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Food, water, health, livelihoods already hit by climate change: IPCC

The effects of human-caused climate change are already evident on all continents and waters, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said today in a massive report, in the panel’s most plain language yet. Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability warned of “pervasive risks” depending on the amount of future climate change — but said opportunities still exist for “effective responses,” albeit challenging ones. Climate change has already hit agriculture, human health, water and land-based ecosystems, water supplies, and some people’s livelihoods, said the IPCC. It said the effects are evident everywhere on earth “from the tropics to the poles,

Leave Ukraine to the Russians: Manthorpe

Leave Ukraine to the Russians, says International affairs analyst Jonathan Manthorpe. Excerpt of the column: It may have slipped the memory of certain world leaders, but 15 years ago it was decided that the G-8 club of the world’s leading economies was too elite a cabal to be of much practical use. So, with Canada’s then-Finance Minister Paul Martin leading the charge, the G-20 was formed in 1999. The G-20 includes the G-8 countries – the United States, Italy, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Japan, Canada and Russia – but also includes the major developing economies such as Brazil, China,

Journalists collateral damage in Middle East rivalries

Detained journalists on trial, regional rivalries and allegations of terrorism are roiling the Middle East. International affairs analyst Jonathan Manthorpe  explains in a new column. Excerpt: A bitter feud among Arab states over relations with radical Islamic groups and how to confront regional rival Iran is threatening to bring new volatility to the already raging insecurity in the Middle East. The feud pits the oil-rich emirate of Qatar against Saudi Arabia, the other Gulf States of the United Arab Emirates, and Egypt. At the heart of the rift is the financial and moral support by Qatar for militant Islamic groups

Privacy Tools: Mask Your Location

  by Julia Angwin, ProPublica In the course of writing my book, Dragnet Nation, I tried various strategies to protect my privacy. In this series of book excerpts and adaptations, I distill the lessons from my privacy experiments into tips for readers. “Where R U?” There’s a reason that is among the most common text messages of the modern age. Location is one of the most revealing pieces of information about us. In 2013, researchers found that four instances of a person’s location at a given point in time were enough to uniquely identify 95 percent of the individuals they

Dirty air kills twice as many as previously thought: WHO

Air pollution is now the world’s largest single environmental health risk, prematurely killing some seven million people in 2012 alone, said the World Health Organization. People die prematurely of pollution-linked strokes, ischaemic heart disease, cancer, respiratory infections and chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases (COPD), said WHO in estimates released in Geneva on March 25. The organization’s new estimates are double the numbers of people previously suspected killed by dirty air, both indoor and outdoor, and WHO announced a  program to better track information and advise and inform countries of health gains from reducing pollution. The problem is global. In France this

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