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John Kerry warns against carbon capture’s ‘great facade’ as a climate cure-all

Published Sun, 29 Dec 2024 12:18:59 GMT

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Some countries at the COP28 climate talks are lying about the potential for capturing the greenhouse gases fossil fuels emit, U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said.Kerry was speaking at an event on Friday evening on the sidelines of the U.N. COP28 climate talks in Dubai, where the nations of the world are wrangling over the draft of a pledge to end fossil fuel use.The deal has been forcefully opposed by fossil fuel-producing countries, including Saudi Arabia. Negotiators from Riyadh argue carbon pollution can be largely captured and buried using scrubbing technology that Kerry said remains largely unproven at the needed scale.“There are people here who want to just continue business as usual. And the great facade is: ‘Oh no, we’ll be able to capture everything,’” said Kerry, his voice hoarse from a chest cold. “No scientist tells me we can capture it all. Can’t do it. Can we capture some? Yes, and by the way, I’m for it.”Kerry said it was...

Gallery: Gronk gifts cars to members of Army and Navy

Published Sun, 29 Dec 2024 12:18:59 GMT

Man in critical condition from shooting in North York

Published Sun, 29 Dec 2024 12:18:59 GMT

A man is in critical condition from being shot in the Wilson Avenue and Highway 400 area of North York on Saturday morning.Police responded to reports at approximately 6:29 a.m. of a male lying on the roadway, and Constable Laura Brabant says the man was found on Wilson Avenue just west of Highway 400.Medics transported an adult man to the hospital via emergency run, advising he had been shot. His injuries are life-threatening.Anyone with information is asked to contact police.

Zimbabwe holds special elections after court rules to remove 9 opposition lawmakers from Parliament

Published Sun, 29 Dec 2024 12:18:59 GMT

HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) — Zimbabwe is holding special elections Saturday for nine seats in Parliament after opposition lawmakers were removed from their positions and disqualified from running again. The opposition called it an illegal push by the ruling ZANU-PF party to bolster its parliamentary majority and possibly change the constitution. This may allow President Emmerson Mnangagwa, 81, who was reelected for a second and final term in August amid international and regional criticism, to run for another term.All nine opposition lawmakers from the Citizens Coalition for Change party that were removed were elected in the national vote in August. But an official claiming to be the secretary-general of the party recalled them from their positions in the weeks after that election.CCC leader Nelson Chamisa said the official, Sengezo Tshabangu, held no position with the party and his instructions should be ignored. But Zimbabwean courts recognized Tshabangu’s authority, ruled to rem...

Fields of anxiety: Overcoming stigma to address mental health struggles of farmers

Published Sun, 29 Dec 2024 12:18:59 GMT

Christi Friesen remembers her husband saying he knew that the cloud of depression over her was finally lifting when he saw her smile at the end of the gruelling 2016 harvest season.That October had been brutal, with three storms dumping about 20 centimetres of snow on the couple’s Peace River, Alta., grain farm. On the morning of the third snowstorm, Friesen felt the wind knocked out of her when she looked out the window to see a blanket of white covering crops she had hoped they would harvest that day.“Oh my God. I just sat on the bed and I just cried, and I held my head in my hands,” she said in a recent interview. “I just cried and cried and cried …. It was an awful year.”Most Canadian farm families are familiar with the stresses that come with agriculture. Their livelihoods can be affected by the vagaries of nature, crop or animal disease and even distant wars, but often they find themselves silenced by the stigma surrounding mental illness.An...

Israel strikes north and south Gaza after US vetoes a UN cease-fire resolution

Published Sun, 29 Dec 2024 12:18:59 GMT

Israel pounded areas of the Gaza Strip with airstrikes and artillery on Saturday, a day after the United States vetoed a U.N. resolution demanding an immediate humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza.Secretary-General Antonio Guterres for the first time invoked Article 99 of the U.N. Charter, which enables a U.N. chief to raise threats he sees to international peace and security. He warned of a “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza. But U.S. Deputy Ambassador Robert Wood said on Friday that halting military action would allow Hamas to continue to rule Gaza and “only plant the seeds for the next war.”The war was triggered by Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel, in which militants from Gaza killed about 1,200, most of them civilians and took more than 240 people hostage.The Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said the death toll in the territory has surpassed 17,400 over the past two months, with more than 46,000 wounded. The ministry does not differentiate between civilian and combatant...

US and Philippines condemn the Chinese coast guard’s water cannon blasts on fisheries vessels

Published Sun, 29 Dec 2024 12:18:59 GMT

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — The Philippines and its treaty ally, the United States, separately condemned a high-seas assault Saturday by the Chinese coast guard together with suspected militia ships that repeatedly blasted water cannons to block three Philippine fisheries vessels from a disputed shoal in the South China Sea.The noontime assault by Chinese ships off the Scarborough Shoal, one of the most aggressive this year, caused “significant damage” to the communication and navigation equipment of one of the three Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources ships, Filipino officials said.They said without elaborating that suspected militia vessels accompanying Chinese coast guard ships used a long-range acoustic device that could impair hearing, causing “severe temporary discomfort and incapacitation to some Filipino crew.”It’s the latest flare-up of the long-seething territorial disputes in the South China Sea, a flashpoint in Asia that has put the U.S. and China on a c...

Protests during UN climate talks have “shocking level of censorship”

Published Sun, 29 Dec 2024 12:18:59 GMT

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Activists designated Saturday a day of protest at the COP28 summit in Dubai. But the rules of the game in the tightly-controlled United Arab Emirates meant sharp restrictions on what demonstrators could say, where they could walk and what their signs could portray.At times, the controls bordered on the absurd. A small group of demonstrators protesting the detention of activists — one from Egypt and two from the UAE — were not allowed to hold up signs bearing their names. Demonstrators were banned from “marching” from one venue to the other, though the could walk between events. And a pro-Palestinian protester said he was told demonstrators could not say “from the river to the sea.” In the aftermath of a brutal Hamas attack on Israel in October and subsequent bombing of the Gaza Strip, that phrase has been used by pro-Palestinian rallies to call for single state on the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. Some Jews hear a clear...

ATCEMS: 1 dead following north Austin traffic incident, road closures expected

Published Sun, 29 Dec 2024 12:18:59 GMT

AUSTIN (KXAN) — One person died Saturday following a traffic incident in north Austin, according to Austin-Travis County EMS.Officials said the incident occurred at approximately 5:50 a.m. at North Interstate 35 near Rutherford Lane.ATCEMS said to expect extended closures for the investigation.As of 6:17 a.m., no further information was available.

Nicholas Kristof: So many child deaths in Gaza, and for what?

Published Sun, 29 Dec 2024 12:18:59 GMT

Consider this: The most dangerous place to be a child in the world today is the Gaza Strip.That’s the assessment of Catherine Russell, executive director of UNICEF, who is not a bleeding-heart radical but a former ambassador and veteran lawyer who worked for Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama.Already it appears that more than twice as many children have died in Gaza just since the war started Oct. 7 than in all the conflicts worldwide in 2022, according to United Nations figures.“Almost 1 out of every 150 Palestinian children in Gaza have been killed in just two months,” noted Dr. Zaher Sahloul, president of MedGlobal, an aid group working there. “That is the equivalent of half a million American children.”Sahloul warned that many others may “die from infections, waterborne diseases or dehydration,” while others will suffer from lifelong physical disabilities.We can and should despise Hamas, a repressive, misogynist and homophobic force that uses Palestinian civilians as human sh...