Mapping extreme snowmelt and its potential dangers

Rapid snowmelt can be dangerous, and understanding its drivers is important for understanding the world under the influence of climate change

UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA

Research News

 

Snowmelt - the surface runoff from melting snow - is an essential water resource for communities and ecosystems. But extreme snow melt, which occurs when snow melts too rapidly over a short amount of time, can be destructive and deadly, causing floods, landslides and dam failures.

To better understand the processes that drive such rapid melting, researchers set out to map extreme snowmelt events over the last 30 years. Their findings are published in a new paper in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.

"When we talk about snowmelt, people want to know the basic numbers, just like the weather, but no one has ever provided anything like that before. It's like if nobody told you the maximum and minimum temperature or record temperature in your city," said study co-author Xubin Zeng, director of the UArizona Climate Dynamics and Hydrometeorology Center and a professor of atmospheric sciences. "We are the first to create a map that characterizes snowmelt across the U.S. Now, people can talk about the record snowmelt events over each small area of 2.5 miles by 2.5 miles."

Zeng and lead study author Josh Welty, who received his doctoral degree under Zeng's advising, created a map that catalogs the top-10 extreme snowmelt events in terms of frequency, magnitude, temperature and precipitation over every 2.5-mile square of the U.S. between 1988 and 2017. They also used machine learning to understand how large-scale weather patterns affect extreme snow melt.

They found that in the western half of the country, winds transport water vapor from the Pacific Ocean eastward. However, in the eastern half of the country, weather patterns transport moisture primarily south to north from the Gulf of Mexico all the way to the Great Lakes and New England.

Their maps also reveal that in most cases, extreme snowmelt is caused by unusually warm temperatures. This conclusion is fairly intuitive, but a surprising finding revealed that in certain regions, particularly in the Pacific Northwest and the northeastern U.S., extreme snowmelt events are driven by rain - which is relatively warm - falling on snow. In these cases, extreme snowmelt events become immediately dangerous.

The paper outlines one such example in detail: The Oroville Dam in Butte County, California, holds the second-largest reservoir in the state. In 2017, a series of storms dropped huge amounts of warm rain on the snowcapped Sierra Nevada Mountains, resulting in rapid snowmelt that filled the dam past its brim. Spillways, which provide controlled water runoff, failed, and over 180,000 people were evacuated.

Such events might happen more often in the future, according to Zeng and Welty's findings. The researchers found only a slight increase in the frequency of such events over the 30-year period, and they didn't see a trend in terms of the magnitude of extreme snowmelt events. However, 30 years isn't long enough to establish a trend, said Zeng, who is also the Agnes N. Haury Endowed Chair in Environment in the UArizona Department of Hydrology and Atmospheric Sciences. That means future research will be especially important.

"This paper serves as foundation and a reference point to see if and how things will be changing in different regions over the next 10 to 15 years," Welty said.

###

CRISPR CRITTER

Sweet success: CABBI demonstrates first precision breeding of sugarcane with CRISPR-Cas9

Gene-editing offers a targeted, efficient way to develop new varieties of this productive but complex plant

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN INSTITUTE FOR SUSTAINABILITY, ENERGY, AND ENVIRONMENT

Research News

 

IMAGE: CABBI'S FREDY ALTPETER, PROFESSOR OF AGRONOMY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA'S INSTITUTE OF FOOD AND AGRICULTURAL SCIENCES, EVALUATES FIELD-GROWN GENETICALLY MODIFIED SUGARCANE (OILCANE) AT THE UF/IFAS PLANT SCIENCE RESEARCH UNIT.... view more 

CREDIT: AMY STUART, UF/IFAS

Sugarcane is one of the most productive plants on Earth, providing 80 percent of the sugar and 30 percent of the bioethanol produced worldwide. Its size and efficient use of water and light give it tremendous potential for the production of renewable value-added bioproducts and biofuels.

But the highly complex sugarcane genome poses challenges for conventional breeding, requiring more than a decade of trials for the development of an improved cultivar.

Two recently published innovations by University of Florida researchers at the Department of Energy's Center for Advanced Bioenergy and Bioproducts Innovation (CABBI) demonstrated the first successful precision breeding of sugarcane by using CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing -- a far more targeted and efficient way to develop new varieties.

CRISPR/Cas9 allows scientists to introduce precision changes in almost any gene and, depending on the selected approach, to turn the gene off or replace it with a superior version. The latter is technically more challenging and has rarely been reported for crops so far.

In the first report, researchers demonstrated the ability to turn off variable numbers of copies of the magnesium chelatase gene, a key enzyme for chlorophyll biosynthesis in sugarcane, producing rapidly identifiable plants with light green to yellow leaves. Light green plants did not show growth reduction and may require less nitrogen fertilizer to produce the same amount of biomass. That study, published in Frontiers in Genome Editing, was led by CABBI researchers Fredy Altpeter, Professor of Agronomy at the University of Florida's Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (IFAS), and Ayman Eid, a Postdoctoral Research Associate in Altpeter's lab.

The second study, also published in Frontiers in Genome Editing, achieved efficient and reproducible gene targeting in sugarcane, demonstrating the precise substitution of multiple copies of the target gene with a superior version, conferring herbicide resistance. Scientists co-introduced a repair template together with the gene-editing tool to direct the plant's own DNA repair process so that one or two of the thousands of building blocks of the gene, called nucleotides, were precisely replaced in the targeted location. The result was that the gene product was still fully functional and could no longer be inhibited by the herbicide. That study was led by Altpeter and former CABBI Postdoc Mehmet Tufan Oz.

Altpeter's lab, part of CABBI's groundbreaking project to develop new oil-rich sugarcane varieties, has pioneered research with sugarcane genome editing using the TALEN gene-editing system. But the two recent publications are the first to successfully demonstrate CRISPR gene-editing in sugarcane as well as gene targeting for precision nucleotide substitution in sugarcane using any genome-editing tool.

"Now we have very effective tools to modify sugarcane into a crop with higher productivity or improved sustainability," Altpeter said. "It's important since sugarcane is the ideal crop to fuel the emerging bioeconomy."

CAPTION

Ayman Eid, CABBI Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Florida, displays gene-edited sugarcane with reduced chlorophyll content. Two recent studies by CABBI researchers at Florida's Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences demonstrated the first successful precision breeding of sugarcane by using CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing.

CREDIT

Rajesh Yarra, UF/IFAS Agronomy

Sugarcane is a hybrid of two kinds of parent plants, so it has multiple sets of chromosomes rather than just two, as with humans or "diploid" plants. That creates genetic redundancy -- with many sets of genes doing the same job -- which may contribute to the plant's productivity: If one set breaks, there's a backup. But it makes sugarcane extremely difficult to modify. Crop scientists have to target all the genes and copies that govern a particular trait in order to make improvements.

With conventional breeding, two types of sugarcane are cross-bred to reshuffle the genetic information present in each parent in the hope of enhancing a desirable trait such as disease resistance. The problem is that genes are transferred from the parents to offspring in blocks, and desirable traits are often linked with deleterious genetic material. This means scientists often have to do multiple rounds of backcrossing and screen thousands of plants to restore the elite background, or underlying plant characteristics, in addition to improving one trait they’re attempting to modify. The process is more time-consuming and costly in plants with complex genomes like sugarcane.

Precise gene-editing technologies such as CRISPR-Cas9 offer a much more targeted path to crop improvement because it avoids the reshuffling of genetic information and simply changes inferior gene versions into superior ones. Given the sugarcane genome's complexity, Altpeter and his team focused initially on genes that control noticeable traits -- leaf color and herbicide resistance -- so they could determine if the edits worked.

Beyond providing an easily identifiable phenotype, the targeted genes may prove useful in future research. Changing the chlorophyll content of sugarcane has the potential to increase canopy level photosynthesis or reduce the requirement for nitrogen fertilizer, based on previous plant modeling. Sugarcane is a tall, dense plant, with the top leaves getting lots of sun and shading lower foliage. If the upper leaves have less chlorophyll, sunlight can penetrate deeper into the plant, increasing its biomass with the same amount of light and less fertilizer. Herbicide resistance is not only an agronomically desirable trait to facilitate weed management; it will also facilitate future gene-editing efforts by enabling suppression of non-edited plant cells.

At CABBI, Altpeter and his team are already applying the results to develop improved sugarcane lines. Sugarcane has many different gene targets that can translate into more biomass or the production of lipids or specialty fatty acids -- all of which would advance CABBI's goals to produce fuels and other products from plants to replace petroleum. Because the crop is already harvested and processed for sugar extraction, the basic infrastructure to process its raw material into a product on a shelf is essentially in place.

"Adding value streams is relatively inexpensive compared to other crop alternatives," Altpeter said.

###

Coauthors on the first study included CABBI visiting scientist Chakravarthi Mohan, CABBI Lab Technician Sara Sanchez, and former CABBI Postdoc Duoduo Wang, all in Altpeter's lab. Coauthors on the second study included Angelika Altpeter, Ratna Karan, and Aldo Merotto of the Agronomy Department at UF/IFAS.

CAPTION

Mehmet Tufan Oz, former CABBI Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Florida's Institute of Food and Agriculture, sequences data of gene-edited sugarcane. Two recent studies by CABBI researchers at Florida demonstrated the first successful precision breeding of sugarcane by using CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing.

CREDIT

Baskaran Kannan, UF/IFAS Agronomy

 

You can snuggle wolf pups all you want, they still won't 'get' you quite like your dog

After 14,000 years of domestication, dogs have some of the same cognitive abilities as human babies.

DUKE UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

IMAGE: IF YOU FEEL LIKE YOUR DOG GETS YOU IN A WAY THAT MOST OTHER ANIMALS DON'T, YOU'RE RIGHT. NEW RESEARCH COMPARING DOG PUPPIES TO HUMAN-REARED WOLF PUPS OFFERS SOME CLUES... view more 

CREDIT: CANINE.ORG, JARED LAZARUS

DURHAM, N.C. -- You know your dog gets your gist when you point and say "go find the ball" and he scampers right to it.

This knack for understanding human gestures may seem unremarkable, but it's a complex cognitive ability that is rare in the animal kingdom. Our closest relatives, the chimpanzees, can't do it. And the dogs' closest relative, the wolf, can't either, according to a new Duke University-led study published July 12 in the journal Current Biology.

More than 14,000 years of hanging out with us has done a curious thing to the minds of dogs. They have what are known as "theory of mind" abilities, or mental skills allowing them to infer what humans are thinking and feeling in some situations.

The study, a comparison of 44 dog and 37 wolf puppies who were between 5 and 18 weeks old, supports the idea that domestication changed not just how dogs look, but their minds as well.

At the Wildlife Science Center in Minnesota, wolf puppies were first genetically tested to make sure they were not wolf - dog hybrids. The wolf puppies were then raised with plenty of human interaction. They were fed by hand, slept in their caretakers' beds each night, and received nearly round-the-clock human care from just days after birth. In contrast, the dog puppies from Canine Companions for Independence lived with their mother and littermates and had less human contact.

Then the canines were tested. In one test, the researchers hid a treat in one of two bowls, then gave each dog or wolf puppy a clue to help them find the food. In some trials, the researchers pointed and gazed in the direction the food was hidden. In others, they placed a small wooden block beside the right spot -- a gesture the puppies had never seen before -- to show them where the treat was hidden.

The results were striking. Even with no specific training, dog puppies as young as eight weeks old understood where to go, and were twice as likely to get it right as wolf puppies the same age who had spent far more time around people.

Seventeen out of 31 dog puppies consistently went to the right bowl. In contrast, none out of 26 human-reared wolf pups did better than a random guess. Control trials showed the puppies weren't simply sniffing out the food.

Even more impressive, many of the dog puppies got it right on their first trial. Absolutely no training necessary. They just get it.

It's not about which species is "smarter," said first author Hannah Salomons, a doctoral student in Brian Hare's lab at Duke. Dog puppies and wolf puppies proved equally adept in tests of other cognitive abilities, such as memory, or motor impulse control, which involved making a detour around transparent obstacles to get food.

It was only when it came to the puppies' people-reading skills that the differences became clear.

"There's lots of different ways to be smart," Salomons said. "Animals evolve cognition in a way that will help them succeed in whatever environment they're living in."

Other tests showed that dog puppies were also 30 times more likely than wolf pups to approach a stranger.

"With the dog puppies we worked with, if you walk into their enclosure they gather around and want to climb on you and lick your face, whereas most of the wolf puppies run to the corner and hide," Salomons said.

And when presented with food inside a container that was sealed so they could no longer retrieve it, the wolf pups generally tried to solve the problem on their own, whereas the dog puppies spent more time turning to people for help, looking them in the eye as if to say: "I'm stuck can you fix this?"

Senior author Brian Hare says the research offers some of the strongest evidence yet of what's become known as the "domestication hypothesis."

Somewhere between 12,000 and 40,000 years ago, long before dogs learned to fetch, they shared an ancestor with wolves. How such feared and loathed predators transformed into man's best friend is still a bit of a mystery. But one theory is that, when humans and wolves first met, only the friendliest wolves would have been tolerated and gotten close enough to scavenge on the human's leftovers instead of running away. Whereas the shyer, surlier wolves might go hungry, the friendlier ones would survive and pass on the genes that made them less fearful or aggressive toward humans.

The theory is that this continued generation after generation, until the wolf's descendants became masters at gauging the intentions of people they interact with by deciphering their gestures and social cues.

"This study really solidifies the evidence that the social genius of dogs is a product of domestication," said Hare, professor of evolutionary anthropology at Duke.

It's this ability that makes dogs such great service animals, Hare said. "It is something they are really born prepared to do."

Much like human infants, dog puppies intuitively understand that when a person points, they're trying to tell them something, whereas wolf puppies don't.

"We think it indicates a really important element of social cognition, which is that others are trying to help you," Hare said.

"Dogs are born with this innate ability to understand that we're communicating with them and we're trying to cooperate with them," Salomons said.

###

This research was supported by the Office of Naval Research (N00014- 16-12682), the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health (NIH-1Ro1HD097732) and the AKC Canine Health Foundation (#2700).

CITATION: "Cooperative Communication with Humans Evolved to Emerge Early in Domestic Dogs," Hannah Salomons, Kyle Smith, Megan Callahan-Beckel, Margaret Callahan, Kerinne Levy, Brenda S. Kennedy, Emily Bray, Gitanjali E. Gnanadesikan, Daniel J. Horschler, Margaret Gruen, Jingzhi Tan, Philip White, Evan MacLean, Brian Hare. Current Biology, July 12, 2021. DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2021.06.051

The Call of the Wild - ibiblio.org

https://www.ibiblio.org/ebooks/London/Call of Wild.pdf · PDF file

Book: The Call of the Wild Author: Jack London, 1876–1916 First published: 1903 The original book is in the public domain in the United States and in most, if not all, other countries as well. Readers outside the United States should check their own countries’ copyright laws to …

GOOD NEWS
Scientists: Pup births hopeful sign for Isle Royale wolves

By JOHN FLESHER

FILE - In this Sept. 26, 2018, file photo, provided by the National Park Service, a 4-year-old female gray wolf emerges from her cage as it is released at Isle Royale National Park in Michigan. Wolf pups have been spotted again on Isle Royale, a hopeful sign in the effort to rebuild the predator species' population at the Lake Superior national park, scientists said Monday, July 12, 2021. (National Park Service via AP, File)

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. (AP) — Wolf pups have been spotted again on Isle Royale, a hopeful sign in the effort to rebuild the predator species’ population at the U.S. national park, scientists said Monday.

It’s unknown how many gray wolves roam the island chain in northwestern Lake Superior. The coronavirus pandemic forced cancellation of the census that Michigan Technological University experts had conducted each winter for 63 years.

Remote cameras detected four pups on the park’s eastern end in January, the researchers said in a new report. The sightings, and additional clues such as previously observed scats and tracks, suggest that two litters were born in the area last year and perhaps another on the western side.

Park officials said last fall that at least two pups likely were born in 2019.

The population was 12 to 14 during the last Michigan Tech survey in winter 2020. The latest births would indicate it is higher now, but some older wolves may have died.

“It most likely will be winter of next year before we have firm information,” said Sarah Hoy, a research assistant professor and animal ecologist, adding that the presence of young wolves is reason for optimism. “Things are definitely looking up.”

Scientists with Michigan Tech, the National Park Service and State University of New York will combine available information with genetic analyses to produce a population estimate based on death rates and numbers of litters.

An initial data summary should be finished this month, said Mark Romanski, a biologist and natural resources program manager at Isle Royale.

“Because of constraints placed on field activities during the pandemic, we are especially pleased to have multiple lines of evidence to enumerate the population,” he said.

Wolves are believed to have migrated to Isle Royale from Minnesota or the Canadian province of Ontario around the middle of the 20th century, crossing about 15 miles (24 kilometers) over the frozen lake surface.

Once established, they began feasting on the park’s abundant moose and helped keep the herd from outgrowing its food supply. But wolf numbers plummeted in the past decade, which scientists blamed primarily on inbreeding.

The National Park Service announced plans in 2018 to restore the population, which had fallen to two. Crews took 19 wolves from Minnesota, Ontario and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula to the island in a series of airlifts. Some have died and at least one wandered back to the mainland but most appear to be settling in.

“They’re killing moose, starting to function as they should,” Hoy said.

The goal is to have 20-30 wolves within three to five years. Officials haven’t decided whether to bring more in, park spokeswoman Liz Valencia said.

“A healthy park ecosystem includes a variety of wildlife and abundant food sources,” said Christine Goepfert, Midwest associate director for the National Parks Conservation Association. “As wolves bounce back after nearly disappearing from the park, their presence as a predator on the island will help all wildlife and native plants thrive at Isle Royale.”

The wolves’ decline fueled a moose boom between 2012 and 2019, when the population may have reached 2,000 before dropping to 1,876 last year. It appears to have fallen further since, the report said.

During vegetation surveys this spring, researchers found 15 moose dead from starvation. Balsam fir saplings, their primary winter food source, were in “the worst condition ever observed” as moose munched every available branch, Hoy said. Blood-sucking ticks that thrived during the mild winter made things worse.

Also during the past year, personnel with the park service and Michigan Tech organized thousands of moose bones that have been gathered at Isle Royale. They’re being cleaned, photo-documented and entered into a database. The collection eventually will be housed in a museum.

“It is gratifying to see the National Park Service invest in the long-term preservation of moose bones, and it is almost certain that the scientific value of the collection will increase over time,” Michigan Tech wildlife ecologist Rolf Peterson said. “We have already put it to use in ways never anticipated when the bones were first collected and saved.”

A FAIR ASSEMENT CONSIDERING

Braid: Federal election campaign will come with challenges for Notley

For the Alberta NDP, the most dangerous player in the looming federal election might be the federal NDP

Author of the article:

Don Braid • Calgary Herald
Publishing date: Jul 11, 2021 • 

NDP leader Rachel Notley speaks to reporters while calling for faster relief for small businesses.

Thursday, May 20, 2021. PHOTO BY BRENDAN MILLER/POSTMEDIA


For the Alberta NDP, the most dangerous player in the looming federal election might be the federal NDP.

Opposition Leader Rachel Notley is in Calgary for Stampede. She won’t be riding any ziplines this year, but she’s spending a lot of time connecting with people in parks and communities.

Notley and her party are well ahead of the UCP and Premier Jason Kenney in the polls, even in Calgary, largely because of unhappiness with government performance on provincial issues.

But the federal election campaign, expected to launch in coming weeks, could be a challenge.

Federal NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh has been wildly contradictory about pipelines and energy development.

He calls for supporting workers in the energy transition without much reference to Alberta, which will obviously be most affected by the race to net-zero emissions.

Singh has said he would give every province — especially Quebec — the ability to stop energy projects. He would somehow do that without denying the federal constitutional power to override provincial opposition to works of national interest.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals could capture a majority, rendering Singh irrelevant after the election.

But to win the support they need in Quebec and Ontario, the Liberals may have to steal more NDP policies and attitudes than usual.

Kenney will find all this very useful. We can expect him to pin any hostile NDP suggestion on Notley. Hurting her chances might be the only benefit he gets from this election.

Asked about the obvious policy conflict with her federal party, Notley says: “It’s a bit of a work in progress. We’ve got a very good MP in Heather McPherson (Edmonton Strathcona). She talks to the (NDP) caucus every day about the reality of oil and gas workers, and the oil and gas economy and its contribution to quality of life for regular folks in Alberta and across the country.

“The more we can have people like that in the NDP caucus, and also in all the caucuses across the country, the better that is.

“We will see what level of emphasis the federal party puts on oil and gas infrastructure as part of their campaign. There may well be certain things we agree to disagree on.

“Jason Kenney’s federal leader (Erin O’Toole) supports the carbon tax, yet nobody seems to call him out for otherwise supporting the federal leader on other issues.”

(Maybe that’s because O’Toole’s policy on carbon pricing, sort of a supermarket points scheme, is even murkier than Singh’s position on pipelines.)

But Notley is all in for many federal NDP policies.

“There are elements of what they’re proposing that we do strongly support.

“They’re pushing very hard for a comprehensive overhaul in how we provide long-term care for seniors in Canada, and I think that is long overdue.

“They’re pushing for pharmacare . . . and for more sustainable income support for people who have not been able to find work as we come out of the pandemic.

“Those are important bread-and-butter issues that we do support.”

If there’s energy conflict, she concludes, “We might have to allow for the complexity of national politics within the party.”

Notley’s Stampede style, meanwhile, is distinctly different from Kenney’s. While he appears in public without a mask, Notley and her crew wear them even outdoors.

“We’re not going to those big centralized events,” she said. “Even in the more careful events that we are creating, I’m connecting with hundreds of people a day and so I feel I have to be responsible in terms of how I interact with them.”

Overall, she said, “The (COVID-19) numbers right now are awfully low, so that’s encouraging . . . I’m going to be cautiously optimistic that we come through this without accelerating any negative consequences.

“Stampede is a hopeful event for Calgarians. I’m not interested in stomping on that hope.”

As for the federal campaign, her chore will be to get through unscathed.

Don Braid’s column appears regularly in the Herald

NOT FOR PROFIT
UN calls for global database of human gene editing research

LONDON (AP) — The World Health Organization issued new recommendations Monday on human genome editing, calling for a global registry to track “any form of genetic manipulation” and proposing a whistle-blowing mechanism to raise concerns about unethical or unsafe research.

The U.N. health agency commissioned an expert group in late 2018 following a dramatic announcement from Chinese scientist He Jiankui that he had created the world’s first gene-edited babies.

In two reports Monday, WHO’s expert group said all studies involving human genome editing should be made public, although the committee noted that wouldn’t necessarily stop unprincipled scientists.

“In the field of stem cell research, unscrupulous entrepreneurs and clinics have deliberately misused clinical trial registries by registering procedures they plan to undertake as if they were properly sanctioned clinical trials,” the group said, calling for WHO to ensure that all genetic editing research registered in their database are reviewed and approved by an ethics committee.

When Chinese scientist He announced he had altered the DNA of twin babies to prevent them from catching HIV, he said the university where he worked was not aware and that he had funded the work himself. He was later sentenced to three years in jail for conducting “illegal medical practices.”

WHO’s expert group also said the U.N. agency should develop ways to identify any potentially concerning gene editing trials, saying a mechanism should be developed “for reporting violations of research integrity.”

Robin Lovell-Badge of the Francis Crick Institute, one of the experts on the committee, cited several instances where scientists in Russia, Ukraine and Turkey planning controversial genetic editing experiments were pressured not to proceed and called for a more formal whistle-blowing mechanism.

Still, the group acknowledged that as gene editing techniques become cheaper and easier to use, the ability of WHO to monitor such research is limited. The U.N. agency also has no authority to compel countries to cooperate, even during a public health emergency.

During the coronavirus pandemic, for example, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has repeatedly criticized rich countries for not sharing their vaccines, warning in January that the world was on the brink of a “catastrophic moral failure.”

But rich countries have made little effort to immediately share their doses with poor countries, even as COVID-19 spikes across Africa and Southeast Asia. Of the more than 3 billion vaccines that have been administered globally since then, fewer than 2% have been in poor countries.

POSTFORDISM = LATE CAPITALI$M

Vietnam's Vinfast to launch electric cars in US, Europe next year

Issued on: 12/07/2021 - 14:08Modified: 12/07/2021 - 14:06
Vinfast sold around 30,000 vehicles last year Manan VATSYAYANA AFP/File

Hanoi (AFP)

Vietnam's first homegrown car manufacturer Vinfast said Monday it will launch two new electric vehicle models early next year in North America and Europe, as it pushes to enter the lucrative but crowded market.

The carmaker is a subsidiary of Vietnam's largest private conglomerate, Vingroup, which is owned by the country's richest man, a press-shy billionaire who started his career selling dried noodles in Ukraine.

The company said Monday it had officially begun operations in the US, Canada, France, Germany and the Netherlands and had recruited staff and opened offices in these "key markets".

All the vehicles will be made in Vietnam.

It aims to launch its two new electric car models -- the VF e35 and VF e36 -- in March 2022, the company added.

But Vinfast will face stiff competition, especially when going up against big-name brands including Volkswagen and Elon Musk's Tesla.

To prepare for its entry into global markets, the company said it had recruited experts from firms including Tesla, BMW and Toyota.

Domestically, Vinfast has already sold vehicles that include sedan and SUV models, along with e-scooters and even electric buses.

It sold around 30,000 vehicles last year.

The firm introduced its domestic electric car model -- the VF e34, costing about $29,000 -- in January and has received around 25,000 pre-orders, the company says.

But Vinfast has made clear it has global ambitions.

In February it said it had received a permit to test autonomous vehicles on public streets in California, and it would begin selling two of its three models with autonomous features in the US, Canada and European markets from 2022.

The cradle-to-grave Vingroup empire includes housing, resorts, schools, hospitals and shopping malls.

Vingroup CEO Pham Nhat Vuong is worth an estimated $7 billion, according to Forbes.

© 2021 AFP

 

Director Haroun in race for Palme d'Or: 'Chad's feminist revolution will come'

Set in the outskirts of N'Djamena, Chad, the film "Lingui", by director Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, tells the story of an adolescent whose unwanted pregnancy puts her in conflict with her country's laws and traditions. Haroun lives in France, but most of his films were produced in Chad, his country of birth, which he left during the unrest of the 1980s. He spoke to FRANCE 24.

 

India: Lightning strikes kill at least 50 people

Lightning strikes have killed at least 50 people in the states of Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. In one incident, 11 people were killed while taking a selfie at a historical fort.

    

Over the past 24 hours, lightning strikes have killed dozens of people in states across India

Lightning strikes killed more than 50 people across several Indian states authorities said on Monday.

Thunderstorms are common in the country at the start of the monsoon season and kill hundreds each year. 

What happened?

In one case, a group of 11 people were killed due to lightning in the western state of Rajasthan, while they were taking selfies near watchtowers at the 12th-century Amer Fort. 

"It was already raining when the people were there. They huddled in the towers as the rainfall intensified. Some of the injured were left unconscious by the strikes. Others ran out in panic and extreme pain," Saurabh Tiwari, a senior police officer told AFP news agency. 

Indian media outlets reported at least 42 others were killed in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, with some deaths also being reported in the central state of Madhya Pradesh. 

Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that funds have been released to give to the injured and next of kin of the deceased. 

The state government of Uttar Pradesh also announced financial aid for those whose livestock had been affected by the storms.

More dangerous conditions expected

India's Meteorological Department warned that more lightning strikes may occur within the next two days.

According to data from 2019, about 2,900 people were killed due to lightning that year. 

The southwest monsoon winds, which bring rainfall to India from June to September, are yet to reach the northern parts of India, including capital Delhi. 

Covid triggered biggest increase in hunger in decades: UN

Issued on: 12/07/2021 - 

More people needed to turn to soup kitchens and food banks as pandemic restrictions forced them from their jobs NORBERTO DUARTE AFP/File


Paris (AFP)

The Covid pandemic caused an estimated 18 percent increase in the number of people facing hunger, a UN report released on Monday found, dealing a massive setback to efforts to ensure everyone has access to food.

The world was already off track to achieve its goal of eradicating hunger by 2030, but the report warned that Covid had now sent it back in the wrong direction.

The "economic downturns as a consequence of Covid-19 containment measures all over the world have contributed to one of the largest increases in world hunger in decades," said the annual food security and nutrition report compiled by several UN agencies.

Although the full impact of the pandemic cannot yet be determined, the report estimated around 118 million more people faced hunger in 2020 than in 2019, an increase of 18 percent.

The rise in moderate or severe food insecurity was equal to the previous five years combined.

"Nearly one in three people in the world (2.37 billion) did not have access to adequate food in 2020 -- an increase of almost 320 million people in just one year," the report said.

One in 10 people were undernourished.

The increase in hunger was widespread as the economic downturn affected almost all low- and middle-income countries.

But the biggest impact was in countries where there were also climate-related disasters or conflict, or both.

"The Covid-19 pandemic is just the tip of the iceberg," said the report.

"More alarmingly, the pandemic has exposed the vulnerabilities forming in our food systems over recent years as a result of major drivers such as conflict, climate variability and extremes, and economic slowdowns and downturns."

The UN agencies said there is a unique opportunity to reverse the dynamic this year however, thanks to two major food and nutrition summits plus the COP26 meeting on climate change.

The report was jointly published by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the United Nations Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF), the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and the World Health Organization (WHO).

© 2021 AFP