United News of Bangladesh

New Zealand's government said Tuesday it will partner with U.S. investment giant BlackRock in its aim to become one of the first nations in the world to have its electricity grid run entirely from renewable energy. The government said it was helping BlackRock launch a $1.2 billion fund to ramp up investments in wind and solar generation, as well as battery storage and green hydrogen. Some of the investment is expected to come from government-owned companies. New Zealand's electricity grid already runs off about 82% renewable energy after it damned rivers decades ago to produce hydroelectric power. The government said it aims to reach 100% renewable generation by the end of this decade. The announcement comes two months out from an election, with the government hoping to burnish its green credentials. Critics point out the nation’s overall greenhouse gas emissions have barely budged since the government symbolically declared a climate emergency in 2020. Read: Bangladesh encourages enhancing share of renewable energy in fuel-mix: Nasrul “This is a gamechanger for the clean-tech sector, and an example of the pragmatic and practical steps the government's taking to accelerate climate action while actually growing our economy and creating jobs,” Prime Minister Chris Hipkins told reporters in Auckland. Hipkins said the fund would allow New Zealand companies to produce intellectual property that could be commercialized across the world. “Partnering with, and supporting, industry to solve the climate crisis is a no-brainer,” Hipkins said. BlackRock released few details about the planned 2 billion New Zealand dollar ($1.22 billion) fund, but did say it would initially target institutional investors. It was the first time BlackRock had launched an initiative of its kind, said Andrew Landman, the head of BlackRock in Australia and New Zealand. Read: Norway keen to invest in Bangladesh’s renewable energy sector “The level of innovation is far greater in this country than we see elsewhere in clean tech,” Hipkins told reporters. “We are seeing enormous visionary capabilities out of those investee companies.” BlackRock said making the grid completely green would require a total investment of about US$26 billion. BlackRock Chief Executive Larry Fink said on social media that “the world is looking for models of cooperation between the private and public sectors to ensure an orderly, just and fair energy transition.” David Seymour, the leader of New Zealand's libertarian ACT Party, said the plan would push up power prices for little environmental gain. Read: ADB to fund urban transport, climate resilience, renewables projects worth $628 million “New Zealanders don’t want to be subject to a ‘world first’ climate change experiment that will mean the government micromanages their lives," Seymour said in a statement.

Almost one-third of Australians report feeling lonely, a landmark study has found. Ending Loneliness Together, a national coalition of research and advocacy organizations, on Monday published the first State of the Nation Report into social connection. The survey of more than 4,000 people aged 18-92 revealed that 32 percent of Australian women and 31 percent of men are lonely. Mass virus test in nursing home seeks to combat loneliness Those aged 18-24 were the most likely to often or always feel lonely, at four times the rate of those aged 75+. People in rural areas were slightly more likely to be lonely than those in metropolitan areas. The report found that Australians who feel lonely are typically less engaged in physical activity, less productive at work and more likely to have a social media addiction. Lonely Australians are 4.6 times more likely to have depression and two times more likely to have chronic disease than the rest of the population. Dog ownership helps reduce loneliness: Research "Loneliness is a critical issue of our time and has been recognized as a public health priority for many countries around the world. While the detrimental health, economic and social impacts of loneliness are well established, community awareness and action remain low," Michelle Lim, chair of Ending Loneliness Together, said in the report. The report was released to coincide with the start of Australia's first Loneliness Awareness Week. "Loneliness should not be seen as a sign of weakness or fault. Feeling lonely is an innate signal for us to acknowledge and address our basic human need for connection. Understanding this is the first step to creating a more connected Australia," Lim said. Thirty-nine percent of people who reported loneliness were living in Australia's most disadvantaged neighborhoods compared to 28 percent in the least disadvantaged. One-third of people said they feel ashamed about being lonely and 58 percent said they avoid talking about it. Australia-Bangladesh willing to take bilateral relations to new height

The summer of 2023 is "a summer of extremes," resulting in major damage to people's health and the environment, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said Friday. Clare Nullis, spokesperson for the WMO, said here at a press briefing that dangerous weather, including intense heat and devastating rainfall, has impacted large parts of the world in this "summer of extremes." She said many new station temperature records around the world were broken in July, and the start of August also saw a winter heatwave in parts of South America. Crash of plane fighting Greek island wildfire kills both pilots as Italian blaze claims 2 lives In a series of updates on extreme weather, WMO said earlier this week that many countries like France, Greece, Italy, Spain, Algeria and Tunisia all reported new maximum daytime and overnight station temperature records. Large parts of the United States were also gripped by extensive heatwaves. "We need to broaden focus beyond maximum temperatures because the minimum temperature is most important for health and critical infrastructure," said WMO extreme heat senior advisor John Nairn. WMO pointed out that heatwaves are among the deadliest natural hazards with thousands of people dying from heat-related causes each year, while the full impact of a heatwave is often not known until weeks or months afterwards. Climate change keeps making wildfires and smoke worse. Scientists call it the 'new abnormal' According to WMO, sea surface temperatures of the Mediterranean are set to be exceptionally high in the coming days and weeks, exceeding 30 degrees Celsius in some parts, and more than four degrees Celsius above average in a large part of the western Mediterranean. WMO believes that the impacts of marine heatwaves include migration of species and extinctions, arrival of invasive species with consequences for fisheries and aquaculture. Speaking at Friday's press briefing, the WMO spokesperson also said that Canada is experiencing its worst wildfire season on record. Climate: 18,000 killed by heat in Italy last summer - study In Canada, record-breaking wildfires continue to burn big forest areas. More than 650 wildfires were out of control as of July 24. And earlier this week WMO said wildfires had forced evacuation of hundreds of residents and tourists on the Greek islands of Rhodes, Evia and Corfu since July 17. The emissions of these wildfires have reached record levels. Heavy rains and flooding also caused severe damage and loss of life in parts of the world. "As the planet warms, the expectation is that we will see more and more intense, more frequent, more severe rainfall events, leading also to more severe flooding," said Stefan Uhlenbrook, director of hydrology, water and cryosphere at WMO. WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas noted that "The extreme weather - an increasingly frequent occurrence in our warming climate - is having a major impact on human health, ecosystems, economies, agriculture, energy and water supplies." "This underlines the increasing urgency of cutting greenhouse gas emissions as quickly and as deeply as possible," said Taalas.

A police raid in a low-income neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro set off a gunbattle that killed nine people and wounded two officers Wednesday, marking the latest incident in a wave of lethal policing in Brazil. In a statement, Rio's police said suspected criminals in the Vila Cruzeiro favela shot first, wounding the officers and prompting police to return fire. Nine people hit by bullets were taken to a state hospital, where they were declared dead, according to the statement, which said intelligence work had uncovered a meeting in Vila Cruzeiro among crime leaders who control the region. Condemned building used by homeless people falls in Brazil, killing 14 people Vila Cruzeiro has been the site of bloodshed during police operations in the past. A firefight in resulted in more than 20 deaths in May 2022, just months after another raid saw eight people killed. The Rio de Janeiro state government’s strategy for tackling violence and organized crime has come under criticism in recent years, particularly given there is little insight into officers' choice to dispense lethal force. The practice isn't limited to Rio. The raid Wednesday morning came as the public security secretariat in neighboring Sao Paulo state raised the death toll from a police operation there the previous day to 16 from 14. The prior figure had already meant the raid in the coastal city of Guaruja was that state's deadliest since 2006, according to news website G1. Guaruja residents protested against police Wednesday, holding banners and walking amid large, stuffed dolls strewn on the ground in representation of the dead. In Lula's first six months, Brazil Amazon deforestation dropped 34%, reversing trend under Bolsonaro Over the weekend, three police operations targeting alleged drug traffickers in the northeastern state of Bahia resulted in 19 people being killed, local media reported. Outcry over the unbridled lethality of policing in Brazil's favelas has led to the adoption of police body cameras in certain states, notably Sao Paulo. The cameras have been widely credited with reducing police violence there. Neymar’s publicity representative Robin Miah meets Brazilian envoy in Dhaka Killings by active-duty officers in Sao Paulo fell to 256 in 2022, down 61% from 2020 — the last full year before the widespread rollout of the cameras.

China's capital has recorded its heaviest rainfall in at least 140 years over the past few days as remnants of Typhoon Doksuri deluged the region, turning streets into canals where emergency crews used rubber boats to rescue stranded residents. The city recorded 744.8 millimeters (29.3 inches) of rain between Saturday and Wednesday morning, the Beijing Meteorological Bureau said Wednesday. Beijing and the surrounding province of Hebei were hit by severe flooding because of the record rainfall, with waters rising to dangerous levels. The rain destroyed roads and knocked out power and even pipes carrying drinking water. It flooded rivers surrounding the capital, leaving cars waterlogged, while lifting others onto bridges meant for pedestrians. The number of confirmed deaths from the torrential rains around Beijing rose to 21 on Wednesday after the body of a rescuer was recovered. Wang Hong-chun, 41, was with other rescuers in a rubber boat when it flipped over in a rapidly flowing river. Four of her teammates survived. At least 26 people remain missing from the rains. Among the hardest hit areas is Zhuozhou, a small city in Hebei province that borders Beijing's southwest. On Tuesday night, police there issued a plea on social media for lights to assist with rescue work. Rescue teams traversed the flooded city in rubber boats as they evacuated residents who were stuck in their homes without running water, gas or electricity since Tuesday afternoon. Floods around Chinese capital kill at least 20, leave 27 missing as thousands evacuated “I didn’t think it would be that severe, I thought it was just a little bit of water and that it would recede,” said 54-year-old Wang Huiying. She ended up spending the night on the third floor of her building as the water seeped into the first floor, which holds her steamed bread shop. All the machinery is now underwater. It's unknown how many people are trapped in flood-stricken areas in the city and surrounding villages. Rescue teams from other provinces came to Zhuozhou to assist with evacuations. Flooding and a landslide in eastern China leave 5 dead and 3 missing “We have to grasp every second, every minute to save people,” said Zhong Hongjun, the head of a rescue team from coastal Jiangsu province. Zhong said he had been working since 2 a.m. Wednesday when they arrived, and expects to work into the night. They’ve rescued about 200 people so far. “A lot of the people we saved are elderly and children,” he said. On Wednesday, waters in Gu'an county in Hebei, which borders Zhuozhou, reached as high as halfway up a pole where a surveillance camera was installed. Gu'an county resident Liu Jiwen, 58, was evacuated from his village on Tuesday night. “There’s nothing we can do. It’s natural disaster,” he said. Two other people were trying to pass through the flooded areas to rescue a relative trapped in a nearby village. Nearly 850,000 people have been relocated, local authorities in Hebei province said. The previous record for rainfall was in 1891, the Beijing Meteorological Bureau said Wednesday, when the city received 609 millimeters (24 inches) of rain. The earliest precise measurements made by machines are from 1883. Low-lying areas in Sirajganj flooded as Jamuna's waters keep rising  Ma Jun, director of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, called the recent rainfall “extreme.” Last year's total rainfall in Beijing did not even top 500 millimeters (19.6 inches). Ma said there should be a review of how cities are planned because some places experience repeat flooding. “We need to avoid building large-scale construction ... in low-lying areas,” Ma said. The record rainfall from Doksuri, now downgraded to a tropical storm, may not be the last. Typhoon Khanun, which lashed Japan on Wednesday, is expected to head toward China later this week. The powerful storm, with surface winds of up to 180 kph (111 mph), may also hit Taiwan before it reaches China. Thousands of people were evacuated to shelters in schools and other public buildings in suburban Beijing and in nearby cities. The central government is disbursing 44 million yuan ($6.1 million) for disaster relief in affected provinces. The severity of the flooding took the Chinese capital by surprise. Beijing usually has dry summers but had a stretch of record-breaking heat this year.

Former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad stressed that to change the world and make it a better place to live in, war should be made illegal. “If one person is killed, the government must take severe action. War is a crime. There must be world government to monitor countries and summon anyone who creates war or kills anyone,” said Dr Mahathir on Day 2 of the 13th Social Business Day attended by 700 Delegates from 31 countries around the world, including Japan, China, Philippines, Nepal, Colombo, India, Italy, Brazil, and more. Mahathir bin Mohamad was hosted by 2006 Nobel Peace Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus on the second day of the global conference “Social Business Day 2023" under the theme “War, Peace and Economics: The Future of Human Beings.”  Also read: Former Malaysia PM Mahathir loses ground to poll rivals He added, “Some entities in the West, who profit from producing and selling weapons at high prices, often provoke nations into going to war. He condemned the idea that war solves problems and instead urged countries to work together for the common goal of peace and stability. He shared his views on various global issues, including climate change, the Ukraine war, the China-Taiwan conflicts and Covid 19 and mentioned that to tackle all these problems, the concept of Social Business should be kept at the forefront.   He further said that to change the world and make the world a better place to live in, war should be made illegal.”  Also read: Appellate Division orders Dr Yunus to pay NBR Tk 12 crore tax on donations War is a profitable business for those who produce and sell weapons at very high prices, he added. The conference has brought together 120 speakers worldwide such as Marina Mahathir, columnist and activist, Sharifah Sofia Albukhary, Trustee of the Albukhary Foundation, President Jose Ramos Horta of Timor Leste, Thomas Bach, president of the International Olympic Committee, Marina Silva, Brazil’s minister of environment.  Excitement built up during the introduction and announcement of the global Social Business Design Competition 2022 and the Social Fiction Design Competition 2023 winners where the youth were encouraged to present social business plans and social fiction ideas that inspire solutions to the challenges faced by a young person in the world of 2050. The International Olympic Committee Vice President, Ser Miang Ng, delivered a keynote address emphasizing the power of sports in promoting entrepreneurship and social impact at a session titled on "Mobilizing Sports and Social Business in the New Economic Landscape" The day continued with discussions on topics like circular transition to a green economy, mobilizing sports for social business, replication of microcredit, and the role of AI in social business leadership.  Also read: Petition filed with HC to quash charges framed against Dr Yunus Eight breakout sessions, hosted by different organisations from the Social Business ecosystem, including Yunus Centre, Albukhary International University, My Harapan, Yunus Social Business, and Grameen Creative Lab provided a platform for experts and practitioners to share strategies, case studies. A video recorded speech was played at the Conference from Jose Ramos Horta, the President of Timor Leste on the theme of the conference, who had been confirmed to attend the event, but could not because of an invitation to attend a meeting in Ukraine on the same dates. The day concluded with remarks from Professor Muhammad Yunus, who shared “Nations invest billions of dollars in producing weapons. They have a big budget for weapons and war, but no budget for peace.”  He further highlighted that the world needs a new civilization and warned of emerging new technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), which seems to be replacing humans causing millions of people to lose their jobs.  He urged the people to find Social Business solutions to turn young people into entrepreneurs rather than running after jobs. He said all human beings are born as entrepreneurs. Two specialized events were conducted the following day,  Social Business Academia Dialogue and 3Z Club Convention. Crucial issues in academia surrounding Social Business were discussed by participants, that includes academics, students and practitioners representing 12 universities of the 105 Yunus Social Business Centres (YSBCs) around the world. The 3ZERO Club Convention brought together a total 17 3ZERO Clubs  representing Malaysia, Bangladesh, Canada, India and Nepal who takes actions to bring tangible solutions for creating a world of three zeros – zero net carbon emissions, zero wealth concentration for ending poverty and zero unemployment by unleashing entrepreneurship in all. At the conclusion of the Social Business Day, Professor Yunus went to Kuala Lumpur to attend events organized by Sunway University and University Kebangsann Malaysia (UKM) both of whom have  established  Yunus Social Business Centres.  

Donald Trump was indicted on felony charges Tuesday for working to overturn the results of the 2020 election in the run-up to the violent riot by his supporters at the U.S. Capitol, with the Justice Department acting to hold him accountable for an unprecedented effort to block the peaceful transfer of presidential power and threaten American democracy. The four-count indictment, the third criminal case against Trump, provided deeper insight into a dark moment that has already been the subject of exhaustive federal investigations and captivating public hearings. It chronicles a months-long campaign of lies about the election results and says that, even when those falsehoods resulted in a chaotic insurrection at the Capitol, Trump sought to exploit the violence by pointing to it as a reason to further delay the counting of votes that sealed his defeat. Even in a year of rapid-succession legal reckonings for Trump, Tuesday’s indictment, with charges including conspiring to defraud the United States government that he once led, was stunning in its allegations that a former president assaulted the “bedrock function” of democracy. It’s the first time the defeated president, who is the early front-runner for next year's Republican presidential nomination, is facing legal consequences for his frantic but ultimately failed effort to cling to power. Trump pleads not guilty to federal charges that he illegally kept classified documents “The attack on our nation’s Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was an unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy,” said Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith, whose office has spent months investigating Trump. “It was fueled by lies, lies by the defendant targeted at obstructing a bedrock function of the U.S. government: the nation’s process of collecting counting and certifying the results of the presidential election.” The Trump campaign called the charges “fake” and asked why it took two-and-a-half years to bring them. Trump was the only person charged in Tuesday's indictment. But prosecutors obliquely referenced a half-dozen co-conspirators, including lawyers inside and outside of government who they said had worked with Trump to undo the election results. They also advanced legally dubious schemes to enlist slates of fake electors in battleground states won by Democrat Joe Biden to falsely claim that Trump had actually won them. The indictment accuses the defeated president and his allies of trying to “exploit the violence and chaos” by calling lawmakers into the evening on Jan. 6 to delay the certification of Biden’s victory. Trump arrives in Florida as history-making court appearance approaches in classified documents case It also cites handwritten notes from former Vice President Mike Pence that give gravitas to Trump’s relentless goading to reject the electoral votes. Pence, who is challenging Trump for the GOP presidential nomination, declined overtures from a House panel that investigated the insurrection and sought to avoid testifying before the special counsel. He appeared only after losing a court fight, with prosecutors learning that Trump in one conversation derided him as “too honest” to stop the certification. Trump is due in court Thursday, the first step in a legal process that will play out in a courthouse situated between the White House he once controlled and the Capitol his supporters once stormed. The case is already being dismissed by the former president and his supporters — and even some of his rivals — as just another politically motivated prosecution. Trump set for first public appearances since federal indictment, speaking in Georgia, North Carolina Yet the case stems from one of the most serious threats to American democracy in modern history. The indictment centers on the turbulent two months after the November 2020 election in which Trump refused to accept his loss and spread lies that victory was stolen from him. The turmoil resulted in the riot at the Capitol, when Trump loyalists violently broke into the building, attacked police officers and disrupted the congressional counting of electoral votes. In between the election and the riot, Trump urged local election officials to undo voting results in their states, pressured Pence to halt the certification of electoral votes and falsely claimed that the election had been stolen — a notion repeatedly rejected by judges. Among those lies, prosecutors say, were claims that more than 10,000 dead voters had voted in Georgia along with tens of thousands of double votes in Nevada. Each claim had been rebutted by courts or state or federal officials, the indictment says. Prosecutors say Trump knew his claims of having won the election were false but he "repeated and widely disseminated them anyway — to make his knowingly false claims appear legitimate, to create an intense national atmosphere of mistrust and anger, and to erode public faith in the administration of the election.” The document carefully outlined arguments that Trump has been making to defend his conduct, that he had every right to challenge the results, to use the courts, even to lie about it in the process. But in stark detail, the indictment outlines how the former president instead took criminal steps to reverse the clear verdict voters had rendered. The indictment had been expected since Trump said in mid-July that the Justice Department had informed him he was a target of its investigation. A bipartisan House committee that spent months investigating the run-up to the Capitol riot also recommended prosecuting Trump on charges, including aiding an insurrection and obstructing an official proceeding. The indictment includes charges of conspiring to defraud the U.S., conspiring to obstruct an official proceeding, obstructing an official proceeding and violating a post-Civil War Reconstruction Era civil rights statute that makes it a crime to conspire to violate rights that are guaranteed by the Constitution — in this case, the right to vote. The mounting criminal cases are unfolding in the heat of the 2024 race. A conviction in this case, or any other, would not prevent Trump from pursuing the White House or serving as president, though Trump as president could theoretically appoint an attorney general to dismiss the charges or potentially try to pardon himself. In New York, state prosecutors have charged Trump with falsifying business records about a hush money payoff to a porn actor before the 2016 election. The trial is set to begin in March. In Florida, the Justice Department has brought more than three dozen felony counts, accusing him of illegally possessing classified documents after leaving the White House and concealing them from investigators. That trial begins in May. Prosecutors in Georgia are also investigating efforts by Trump and his allies to reverse his election loss to Biden there. The district attorney of Fulton County is expected to announce charging decisions within weeks. Smith's team has cast a broad net as part of his federal investigation, with his team questioning senior Trump administration officials, including Pence, before a grand jury in Washington. Prosecutors also interviewed election officials in Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan and other battleground states won by Biden who were pressured by the Trump team to change voting results. Rudy Giuliani, a Trump lawyer who pursued post-election legal challenges, spoke voluntarily to prosecutors. Giuliani was not named in the indictment, but appears to match the description of one of the co-conspirators. A spokesman for Giuliani said Tuesday night that Trump had a “good-faith basis” for the actions he took. Attorney General Merrick Garland last year appointed Smith, an international war crimes prosecutor who also led the Justice Department’s public corruption section, as special counsel to investigate efforts to undo the election as well as Trump’s retention of classified documents at his Florida home, Mar-a-Lago. Although Trump has derided him as “deranged” and called him politically motivated, Smith’s past experience includes overseeing significant prosecutions against high-profile Democrats. The Justice Department’s investigations began well before Smith’s appointment, proceeding alongside separate criminal probes into the rioters themselves. More than 1,000 people have been charged in connection with the insurrection, including some with seditious conspiracy.  

Torrential rain in areas around China's capital, Beijing, killed at least 20 people and left 27 missing, the government reported Tuesday, as flooding destroyed roads, uprooted trees and knocked out power. Thousands of people were evacuated to shelters in schools and other public buildings in suburban Beijing and in the nearby cities of Tianjin and Zhuozhou. The severity of the flooding took the Chinese capital by surprise. Beijing usually has dry summers but had a stretch of record-breaking heat this year. 11 dead and 27 missing in flooding around Beijing after days of rain Other areas, especially China's south, have suffered unusually severe summer flooding that caused scores of deaths. Other parts of the country are struggling with drought. Muddy water surging down streets washed away cars in the Mentougou district on Beijing's western edge. Flooding and a landslide in eastern China leave 5 dead and 3 missing “The cars parked on the street floated and got washed away," said a resident, Liu Shuanbao. "A couple of cars parked behind my apartment building disappeared in just one minute.” Emergency workers used bulldozers on Tuesday to clear streets while residents waded through mud. “Neither officials nor ordinary people expected the rain to be so heavy," said another Mentougou resident, Wu Changpo. "There were a lot of landslides and flooded villages. I cried repeatedly seeing these reports.” Eleven deaths were reported in Beijing and authorities were looking for 27 missing people, according to the official Xinhua News Agency. Nine deaths were reported in Hebei province, which surrounds the capital. Academic activities of 66 educational institutions suspended amid flood in Kurigram Power to some 60,000 homes in the capital's Fangshan district was knocked out, Phoenix TV reported on its website. In Zhuozhou, southwest of Beijing, some 125,000 people from high-risk areas were moved to shelters, Xinhua said. President Xi Jinping issued an order for local governments to go “all out” to rescue those trapped and minimize loss of life and property damage. The government of Tianjin, a port east of Beijing, said 35,000 people were evacuated from near the swollen Yongding River. As much as 500 millimeters (almost 20 inches) of rain has fallen in some places since Saturday, according to the Hebei province weather agency. Some areas reported as much as 90 millimeters (3 1/2 inches) of rainfall per hour. Some 13 rivers exceeded warning levels in the Haihe Basin, which includes Beijing, Tianjin and Shijiazhuang, Xinhua said, citing the Ministry of Water Resources. About 42,000 people were evacuated from areas of Shanxi province to Hebei's west, it reported, citing emergency officials. In early July, at least 15 people were killed by floods in the southwestern region of Chongqing, and about 5,590 people in the far northwestern province of Liaoning had to be evacuated. In the central province of Hubei, rainstorms trapped residents in their vehicles and homes. China’s deadliest and most destructive floods in recent history were in 1998, when 4,150 people died, most of them along the Yangtze River. In 2021, more than 300 people died in flooding in the central province of Henan. Record rainfall inundated the provincial capital of Zhengzhou on July 20 that year, turning streets into rushing rivers and flooding at least part of a subway line.

Britain said on Monday it will grant hundreds of new oil and gas licenses in the North Sea in a bid for energy independence, ignoring calls from environmental campaigners and the United Nations to stop the development of new fossil fuel projects. The plans announced by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak include a pledge to invest 20 billion pounds ($26 billion) in carbon capture and storage projects as Sunak maintained the government's commitment to eliminate net carbon emissions by 2050. Sunak, who is traveling to Scotland to formally unveil the package, said Britain will still need fossil fuels even after the country reaches its net zero target. He said it is better to produce oil and natural gas at home rather than rely on foreign leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose invasion of Ukraine sent global energy prices soaring around the globe. "We have all witnessed how Putin has manipulated and weaponized energy — disrupting supply and stalling growth in countries around the world,'' Sunak said in a statement. "Now more than ever, it's vital that we bolster our energy security and capitalize on that independence to deliver more affordable, clean energy to British homes and businesses.'' The plan comes as Sunak faces pressure to roll back expensive environmental commitments as his Conservative Party scrambles to attract voters amid opinion polls showing that the party is likely headed toward a crushing defeat in the next general election.   But U.N. scientists and environmental campaigners are calling on governments around the world to accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels after a summer of record high temperatures, drought and floods linked to man-made climate change. Burning oil and gas to power vehicles, factories and electricity generating stations releases huge amounts of carbon dioxide, the main driver of global warming. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has raised concerns that governments were backtracking on their commitments to cut greenhouse gas emissions at a time when they should accelerate their efforts. "The problem is not simply fossil fuel emissions, it's fossil fuels — period," Guterres told reporters last month in New York. "The solution is clear: The world must phase out fossil fuels in a just and equitable way — moving to leave oil, coal and gas in the ground where they belong — and massively boosting renewable investment in a just transition." Britain began pumping oil and gas from the North Sea in the mid-1970s, a major source of jobs and tax revenue, particularly in Scotland. But production has been declining since around 2000, making support for the industry a major political issue. British authorities have pledged to reduce net carbon emissions by 68% by the end of the decade, on the way to reaching net-zero by 2050. Achieving net-zero means releasing only as much greenhouse gasses as can be pulled out of the atmosphere through natural or technological means. But the government's climate advisers say the pace of progress is "worryingly slow." In a report last month, an advisory panel that tracks the U.K.'s decarbonization efforts slammed officials for backtracking on commitments and said Britain had "lost its clear global leadership position on climate action." The Climate Change Committee said backing for a new coal mine and new domestic oil and gas production undermined Britain's "international messaging" on the need to stop developing fossil fuel projects. The carbon capture and storage projects backed by Sunak aim to remove carbon dioxide from industrial emissions and pump it into old gas fields for permanent storage underground. Environmental campaigners say the risk of focusing on this technology is that it may distract the government from other programs needed to accelerate the drive to net-zero, and deceive consumers into thinking that continued use of fossil fuels is compatible with such a goal. "It's a bit difficult to take seriously the idea that this should be prioritized for prime ministerial attention when so much else needs it instead,'' Doug Parr, the chief scientific officer for Greenpeace UK, told the BBC. Stuart Haszeldine, a professor of carbon capture and storage at the University of Edinburgh, said Sunak's cash injection could be "transformative'' in expanding carbon capture and storage, but there is reason to be skeptical about the motives of the energy industry, which has traditionally been more focused on making money for shareholders than pursuing environmental targets. "Unless the governments make carbon capture and storage profitable, oil companies tend not to be very interested,'' Haszeldine told the BBC. "Their money can talk very loudly, but it doesn't listen very well." "What governments are often subjected to is intense lobbying by oil and gas companies to continue extracting oil and gas and to go slow on carbon capture and storage," he added.

The National Institutes of Health is beginning a handful of studies to test possible treatments for long COVID, an anxiously awaited step in U.S. efforts against the mysterious condition that afflicts millions. Monday’s announcement from the NIH’s $1.15 billion RECOVER project comes amid frustration from patients who’ve struggled for months or even years with sometimes-disabling health problems — with no proven treatments and only a smattering of rigorous studies to test potential ones. “This is a year or two late and smaller in scope than one would hope but nevertheless it’s a step in the right direction,” said Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly of Washington University in St. Louis, who isn’t involved with NIH’s project but whose own research highlighted long COVID’s toll. Getting answers is critical, he added, because “there’s a lot of people out there exploiting patients’ vulnerability” with unproven therapies. READ: Coronavirus origins still a mystery 3 years into pandemic Scientists don’t yet know what causes long COVID, the catchall term for about 200 widely varying symptoms. Between 10% and 30% of people are estimated to have experienced some form of long COVID after recovering from a coronavirus infection, a risk that has dropped somewhat since early in the pandemic. “If I get 10 people, I get 10 answers of what long COVID really is," U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said. That's why so far the RECOVER initiative has tracked 24,000 patients in observational studies to help define the most common and burdensome symptoms — findings that now are shaping multipronged treatment trials. The first two will look at: — Whether taking up to 25 days of Pfizer's antiviral drug Paxlovid could ease long COVID, because of a theory that some live coronavirus, or its remnants, may hide in the body and trigger the disorder. Normally Paxlovid is used when people first get COVID-19 and for just five days. — Treatments for “brain fog” and other cognitive problems. They include Posit Science Corp.’s BrainHQ cognitive training program, another called PASC-Cognitive Recovery by New York City’s Mount Sinai Health System, and a Soterix Medical device that electrically stimulates brain circuits. READ: Russian coronavirus-denying ex-monk sentenced to 7 years Two additional studies will open in the coming months. One will test treatments for sleep problems. The other will target problems with the autonomic nervous system — which controls unconscious functions like breathing and heartbeat — including the disorder called POTS. A more controversial study of exercise intolerance and fatigue also is planned, with NIH seeking input from some patient groups worried that exercise may do more harm than good for certain long COVID sufferers. The trials are enrolling 300 to 900 adult participants for now but have the potential to grow. Unlike typical experiments that test one treatment at a time, these more flexible “platform studies” will let NIH add additional potential therapies on a rolling basis. “We can rapidly pivot,” Dr. Amy Patterson with the NIH explained. A failing treatment can be dropped without ending the entire trial and “if something promising comes on the horizon, we can plug it in.” READ: WHO endorses landmark public health decisions on Essential Medicines for Multiple Sclerosis The flexibility could be key, according to Dr. Anthony Komaroff, a Harvard researcher who isn’t involved with the NIH program but has long studied a similarly mysterious disorder known as chronic fatigue syndrome or ME/CFS. For example, he said, the Paxlovid study “makes all sorts of sense,” but if a 25-day dose shows only hints of working, researchers could extend the test to a longer course instead of starting from scratch. Komaroff also said that he understands people's frustration over the wait for these treatment trials, but believes NIH appropriately waited “until some clues came in about the underlying biology," adding: “You’ve got to have targets.”