Drifting off - US late night talk shows no longer must-see TV

New York (AFP) – America's late night talk shows once were appointment viewing, but with ratings tanking and ad revenues plummeting, their coveted place on the small screen is in question.

Barack Obama appeared 'The Tonight Show" with then host Jay Leno in 2009 © MANDEL NGAN / AFP/File

The hosts of yesterday and today -- comedians from Johnny Carson and Jay Leno to Jimmy Fallon and Jon Stewart -- are household names, and their jokes were once mandatory conversation starters at the water cooler.

But NBC, home to "The Tonight Show," hosted by Fallon, recently moved from five new episodes a week to four -- a sign of the not-so-great times.

"Late night TV is just not that relevant in today's television world," said Jeffrey McCall, a professor specializing in media at DePauw University in Indiana.

Each show follows a similar formula -- a host sits behind a desk and celebrity guests tell funny anecdotes, promote their latest work, and even play self-deprecating games for audience amusement.
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Thanks to the advent of streaming and clips going viral on the internet, these hosts -- David Letterman and Stephen Colbert are other examples -- have become globally recognized.

But the format is stagnating: the most popular among them, Colbert's "Late Show" on CBS, has seen its audience slashed by 32 percent over the last five years.

And ad revenue is vanishing. In the first eight months of 2024, it fell 10 percent, according to media analytics firm Guideline, after an even bigger drop last year.

"Late night was once a fabulous generator of profit," because shows were cheaper to produce than primetime fare and featured abundant commercial time, explained Bill Carter, the author of several books on the topic.

"Profits the shows provide have shrunk toward non-existent."

NBC's decision to cut one episode of "The Tonight Show" per week came after CBS and ABC -- Kimmel's home network -- had done the same thing.

In the last three years, several high-profile hosts have thrown in the towel, including Conan O'Brien (TBS) and James Corden (CBS) -- prompting the networks to scrap their programs altogether.

In the middle of the 2010s, late-night TV seized the moment offered by YouTube, where clips could be posted, consumed whenever and sometimes go viral.

Corden created a worldwide success with his "Carpool Karaoke" series featuring superstars singing with him in his car.

But even that online money-spinning success has dried up, with YouTube offering advertisers far lower rates than traditional network broadcasts.

The podcast threat

© John Lamparski / AFP/File

Another issue is that late night programs have a limited shelf life, unlike films or scripted television series, which have found a second life on streaming platforms.

"I do think the format needs updating. It has basically been the same since Steve Allen," Carter said, referring to the first host of "The Tonight Show" in 1954, who is considered the father of the genre.

For Mitch Semel, who oversaw the production of several late night shows, "there was a lot of comfort in having a show be the same every night or every week."

"Now, we're in an era where people like much more, playing with formats, surprising viewers, trying to mash genres and styles together," he said.

Streaming platforms facing strained budgets have attempted to join the late night game, with Hasan Minhaj's "Patriot Act" on Netflix or Amazon Prime's "Influenced," which targeted younger viewers by tackling trending topics on social media.

"The late night hosts historically need viewers who tend to be younger," McCall said. "At this point, Kimmel, Fallon and Colbert are all 50+ years of age, with Colbert now 60. They would seem rather old."

As if the competition for viewers from series, films, social media and sports events was not enough, late night shows also must contend with podcasts filmed and aired on YouTube and Spotify, which Carter says "offer some of the flavor of late night."

Jimmy Kimmel hosts a late night show on ABC © Patrick T. Fallon / AFP/File

"The Joe Rogan Experience," the most downloaded podcast in the world, and the popular "Call Her Daddy" offer viewers spontaneity and the unexpected.

Those were once both hallmarks of late night, but now, "even the guest segments are very carefully prepared" on network shows, according to Semel.

A podcast without time constraints that can evolve in real time "brings more enjoyment for the guests and for the hosts, and probably by translation, for the listeners and viewers as well," Semel said.

"We all like it when we see people who are talking genuinely having fun, not manufactured fun."

© 2024 AFP

Huge US lithium mine gets govt approval

Los Angeles (United States) (AFP) – An enormous lithium mine in the Nevada desert was granted final government approval Thursday in a project the miner predicts will quadruple US production of a mineral critical to the renewable energy revolution.

A Tiehm's buckwheat plant starts to bud in its native habitat in the Silver Peak Range in Esmeralda County, Nevada beside Rhyolite Ridge, the site of a proposed lithium mine © Robyn Beck / AFP

Operations at Rhyolite Ridge will produce enough lithium to supply the batteries for more than 370,000 electric vehicles every year, Australian operator Ioneer said.

The plant will create 500 construction jobs over the next few years and 350 jobs during its decades of extraction, the company said.

"There are few deposits in the world as impactful as Rhyolite Ridge," said Ioneer Executive Chairman James Calaway, heralding the permit issued Thursday by the Bureau of Land Management.

The company's managing director, Bernard Rowe, said construction would begin next year.

"This permit gives us a license to commence construction in 2025 and begin our work in creating hundreds of good-paying rural jobs, generating millions in tax revenue for Esmeralda County, and bolstering the domestic production of critical minerals," he said.

The news comes less than two weeks before Americans go to the polls to elect a new president, and will be welcomed in Nevada, where unemployment is well above the national average.

The administration of President Joe Biden has made the green transition a key plank of its economic policy, investing heavily in technologies aimed at slashing the pollution that is causing the climate to change.

Scientists say electric vehicles are a vital link in that chain, and their widespread adoption in the car-dependent US will be vital if the country is to meet its carbon reduction targets.

Biden has tried to nudge the US auto industry to re-tool and shift production away from gas-guzzlers and into electric cars, in a move he says will help create jobs at home.

Subsidies for consumers have rewarded automakers who produce EVs in the United States, even while they struggle to source lithium batteries -- a sector dominated by strategic rival China.

But the project at Rhyolite Ridge has highlighted the trade-off between the need to adapt energy sources and the desire to protect the planet's biodiversity.

Campaigners say the mine will threaten the unique habitat of the endangered Tiehm's Buckwheat -- a rare wildflower with delicate cream-colored blossoms that grows only in this corner of Nevada.

"By greenlighting this mine the Bureau of Land Management is abandoning its duty to protect endangered species like Tiehm's Buckwheat and it's making a mockery of the Endangered Species Act," said Patrick Donnelly of the Center for Biological Diversity, a nonprofit conservation group.

"We need lithium for the energy transition, but it can't come with a price tag of extinction."

Ioneer admits that over the years the mine is in operation around a fifth of the flower's habitat will be directly affected.

But the company, which has spent $2.5 million researching the plant, says mining will not affect its survival, insisting their experiments show it is already growing well in greenhouses.

© 2024 AFP

Shigeru Ishiba: Japan's new PM on shaky ground

Agence France-Presse
October 24, 2024 

Japan's Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba (AFP)

Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba likes crafting model ships but his short tenure could come unstuck if the gamble of calling snap elections goes as badly on Sunday as some polls suggest.

The self-confessed defense "geek" is a fan of trains, 1970s pop idols and making military models, including once of a Soviet aircraft carrier for a visiting Russian defense minister.

Last month the 67-year-old saw off eight other candidates to become head of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which has governed Japan almost uninterrupted for seven decades.

He took office on October 1, replacing Fumio Kishida, who suffered from discontent over rising prices, a slush fund scandal and LDP ties to a Christian movement in the wake of the 2022 assassination of ex-premier Shinzo Abe.

Although relatively popular with the public -- at least before becoming PM -- Ishiba had four previous failed bids to lead the party including in 2012 against his arch-rival Abe.

Ishiba long alienated party heavyweights with his "outspoken criticism of LDP policies under Abe", said Yu Uchiyama, a politics professor at the University of Tokyo.


But he became "vocal about the need for the LDP to turn over a new leaf," which may have worked in his favor, Uchiyama told AFP.

- 'New Japan' -

Despite hiccups, including over a doctored photo of the cabinet, Ishiba got off to a good start and called snap elections after barely a week in office.


"This is an attempt to create a new Japan that will drastically change the nature of Japanese society. In order to boldly carry out this major change, we need the confidence of the people," he declared.

He pledged to revitalize depressed rural regions and to address the "quiet emergency" of Japan's falling population with measures to support families like flexible working hours.

This decade, he said he wants to hike the average national minimum wage by nearly 43 percent to 1,500 yen ($9.80) per hour, although experts worry this will hurt small firms.


In a reference to China, Ishiba said that "today's Ukraine could be tomorrow's East Asia", with the regional environment "the most severe since the end of World War II".

He has also backed the creation of a regional military alliance along the lines of NATO to counter China, although he has since cautioned it would "not happen overnight".

But Ishiba's support before becoming premier for the Bank of Japan's exit from its ultra-loose policies sent the yen surging and stocks tumbling after he won the LDP leadership.


He steadied markets by stating the time was not right for more interest rate hikes.

- Rowing back -

Early polls gave Ishiba's cabinet approval ratings of 45-50 percent, compared with 20-30 percent for the hapless Kishida administration's final month.


But Ishiba's ratings have since fallen, not helped by him rowing back his position on issues including allowing married couples to take separate surnames.

He also walked back on a commitment to increase the tax rate on capital gains, saying he was "not currently considering a specific tax increase".

The father-of-two also missed a chance to appear more modern by appointing only two women to his cabinet, down from five under Kishida.


Popularity among voters is a different beast to the LDP leadership contest, where Ishiba "appeared popular because he occupied a unique position, standing in opposition to PM Abe and his successors within the party", said Yosuke Sunahara, professor of public administration at Kobe University.

"Now the focus has shifted from an internal party race to competition between parties. Unlike Abe, who was known for his hawkish stance and reform-driven agenda, it has become harder for Ishiba to distinguish himself," Sunahara told AFP.

A Kyodo News survey last weekend put the approval rating for Ishiba's cabinet at 41.4 percent, down from 42.0 percent a week earlier.


Other polls warn the LDP could fail to win a majority on its own for the first time since 2009.

Some paint an even sorrier picture, suggesting that even seats from the LDP's junior coalition party will not be enough for Ishiba to form a government without other partners.

"Regardless of what the election results are, Ishiba's longevity as prime minister is in question," said Rintaro Nishimura at think-tank The Asia Group.


"There is a group of people (in the LDP) that could form a critical mass... and try and usher in a change. Not a change in government, but a change in leadership within the LDP," Nishimura said.

© Agence France-Presse

Austrian lawmakers elect first far-right parliament president

Agence France-Presse
October 24, 2024 

Walter Rosenkranz of Austria's Freedom Party (FPOe) was elected the president of Austria's parliament despite the local Jewish community criticizing him for having paid 'homage to Nazi criminals' (Alex HALADA/AFP)

Austrian lawmakers on Thursday elected for the first time a far-right politician as parliament president despite the Jewish community criticising the nominee for having paid "hommage to Nazi criminals".

The far-right Freedom Party (FPOe) won national polls for the first time last month, gaining almost a third of the votes, though it has been unable to find partners to form a government.

But as the strongest party, it nominated lawmaker Walter Rosenkranz, 62, a lawyer and a former presidential candidate, as the parliament's president.

In parliament's first session following last month's national elections, Rosenkranz was elected with 100 out of 162 valid votes that were cast, current parliament president Wolfgang Sobotka said.

Rosenkranz, who has been widely criticized for being a member of a far-right student fraternity known for its strident pan-German nationalism, was elected in a secret ballot.

In a debate before the vote, conservative Chancellor Karl Nehammer -- who hopes to head another government -- said his party was "committed to the customs and traditions" of parliament of the strongest party nominating the president.

FPOe leader Herbert Kickl praised Rosenkranz for his "loyalty to democracy, the constitution and the rule of law".

Ahead of the vote, Oskar Deutsch, president of IKG that represents Vienna's Jewish community, expressed his indignation in an open letter to parliament members, describing Rosenkranz as someone from the "revisionist camp", who "pays outright homage to Nazi criminals".

King Charles sips narcotic kava drink, becomes Samoan 'high chief'

Agence France-Presse
October 24, 2024 

Britain's King Charles III drinks kava as Queen Camilla looks on during a ceremony in Samoa (AFP)

King Charles III took part in a traditional kava-drinking ceremony before a line of bare-chested, heavily tattooed Samoans and was declared a "high chief" of his Pacific island realm on Thursday.

The British monarch is on an 11-day tour of Australia and Samoa, independent nations where he is still head of state -- the first major foreign trip since his cancer diagnosis earlier this year.

Wearing a white safari-style suit, the 75-year-old king sat at the head of a carved timber longhouse where he was presented with a polished half-coconut filled with a mildly narcotic kava brew.

The peppery, slightly intoxicating root drink is a key part of Pacific culture and is known locally as "ava".

The kava roots were paraded around the marquee, prepared by the chief's daughter and filtered through a sieve made of the dried bark of a fau tree.

Once ready, a Samoan man screamed as he decanted the drink, which was finally presented to the king.

Charles uttered the words: "May God Bless this ava" before lifting it to his lips. The ceremony concluded with claps.

Charles's wife, Queen Camilla sat beside him, fanning herself to ease the stiffing tropical humidity.

- High Chief -


Many Samoans are excited to host the king -- his first-ever visit to the Pacific Island nation that was once a British colony.

The royal couple later visited the village of Moata'a where Charles was made "Tui Taumeasina" or high chief.

According to local legend, the area around Moata'a is where the coconut originated.


"Everyone has taken to our heart and is looking forward to welcoming the king," local chief Lenatai Victor Tamapua told AFP ahead of the visit.

"We feel honoured that he has chosen to be welcomed here in our village. So as a gift, we would like to bestow him a title."

Tamapua also planned to raise the issue of climate change with the king and queen and show them the local mangroves.


"The high tides is just chewing away on our reef and where the mangroves are," he told AFP, adding that food sources and communities were being washed away or inundated.

"Our community relies on the mangrove area for mud crab and fishes, but since, the tide has risen over the past 20 years by about two or three meters (up to 10 feet)."

The king is also in Samoa for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting which is taking place in Apia.


- Colonialism and climate -

The legacy of empire looms large at the meeting.

Commonwealth leaders will select a new secretary-general nominated from an African country –- in line with regional rotations of the position.


All three likely candidates have called publicly for reparations for slavery and colonialism.

One of the three, Joshua Setipa from Lesotho, told AFP that the resolution could include non-traditional forms of payment such as climate financing.

"We can find a solution that will begin to address some injustices of the past and put them in the context happening around us today," he said.


Climate change features heavily on the agenda.

Tuvalu, Vanuatu and Fiji have backed calls for a "fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty" -- essentially calling for Australia, Britain and Canada to do more to lower emissions.

Pacific leaders argue the trio of "big countries" have historically accounted for over 60 percent of the Commonwealth's emissions from fossil fuels.


Vanuatu's special envoy for climate change Ralph Regenvanu called on other nations to join the treaty.

"As a Commonwealth family, we look to those that dominate fossil fuel production in the Commonwealth to stop the expansion of fossil fuels in order to protect what we love and hold dear here in the Pacific," he said.

Australia's foreign minister Penny Wong said her gas and mineral-rich nation was working to be cleaner.


"We know we have a lot of work to do, and I've been upfront with every partner in the Pacific," she said.

Pacific island nations -- once seen as the embodiment of palm-fringed paradise -- are now among the most climate-threatened areas of the planet.

Montana Republican stands by racism ahead of historic Biden apology to Native Americans

Matt Laslo
October 24, 2024

(Photo courtesy of Tim Sheehy's campaign website)

This article was paid for by Raw Story subscribers. Not a subscriber? Try us and go ad-free for $1. Prefer to give a one-time tip? Click here.

WASHINGTON — This week, President Joe Biden is doing something Montana Republican Senate candidate Tim Sheehy has refused to do: Apologize to Native Americans.

Since September, Sheehy has rebuffed calls from tribal leaders and his Senate opponent, Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT), to apologize after recordings surfaced of him deriding Native Americans for the substance abuse issues that have plagued Indian Country for decades, including laughing them off as “drunk at 8 a.m.”

Sheehy’s response has included the veteran telling Tester in a Senate debate that “insensitive jokes” are part of military culture. That stands in stark contrast to the formal apology Biden is set to deliver Friday to the tens of thousands of Native American families impacted by the United States’ Indian boarding school policies from 1819 through the 1970s.

In an exclusive interview with Raw Story ahead of Biden’s Friday announcement in Arizona, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland gushed over the president’s formal apology.

“Oh my gosh, I never thought I would see this in my lifetime,” Haaland told Raw Story. “Decades ago, when I was sitting at my grandmother's kitchen table and talking to her about boarding schools, you know, she didn't tell me everything, right? I knew there was more to what she was telling me.”

As an enrolled member of the Pueblo of Laguna, Haaland is the first Native American in American history to serve as a cabinet secretary. For her, it’s personal. That’s partly why she launched the administration’s Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative in 2021, which is culminating with this formal apology to Indigenous communities on behalf of the United States of America.

The former New Mexico Democratic congresswoman’s grandma was sent to a Catholic boarding school some 125 miles away from her home, but “it could have been 1,000 miles because her dad only had a horse and wagon.”

“She told me he was able to only visit her twice during the five years she was there. Her time there, her dad's time at boarding school, that affected my life, and I didn't realize how much it affected my life right until I got a little bit older,” Haaland said. “So this is important.”

Over in Montana, the lack of an apology is also thundering across Indian Country.

“...there’s Coors Light cans flying by your head…”

In September, audio of Sheehy mocking Native Americans was uncovered by Char-Koosta News — “the official news publication of the Flathead Indian Reservation” — and no matter how many Montana tribal elders have demanded an apology, he’s refused.

“Great way to bond with all the Indians, to be out there while they’re drunk at 8 a.m.,” Sheehy, a former Navy SEAL, says on one recording.

Sheehy is also heard insulting a historic parade at Montana’s annual Crow Fair, a 105-year-old celebration near the Little Big Horn River.

“If you know a tough crowd, you want to go to the Crow res,” Sheehy, a businessman, says on another recording. “They let you know whether they like you or not — there’s Coors Light cans flying by your head riding by.”

When Raw Story asked the Interior secretary about demeaning tropes like the ones the businessman — who’s been accused of siphoning $160 million from Montana taxpayers — has acknowledged perpetuating, Haaland said political aspirants like Sheehy need to study up on Native American history.

“All I can say is that I hope that people who say things like that will educate themselves, because if they're running for office, they need to be educated so that they can be effective leaders for their constituents,” Haaland said.

Across Montana there are 12 tribes and seven reservations, and the state’s nearly 70,000 Native Americans make up almost 7% of the state’s population. That makes them a crucial voting block in the state’s all-important U.S. Senate contest — a race that could tilt control of the Senate back to Republicans if the incumbent, Tester, loses.

Still, Sheehy refuses to apologize — and his campaign didn’t return Raw Story’s request for comment on this piece — which Haaland says is personally painful to Native Americans.

“I know that there will always be a certain amount of ignorance out there with respect to tribal nations. When people say really offensive things like that, they lack a knowledge of the history of our people. Our history is complicated. It's complex. It has many different eras,” Haaland said. “We went through eras of genocide, and we went through eras of land stealing and then assimilation policies. We have lived through so much.”

“It is a big deal”

Raw Story never mentioned Sheehy by name to the Interior secretary because federal officials like Haaland are prohibited from campaigning by the Hatch Act. When we specifically mentioned Tester, the secretary gently rebuffed us.

“I can't ask you about politics, but what has Sen. Tester — as a former chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee — what has he meant to Indian Country?” Raw Story asked.

“Would you like to ask a different question? Because I can’t speak for him,” Haaland said.

This is an election year and the president’s issuing the formal apology on behalf of the United States in the battleground state of Arizona, which smells of politics to critics.

But Haaland says there’s nothing political about the timing.

“No. I mean, they can say what they want. The president's apology is real and it's heartfelt and it's meaningful, and it will mean something to the people there. It will mean something to anyone who listens to it,” Haaland said. “It's a wonderful day to be indigenous, and I'm really proud to be by the president's side for this most important day.”

Knowing Native Americans like herself are far from monolithic, Haaland’s hoping enrolled members of tribes across Indian Country feel the sincerity of this long overdue presidential apology — one she was pivotal in bringing about.

“I hope they feel seen. I hope they feel heard by the president of the United States,” Haaland told Raw Story. “It is a big deal.”

Matt Laslo has covered Congress since 2006, bringing Raw Story readers the personalities behind the politics and policy straight from Capitol Hill. Based in Washington, D.C., Matt has been a long-time contributor to NPR, WIRED, VICE News, The Daily Beast, Rolling Stone, and Playboy. More about Matt Laslo.

Republican candidate's Navy records differ from his claims about discharge: report

Sarah K. Burris
October 24, 2024 

Montana Republican Senate candidate and former Navy SEAL Tim Sheehy's record of military service is once again facing scrutiny.

In the latest iteration, NBC News revealed that while Sheehy claimed he was discharged for medical reasons after injuries while he was on duty, documents show something different.

A heavily redacted document obtained by NBC reveals Sheehy resigned voluntarily. A medical condition that "forced him out of uniform" wasn't listed. The report says that a former U.S. official familiar with the details of Sheehy's "separation" confirmed the information.

Read also: Montana Republican stands by racism ahead of historic Biden apology to Native Americans

According to his book, Sheehy claimed he was riding in a mini-submarine during a training exercise in Hawaii and got "the bends," a decompression sickness caused when a diver ascends too quickly. Nitrogen can build up bubbles in the blood and tissue. Sheehy's book says the incident left a "tiny hole in my heart.”

“There would be a period of recovery and evaluation, I was told, before I could return to active duty,” he says in the book.

When NBC requested a comment from the campaign, a spokesperson had a different take.

“Tim Sheehy was honorably discharged from the Navy after being declared medically unfit to continue to serve as a Navy SEAL in 2014. After Tim left active duty in 2014, he was then in the Navy Individual Ready Reserve (IRR) until his honorable discharge in 2019.”

The campaign refused to respond to the discrepancy between what Sheehy said publicly and what his documents show.

This isn't the first time Sheehy's service record has faced swirling questions. He also said that he was shot while serving in combat in Afghanistan. A report in April revealed Sheehy told officials that he shot himself in the arm three years later when he accidentally discharged a firearm in Montana's Glacier National Park. He claimed that it was a story he made up, a "lie" to the newspaper, "To protect himself and his former platoonmates from facing a potential military investigation into an old bullet wound."

Official paperwork to a law enforcement officer gives extensive details, seemingly confirming that he accidentally shot himself in 2015 when his Colt .45 revolver fell and discharged in the national park. A park ranger has also come out to fact-check the Republican candidate.

Sheehy faces off against U.S. Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT).

Read the full report here.

Climate change worsened deadly Africa floods, scientists say

Agence France-Presse
October 23, 2024 

Men building a make-shift levee amid floods in Messawi, Sudan earlier this year (AFP)

Human-caused climate change worsened floods that have killed hundreds of people and displaced millions in Cameroon, Chad, Niger, Nigeria and Sudan this year, according to a study published on Wednesday.

The intense rainy season has unleashed a humanitarian crisis across large areas of the Sahel region bordering the Sahara desert.

A new analysis by the World Weather Attribution (WWA) network of scientists found warming driven by the use of fossil fuels had exacerbated the flooding in Sudan.

The researchers also said climate change would have made this year's torrential rains around five to 20 percent more intense across the Niger and Lake Chad basins, citing a previous WWA study of similar floods in 2022.

"This is only going to keep getting worse if we keep burning fossil fuels," said Clair Barnes from the Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial College London.

Speaking at a briefing ahead of the study's publication, she said such downpours "could happen every year" if global temperatures increase to two degrees Celsius (35.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.


"It's pretty serious," she said.

- Downpours and storms -

Global warming is not just about rising temperatures -- the extra heat trapped in the atmosphere and seas has knock-on effects and can result in more intense downpours and storms.


The researchers said there was a clear link between the extreme rainfall and a warming planet.

In the study, they focused on war-torn Sudan, where millions of displaced people have been uprooted by conflict and driven into flood-prone areas.

The scientists used modelling to compare weather patterns in our world and one without human-induced warming, and found that month-long spells of intense rainfall in parts of Sudan had become heavier and more likely due to climate change.


At the current 1.3 degrees Celsius of warming, they said similar periods of rainfall are expected to occur on average about once every three years, and have become about 10 percent heavier due to climate change.

- 'Incredibly concerning' -

"These results are incredibly concerning," said Izidine Pinto, one of the study's authors and a researcher at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute.


He warned that "with every fraction of a degree of warming, the risk of extreme floods will keep increasing", and called for the UN's COP29 climate summit to "accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels" when it meets in Azerbaijan next month.

Joyce Kimutai, a researcher at Imperial's Centre for Environmental Policy, said the floods underscored the need for a loss and damage fund for nations devastated by climate change.

A key meeting ahead of COP29 earlier this month ended with countries making little progress over how to finance a deal for poorer nations.


"Africa has contributed a tiny amount of carbon emissions globally, but is being hit the hardest by extreme weather," Kimutai said.

The role of climate change in the floods was compounded by other human-made problems, the researchers said, and they called for better maintenance of dams and investment in early warning systems.

Wild animals can experience trauma and adversity too

The Conversation
October 23, 2024 

Marmot (Jean Christophe Verhaegen:AFP)

Psychologists know that childhood trauma, or the experience of harmful or adverse events, can have lasting repercussions on the health and well-being of people well into adulthood. But while the consequences of early adversity have been well researched in humans, people aren’t the only ones who can experience adversity.

If you have a rescue dog, you probably have witnessed how the abuse or neglect it may have experienced earlier in life now influence its behavior – these pets tend to be more skittish or reactive. Wild animals also experience adversity. Although their negative experiences are easy to dismiss as part of life in the wild, they still have lifelong repercussions – just like traumatic events in people and pets.

As behavioral ecologists, we are interested in how adverse experiences early in life can affect animals’ behavior, including the kinds of decisions they make and the way they interact with the world around them. In other words, we want to see how these experience affect the way they behave and survive in the wild.

Many studies in humans and other animals have shown the importance of early life experiences in shaping how individuals develop. But researchers know less about how multiple, different instances of adversity or stressors can accumulate within the body and what their overall impact is on an animal’s well-being.

Wild populations face many kinds of stressors. They compete for food, risk getting eaten by a predator, suffer illness and must contend with extreme weather conditions. And as if life in the wild wasn’t hard enough, humans are now adding additional stressors such as chemical, light and sound pollution, as well as habitat destruction.

Given the widespread loss of biodiversity, understanding how animals react to and are harmed by these stressors can help conservation groups better protect them. But accounting for such a diversity of stressors is no easy feat. To address this need and demonstrate the cumulative impact of multiple stressors, our research team decided to develop an index for wild animals based on psychological research on human childhood trauma.

A cumulative adversity index

Developmental psychologists began to develop what psychologists now call the adverse childhood experiences score, which describes the amount of adversity a person experienced as a child. Briefly, this index adds up all the adverse events – including forms of neglect, abuse or other household dysfunction – an individual experienced during childhood into a single cumulative score.

This score can then be used to predict later-life health risks such as chronic health conditions, mental illness or even economic status. This approach has revolutionized many human health intervention programs by identifying at-risk children and adults, which allows for more targeted interventions and preventive efforts.

So, what about wild animals? Can we use a similar type of score or index to predict negative survival outcomes and identify at-risk individuals and populations?

These are the questions we were interested in answering in our latest research paper. We developed a framework on how to create a cumulative adversity index – similar to the adverse childhood experiences score, but for populations of wild animals. We then used this index to gain insights about the survival and longevity of yellow-bellied marmots. In other words, we wanted to see whether we could use this index to estimate how long a marmot would live.

A marmot case study

Yellow-bellied marmots are a large ground squirrel closely related to groundhogs. Our research group has been studying these marmots in Colorado at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory since 1962.



A marmot wearing an ear tag. Xochitl Ortiz Ross

Yellow-bellied marmots are an excellent study system because they are diurnal, or active during the day, and they have an address. They live in burrows scattered across a small, defined geographical area called a colony. The size of the colony and the number of individuals that reside within varies greatly from year to year, but they are normally composed of matrilines, which means related females tend to remain within the natal colony, while male relatives move away to find a new colony.

Yellow-bellied marmots hibernate for most of the year, but they become active between April and September. During this active period, we observe each colony daily and regularly trap each individual in the population – that’s over 200 unique individuals just in 2023. We then mark their backs with a distinct symbol and give them uniquely numbered ear tags so they can be later identified.

Although they can live up to 15 years, we have detailed information about the life experiences of individual marmots spanning almost 30 generations. They were the perfect test population for our cumulative adversity index.

Among the sources of adversity, we included ecological measures such as a late spring, a summer drought and high predator presence. We also included parental measures such as having an underweight or stressed mother, being born or weaned late, and losing their mother. The model also included demographic measures such as being born in a large litter or having many male siblings.

Importantly, we looked only at females, since they are the ones who tend to stay home. Therefore, some of the adversities listed are only applicable to females. For example, females born in litters with many males become masculinized, likely from the high testosterone levels in the mother’s uterus. The females behave more like males, but this also reduces their life span and reproductive output. Therefore, having many male siblings is harmful to females, but maybe not to males.

A yellow-bellied marmot shown on a trail camera in Montana.

So, does our index, or the number of adverse events a marmot experienced early on, explain differences in marmot survival? We found that, yes, it does.

Experiencing even just one adversity event before age 2 nearly halved an adult marmot’s odds of survival, regardless of the type of adversity they experienced. This is the first record of lasting negative consequences from losing a mother in this species.

So what?

Our study isn’t the only one of its kind. A few other studies have used an index similar to the human adverse childhood experiences score with wild primates and hyenas, with largely similar results. We are interested in broadening this framework so that other researchers can adopt it for the species they study.

A better understanding of how animals can or cannot cope with multiple sources of adversity can inform wildlife conservation and management practices. For example, an index like ours could help identify at-risk populations that require a more immediate conservation action.

Instead of tackling the one stressor that seems to have the greatest effect on a species, this approach could help managers consider how best to reduce the total number of stressors a species experiences.

For example, changing weather patterns driven by global heating trends may create new stressors that a wildlife manager can’t address. But it might be possible to reduce how many times these animals have to interact with people during key times of the year by closing trails, or providing extra food to replace the food they lose from harsh weather.

While this index is still in early development, it could one day help researchers ask new questions about how animals adapt to stress in the wild.


Xochitl Ortiz Ross, Ph.D. Candidate in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Los Angeles

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

Palestinian seeds join Arctic 'doomsday vault'

Agence France-Presse
October 23, 2024 

The Global Seed Vault (AFP)

A "doomsday vault" in the Arctic designed to safeguard the world's plant diversity has received a new deposit of thousands of seed samples, including Palestinian ones amid war and hunger in Gaza, it said on Wednesday.

Opened in 2008, the Global Seed Vault offers a safety net in case of natural catastrophe, war, climate change, disease or manmade disasters.

More than 30,000 samples from a record 23 organisations in 21 countries were deposited in the vault in Norway's Svalbard archipelago on Tuesday, the Crop Trust, one of the project's partners, said on Wednesday.

Buried inside a mountain near Longyearbyen on Spitsbergen Island, about 1,300 kilometers (about 800 miles) from the North Pole, the "Noah's Ark" of food crops is also aimed at preserving plants that can feed a growing population facing climate change.

Launched in 2008 with funding from Norway, the three cold chambers are today home to some 1.3 million varieties of seeds that their owners can withdraw at any moment.

Among those deposited on Tuesday were 21 Palestinian species comprised of vegetables, millet and herbs, provided by the Palestinian non-profit Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC).

According to the Crop Trust, a new delivery of seeds is expected in February from Sudan, a country also ravaged by war and famine.

"Climate change and conflict threaten infrastructure and impact food security for over 700 million people in more than 75 countries worldwide," Crop Trust director Stefan Schmitz said.

"Genebanks are ramping up efforts to back-up seed collections, and we are proud to support them by providing a safe haven in Svalbard," he said in a statement.


The vault is designed to be able to resist catastrophes, located far from conflict zones and placed at an altitude that will protect it from rising sea levels.

Even if the refrigeration system were to fail, the vault would maintain its cold temperature thanks to the permafrost around it.

Trump covertly planning the world’s biggest protection racket

Lindsay Beyerstein
October 23, 2024 

Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to the press, at Trump Tower in New York City, U.S., September 26, 2024. REUTERS/David Dee Delgado

You wouldn’t expect a presidential candidate to make a massive middle class tax hike the centerpiece of his economic platform, but that’s exactly what Donald Trump is doing.

Trump has vowed to slap a 20 percent tax on all imports, a 60 percent tax on all Chinese imports and a 2,000 percent tax on imported cars.

These taxes are known as tariffs. Everything from tequila to video game consoles would cost more. Trump’s tariffs would cost the average family nearly $4,000 a year and rising prices would accelerate inflation.

Trump claims that other countries will pay for the tariffs, but consumers paid for nearly all of the tariffs he imposed in his first term through higher prices.

And then we paid billions more to bail out the farmers who were ruined by the tariffs our trading partners imposed in retaliation.

So why is Trump so keen on taxing imports?

Because the Trump tariffs would create the greatest engine of corruption in history, an institutionalized kleptocracy where import-based business lives or dies by Trump’s favor. Elon Musk’s imported parts might be exempted while GM’s are not.

Congress has given the president sweeping powers to impose tariffs, and critically, to waive those tariffs for a favored few. US imports totaled $3.8 trillion in 2023. The thought of a 34-time convicted felon wielding that kind of power is terrifying. Powerful interests at home and abroad want to save money and gain an edge over their competitors by dodging tariffs. Trump is just the man to make that happen, for a price.


Trump’s business empire creates limitless opportunities for would-be tariff dodgers to convert cash into official acts. In all, Trump’s businesses raked in nearly $2 billion in revenue during his first term, including millions from the governments of China, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. If emoluments won’t suffice, there’s always bribery. Trump is credibly accused of taking 200 pounds of cash worth $10 million from Egypt in exchange for a friendlier diplomatic posture towards the autocratic regime.

Trump politicized tariff waivers in his first term.

The Brookings Institution found that “a bewildering array of politically favored importers won tariff relief” during that time. Bibles from China got a waiver because the religious right insisted, but textbooks are still taxed. Now the Trump Bible is made in China, too. Salmon and cod got waivers because powerful Republican senators threw their weight around. Chinese tiki torches got the nod for reasons that remain as murky as a bad fish farm. Governments including China, Russia and Argentina are suspected of granting Trump and his family trademarks worth millions of dollars in the hopes of securing more favorable trade relations.

Technically, the Commerce Department grants the waivers. These concessions are supposed to be based on the national interest, but the process is notoriously opaque and politicized at the best of times.

In a second Trump term, it would become completely corrupt. In the name of fighting an imaginary “Deep State,” Trump plans to purge career civil servants and replace them with maga hacks who will do his bidding. The Heritage Foundation, home of Project 2025, is already flooding federal agencies with Freedom of Information Requests to find out which civil servants aren’t Trumpy enough. Heritage shelled out $100,000 for Project Sovereignty 2025 to draw up a McCarthyite list of civil servants that Heritage President Kevin Roberts considers to be a “deep state of entrenched Leftist bureaucrats.”

If you wondered why JD Vance called on Trump to “fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people,” there’s your answer. It’s the mid-level bureaucrats in every federal agency that stand in the way of turning the federal government into a Trump protection racket.

Trump’s tariff plan would give him discretion to play favorites over trillions of dollars of trade. We know he’d follow through because he played favorites with tariffs in his first term. The second time around, he will vastly increase the amount of goods subject to tariffs and purge the civil service of anyone who might oppose his bid to reward his friends and punish his enemies.