5: Hmm, Could Australia’s Recent Apocalyptic Weather Be a Sign of Climate Change?
Floods in WA, raging bushfires in NSW—it’s just a taste of things to come, according to climate scientists.
How about that weather, hey? Summer has been a doozy so far. In Western Australia, towns have been evacuated and roads closed due to flash flooding—a result of the second wettest February in 25 years. Meanwhile, the eastern states have succumbed to a heat wave that has seen firefighters struggle to contain scores bushfires in New South Wales. In recent days, the forecast has been so dire the Bureau of Meteorology’s temperature maps looked apocalyptic—much of the country rendered black because bright red wasn’t enough for how hot it was.
Sure, Australian summers tend to be hot. But these recent weather events are at the extreme of both ends of the spectrum. Within the same week, Australians were evacuated from their homes to escape both flooding and bushfire. If only scientists could’ve predicted this kind of extreme weather would happen this summer. Oh wait, they did. They totally did.
On February 8, the Australian Climate Commission released a report titled Cranking Up The Intensity: Climate Change and Extreme Weather Events. It predicted that extreme heat would increase across the entire continent, with significant increases in the length, intensity and frequency of heat waves in many regions. It also predicted that extreme rainfall events would increase across most of Australia. Southern and eastern Australia, it reads, “are projected to experience harsher fire weather.”
How come? You know the answer to this already. The report finds that climate change is influencing extreme weather across Australia. It notes that while the links between climate change and bush fires and heat waves have also been well-established, the evidence linking climate change to storms and heavy rainfall is also growing.
The report sure seems relevant in light of the weather over the past couple of weeks. One of its authors, climate scientist Dr Will Steffen, agrees. Speaking to VICE this morning, he didn’t mince words.
“Yes, the recent weather in Australia is a symptom of climate change,” Steffen said. “We can see this best by comparing recent extreme weather events to those 50 or more years ago. Recent extreme events have become more frequent and more intense, and this is a result of climate change caused by the burning of fossil fuels.”
Vice News
4: Israel wants settlements, not peace
Israel is above international law, or so it seems. On December 23, the United Nations Security Council passed resolution 2334, re-affirming the illegality of Israeli settlements.
The vote was significant for two reasons: Unlike previous UNSC resolutions targeting Israel, it was not vetoed by the Obama administration, who decided to abstain. Secondly, it demonstrated an international consensus on the illegality and illegitimacy of Israel’s settlement enterprise, and showed that these settlements constitute an obstacle to peace.
These points were reiterated by then-US Secretary of State John Kerry in his December 28 speech, and subsequently in the January peace conference held in Paris, which was one of the largest peace conferences ever held in terms of high-level participation.
The fact that even Israel’s staunchest ally, the United States, affirmed the illegality of settlements, did nothing to change the course of the Benjamin Netanyahu government.
On the contrary, since the UN Security Council passed the resolution, Israel hurried to approve the construction of even more houses in illegal settlements on Palestinian land. Within one month, the government gave the green light for the construction of more than 6,000 housing units – a higher number than the total number of settlement housing units approved in all of 2016.
Aljazeera
3: 48 QUESTIONS THE FBI USES TO DETERMINE IF SOMEONE IS A LIKELY TERRORIST
FOR THE PAST year and a half, the FBI has been using a secret scoring system to judge the likelihood that someone will carry out a violent attack. The survey, called “Indicators of Mobilization to Violence,” assigns points based on factors like religious observance, travel history, financial transactions, and physical appearance.
A copy of the survey in a classified FBI document was obtained by The Intercept.
The survey itself consists of 48 questions that agents are supposed to answer about terror suspects as part of an investigation. The document also includes a set of frequently asked questions about the scoring system aimed at agents working counterterrorism investigations.
According to the document, the program was rolled out in the fall of 2015.
Many of the questions in the survey have obvious relevance to whether someone is plotting a violent act, such as whether the person has access to weapons, has trained or fought overseas, or has tried to acquire bomb-making materials.
The Intercept
2: ICE Arrests 600 in Nationwide Raids After Trump Order Expands Criminalization of Immigrants
Immigrant communities across the country are on edge after federal immigration agents arrested over 600 people in the past week in the largest raids since Donald Trump became president. Raids were reported in at 11 states, including California, New York, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri and Wisconsin. On Sunday, Trump tweeted, “The crackdown on illegal criminals is merely the keeping of my campaign promise. Gang members, drug dealers & others are being removed!” Immigrant rights activists say the actions signal a clear shift by the Trump administration to deport people who were considered a “low priority” for removal under President Obama. We speak to California state Senate President Kevin de León and Steven Choi, executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition.
Democracy Now
1: Britons living in the EU face Brexit backlash, leaked paper warns
Theresa May is facing renewed protests over her handling of Britain’s withdrawal from the EU after a leaked document warned that British nationals living on the continent could now expect a backlash as a consequence of the government’s treatment of foreigners since the Brexit referendum.
The prime minister was accused of creating needless anxiety for British expats as an EU assessment of the legal impact of Britain’s withdrawal, obtained by the Guardian, revealed that the 1.2 million Britons living in the EU could pay the penalty for the prime minister’s failure to offer a secure future for EU nationals in the UK.
The internal document drawn by the European parliament’s legal affairs committee says that it will be down to each member state whether British citizens are allowed to carry on living in their respective countries after 2019, but adds: “The fact that it appears to be particularly difficult for foreign nationals, even if married to UK nationals or born in the UK, to acquire permanent residence status or British nationality may colour member states’ approach to this matter.”
The Guardian
