5: Getting Inked: How Kiwi Scientists Could Solve the World’s Energy Problem
Powering up might soon be as easy as grabbing yourself a roll of solar cell ink from the hardware store.
Every hour, the energy that falls on earth from the sun is enough to power the globe for an entire year. Harnessing just a fraction of that would provide the world with all the energy it requires.
The problem is finding a cheap and efficient way to do that—and a team of Wellington scientists thinks it has the answer. It might just be all the world needs to be powered entirely by renewable energy.
The secret is polymers, plastics with the properties to create lighter, more flexible, easier to manufacture solar cells (and therefore cheaper) than the silicon ones you currently see on rooftops. With this technology, powering up could be as easy as going to a hardware store, buying a roll of solar cells printed with a kind of “solar ink”, rolling it out on your roof, and plugging in.
Vice News
4: Donald Trump Puts Coal Lobbyist in Charge of Prosecuting Environmental Crimes
A LOBBYIST FOR a utility company that heavily relies on coal-fueled power plants and has clashed with regulators is the new acting assistant attorney general in charge of the Department of Justice division that oversees environmental crimes.
The appointment of Jeffery H. Wood, who up until last week was a lobbyist for Southern Company, was announced only with a modest notice posted on January 23 on the Environment and Natural Resource Division’s website.
It’s the latest personnel move that signals the coal industry’s return to power in the Beltway.
President Trump has yet to nominate anyone to hold the assistant attorney general job on a permanent basis, but for the time being Wood will be overseeing the division that enforces civil and criminal environmental laws to reduce pollutants discharged into the air, water and land, and brings cases to enable the clean-up of contaminated waste sites.
The Intercept
The battle between Donald Trump and the press escalated Thursday after one of Trump’s top advisers called the media the opposition party. In a rare interview with The New York Times, Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon, said, “The media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while.” Bannon, the former head of Breitbart News, added, “I want you to quote this. The media here is the opposition party. They don’t understand this country. They still do not understand why Donald Trump is the president of the United States.” We speak to reporter Sarah Posner, who interviewed Bannon in July. In August, she wrote a headline-grabbing article for Mother Jones about Steve Bannon titled “How Donald Trump’s New Campaign Chief Created an Online Haven for White Nationalists.”
Democracy Now
2: UN envoy Nikki Haley pledges to ‘take names’ of those who don’t support US
The new US ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, has pledged to overhaul the world body and warned US allies that she will be “taking names” of countries that do not support Washington.
Haley made brief remarks to reporters as she arrived at the world body’s headquarters in New York to present her credentials to the UN secretary general, António Guterres.
“Our goal with the administration is to show value at the UN and the way that we’ll show value is to show our strength, show our voice, have the backs of our allies and make sure that our allies have our back as well,” Haley said.
“For those that don’t have our back, we’re taking names, we will make points to respond to that accordingly.”
The Guardian
1: Donald Trump ‘committed to NATO’, says May in US visit
Donald Trump is “100 percent behind” NATO, Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May has said, after becoming the first foreign leader to meet the US president since he was sworn in a week ago.
In a joint press conference after a White House meeting on Friday, May said that during their talks Trump gave strong backing to NATO, an alliance that he had previously called “obsolete”.
The two countries “are united in our recognition of NATO as the bulwark our collective defence, and today we’ve reaffirmed our unshakable commitment to this alliance,” she told reporters.
The meeting between the two leaders in Washington, DC, came a day before Trump is scheduled to speak by telephone to Vladimir Putin, his Russian counterpart.
When asked about his upcoming discussion with the Russian president, Trump said he wanted to have good relations with Russia but played down any talk that he was ready to lift US sanctions against Moscow.
Aljazeera
