Month: November 2024

When British conservationists flew to Slovenia this summer hoping to catch enough singing cicadas to reintroduce the species to the New Forest, the grasshopper-sized insects proved impossible to locate, flying elusively at great height between trees.

Now a 12-year-old girl has offered to save the Species Recovery Trust’s reintroduction project. Kristina Kenda, the daughter of the Airbnb hosts who accommodated the trust’s director, Dom Price, and conservation officer Holly Stanworth in the summer summer, will put out special nets to hopefully catch enough cicadas to re-establish a British population.

“I’m very pleased to be able to help the project,” Kristina said. “I like nature and wildlife and it was fun helping Dom and Holly look for cicadas when they were here. Cicadas are a part of the summer in Slovenia so it would be nice to help make them a part of the summer in England as well.”

The black and orange New Forest cicada (Cicadetta montana) was the only cicada species found in Britain. In summer, males produce a high-pitched song – inaudible to many ears – to attract females who lay eggs in the trees. When the tiny nymphs hatch, they fall to the forest floor and burrow into the soil, slowly developing underground for six to eight years before emerging as adults.

The species disappeared from the forest from which it takes its common British name in the 1990s and the Species Recovery Trust has begun a £28,000 project funded by Natural England’s species recovery programme to bring it back.

The plan was to collect – with permission – five males and five females from the Idrija Geopark in Slovenia and establish them in a cicada nursery of enclosed plants in pots created by zoo staff at Paultons Park theme park near the New Forest.

Although Price and Stanworth could not catch the adult cicadas, they found hundreds of tiny mud chimneys made by the nymphs as they emerged from the ground close to their Airbnb accommodation.

They realised that if they could erect a net tent over the area before the cicadas emerge next year, they could catch enough to take back to the UK. But they couldn’t risk leaving the nets up over winter, during which they were likely to be damaged, and could not afford an extra trip to Slovenia.

So Kristina, the daughter of their hosts Katarina and Mitja, offered to undertake the job of setting up the nets in the spring and checking they are secure. She also agreed to monitor the area through the winter to spot any signs of activity.

Price said: “We are so grateful to Kristina and the whole family for their enormous support. At this stage, the project might be impossible without that help. If this method works then we can bring back one of the UK’s most special species, our only cicada and an icon of the New Forest that residents and visitors can enjoy for ever.”

The trust team will now fly out in early June when they hope to collect their precious living cargo. The plan is for the collected adult cicadas to lay eggs on plants in pots, with the subsequent nymphs burrowing into the plant-pot soil. The plants and the soil will then be planted at secret locations in the New Forest and monitored, with the hope that enough offspring emerge to restart the wild population.

It will be a six-year wait to see if the tiny nymphs survive underground to become the first new UK generation of New Forest cicadas.

Donald Trump nominated Scott Bessent, a longtime hedge-fund investor who taught at Yale University for several years, to be his treasury secretary, a statement from Trump confirmed on Friday. The job is one of the most powerful in Washington, with huge influence over America’s gigantic economy and financial markets.

The move to select Bessent is the latest as the president-elect starts to pull together the administration for his second term in the White House. The process so far has been marked largely by a focus more on personal and political loyalty to Trump than expertise and experience.

In economics, one of the main focuses and controversies of the treasury role will be to deal with Trump’s high-profile and oft-repeated promises to pursue a policy of aggressive new US tariffs in foreign trade – something that is widely feared by many other countries across the globe.

Wall Street had been closely watching who Trump would pick for the treasury role, especially given his plans to remake global trade through tariffs.

Bessent, 62, has advocated for tax reform and deregulation, particularly to spur more bank lending and energy production, as noted in a recent opinion piece he wrote for the Wall Street Journal.

The stock market surge after Trump’s election victory, he wrote, signaled investor “expectations of higher growth, lower volatility and inflation, and a revitalized economy for all Americans”.

Bessent follows other financial luminaries who have taken the job, including the former Goldman Sachs executives Robert Rubin, Hank Paulson and Steven Mnuchin, Trump’s first treasury chief. Janet Yellen, the current secretary and first woman in the job, previously chaired the Federal Reserve and White House council of economic advisers.

As the 79th treasury secretary, Bessent would essentially be the highest-ranking US economic official, responsible for maintaining the plumbing of the world’s largest economy, from collecting taxes and paying the nation’s bills to managing the $28.6tn Treasury debt market and overseeing financial regulation, including handling and preventing market crises.

The treasury boss also runs US financial sanctions policy, oversees the US-led International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and other international financial institutions, and manages national security screenings of foreign investments in the US.

Bessent would face challenges, including safely managing federal deficits that are forecast to grow by nearly $8tn over a decade due to Trump’s plans to extend expiring tax cuts next year and add generous new breaks, including ending taxes on social security income.

Without offsetting revenues, this new debt would add to an unsustainable fiscal trajectory already forecast to balloon US debt by $22tn through 2033.
Managing debt increases this large without market indigestion will be a challenge, though Bessent has argued Trump’s agenda would unleash stronger economic growth that would grow revenue and shore up market confidence.

Bessent would also inherit the role carved out by Yellen to lead the G7 nations to provide tens of billions of dollars in economic support for Ukraine in its fight against Russia’s invasion and tighten sanctions on Moscow. But given Trump’s desire to end the war quickly and withdraw US financial support for Ukraine, it is unclear whether he would pursue this.

Another area where Bessent will likely differ from Yellen is her focus on climate change, from her mandate that development banks expand lending for clean energy to incorporating climate risks into financial regulations and managing hundreds of billions of dollars in clean energy tax credits.

Trump, a climate-change skeptic, has vowed to increase production of USfossil fuel energy and end the clean-energy subsidies in Joe Biden’s 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.

Reuters contributed to this report

The Texas board of education voted 8-7 on Friday to approve a new Bible-based curriculum in elementary schools.

The curriculum, called “Bluebonnet Learning”, could be implemented as soon as August 2025 and affects English and language arts teaching material for kindergarten through fifth grade public school classes.

Teachers will have a choice to opt into the new faith-based learning curriculum, but the state is offering a financial incentive of $60 a student for participating school districts.

Parents, teachers and rights groups expressed outrage at the move that some say violates the US constitution and will alienate students and teachers of other faiths.

“The Bluebonnet curriculum flagrantly disregards religious freedom, a cornerstone of our nation since its founding. The same politicians censoring what students can read now want to impose state-sponsored religion on to our public schools,” said Caro Achar, engagement coordinator for free speech at the Texas chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. “We urge districts to reject this optional curriculum and uphold a public school education that honors the religious diversity and constitutional rights of Texas students.”

Examples of Bible references in the curriculum include a kindergarten lesson on “the golden rule”, which teaches the importance of treating others the way one would want to be treated, linked to Jesus’s sermon on the mount, and a third-grade unit about ancient Rome and Jesus’s life:

According to the Christian Bible, on the day Jesus was born, his mother Mary and father Joseph were traveling to the town of Bethlehem to register for the census. The census, ordered by the Roman government, required Roman citizens to be counted and their names registered. This was used in part to help the empire know how many people needed to pay taxes and is a practice continued by governments to this day.

When Mary and Joseph arrived in Bethlehem, they were told there were no rooms available to rent. They took shelter in a nearby stable, a type of barn where animals are kept. When Jesus was born, Mary wrapped him in pieces of cloth and laid him in a manger, which is a long wooden or stone box used for horses and cattle to eat animal feed. This story of Jesus’s birth in a stable is commonly featured as part of displays put on by Christians even today during the Christmas holidays each year.

The Christian Bible explains that throughout his life, Jesus taught about God’s love and forgiveness, and performed many miracles.

In text messages seen by the Guardian between Chancie Davis, a former school teacher from the Katy independent school district who objected to the curriculum, and state education board member Audrey Young, who voted in favor of the curriculum, Young denied any mention of Jesus in the curriculum and doubled down on her vote.

“You think every single person regardless of their beliefs should be learn about the Bible,” Davis wrote to Young.

Young replied: “In order to be able to participate wholly in a literate society.”

Both Young and the Texas board of education did not respond to a request for comment.

Davis said she began texting with Young after finding her cellphone number on the board’s website. She said she was “shocked” to receive a text back from her elected representative, especially in the middle of the board meeting about the vote.

“I think I was most surprised by her non-professionalism in thinking through the matter, like it was a done deal already,” Davis said. “She wasn’t ready to listen to anything.”

Davis said “there’s a clear line between separation of church and state, and I think that this crosses that, and it’s a slippery slope in our public schools, and all students deserve to be represented, not just the Christian sect”.

Bryan Henry, a local Cypress, Texas, parent and public school advocate affiliated with Cypress Families for Public Schools, said the curriculum was “just the latest example of Texas being a laboratory for Christian nationalism”.

Henry added: “What I find particularly insidious about it is the fact that they are going to incentivize school districts to adopt the curriculum in exchange for extra funding at a time when the state government is starving public schools of needed money because they want vouchers for private Christian schools.”

A spokesperson for the Texas State Teachers Association, which is affiliated with the US’s largest labor union, the National Education Association, told the Guardian: “The implementation of this curriculum means grade-school children in schools that adopt the curriculum will receive what amounts to Christian Sunday school lessons in their public schools, something our public education system was not intended to provide and should not provide.

“Students who observe religions other than Christianity, in effect, will be discriminated against because their own religions will be all but ignored.”

Darcy Hirsh, the director of government relations and advocacy at the National Council of Jewish Women, the US’s oldest Jewish feminist civil rights organization, said in an interview with the Guardian: “As a Jewish organization, maintaining the separation of church and state is a key priority for us as it is the cornerstone of our democracy.”

Hirsh added she was “devastated” about “the Texas school board’s decision today to implement a curriculum that is based in the Bible, and even one specific interpretation of the Bible”.

Vladimir Putin has vowed to launch more strikes using an experimental intermediate-range ballistic missile as Ukraine decried the testing of the nuclear-capable weapon on its territory as an “international crime”.

Speaking at a defence conference on Friday, Putin contested US claims that Russia possessed only a “handful” of the high-speed ballistic missiles, saying that the military had enough to continue to test them in “combat conditions”.

“The tests [of the missile system] have passed successfully, and I congratulate you all on that,” Putin said, according to the Interfax news agency. “As has been said already, we’ll be continuing these tests, including in combat conditions, depending on the situation and nature of threats being posed to Russia’s security, especially considering that we have enough of such items, such systems ready for use in stock.”

At the same conference, the Russian strategic missile forces commander Sergei Karakayev said that the missiles could strike targets throughout Europe.

“Depending on the objectives and the range of this weapon, it can strike targets on the entire territory of Europe, which sets it apart from other types of long-range precision-guided weapons,” Karakayev said.

Russia launched the experimental missile, which US officials described as a modified design based on Russia’s longer-range RS-26 Rubezh intercontinental ballistic missile, against a rocket factory in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro. Both Vladimir Putin and US officials have said the missile is capable of carrying a nuclear warhead.

US officials have decried Putin’s use of a nuclear-capable warhead but denied that it is a “gamechanger” in the war between Russia and Ukraine, adding that Russia possessed just a handful of the missiles, which its military has named Oreshnik, or Hazel.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy called Russia’s use of an experimental ballistic missile in a strike on Ukraine an “international crime” as he appealed on Friday to countries around the world including the global south to condemn Russia’s latest escalation.

In an address on social media, Zelenskyy said he had already directed his defence minister to hold consultations with allies to secure new air defence systems that could “protect lives from the new risks” of the intermediate-range missiles.

“Using another country not just for terror but also to test new weapons for terror is clearly an international crime,” the Ukrainian president said.

Nato and Ukraine will hold emergency talks on Tuesday to discuss the attack.

The conflict is “entering a decisive phase”, the Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, said on Friday, and “taking on very dramatic dimensions”.

Ukraine’s parliament cancelled a session as security was tightened after Thursday’s Russian strike on the military facility in Dnipro.

Aside from western partners, Zelenskyy called on China and members of the global south, to condemn the strike, saying that the leaders “call for restraint every time, and in response they invariably receive some new escalation from Moscow”.

China and Brazil have proposed a joint “peace plan” that Ukraine has said only emboldens Russia by providing diplomatic cover for the continued assault on Ukraine.

Developing countries were being urged by civil society groups to reject “a bad deal” at the UN climate talks on Friday night, after rich nations refused to increase an “insulting” offer of finance to help them tackle the climate crisis.

The stage is set for a bitter row on Saturday over how much money poor countries should receive from the governments of the rich world, which have offered $250bn a year by 2035 to help the poor shift to a low-carbon economy and adapt to the impacts of extreme weather.

That is “nowhere near enough” according to poor country groupings and campaigners at the talks. “This is unacceptable,” said the Alliance of Small Island States in a statement. Climate finance at this level would not enable countries to green their economies to the extent needed to limit global heating to 1.5C above preindustrial levels, they warned. “The proposed $250bn a year by 2035 is no floor, but a cap that will severely stagnate climate action efforts.”

The Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice said there were growing calls for a walkout, and that “no deal is better than a bad deal”, as the Cop29 UN climate summit dragged on through Friday night. There is still no end in sight to the talks, which were scheduled to finish on Friday at 6pm Baku time.

Wafa Misrar, the campaigns and policy lead of Climate Action Network Africa, said: “[This is] a profound disrespect to the people on the frontlines of the climate crisis – those losing their lives, homes and livelihoods every day. It is disheartening to witness the lack of commitment from global north countries, who seem willing to disregard our realities.”

Safa’ Al Jayoussi, the climate justice lead at Oxfam International, said: “This is a shameful failure of leadership. No deal would be better than a bad deal, but let’s be clear – there is only one option for those grappling with the harshest impacts of climate collapse: trillions, not billions, in public and grants-based finance.”

According to the draft text of a deal circulated on Thursday, developing countries would receive at least $1.3tn a year in climate finance by 2035, which is in line with the demands most submitted in advance of this two-week conference.

But poor nations wanted much more of that headline finance to come directly from rich countries, preferably in the form of grants rather than loans. They said the offer of $250bn coming from rich countries, with few safeguards over how much would come without strings attached, was much too little.

On Friday evening Greta Thunberg called the current draft “a complete disaster”. “The people in power are yet again about to agree to a death sentence to the countless people whose lives have been or will be ruined by the climate crisis,” she posted on X. “The current text is full of false solutions and empty promises. The money from the global north countries needed to pay back their climate debt is still nowhere to be seen.”

The offer from developed countries is supposed to form the inner core of a “layered” finance settlement, accompanied by a middle layer of new forms of finance such as new taxes on fossil fuels and high-carbon activities, carbon trading and “innovative” forms of finance; and an outermost layer of investment from the private sector, into projects such as solar and windfarms.

These layers would add up to $1.3tn a year, which is the amount that leading economists have calculated is needed in external finance for developing countries to tackle the climate crisis. Many activists have demanded more – figures of $5tn or $7tn a year have been put forward by some groups, based on the historic responsibilities of developed countries for causing the climate crisis.

But rich countries are facing their own budgetary crises, with rampant inflation, wars including the one in Ukraine, the aftermath of the Covid pandemic and threats from rightwing parties to weaponise the climate crisis as an issue.

Steven Guilbeault, Canada’s climate minister and a former green activist, said: “Countries like Canada are not denying what the needs are. We have made it clear that we cannot get to trillions with public dollars. It’s simply not possible.”

Most countries – and campaigners – know this, he added. “Some people are being disingenuous. They have known from the beginning that we would get to trillions with public money. Our public would not allow that to happen, but we can mobilise more than we have so far and that’s exactly what we are doing.”

Azerbaijan, which holds the presidency of the talks, also came in for criticism on Friday as countries complained that draft texts of an agreement left out and played down a key commitment to “transition away from fossil fuels”.

That commitment was made a year ago at the Cop28 talks in Dubai, but some countries want to unpick it. Saudi Arabia has been widely accused of taking the commitment out of drafts at every opportunity, to the fury of developed countries that want to build on the commitment to force a global shift away from high-carbon energy.

Yalchin Rafiyev, the chief negotiator for Azerbaijan, responded by accusing rich countries of failing to come up with an adequate offer of climate finance. “It [the $250bn] doesn’t correspond to a fair and ambitious goal,” he said.

Delegates expect a further draft text on Saturday morning. That will also be subject to fierce negotiations and potentially further iterations.

A jury at a civil trial at Ireland’s high court has found that the Irish martial arts fighter Conor McGregor assaulted a woman who had accused him of raping her at a hotel in Dublin in December 2018.

McGregor was ordered pay nearly €250,000 (£210,000) in damages to Nikita Hand, who is also known as Nikita Ní Laimhín.

Lawyers for Hand had accused 36-year-old McGregor of brutally raping and battering her after she invited him to join her and a friend at a work Christmas party in the Beacon Hotel in Dublin in December 2018.

Hand also alleged that another man, James Lawrence, who joined the party, sexually assaulted her. The jury found that Lawrence did not assault Hand.

Speaking outside the court after the verdict, Hand, 35, told reporters that she was “overwhelmed” by the support she had received. She thanked her family and a staff member from a rape crisis centre who had sat beside her throughout “this entire period”, including the two-week trial.

“I want to show [her daughter] Freya and every other girl and boy that you can stand up for yourself if something happens to you, no matter who the person, is and justice will be served,” Hand said.

“To all the victims of sexual assault, I hope my story is a reminder that no matter how afraid you might be, speak up, you have a voice and keep on fighting for justice.”

She added that she hoped to rebuild her life now that the six-year ordeal was over.

Hand, who grew up in the same area of Dublin as McGregor, took the civil court case primarily to be vindicated, her barrister had told the court, after the director of public prosecutions decided not to pursue a criminal case on the grounds that there was no reasonable prospect of a conviction.

McGregor doubled over with his head in his hands and shook his head as the jury returned their verdict and awarded Hand damages of €248,603.

There were tense scenes in court as McGregor arrived with a large supporter and family contingent including his partner, Dee Devlin, his mother, Margaret McGregor, and sister Aoife McGregor, along with his boxing coach, Philip Sutcliffe, standing at the back just feet away from Hand.

McGregor had denied the allegations, saying that he had “fully consensual sex” with Hand. He also denied causing bruising to her. He told the court that Hand’s accusations against him were “full of lies” verging on “fantasy”.

Hand had told the court that she and a friend made contact with McGregor, whom she knew, after a work Christmas party. She said they were driven by McGregor to a party in a penthouse room of a south Dublin hotel, where drugs and alcohol were consumed. She said McGregor took her to a bedroom in the penthouse and sexually assaulted her. Hand’s lawyer, John Gordon, said Hand was on antidepressants and “full of drugs” at the time of the alleged assault.

The verdict is likely to renew questions about the difficulty in bringing rape cases to court. Hand’s barrister told the court this week that whatever the outcome she would “always be a marked woman” because she had the “courage” to stand up to the fighter.

Hand had told the jury that she was “absolutely devastated and let down” when the director of public prosecutions told her they would not be progressing her file.

Over the two weeks of the trial, the jury heard harrowing accounts of the incident including a 45-minute recording of a conversation in which a deeply distressed Hand told her then boyfriend about the alleged rape.

The court heard Hand saying McGregor had pinned her down on the bed with all his body weight, and claiming he had put her head in a headlock, mock-choking her three times in a “terrifying” episode.

Oil runs deep in Azerbaijan, the host country of this year’s UN climate summit. Just 30 minutes south-west of the Cop29 conference centre lies the site of the world’s first industrially drilled oil well, opened in 1846.

Just metres away sit a handful of operating oil wells, nodding away. The Guardian spoke to an employee of Azerbaijan’s state-owned oil and gas company, Socar, who was working on one of the wells. Asked what oil meant for Azerbaijan, the 47-year-old worker said: “Too much!”

“It’s our future,” he said through an interpreter. “And our green future.”

Can oil be green? The worker said Socar had made efforts to clean up its oil supply, which he described as a “good thing”. Asked what he made of efforts to reduce fossil fuel usage, he said that in 100 years he imagined the world would be far less reliant on oil.

The worker, who has been at Socar for 15 years, said he had seen the impacts of the climate crisis first-hand. Baku’s winters had warmed considerably, he said, and snow was arriving later in winter across the country.

Azerbaijan’s economy has long been dependent on its oil reserves. Nothing makes this clearer than the Villa Petrolea. The compound, named for the Latin for “oil estate”, is where the Nobel brothers once lived and worked. In the late 1800s, Baku produced half of the world’s petroleum, and the Nobel brothers’ company, Branobel Oil, was responsible for most of that supply.

One of the Nobel brothers, Alfred, was also the inventor of dynamite, earning him the nickname “Merchant of Death”. To restore his legacy, he used his fortune from his shares in the oil company to create the Nobel prize. It is estimated that about 25% of the funds used to start the Nobel Foundation came from Branobel money.

Today, the Nobel brothers’ home is a museum – but a “living” one, since oil companies still hold events in its meeting room, a Villa Petrolea tour guide said.

The Nobels are not the only historical figures whose petroleum fortunes powered Azerbaijan. Oil money looms large over Baku. Towering over the city is the House of Hajinski, a striking five-storey building that was once the residence of the oil baron Isa Bey Hajinski. The oil magnate and philanthropist also owned a paraffin refinery in the sector of Baku known as Black City. The first owner of an automobile in Baku, Hajinski paid to build the nearby boulevard in 1901.

Other petroleum bosses also shaped Baku. The “coolest oil baron” was Zeynalabdin Taghiyev, said the Guardian’s tour guide, who is the tourism manager for Baku’s old city. Taghiyev paid to have the Middle East’s first secular Muslim school for girls built in the late 1800s.

Scientists have long said the swift phase-out of fossil fuels is necessary to avert the worst impacts of the climate crisis. Though Baku’s economy runs on oil, many residents were excited to see Cop29 held in their city.

One shopkeeper in the old city of Baku said he was “of course” familiar with the climate summit, and added that he has been told that this summit was meant to help climate-vulnerable countries. He said there was a need to protect nature “without human interference”.

Nearby, two young men sat smoking outside a coffee shop. “It’s really an honour for us to be hosting the event on climate change in our country,” said Azadil Eyvazob, 21.

Fakhri Hasanov, 22, agreed but said the summit should really have taken place in a part of Azerbaijan that is less familiar with the green transition.

“Here in Baku, they are already making progress with bringing in more bikes and electric cars,” he said. “Other people need to hear the message more.”