Climate change intensifies conflicts, John Kerry says
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Negative effects of climate change such as extreme drought are linked to deadly violence in countries such as Syria and Nigeria, and those still denying there's a problem are putting the entire planet at risk, the US secretary of state said.
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"It's not a coincidence that immediately prior to the civil war in Syria the country experienced its worst drought on record, as many as 1.5 million people migrated from Syria's farms to its cities, intensifying the political unrest that was just beginning to royal and boil in the region," said Kerry.
"In Nigeria, climate change didn't lead to the terrorist group Boko Haram, but the severe drought that the country suffered and the inability of the government to cope with it helped create the political and economic vitality that the militants exploited to seize villages, butcher teachers, and kidnap hundreds of school girls," he added.
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"It would be better for all of us if I was exaggerating the urgency of this threat, but the science tells us unequivocally that those who continue to make climate change a political fight put us all at risk.
What counts as fair?
In studies, young children usually default to splitting up resources equally. However, as children get older, they shift toward a merit-based approach, in which people who work harder on a task are rewarded with a bigger portion.
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"There is evidence that even very young kids, if you force them to choose, they'll give more to the person with more merit," says Edward Gibson, a professor of brain and cognitive sciences at MIT and an author of the study. "It's not that they don't understand the concept of more merit, it's just that they probably don't know how to do the distribution."
It appears that while children understand the concept of rewarding more effort before they learn to count, they can't accurately translate that into a distribution that reflects each person's contribution, the researchers say. In a related study, not yet published, they have found that as children learn to count, they also gain an understanding of how sets of objects change as you add items or remove them.
Record Levels of CO2 Herald the Future of Climate Change
The Earth's climate has changed. After nearly two centuries of fossil fuel-burning, concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have reached 400 parts per million, especially boosted by the seemingly ever-accelerating amount of combustion in the last few decades according to the World Meteorological Organization. Atmospheric CO2 concentrations of 0.04 percent may not seem like much but it is enough to have already raised average global temperatures by a full degree Celsius, according to the U.K.'s Met Office, with more warming on the way as the greenhouse gas lingers invisibly in the atmosphere, trapping heat, or mixing into the ocean, rendering its waters more acidic.
In fact, the world has not seen CO2 concentrations this high in at least hundreds of thousands of years. Roughly 35 billion metric tons of CO2 are spewed into the atmosphere annually—and rising. The waters of the global ocean have become 30 percent more acidic in the last few decades and the world has not been this warm in thousands of years. This year is likely to be the hottest one since record keeping began, thanks to an El Nino weather pattern that’s taking place in addition to global warming. The top 10 warmest years have all occurred since 1998, which was the year of the last major El Nino.
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There is still a long way to go, as that 90 percent figure implies. The gap between what nations have promised—reductions of as much as 11 billion metric tons of greenhouse gases by 2030—and what is needed to avoid adding another degree C to the global average temperature—an additional reduction of at least seven billion metric tons of CO2e by 2030—remains large. There are thousands of fossil fuel-fired power plants, more than a billion petroleum-powered vehicles and all the attendant infrastructure to service them, whether oil pipelines, roads or coal mines. We may need technologies like CO2 capture and storage, even if only to deal with the climate-`changing pollution from natural gas-fired power plants or the cement kilns and steel foundries needed to build wind turbines or nuclear reactors.
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We have entered what might be called the Anthropocene thermal maximum, an era of global warming driven by one species penchant for burning fossil fuels and cutting down forests. Right now in 2015 may be the last time anyone breathes air with average CO2 concentrations below 400 ppm, as this number marches seemingly inexorably upward. But we don't have to keep adding to that number forever.
Tyson Foods Wants the Supreme Court to Let It Keep Stealing Workers' Wages
Workers have filed dozens of lawsuits against Tyson Foods alleging millions of dollars in "wage theft" for its failure to keep wage and hour records and to properly pay workers for overtime as required by the Fair Labor Standards Act (FSLA). On Tuesday, Tyson came before the US Supreme Court and argued that the justices should make those lawsuits go away. Tyson Foods v. Bouaphakeo is truly a David-versus-Goliath lawsuit, with about 3,000 low-income, often immigrant workers going up against the world's second-largest meat processor, which has more than $30 billion in annual sales.
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Judging from the arguments Tuesday, it's still far cheaper in the long run for Tyson to continue fending off a few lawsuits than it is to comply with the recordkeeping law and pay workers accordingly. Phillips told the court that a difference of a mere three minutes of changing time per worker translated into $1.4 million less in damages in the case. That may explain why, as one Tennessee federal court observed in 2008, Tyson has "now been litigating this same issue for decades, reflecting what can only be described as a deeply-entrenched resistance to changing their compensation practices to comply with the requirements of [the] FLSA."
The justices were sharply critical of Tyson's arguments, particularly crucial swing voter Justice Anthony Kennedy who, right out of the gate, said to Phillips, "I just don't understand your argument." While the case has ideological overtones, the justices quizzed Phillips relentlessly on Tyson's trial strategy, which seemed to have been to focus on the Wal-Mart decision as precedent to get the case thrown out rather than vigorously defending the lawsuit before the jury. Assistant Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, arguing for the government on the side of the workers, gave a rapid-fire laundry list of all the ways Tyson's poor trial strategy produced the verdict it was now asking the court to overturn. She said that those trial failures were the problem with this case, not any flaw in the class action mechanism. Some of the justices seemed to agree, particularly Kennedy.
Renewable energy made up half of world's new power plants in 2014: IEA
Green energy is now the second-largest generator of electricity in the world, after coal, and is set to overtake the dirtiest fossil fuel in the early 2030s, said the IEA’s World Energy Outlook 2015 report, published on Tuesday.
“The biggest story is in the case of renewables,” said IEA executive director, Fatih Birol. “It is no longer a niche. Renewable energy has become a mainstream fuel, as of now.” He said 60% of all new investment was going into renewables but warned that the $490bn of fossil fuel subsidies in 2014 meant there was not a “fair competition”.
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Huge changes in China are a major factor in coal’s decline, said Birol: “The era of the China boom in terms of energy demand growth is coming to an end. This is a major story and has implications for the entire world.” He said China had the biggest energy efficiency programme in the world and that “China is the champion of renewables”, as well having a major nuclear programme and likely growth in unconventional gas.
But the IEA expects coal demand is set to triple in India and in south-east Asia by 2040. “South-east Asia is amazingly important and not getting much attention,” said Birol. “It is the only region in the world where the coal demand is increasing its share.” He said, in the absence of climate policies, cheap coal and renewables would squeeze out gas in the region.
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The IEA has been criticised in the past for underestimating the speed of solar energy deployment. “The global breakthrough of renewable energy has happened much faster than anticipated,” said Emily Rochon, global energy strategist at Greenpeace International. “The IEA is catching up on renewable energy trends, but it is still failing to see the full potential of change. We believe that with the right level of policy support, the world can deliver 100% renewable energy for all by 2050.”
How America bought and sold racism, and why it still matters
We've all encountered what people today call Black Memorabilia — a Mammy cookie jar, a racist postcard — but have you ever wondered where these depictions came from, and why they are so common? In her latest article for Collectors Weekly, Lisa Hix interviewed Dr. David Pilgrim, author of Understanding Jim Crow, to get some answers to these and other questions. Hix learned that Black Memorabilia was popularized by post-Reconstruction whites to dehumanize African Americans, and that while slavery may have ended in 1865, Jim Crow has persisted in various forms and guises to this day, which helps explain why the presence of an African American family in the White House has not been enough to put America's racial history behind us.
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“If you believed that black men were Sambos, childlike buffoons, for example, then why would they be allowed to vote?” Pilgrim says. “Why would they be allowed to hold office, serve on a jury, or attend public schools with whites? If black men were brutes who were a threat to white women, why would they be allowed to share beaches, public-school classes, or taxicabs? If black women were Mammies whose best roles in life were serving white families, why would they be allowed in other occupations when the society needed them for that? So the caricatures, and the stereotypes which accompanied them, became rationalizations for keeping blacks at the bottom of the racial hierarchy. Perpetuating these caricatures was a way to make sure you didn’t have to compete against black people economically. In short, it was a way of sustaining white supremacy."
El Nino threatens 'millions in east and southern Africa'
Some 11 million children are at risk from hunger, disease and water shortages in east and southern Africa because of the strengthening El Nino weather phenomenon, the UN children's charity has said.
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"The weather phenomenon, among the strongest on record, is likely to cause more floods and droughts, fuel Pacific typhoons and cyclones and affect more areas if it continues strengthening as forecast over the coming months," Unicef said in a statement.
It said 8.2 million people in Ethiopia faced food insecurity, while an estimated 350,000 children needed treatment for severe acute malnutrition.
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In South Africa, livestock has been dying as a result of the drought, and water restrictions have been imposed in the main city, Johannesburg, and other areas, correspondents say.
South Dakota tribe burns marijuana crop over raid fears
Fearing a federal raid, a South Dakota Native American tribe is burning its marijuana crop, which it had planned to sell in a resort on its land.
The "marijuana resort" would have been the first of its kind, but concerns that the stockpile could be confiscated led tribe leaders to incinerate it.
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"We just felt it would be best to go in with a clean slate to look for answers on how to proceed so that all sides are comfortable with it," said Flandreau Santee Sioux President Anthony Reider, adding that burning the crop was "in the best interest of both tribal and non-tribal members."
The 400-person tribe, which already runs a casino, hotel and ranch, had predicted the marijuana sales would make up to $2m (£1.3m) per month.
Afghan killings: Thousands protest over murdered Hazaras
The murdered Hazaras included four men, one woman and two girls. Some had their throats slit - it is not clear by whom.
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Ghazni has a large population of minority Hazaras who are mostly Shia Muslims. But unlike in neighbouring Pakistan they have been largely spared attacks by Sunni militants in recent years.
The bodies of the seven victims were later moved to Kabul where hundreds were waiting to meet the coffins ahead of further protests.
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However two days after the killings, eight other Hazara hostages were freed.
One of those released told the BBC that they had been held by foreign fighters who were speaking Uzbek.
Report shows the disproportionate effects of climate change on the global poor
The report is one of the first to connect climate and poverty at the level of the household. According to the Bank, a warming world will send an additional 100 million people into extreme poverty (living on $1.90 per day, according to the new standard) by 2030 — and nearly half of those people will live in India.
It’s easy to imagine how climate change can exacerbate poverty — warmer temperatures can stimulate disease and less predictable weather patterns can harm crop yields, which in turn affect food security and income. The report predicts, for example, that food prices in Sub-Saharan Africa will jump by 12 percent by 2030 due to falling farm yields.
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Consider the heading in the report’s executive summary: “Climate change is a threat to poverty eradication.” Not “climate change is a threat to livelihoods” or “to the world’s poorest,” but rather to the progress of development agencies. Of course, poverty eradication isn’t exactly a morally abhorrent line of work to be in, but it is a line of work. And the point is worth belaboring because many would argue that capitalist paradigms of economic development got us into this climate debacle in the first place.
For many activists, the Bank’s report offers more of the same: problem statements without real solutions. “None of the Bank’s proposed pro-poor climate policies can work if development plans fail to strengthen the ability of indigenous and local forest peoples to defend their rights and protect their resources,” said Andy White, coordinator at the Rights and Resources Initiative, in a statement. Citing research on indigenous land stewardship, White argued that the only way to craft a sustainable future for the global poor is to re-secure Indigenous Peoples’ and community land rights.
German Facebook boss to be investigated for 'ignoring racist posts'
Prosecutors in Hamburg have launched an investigation into the European head of Facebook over the social platform’s alleged failure to remove racist hate speech, a spokeswoman for the prosecutor has said.
The move was announced on Tuesday as German politicians and celebrities voiced concern about the rise of xenophobic comments in German on Facebook and on other social media as the country struggles to cope with the influx of about 1 million refugees this year.
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The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, urged Facebook to do more this year on the matter, while the country’s justice ministry wants to set up a taskforce with the company, other social networks and internet service providers with the aim of identifying criminal posts more quickly and taking them down.
Singles Day on track to break record as sales near $8bn
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Singles Day, also known as Double Eleven because its held on 11 November, has become a major annual event for Chinese retailers.
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Singles Day has grown tremendously since it was started by Alibaba in 2009, and now includes many retailers such as rivals JD.com that stage sales promotions.
This year, Alibaba said there would be more than 40,000 merchants and 30,000 brands from 25 countries selling goods on its platforms.
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It predicts that 1.7 million couriers, 400,000 vehicles and 200 planes will be making deliveries of products that range from electronics goods to cosmetics despite slowing growth in China.
Economists will be looking for clues about domestic consumption in Wednesday's sales as the world's second-biggest economy heads for its slowest growth in nearly a quarter of a century.
Why your older sibling is smarter than you
In a new study from the University of Leipzig, researchers examined how neurotic, extraverted, conscientious, open and agreeable 20,000 people were from the UK, US and Germany - and concluded that personality is not affected by whether you were born first, last or in between.
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But science is increasingly showing that your birth order can affect who you are in different ways - older siblings are smarter on average, while the youngest are healthier and more likely to be gay.
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Although it's not clear why this might be the case, previous research suggests this might be due the eldest child's social status in the family rather than a biological change that happens in the womb.
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Male foetuses produce a particular type of protein in the womb that helps male genitalia to form. But when this is produced, the mother's body responds by producing other proteins, known as antibodies.
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As a result, having older brothers means that a male foetus could have been more quickly exposed to these antibodies from his mother. Prof Bogaert believes that this immune response explains the older brother phenomenon.