaps because of some badgers. It just doesn’t fly.”

However the Cabinet Office expressed concern that it could be seized on by the Russians, who had previously claimed the novichok nerve agent used in the Salisbury poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal originated at Porton Down.

“The reference to Porton Down is damaging to national security – what is set up as a joke, is one of the attack lines Russia has used against us for the novichok poisoning, as it is only a few miles from Porton Down to Salisbury (which is entirely coincidental – as, we believe, it is that the Wuhan lab is so close to where the first Covid outbreak was recorded),” it said.

The disclosure comes after the head of the FBI said last week the agency had assessed that Covid was “most likely” the result of a lab leak.

In response to the Telegraph report, a Government spokesman said: “We would not comment on leaks or private discussions.”

A spokesperson for Mr Hancock said: “Matt will categorically not comment on national security matters.

“The release of this material shows yet again that this unlawful leak of partial information is motivated only by money and an attempt to spin a biased narrative.

“This is completely against the public interest, which will be served by the public inquiry.”

Rainforests pump water round the tropics – but the pulse of this heart is weakening

Jess Baker, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Tropical Climate, University of Leeds,

Dominick Spracklen, Professor of Biosphere-Atmosphere Interactions, University of Leeds,  

Callum Smith, PhD Candidate in Biosphere-Atmosphere Interactions, University of Leeds

The Conversation
Wed, 8 March 2023 

Jack-Sooksan/Shutterstock

Tropical forests are often referred to as the “lungs of the world”, describing the way their trees exchange gases with the atmosphere. By “breathing in” carbon dioxide and “breathing out” oxygen during photosynthesis, tropical forests remove about 15% of man-made carbon emissions and help to slow climate change.

This is not the only way tropical forests influence the climate, however. Anyone who has walked through a woodland on a hot day will know that trees have an immediate cooling effect. As well as shading the ground, trees draw water up from the soil and release it through tiny holes in their leaves called stomata. By doing this, trees cool their environment the same way evaporating sweat cools our bodies.

By pumping water from the land into the air, tropical forests also function like a heart. Water sucked up by tree roots is pumped back into the atmosphere where it forms clouds which eventually release the water as rain to be reabsorbed by trees. This cycle can occur multiple times as air moves over large forests. In fact, it’s critical to the survival of forests situated far from the ocean. In the Amazon and Congo river basins, somewhere between a quarter and a half of all rainfall comes from moisture pumped from the forest itself. This recycling of moisture helps to maintain the large amounts of rainfall tropical forests need.

Rainforests are filled with trees drawing water from the earth to the air. Jess Baker, Author provided

Cutting down trees stops this transfer of water between the earth and the air and causes the surrounding area to heat up. People living near tropical forests are well aware of this effect, and scientists have since proved it using ground and satellite temperature measurements.
The world’s heartbeat is slowing down

Scientists have long understood the theory linking deforestation and decreasing rainfall. Frustratingly, the evidence to prove it has been harder to pin down. Rainfall varies so much from year to year and between regions that it has been challenging to conclusively demonstrate the impact of deforestation.

In a recent study, we used satellite measurements to investigate whether rainfall patterns changed after tropical forests were cleared. By comparing the rainfall over deforested regions with that over neighbouring forest we were able to isolate the impacts of forest loss. We found rainfall reduced after deforestation across all tropical regions, including the Amazon, Congo and in Southeast Asia. As the area of cleared forest expanded, rainfall decreased by a larger amount.

Read more: Amazon fires: deforestation has a devastating heating impact on the local climate – new study

Our work suggests that so much tropical forest has been cleared globally over the past two decades that the tropical forest heartbeat has started to slow, resulting in less rainfall in the surrounding regions. We estimate that if tropical forests continue to be cleared, rainfall could decrease by an additional 10% by 2100 over the most heavily deforested regions. If enough forests are cleared and rainfall declines too much, a tipping point could be reached where there is not enough rain to sustain the remaining forests.

Deforestation threatens to break the tropical forest water pump. Callum Smith, Author provided

How to value tropical forests

Tropical nations are tasked with conserving their forests at the same time as developing their economies. Conservation is often perceived as a trade-off, but the local and regional climate benefits of healthy forests can reduce heat stress, boost crop yields and maintain stable water flows to predictably generate hydroelectricity. It can make more economic sense to protect forests rather than clear them.

If deforestation of the Amazon continues unabated, reductions in rainfall would cut hydropower production in the region to 25% of its potential. Another recent study showed that reducing deforestation in the Amazon to sustain rainfall could prevent agricultural losses of US$1 billion annually.

As the crucial role of tropical forests in maintaining a cooler and wetter climate becomes better understood, the incentive to conserve them will grow.


This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.


Callum Smith receives funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (DECAF project, grant agreement no. 771492) and the Newton Fund through the Met Office Climate Science for Service Partnership Brazil.

Dominick Spracklen receives funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (DECAF project, grant agreement no. 771492) and the Newton Fund through the Met Office Climate Science for Service Partnership Brazil..

Jess Baker receives funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (DECAF project, grant agreement no. 771492) and the Newton Fund through the Met Office Climate Science for Service Partnership Brazil

Australia invests $4.29bn in renewable energy in December quarter, 10 times the previous three months

Peter Hannam
Wed, 8 March 2023 


Investment in large-scale renewable energy and storage accelerated in the final three months of 2022, creating the largest quarterly investments for more than four years, but the pace remains inadequate, the Clean Energy Council says.

Developers made financial commitments to renewables and storage totalling $4.29bn in the December quarter, a 10-fold increase on the previous three months.

The year-end spurt lifted investment commitments to $6.2bn for 2022, a 17% increase on the previous year.

“While the uptick is encouraging, one quarter doesn’t mean a trend,” the council’s chief executive, Kane Thornton, said. “Australia is deploying new large-scale generation – wind and solar farms – more slowly than needed to reach the 82% target for renewable energy on the National Electricity Market” by 2030.

Related: Japan to spend $2.35bn on turning Victorian Latrobe Valley coal into ‘clean hydrogen’

“The fact remains that the rolling quarterly average investment over 12 months has not risen above $2bn since the second quarter of 2019,” Thornton said.

The investment details come a fortnight after the Australian Energy Market Operator warned of potential “reliability gaps” in the national power grid without “urgent” action in coming years to encourage more clean energy capacity and storage.

An indication of how pressure on the grid can spike came on Monday when the first major heatwave for eastern New South Wales for more than a year broke electricity demand records for March by almost a 1,000 megawatts, the AEMO said.

Thornton said the jump in investment was a response to the “more positive political and policy environment” and greater coordination by governments.

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Still, much of the expansion in commitments was the result of the financial signoff for the 756MW stage one of the Golden Plains windfarm, north-west of Geelong. That first stage alone was worth $2bn, the council said.

The project also accounted for more than a third of 1923MW of new installed capacity that reached financial close during the quarter. The tally was up about four-fold from the previous quarter, lifting the rolling 12-month average to its highest level in five quarters.

The industry is relying on fewer but larger projects if recent trends are a guide.

Last year, 15 generation projects for a total of 3.57 gigawatts of installed capacity secured financial approval. In 2021, the tally was 23 projects for 3.06GW, the council said.

New South Wales led with its five projects accounting for 1,559MW in 2022. Victoria claimed second spot with its four new projects adding 945MW of new capacity, ahead of Queensland’s three projects with 495MW.

Related: Tracking Australia’s progress on the climate crisis and the consequences of global heating

On the storage front, South Australia’s 800MW-hour Blyth battery was the largest single project reaching financial close in the December quarter.

For the year as a whole, investors signed off on 12 projects for a total of 7,374MWh of storage, more than double the 2,900MWh – also for 12 projects – in 2021, the council said.

Delays of at least a year in Snowy Hydro’s giant 2.0 pumped hydro scheme and its gas- and hydrogen-powered Kurri Kurri plant have lately added to worries about power supplies, particularly as ageing coal-fired power plants close.

AGL Energy’s Liddell coal plant in the Hunter Valley – now operating just three of its four units – will be the next to shut down, with the remaining 1,260MW scheduled to be switched off on 28 April.

Thornton called for the Renewable Energy Target to be increased and extended beyond its current 2030 deadline to support the sector.

“We know that to truly have an effect on long-term energy prices, Australia needs the security provided by low-cost electricity direct from solar and wind and reduce our reliance on increasingly expensive gas and unreliable coal generation,” he said.

BIOMASS IS A BIOMESS
Stop subsidising energy companies that burn trees for electricity, climate advisers tell government

Wed, 8 March 2023 


The government should stop the flow of multimillion pound subsidies to energy companies that burn trees, its climate watchdog has urged.

The controversial energy source involves burning woody biomass to generate electricity.

It is classed as renewable in the UK because new trees are planted to absorb the carbon dioxide released as trees burn.

That made companies like Drax, which used to burn coal but is now the UK's largest bioenergy provider, eligible for £617 million in government subsidies last year.

In the same year, it posted bumper profits of £731 million as energy prices soared.

In its strongest edict on the issue yet, the Climate Change Committee (CCC) today warned for the first time that subsidies for biomass must end when the current round expires in 2027.

Bioenergy is too expensive and "even sustainable biomass supplies have significant lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions", the CCC said, in a much broader report about Britain's energy future.

It welcomed the fact the money had previously helped convert coal power stations to burn biomass instead, and had supported the industry years ago when low-carbon power was still expensive.

But now it is "not good value for money for bill-payers, and it's not the right thing for the climate either," Dr David Joffe, the CCC's head of net zero, told reporters.

The CCC also warned the current system encouraged biomass companies to "run for as many hours as possible rather than operating flexibly in a back-up role" because they are paid the wholesale price, which is linked to gas prices, as well as the subsidies.

Some scientists back bioenergy as a far cleaner means of power than coal or gas, while many argue it is impossible to guarantee the emissions are reabsorbed, or negate the other pollution.

A Drax spokesperson said its "conversion from coal to biomass is one of the primary reasons that the UK's power sector has decarbonised as fast as it has over the last decade, while maintaining energy security".

In 2021 Sky News revealed that Drax's Selby plant was the largest CO2 emitter in the UK, before any carbon dioxide removal by new tree growth was factored in.

Drax strongly denies allegations by a BBC Panorama programme that it had been felling trees from primary Canadian forests, rather than burning only "waste wood" as promised.

'Important role' for technology that removes carbon

The CCC also said the UK should abandon biomass in its current form from around 2030.

But it threw its support behind plans to make biomass carbon negative by capturing and burying the emissions under the North Sea in depleted oil or gas fields.

The process is known as bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS).

BECCS will play an "important role" in meeting climate targets because it can remove CO2 from the atmosphere while also generating electricity, the CCC said.

The government's reluctance to try to reduce demand, for example via high-polluting sectors like aviation or agriculture, makes carbon removals such as BECCS even more urgent, Dr Joffe told Sky News.

But Conservative MP Pauline Latham said not only should the government end the "massive renewable subsidies they pay to biomass companies" by 2027, but "further subsidies should not be granted beyond this date in the form of subsidies to BECCS".

"These companies should not be using billpayer money to burn wood from other countries' forests," she told Sky News.

Will bioenergy with carbon capture work?

Energy thinktank Ember estimates Drax's proposed BECCS plant would require £31.7 billion in public subsidies.

Drax says it has successfully piloted the carbon capture process, but cannot test the storage because the underground infrastructure has not yet been built.

Its spokesperson said the CCC identifies "the crucial role that carbon removals, and particularly bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), will play in delivering a reliable and resilient decarbonised power system".

The spokesperson added: "We believe the UK will need multiple solutions in place to achieve net zero, and as the country's biggest renewable power generator by output, we look forward to playing an important role in its transition."

The government's delayed Biomass Strategy, which was due by the end of 2022, is expected between April and June this year.

A government spokesperson said the UK is "decarbonising faster than any other G7 country, while low-carbon sources like renewables and nuclear provide half of our total UK energy generation".

They added: "But we are also investing in the new technologies of the future, rapidly progressing developments in Carbon Capture and Storage, alongside being the first government in decades to invest in nuclear energy which will be critical to energy security and making energy more affordable."

The CCC's wide-ranging report looked at how the UK could decarbonise the grid as hoped by 2035. It said the goal was just about still in reach, but officials were moving too slowly at the moment.

Read more:
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RIP

Mystic Meg, one of Britain's most famous astrologers, dies aged 80


Thu, 9 March 2023



Margaret Lake, known as Mystic Meg, has died aged 80.

The astrologer had written daily horoscopes for the Sun newspaper for almost 23 years.

The paper reported that she was admitted to St Mary's Hospital in Paddington, London last month suffering from flu. She died at 3.45am this morning.

Her agent of 34 years Dave Shapland told the Sun: "Without any question, she was Britain's most famous astrologer by a million miles.

"Nobody came close to Meg in that respect. She was followed by millions in this country and also around the world.

"She even became part of the English language - if a politician, somebody from showbiz or ordinary people in the street are asked a tricky question they will say 'Who do you think I am, Mystic Meg?'

"It shows what an impact she made."

Victoria Newton, the editor of the Sun, said: "This is devastating news. We have lost an icon.

"Our brilliant and incomparable Meg was synonymous with The Sun - she was a total legend. We loved her and so did our readers.

"For more than two decades Mystic Meg has been a must read column and cemented her as Britain's most famous astrologer.

"She was a true professional whose guidance helped our readers daily - our postbag bears testament to this.

"One of my favourite memories of Meg is when all the Spice Girls came to the office, just as they were riding high at number one.

"We planned a tour for them but all they wanted to do was meet Mystic Meg!

"You know you're a true icon when the only person Victoria Beckham is interested in is you.

"Farewell Meg. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Our thoughts are with her family and friends."

Mystic Meg was born on 27 July 1942 in Accrington, Lancashire.

She received a teacher's diploma from the university of Leeds.

But she did not go into teaching and instead worked as a sub editor on a women's magazine.

Before she reached the peak of her fame, she wrote erotic stories and worked as a journalist at the now-defunct News of the World magazine.

She became a household name when she started her phone-line horoscope readings in 1989.

She was also a feature on the National Lottery TV show in the 1990s when she would appear on stage and with her crystal ball to predict who would win the weekly jackpot.

Her horoscopes and clairvoyant messages captured the imagination of the public and she received huge amounts of correspondence - particularly from angry Manchester United fans who were angry Mystic Meg predicted their team would lose to Everton in the FA Cup final in 1995.

RIP

Chaim Topol, Fiddler on the Roof actor, dies aged 87

Sian Cain
Wed, 8 March 2023 


Chaim Topol, the Israeli actor and singer best known for his performance as Tevye the Milkman in Fiddler on the Roof, has died at the age of 87.

Topol, who was widely known by his last name alone, died at home in Israel on Wednesday while surrounded by his family, local media reported. His son had recently confirmed that he had been diagnosed with dementia last year.

In a statement announcing Topol’s death, Israel’s president Isaac Herzog described him as a “gifted actor who conquered many stages in Israel and overseas, filled the cinema screens with his presence and especially entered deep into our hearts.”

Related: The film that makes me cry: Fiddler on the Roof

Topol played Tevye in the stage musical over five decades, once estimating that he had performed the role more than 3,500 times. He also played the pious Jewish father in the 1971 film, for which he won a Golden Globe award for best actor, and was nominated for best actor at the Academy Awards.

Just 30 years old when he first began playing fiftysomething Tevye on stage in 1966, Topol used makeup and costuming to make himself appear older and heavier than his years; in 2009, when he finished performing the role in his 70s, he had to act younger than his years.

“How many people are known for one part? How many people in my profession are known worldwide? So I am not complaining,” he said in a 2015 interview. “Sometimes I am surprised when I come to China or when I come to Tokyo or when I come to France or when I come wherever and the clerk at the immigration says ‘Topol, Topol, are you Topol?’ So yes, many people saw [Fiddler], and it is not a bad thing.”

Born in Tel Aviv in 1935, Topol enlisted in the Israeli army at the age of 18. There he became a member of an entertainment troupe, singing and acting on the road; one role he played during his time in the troupe was Sallah Shabati in comedic skits written by the future director and writer Ephraim Kishon, who would later direct Topol in a film adaptation in 1964.

Topol began to gain international recognition for his performance in the satire, which follows the titular character as he and his family navigate the chaos of Israeli immigration. Topol won a Golden Globe for most promising male newcomer, and Sallah Shabati was the first Israeli film to be nominated for best foreign film at the Academy Awards.

Two years later, Topol debuted as Tevye, replacing Shmuel Rodensky briefly in the Israeli production when the actor fell ill. Producer of the original Broadway show Harold Prince called Topol to audition for the upcoming West End production. To become fluent in English, Topol memorised the Broadway cast album and spent six months in London learning his part phonetically with a vocal coach.

A few months after opening, Topol returned to Israel when he was summoned during the Arab-Israeli six-day war and joined an entertainment troupe. He returned to London, appearing in more than 400 performances.

He was cast again as Tevye in the 1971 film after director Norman Jewison decided against using the Broadway actor Zero Mostel, who had made the role famous in the US. Topol won a Golden Globe for best actor for his performance in the film, and was nominated for best actor at the Academy Awards, losing to Gene Hackman in The French Connection.

He continued to play the role in various productions of Fiddler on the Roof around the US, London, Israel and Australia until 2009. He was nominated for a Tony award in 1991 for the 1991 Broadway revival.

Topol pictured in 2015, the year he was awarded the Israel prize, one of the country’s top honours. Photograph: Ariel Schalit/AP

Topol was cast in the lead role in Broadway musical The Baker’s Wife, but was fired after eight months by director David Merrick for unprofessional behaviour.

He landed roles in films including Galileo Galilei in the film Galileo, Dr Hans Zarkov in Flash Gordon and James Bond’s ally Milos Columbo in For Your Eyes Only. He dubbed the voice of Bagheera in the Hebrew-language version of The Jungle Book, and Rubeus Hagrid in the first two Harry Potter films.

In his later years, Topol wrote and illustrated books, and founded a nonprofit for children with special needs. In 2015, he was awarded the Israel prize, one of the country’s top honours.

Undersea graveyard for imported CO2 opens in Denmark

Camille BAS-WOHLERT
Wed, 8 March 2023


Denmark on Wednesday inaugurated a project to store carbon dioxide 1,800 metres beneath the North Sea, becoming the first country in the world to bury CO2 imported from abroad.

"Today we opened a new chapter for the North Sea, a green chapter," Denmark's Crown Prince Frederik said at the inauguration ceremony in the town of Esbjerg in the west of Denmark.

The CO2 graveyard, where the carbon is injected to prevent further warming of the atmosphere, is on the site of an old oil field.

Led by British chemical giant Ineos and German oil company Wintershall Dea, the "Greensand" project is expected to store up to eight million tonnes of CO2 per year by 2030.

Still in their infancy and costly, carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects aim to capture and then trap CO2 in order to mitigate global warming.

Over 200 similar projects are currently operational or under development around the world.

But unlike other projects that store CO2 emissions from nearby industrial sites, Greensand brings in the carbon from far away.

"It's a European success story of cross border cooperation," Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, said in video message played at the ceremony.

First captured at the source, the CO2 is then liquefied -- in Belgium in Greensand's case -- then transported, currently by ship but potentially by pipelines, and stored in reservoirs such as geological cavities or depleted oil and gas fields.

At Greensand, the carbon is transported in special containers to the Nini West platform, where it is injected into an existing reservoir 1.8 kilometres (1.1 miles) under the seabed.

Once the pilot phase is completed, the plan is to use the neighbouring Siri field as well.

Danish authorities, who have set a target of reaching carbon neutrality as early as 2045, say this is "a much needed tool in our climate toolkit".

Ineos CEO Brian Gilvary said at the opening that at full-scale, the project could meet 40 percent of Danish requirements to reach "net zero" and that it could account for 2.5 percent or up to three percent of European requirements.

- North Sea advantages -

The North Sea is particularly suitable for this type of project, as the region already has pipelines and potential storage sites after decades of oil and gas production.

"The depleted oil and gas fields have many advantages because they are well understood and there are already infrastructures which can most likely be reused," said Morten Jeppesen, director of the Danish Offshore Technology Centre at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU).

Near the Greensand site, France's TotalEnergies is also exploring the possibility of burying CO2 with the aim of trapping five million tonnes per year by 2030.

In neighbouring Norway, carbon capture and storage facilities are already in operation to offset domestic emissions, but the country will also be receiving tonnes of liquefied CO2 in a few years' time, transported from Europe by ship.

As Western Europe's largest producer of oil, Norway also has the largest potential for CO2 storage on the continent, particularly in its depleted oil fields.

- Room for improvement -

While measured in millions of tonnes, the quantities stored still remain a small fraction of overall emissions.

According to the European Environment Agency (EEA), the member states of the EU emitted 3.7 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases in 2020 alone, a year that also saw reduced economic activity owing to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Long considered a complicated solution with marginal use, carbon capture has been embraced as necessary by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the International Energy Agency (IEA).

But it remains far from a miracle cure for global warming.

The energy-intensive process to capture and store the CO2 itself emits the equivalent of 21 percent of the gas captured, according to the Australian think tank IEEFA.

And the technology is not without risks, according to the think tank, which says potential leaks could have severe consequences.

Furthermore, the cost of the project has not been made public.

"The cost of CO2 storage must be reduced further, so it will become a sustainable climate mitigation solution as the industry becomes more mature," Jeppesen said.

The technology also faces opposition from environmentalists.

"It doesn't fix the problem and prolongs the structures that are harmful," Helene Hagel, head of climate and environmental policy at Greenpeace Denmark, told AFP.

"The method is not changing our deadly habits. If Denmark really wants to reduce its emissions it should look into the sectors that are producing a lot of them," she said, singling out sectors such as agriculture and transportation.

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