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World leaders call for a pandemic treaty 

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World leaders call for a pandemic treaty 

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More than 20 heads of government and global agencies assemble to establish and sign a treaty that will help plan for future worldwide emergencies.

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https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/dovetail.prxu.org/_/300/8ea7a8b5-44ef-40ac-86b4-66addf429a3d/2021_0330_07.mp3

More than 20 world leaders came together on Tuesday in a joint call for a new global treaty to help the world collectively prepare for future pandemics. The call came in a commentary published in several newspapers around the world. Host Carol Hills speaks with Lawrence Gostin, director of Georgetown University's O'Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, and also an adviser to the WHO.

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World leaders call for a pandemic treaty

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More than 20 world leaders came together on Tuesday in a joint call for a new global treaty to help the world collectively prepare for future pandemics. The call came in a commentary published in several newspapers around the world.

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The world’s most-expensive traffic jam is over 

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The world’s most-expensive traffic jam is over 

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Although the block to the Suez Canal has been cleared, it is still a problem for the hundreds of ships that need to cross as they could be waiting for days and are in jeopardy of security threats while waiting at sea.

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https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/dovetail.prxu.org/_/300/b515b09f-3411-4eb9-af6a-8ef966a7f189/2021_0329_09.mp3

The world's most expensive traffic jam is finally easing up after the Ever Given ship was dislodged from the Suez Canal in Egypt. This is good news for the world's maritime industry, but it could still take days for the hundreds of ships waiting to enter the canal to continue their journeys. And while they wait, there are serious piracy and other security threats at sea. Host Carol Hills speaks with Dirk Siebels from Risk Intelligence, a Denmark-based security intelligence company. He also recently published a book called, "Maritime Security in East and West Africa: A Tale of Two Regions."

Want a seat at the table?

Every morning, the editorial team at public radio's international news show The World meets to plan what they'll cover that day. Want to see what's on deck?

Sign up for our daily newsletter TOP OF THE WORLD and get the big stories we're tracking delivered to your inbox every weekday morning.

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The world's most-expensive traffic jam is over

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The world's most expensive traffic jam is finally easing up after the Ever Given ship was dislodged from the Suez Canal in Egypt. This is good news for the world's maritime industry, but it could still take days for the hundreds of ships waiting to enter the canal to continue their journeys.

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Brazil’s Bolsonaro under fire over minister shuffle, COVID-19 handling

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Brazil’s Bolsonaro under fire over minister shuffle, COVID-19 handling

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Due to the fatal uptick in Coronavirus cases, President Bolsonaro declared a rearranging of his cabinet that will replace six ministers.

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Top of The World - our morning news roundup written by editors at The World. Subscribe here.

As Brazil slides deeper into its COVID-19 crisis, President Jair Bolsonaro on Tuesday announced his biggest Cabinet reshuffle in two years, replacing six ministers. It's the latest turmoil for the embattled right-wing president. Critics argue the move is part of a strategic effort to bring more of a coalition of right-wing parties that support Bolsonaro into Congress, which could be critical to the controversial president's political survival.

The shuffle comes amid strain of COVID-19 infections that is crippling almost all of the states' intensive care units. Bolsonaro has been criticized for his handling of the pandemic and accused of alienating vaccine suppliers while consistently sabotaging lockdown restrictions.

Discussion

Brazil - Latin America's largest country - now accounts for one-quarter of the world's daily COVID-19 deaths - far more than any other single nation - and health experts are warning that the nation is on the verge of even greater calamity.

As part of The World's regular conversation series about the pandemic, reporter Elana Gordon will take your questions and moderate a discussion with Marcia Castro, chair of the Department of Global Health and Population at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health on Tuesday, March 30, 2021, at noon Eastern time. Stream the conversation here.

What The World is following

China on Tuesday cut the number of directly elected seats in Hong Kong's Legislature in another setback for the democracy movement as part of a two-phase effort to clamp down on political protest. The sweeping changes enacted by Beijing in Hong Kong expands the Legislature seats to 90, with only 20 elected by the public. The move follows a previous measure that ensures only "patriotic" figures can run for positions of power.

And in Mexico, there is growing public outrage over the death of a Salvadoran woman who died in police custody in the resort town of Tulum on Saturday. Video footage circulating online shows Victoria Esperanza Salazar, 36, pinned face down with an officer kneeling on her back. An autopsy has confirmed that Salazar died from a broken neck. The video shows officers standing around her motionless, chatting, and then later lifting her body onto a police pickup truck to drive away. Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Monday that those responsible would be punished.

From The World

Hundreds remain missing after Cabo Delgado attack

Last week, Islamist insurgents stormed Palma, killing dozens of people, according to Mozambique's Ministry of Defense spokesperson Omar Saranga.

While many workers in the natural gas industry were evacuated by helicopters and boats in rescues staged by private security and logistics companies, others have fled to neighboring Tanzania, or are still stranded in Palma and surrounding areas in Cabo Delgado.

Since 2017, Cabo Delgado has been increasingly wracked by violence by a local Islamist militant group called Ahlu Sunna Wal Jammah, and referred to locally as al-Shabab. In a short time, the group linked to ISIS has cultivated a reputation for brutal attacks on civilians.

Czech Republic may offer justice, compensation to thousands of sterilized Roma women

A new bill under consideration in the Czech Republic could compensate women who were involuntarily sterilized up to $13,000. Roma women and activist groups say reaching this stage is a huge milestone.

Bright Spot

For UK photographer and anthropologist Liz Hingley, the COVID-19 crisis brought home the need to rebuild a connection with the natural world. She began the "Nature of Care" project (🎧) 10 months ago to help nurses and doctors in London cope with pandemic-induced stress and anxiety by teaching them nature photography skills.

In case you missed it

Listen: Crackdown on protesters in Myanmar grows more deadly

Myanmar's military celebrated Armed Forces Day on Saturday with a display of tanks, missiles and marches. Meanwhile, its troops were dispatched across the country, quelling a civilian uprising that left more than 100 citizens dead, including young children. And, a much-anticipated report is expected this week, laying out the findings of a World Health Organization joint mission to China. The report says that animals were likely the source of the coronavirus outbreak. Also, the world's most expensive traffic jam is finally easing up after the Ever Given container ship was dislodged from the Suez Canal in Egypt.
Don't forget to subscribe to The World's Latest Edition podcast using your favorite podcast player: RadioPublic, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Soundcloud, RSS.

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Brazil's Bolsonaro under fire over minister shuffle, COVID-19 handling

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Top of The World: Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro on Tuesday announced his biggest Cabinet reshuffle in two years, replacing six ministers. Also, China on Tuesday cut the number of directly elected seats in Hong Kong's Legislature. Also, is Mexico, there is growing public outrage over the death of a Salvadoran woman who died in police custody.

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Crackdown on protesters in Myanmar grows more deadly

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Crackdown on protesters in Myanmar grows more deadly

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As Myanmar protesters storm the streets to fight for a return to democracy, troops killed over 100 people in a civilian uprising.

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Crackdown on protesters in Myanmar grows more deadly

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Myanmar's military celebrated Armed Forces Day on Saturday with a display of tanks, missiles and marches. Meanwhile, its troops were dispatched across the country, quelling a civilian uprising that left more than 100 citizens dead, including young children. And, a much-anticipated report is expected this week, laying out the findings of a World Health Organization joint mission to China.

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Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China’s website suffers cyber attack

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Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China’s website suffers cyber attack

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The Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, an international coalition organized to create better strategies on how democratic countries approach China, sustained a cyber attack on their website. It is believed that the Chinese carried out this attack.

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London: The global coalition of MPs pushing their governments to take a firmer stance against China suffered a major cyber attackattack on Monday (UK time).

The Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China's website was out for around nine hours on Monday after suffering a distributed denial-of-service or DDoS attack.

Liberal MP Andrew Hastie and Labor Senator Kimberley Kitching (first and second from top left) are members of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, formed by former UK Tory party leader Iain Duncan Smith (second from bottom left).

A distributed denial-of-service attack occurs when a website is flooded with connection requests by a network of computers, causing the site to slow significantly or crash.

The DDoS on IPAC's website, which is now back online, came around 24 hours after a separate cyber attack on Nine which took Sunday morning programs off-air and disrupted operations at The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, which are published by Nine.

IPAC co-ordinator Luke de Pulford pointed the finger at China as the culprit.

"This isn't the first time we have been attacked," he told The Herald and The Age.

A member of the Uighur community living in Turkey joins a protest against China in Istanbul last month. Credit:AP

"But - while Beijing might be able to knock us off the internet for a few hours - nothing will stop our members standing up for the Uighurs, Hong Kongers, and everyone else oppressed by Xi Jinping's regime," he said.

IPAC has alerted Britain's National Cyber Security Centre.

A spokesman for the centre said cyber security staff were available for MPs and staff if required.

"We are working to fully understand the nature of this incident and have offered technical support," the spokesman said.

"Cyber security advice and personal support from the NCSC is readily available for MPs and their staff."

Robert Pritchard, founder of The Cyber Security Expert said the Chinese state had the apparatus to conduct DDoS attacks, which return websites to normal once finished.

"Attacks like this, against critics of the Chinese state, are really clearly just meant either to prevent people accessing publish material the Chinese state apparatus finds objectionable, or simply to disrupt the operations of the target," he said.

"A DDoS attack cannot happen by accident, although it may be the target has been misidentified in some way but that is unlikely to be the case here," he said.

Chair of Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security James Paterson called the apparent cyber attacks on Nine, IPAC and the Australian Parliament's email system in the last week "a timely reminder there are bad actors out there looking for opportunities to disrupt the operations of businesses, civil society groups and governments for profit and politics."

"This is the new frontier of greyzone conflict and we cannot afford to be complacent about the dangers it poses to our way of life in a digital world."

Latika Bourke is a journalist for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, based in London.

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Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China's website suffers cyber attack

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Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size London: The global coalition of MPs pushing their governments to take a firmer stance against China suffered a major cyber attackattack on Monday (UK time). The Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China's website was out for around nine hours on Monday after suffering a distributed denial-of-service or DDoS attack.

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‘Half-hearted’: Australia slow in its response to crisis in Myanmar

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‘Half-hearted’: Australia slow in its response to crisis in Myanmar

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A critique of Australia's government, characterizing efforts as stagnant in their reaction to the situation in Myanmar.

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Opinion

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In recent weeks the Australian government has faced much criticism over its response to the illegal military coup in Myanmar. Indeed, it took more than a month to formally suspend defence ties.

While Australia has since 2018 imposed sanctions on a limited number of individuals linked to the Myanmar military, army chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing is not on this list and to date no concrete measures have been taken to expand sanctions against the junta.

By way of comparison, within a little over a week of the coup neighbouring New Zealand had suspended all high-level contact with Myanmar and imposed a travel ban on its military leaders, while other Western nations, including the EU, the US and the UK, have been more vocal than Australia on the Myanmar crisis and imposed additional sanctions targeting the military's economic interests.

Anti-coup protesters put out fires during a protest in Thaketa, Myanmar, on Saturday. Credit:AP

Given this, it seems fair to categorise Australia's response to the crisis in Myanmar as sluggish, half-hearted and ineffective. And Foreign Minister Marise Payne's recent assertion that there is "no clear path" for nations in the region to address the crisis in Myanmar hints at a worrying degree of resignation within Australia on the issue.

In fact, with the situation in Myanmar now spiralling out of control and a full-scale civil war and major humanitarian crisis on the horizon, Australia must act now to support the people of Myanmar. Despite the Foreign Minister's reticence, it is clear that Australia has a range of multilateral and unilateral tools and measures at their disposal to do so.

In terms of multilateral action, the most meaningful step Australia can take is to lobby other members of the United Nations General Assembly to call an emergency special session of the assembly under the "Uniting for Peace" resolution. This enables members to circumvent vetoes of UN Security Council members and recommend a range of measures, including armed intervention.

Myanmar Commander-in-Chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing has repeated his promise to hold elections, but not given a date. Credit:AP

An emergency special session will provide Australia and other member states with a platform to push for meaningful actions against the junta in Myanmar, which should include a global arms embargo on the Myanmar military; targeted sanctions against military business interests and associates; referral of the situation to the International Criminal Court and, eventually, the deployment of UN peacekeeping forces to protect the civilian population.

On the domestic front, the Australian government also has a range of options to put pressure on the junta. First and foremost, the government must expand sanctions on the Myanmar military and its business interests. This basic measure has already been taken by most of Australia's allies.

Second, the Australian government can take action against the family members and business associates of members of the Myanmar military who reside in Australia. A number of people with close links to the junta have already been identified by members of the Australian-Burmese community. The government must consider revoking their visas and work rights and, where appropriate, freezing assets they hold in Australia.

Finally, the Australian government can make a major difference by engaging directly with the pro-democracy movement in Myanmar - represented by the democratically elected members of the Committee Representing Pyidaungsu Hluttaw (CRPH) and the non-violent Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM).

Australia should establish a direct line of communication with the CRPH, with a view to eventually recognising a civilian government. Such a move would provide a major boost in terms of international credibility to the pro-democracy movement and would most likely spur other states to follow suit.

Australia should also reach out to the CDM. With the junta cracking down on local and international organisations that would normally be in a position to provide humanitarian support, the CDM - recently nominated for the 2021 Nobel peace prize - is stepping in to fill this gap, providing medical care to those injured by the security forces and coordinating donations of food and cash to civilians who have been affected by both the coup and the COVID-19 crisis.

As the humanitarian situation deteriorates, Australia must look at all options in terms of getting humanitarian assistance into the country. Working with the CDM is one way of doing this, but no doubt there are many others.

With more than 100 civilians killed by the military on March 27 alone, and a total death toll of more than 500 civilians, time is running out. The government must not wait for the outcome of the parliamentary inquiry next month, but must instead move quickly to stop the violence being wrought by the military in Myanmar.
Shane Brady is a co-founder of the Democracy for Burma advocacy group.

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'Half-hearted': Australia slow in its response to crisis in Myanmar

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Opinion Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size In recent weeks the Australian government has faced much criticism over its response to the illegal military coup in Myanmar. Indeed, it took more than a month to formally suspend defence ties.

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Brazil’s military chiefs all quit as Bolsonaro seeks their support

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Brazil’s military chiefs all quit as Bolsonaro seeks their support

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After the replacement of Brazil's defense minister by President Bolsonaro, leaders from all three branches of Brazil's armed forces have resigned.

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By Diane Jeantet and David Biller

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Rio de Janeiro: The leaders of all three branches of Brazil's armed forces have jointly resigned following President Jair Bolsonaro's replacement of the defence minister, causing widespread apprehension of a military shake-up to serve the President's political interests.

The Defence Ministry reported the resignations in a statement released without giving reasons. Replacements were not named. But analysts expressed fears Bolsonaro was moving to assert greater control over the military.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, left, talks with Army Commander General Edson Leal Pujol, during a military ceremony. Pujol has resigned along with the chiefs of the navy and the air force. The Armed Forces have repeatedly said they would not be drawn into politics. Credit:AP

"Since 1985, we haven't had news of such clear intervention of the President with regard to the armed forces," said Carlos Melo, a political science professor at Insper University in Sao Paulo. Brazil was under authoritarian military dictatorship from 1964 to 1985.

Bolsonaro, a conservative former army captain who has often praised the period of dictatorship, has relied heavily on current and former soldiers to staff key cabinet positions since taking office in January 2019, but Melo said the military itself has so far refrained from politics.

President of Brazil Jair Bolsonaro puts a face mask last week, a rare use of the mask for the leader who has mocked their use. Credit:Getty Images

The announcement came after the heads of the army, navy and air force, Edson Leal Pujol, Ilques Barbosa and Antonio Carlos Bermudez respectively - met with the new Defence Minister, General Walter Souza Braga Netto, on Tuesday.

The incoming minister, unlike his predecessor, also celebrated the dictatorship that killed and tortured thousands of Brazilians.

"The 1964 movement is part of Brazil's historic trajectory. And as such the events of that March 31st must be understood and celebrated," said Braga Netto, referring to the date of coup d'etat that established the dictatorship.

A retired army general who has a relationship with the three commanders as well as with Braga Netto told The Associated Press that "there was an embarrassing circumstance so they all resigned". He agreed to discuss the matter only if not quoted by name, expressing fear of retribution.

Bolsonaro on Monday carried out a shake-up of top Cabinet positions that was initially seen as a response to demands for change by lawmakers, diplomats and economists, particularly over his handling of the pandemic that has caused more than 300,000 deaths in Brazil.

That included the replacement of Defence Minister Fernando Azevedo e Silva, who said in his resignation letter that he had "preserved the armed forces as state institutions," a nod at his effort to keep generals out of politics.

Bolsonaro has often bristled at the checks and balances imposed by other branches of government and has attended protests targeting the Supreme Court and Congress.

He has also criticised the Supreme Court for upholding local governments' rights to adopt pandemic restrictions that he adamantly opposes, arguing that the economic effects are worse than the disease itself.

His recent slide in popularity, and the sudden likelihood that he will face leftist former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in the 2022 presidential election, has analysts saying he is looking to the armed forces for support.

Since Brazil's return to democracy in 1985, the armed forces have tried to keep a distance from partisan political quarrels.

Senator Katia Abreu, who heads the Senate's foreign relations commission, said it would be "prudent" for the new defence minister to speak to "calm the nation down about the impossibility of a military intervention."

"I have a conviction that we built a strong democracy. The armed forces are part of the Brazilian state and they have the confidence of all of us," said Abreu, a right-leaning Bolsonaro critic.

Thomas Traumann, an independent political analyst, told AP that it was the first time in living memory that all leaders of the armed forces had quit simultaneously.

"He wants people who will do whatever he wants and so it is extremely risky," Traumann said. "He can put the army out to allow people to go to work. So the army would be in his hands, and not in the hands of the generals."

Politicians and former allies across the country echoed the concerns about the strength of Brazilian democracy.

"Bolsonaro is increasingly similar to Chávez and Maduro," said Rodrigo Maia, formerly congressional president, referring to past and current Venezuelan presidents. "An authoritarian will always be an authoritarian."

Speaking to supporters outside the presidential palace on Wednesday (AEDT), Bolsonaro did not discuss the three commanders. When asked about the pandemic restrictions imposed by governors and mayors, the president said he respects the constitution, though he added: "But it has been some time that some authorities are not playing within the limits of the constitution."

In other cabinet changes, Bolsonaro replaced foreign minister Ernesto Araujo, who was accused by some of impeding the supply of vaccines by making comments seen as insulting to the Chinese and by not aggressively seeking sources.

Earlier this month, Bolsonaro also replaced his health minister, active-duty army General Eduardo Pazuello, the third health minister to leave office since the beginning of the pandemic. Pazuello's tenure coincided with most of Brazil's 317,000 COVID-19 deaths.

On Tuesday, the Health Ministry said a new daily record of 3780 deaths related to COVID-19 had been registered in the previous 24 hours. The previous high of 3650 deaths was recorded on Friday.
AP, The Washington Post

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Brazil's military chiefs all quit as Bolsonaro seeks their support

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By Diane Jeantet and David Biller Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size Rio de Janeiro: The leaders of all three branches of Brazil's armed forces have jointly resigned following President Jair Bolsonaro's replacement of the defence minister, causing widespread apprehension of a military shake-up to serve the President's political interests.

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Headless bodies litter streets of Mozambique town

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Headless bodies litter streets of Mozambique town

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In a fight for control, The Islamic State Group has confessed to the killings and beheadings of Palma citizens which was carried out by The Islamic State Central Africa Province.

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Johannesburg: Fierce fighting for control of Mozambique's strategic northern town of Palma left beheaded bodies strewn in the streets on Monday, (Tuesday AEDT) with heavily armed rebels battling army, police and a private military outfit in several locations.

Thousands were estimated to be missing from the town, which held about 70,000 people before the attack began last Wednesday.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility on Monday for the attack, saying it was carried out by the Islamic State Central Africa Province, according to the SITE extremist monitoring group.

Rebel fighters and weapons after clashes with Mozambique forces last year. Credit:Site Intelligence/AP

The rebel claim said the insurgents now control Palma's banks, government offices, factories and army barracks, and that more than 55 people, including Mozambican army troops, Christians and foreigners were killed. It did not provide further detail on the dead.

Earlier this month the United States declared Mozambique's rebels to be a terrorist organisation and announced it had sent military specialists to help train the Mozambican military to combat them.

Palma is the centre of a multi-billion dollar investment by Total, the France-based oil and gas company, to extract liquified natural gas from offshore sites in the Indian Ocean. The gas deposits are estimated to be among the world's largest and the investment by Total and others is reported to be $US20 billion ($26 billion), one of the largest in Africa.

Islamic extremist rebels gather after clashes with Mozambican government troops near Mocimboa da Praia, in the country's north in August. Credit:SITE/AP

The battle for Palma forced Total to evacuate its large, fortified site a few kilometres outside of the city.

The fighting spread across the town Monday, according to Lionel Dyck, director of the Dyck Advisory Group, a private military company contracted by the Mozambican police to help fight the rebels.

"There is fighting in the streets, in pockets across the town," Dyck told The Associated Press. The Dyck group has several helicopter gunships in Palma which have been used to rescue trapped civilians and to fight the rebels.

"My guys are airborne and they've engaged several little groups and they've engaged one quite large group," Dyck said. "They've landed into the fight to recover a couple of wounded policemen. ... We have also rescued many people who were trapped, 220 people at last count."

He said those rescued were taken to Total's fortified site on the southern African country's Afungi peninsula, where chartered flights flew many south to Pemba, the capital of Cabo Delgado province.

The rebels are well-armed with AK-47 automatic rifles, RPD and PKM machine guns and heavy mortars, Dyck said.

"This attack is not a surprise. We've been expecting Palma to be whacked the moment the rains stopped and the fighting season started, which is now," he said.

"They have been preparing for this. They've had enough time to get their ducks in a row. They have a notch up in their ability. They're more aggressive. They're using their mortars." He said many were wearing black uniforms.

"There have been lots of beheadings. Right up on day one, our guys saw the drivers of trucks bringing rations to Palma. Their bodies were by the trucks. Their heads were off."

Dyck said it will not be easy for the Mozambican government to regain control of Palma.

"They must get sufficient troops to sweep through the town, going house-to-house and clean each one out. That's the most difficult phase of warfare in the book," Dyck said.

"It will be very difficult unless there's a competent force put in place with good command and control to retake that town. It can be done. But it ain't going to be easy."

Without control of Palma, Total's operations are jeopardised, analysts say.

The battle for Palma is similar to how the rebels seized the port Mocimboa da Praia in August. The rebels infiltrated men into the town to live among residents and then launched a three-pronged attack. Fighting continued for more than a week until the rebels controlled the town centre and then its port. The town, about 50 miles south of Palma, is still held by the rebels.

UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric condemned the violence in Palma, which he said has reportedly killed dozens of people, "including some trying to flee a hotel where they had taken shelter".

He referred to those trapped at the Amarula Hotel who tried to escape in a convoy of 17 vehicles on Friday. Only seven vehicles made it to the beach, where seven people were killed. Some in the other vehicles fled into the dense tropical jungle and were later rescued.

"We continue to coordinate closely with the authorities on the ground to provide assistance to those affected by the violence," Dujarric said.

The battle for Palma is expected to drastically worsen the humanitarian crisis in Mozambique's northern Cabo Delgado province, where the rebels started violent attacks in 2017. The insurgents began as a few bands of disaffected and unemployed young Muslim men. They now likely number in the thousands, according to experts.

"The attack on Palma is a game-changer in that the rebels have changed the narrative," said one expert who returned from Palma earlier this month.

"This is no rag-tag bunch of disorganised youths. This is a trained and determined force that has captured and held one town and is now sustaining a battle for a very strategic centre," said the expert, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of visiting Palma.

"They have called into question the entire LNG (liquified natural gas) investment which was supposed to bring Mozambique major economic growth over many years."

Known locally as al-Shabab, although they have no known affiliation with Somalia's jihadist rebels of the same name, the rebels' violence in Mozambique, a nation of 30 million, is blamed for the deaths of more than 2600 people and caused an estimated 670,000 people to flee their homes.

"The attack on Palma has made a bad humanitarian situation worse," said Jonathan Whittall, director of analysis for Doctors Without Borders, which is working to help the displaced around Pemba, the provincial capital 160 km south of Palma.

"Across Cabo Delgado, the situation was already extremely worrying for those displaced by violence and for those who are in areas that are difficult for humanitarian assistance to reach," Whittall said. "This attack on Palma has led to more displacement and will increase the needs that have to be addressed as a matter of urgency."

"For too long northern Mozambique has been a neglected humanitarian crisis," Whittall said, adding that his organisation is exploring ways to expand its emergency response.
AP

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Headless bodies litter streets of Mozambique town

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Johannesburg: Fierce fighting for control of Mozambique's strategic northern town of Palma left beheaded bodies strewn in the streets on Monday, (Tuesday AEDT) with heavily armed rebels battling army, police and a private military outfit in several locations. Thousands were estimated to be missing from the town, which held about 70,000 people before the attack began last Wednesday.

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The Sydney Morning Herald coverage takes the characteristics of a press that is deeply tied to a geographically specific readership; this makes sense given it is a local/national press: while it covers international topics, much of the content is palpably related back to Australia and its readership. On the other hand, The World podcasts, while still holding a distinctly Western— and arguably liberal feel—seems to frame narratives for a far broader audience, at times presenting in line with parachute style journalism.

The Myanmar coup is covered in both publications: The SMH examines, and subsequently criticizes, Australia's slow (or negligent) efforts in offering aid and pressuring the junta. The World offered an analysis of the uprising but from a much more general or 'teaching' angle of the crisis.

Much in the same fashion, the SMH offers detailed coverage regarding the humanitarian crisis in Mozambique. The World covered a few minutes of 'sound bites', delivering basic—somewhat parachute style—content to educate their listeners.

The SMH covers climate change in one article, expressly using a local lens. Global examples are built in but the climate analysis largely focuses on Australia's climate tipping points.

The SMH covers the recent attacks on Asian Americans, the World has no audio coverage. The absence of the Asian American attacks from The World seems to align with the idea that the platform is not intended to read as 'opinion' or editorial-style musings, but rather presents content in a streaming-style. It could also be that the content is there but not easily searchable given the episodes quickly cover an array content.

In conclusion, the SMH reads as a more emphatic publication in that its angling both endorses and criticizes events/stories as they pertain to local readership. The World functions as a (somewhat parachute-style) platform for westernized 'streaming': offering information with a liberal leaning but without the emphatic critiques or exploration specific to a press like the SMH.

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Convicted killer arrested over attack on Asian American woman in NYC: police

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Convicted killer arrested over attack on Asian American woman in NYC: police

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The second attack in the United States on Asian Americans in three weeks which resulted in the death of an Asian American homeless woman. The killer, who was on parole for killing his mother 19 years ago, has been arrested.

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New York: A parolee convicted of killing his mother nearly two decades ago was arrested on charges including felony assault as a hate crime for attacking an Asian American woman near New York City's Times Square, police say.

Police said Brandon Elliot, 38, is the man seen on video kicking and stomping on the woman on Monday. They said Elliot was living at a hotel that serves as a homeless shelter a few blocks from the scene of the attack.

Police said Brandon Elliot, 38, was the man seen on video kicking and stomping on the woman in New York City.

Elliot, who is black, was convicted of stabbing his mother to death in the Bronx in 2002, when he was 19. He was released from prison in 2019 and is on lifetime parole.

He faces charges of assault as a hate crime, attempted assault as a hate crime, assault and attempted assault in Monday's attack, police said. It wasn't immediately known whether he had a lawyer who could speak on his behalf.

The victim was identified as Vilma Kari, a 65-year-old woman who immigrated from the Philippines, her daughter told The New York Times; the newspaper did not identify Kari's daughter.

Philippine Ambassador to the US Jose Manuel Romualdez said the victim is Filipino American.

The country's foreign secretary, Teodoro Locsin Jr, condemned the attack in a Twitter post, saying: "This is gravely noted and will influence Philippine foreign policy."

Locsin did not elaborate how the attack could influence Philippine policy toward the United States. The countries are longtime treaty allies and the Philippine leader, Rodrigo Duterte, is a vocal critic of US security policies who has moved to terminate a key agreement that allows large-scale military exercises with American forces in the Philippines.

"I might as well say it, so no one on the other side can say, 'We didn't know you took racial brutality against Filipinos at all seriously.' We do," Locsin said.

Kari was walking to church in midtown Manhattan when police said a man kicked her in the stomach, knocked her to the ground, stomped on her face, shouted anti-Asian slurs and told her, "you don't belong here" before casually walking away.

She was discharged from the hospital on Tuesday after being treated for serious injuries, a hospital spokesperson said.

The attack on Monday was among the latest in a national spike in anti-Asian hate crimes, and happened just weeks after a mass shooting in Atlanta that left eight people dead, six of them women of Asian descent. The surge in violence has been linked in part to misplaced blame for the coronavirus pandemic and former president Donald Trump's use of racially charged terms like "Chinese virus".

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio called Monday's attack "absolutely disgusting and outrageous". He said it was "absolutely unacceptable" that witnesses did not intervene.

"I don't care who you are, I don't care what you do, you've got to help your fellow New Yorker," de Blasio said on Tuesday.

The attack happened late on Monday morning outside a luxury apartment building two blocks from Times Square.

Two workers inside the building who appeared to be security guards were seen on surveillance video witnessing the attack but failing to come to the woman's aid. One of them was seen closing the building door as the woman was on the ground. The attacker was able to casually walk away while onlookers watched, the video showed.

The building's management company said they were suspended pending an investigation. The workers' union said they called for help immediately.

Mayoral candidate Andrew Yang, the son of Taiwanese immigrants, said the victim "could easily have been my mother". He too criticised the bystanders, saying their inaction was "exactly the opposite of what we need here in New York City".

This year in New York City, there have been 33 hate crimes with an Asian victim as of Sunday, police said. There were 11 such attacks by the same time last year.

On Friday, in the same neighbourhood as Monday's attack, a 65-year-old Asian American woman was accosted by a man waving an unknown object and shouting anti-Asian insults. A 48-year-old man was arrested the next day and charged with menacing. He is not suspected in Monday's attack.

Police Commissioner Dermot Shea announced last week that the department would increase outreach and patrols in predominantly Asian communities, including the use of undercover officers to prevent and disrupt attacks.

The neighbourhood where Monday's attack occurred, Hell's Kitchen, is predominantly white, with an Asian population of less than 20 per cent, according to city demographic data.

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Convicted killer arrested over attack on Asian American woman in NYC: police

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Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size New York: A parolee convicted of killing his mother nearly two decades ago was arrested on charges including felony assault as a hate crime for attacking an Asian American woman near New York City's Times Square, police say.

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‘Our responsibility’: 23 nations back pandemic treaty idea for future emergencies

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‘Our responsibility’: 23 nations back pandemic treaty idea for future emergencies

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In order to prepare for possible future pandemics, 23 countries gather to create a treaty.

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Brussels: Leaders of 23 countries and the World Health Organisation have backed an idea to create an international treaty that would help the world deal with future health emergencies like the coronavirus pandemic now ravaging the globe.

The idea of such a treaty, which would ensure universal and equitable access to vaccines, medicines and diagnostics for pandemics, was first floated by the chairman of European Union leaders, Charles Michel, at a G20 summit in November.

French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have backed the pandemic treaty concept. Credit:AP

On Tuesday it got the formal backing of the leaders of Fiji, Portugal, Romania, Britain, Rwanda, Kenya, France, Germany, Greece, Korea, Chile, Costa Rica, Albania, South Africa, Trinidad and Tobago, the Netherlands, Tunisia, Senegal, Spain, Norway, Serbia, Indonesia, Ukraine and the WHO.

"There will be other pandemics and other major health emergencies. No single government or multilateral agency can address this threat alone," the leaders wrote in a joint opinion article in major newspapers.

"We believe that nations should work together towards a new international treaty for pandemic preparedness and response," they said.

In January, an independent inquiry into the WHO's actions during the start of the pandemic, led by former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark, concluded the existing global alert system for pandemics "is not fit for purpose".

"The World Health Organisation has been under powered to do the job," the inquiry report said.

It also found that most countries did not act on warnings about early cases and did not share information fast enough when cases emerged.

The main goal of the treaty would be to strengthen the world's resilience to future pandemics through better alert systems, data sharing, research and the production and distribution of vaccines, medicines, diagnostics and personal protective equipment, they said.

The treaty would also state that the health of humans, animals and the planet are all connected and should lead to shared responsibility, transparency and cooperation globally.

"We are convinced that it is our responsibility, as leaders of nations and international institutions, to ensure that the world learns the lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic," the leaders wrote.
Reuters

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'Our responsibility': 23 nations back pandemic treaty idea for future emergencies

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Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size Brussels: Leaders of 23 countries and the World Health Organisation have backed an idea to create an international treaty that would help the world deal with future health emergencies like the coronavirus pandemic now ravaging the globe.

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The Suez Canal crisis is over but the blame game begins

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The Suez Canal crisis is over but the blame game begins

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The Suez Canal disaster may be over, but figuring out who to blame is just the beginning.

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Ismailia: With the Ever Given freed and on the move, the spotlight now turns to the investigation of how the vessel got wedged into the Suez Canal, leading to billions of dollars in losses globally.

While strong winds during a dust storm are widely seen as a major factor, Lieutenant General Osama Rabie of the Suez Canal Authority told reporters the investigation would not only focus on the weather. He said human and technical errors could not be ruled out.

Investigators are likely to examine the performance of the two Egyptian canal pilots aboard the Ever Given and their relationship with the ship's captain.

Were there any communications problems? How experienced were the pilots and the captain in navigating the canal? And what challenges did they face in moving a ship of such massive size - as big as the Empire State Building and near the maximum size allowed in the canal - along a single-lane artery of the waterway?

A high-ranking canal pilot working for the Suez Canal Authority who was not authorised to speak on the record said the two pilots aboard the Ever Given were both senior chief pilots with 30-plus years of experience. "They had the experience and qualifications to guide this ship," he said.

The senior pilot said the job of navigating ships through canals had become more taxing in recent years. The vessels today are much larger and carry more cargo than those traversing the canal in the 1990s. Back then, he recalled, an oil tanker had blocked the canal and a single tugboat towed the vessel and cleared the waterway.

"The ships today are bigger than they used to be," the pilot said. "This is something new. We haven't seen this before."

Strong winds, he said, could have easily propelled the Ever Given towards the bank, leaving the canal blocked. "This is something that happens to massive ships of this kind," said the senior pilot. "They can run aground when winds exceed 30 or 40 knots."

He noted that canal pilots have guided the Ever Given through the canal before. "The ship has crossed the Suez Canal previous times but never under such weather conditions," he said.

Contrary to their titles, the pilots do not actually steer the vessel in the Suez Canal. The pilot serves more as a consultant, using his experience and practical knowledge of the canal to give advice, for instance, on how to manoeuvre the vessel or what course to steer.

The captain has to be present at all times on the bridge and give the orders to the helm, to the engines and tugs, taking into account the pilot's directions, according to international maritime law. The captain has to keep the pilot informed of any problems with the handling of the vessel "so that the pilot might be in a position to give better advice to control the navigation and movement of the vessel," the law reads. Ultimately, "the responsibility falls completely" on the captain, it adds.

"The captain has the sole responsibility for directing the ship," the senior pilot said. "The pilots can offer their guidance and opinions, but the captain can choose to refuse it."

Among some seafarers, the role of the pilots can be somewhat mysterious.

Rose George, author of Deep Sea and Foreign Going, a book that recounts a five-week journey aboard a container ship from Britain to Singapore, said that when she travelled through the canal in 2010, it was unclear what the Suez crew's purpose was.

"We had a Suez crew on board, which is obligatory," she said on BBC News Hour on Sunday. "You pay a fortune to go through the Suez Canal, about a $US100,000 to $US300,000 [$130,000-$392,000], but you have to take on a Suez pilot."

"The canal authority says you have to take this crew on board," George said. "You have to take a special electrician who has to operate what they call a Suez Canal projector, which is a massive headlamp that you stick on the foxhole at the front of the ship on the bow, and that's in case anything happens. And then there's also a few other crew who apparently have special rope skills."

She said the captain on the medium-size container ship she was on had been at sea for 42 years, having crossed the canal more times than he could remember. He said he had "never seen this crew do anything except sit in their special crew cabin," George recounted.

Even if the pilot error is found to have contributed to the accident, Egyptian law makes clear that pilots are not liable for any damage during their watch of the ship.

In an explanatory video posted on Monday, Mark Phillip Laurilla, the chief engineer of a container ship who blogs about his experiences under the name Chief MAKOi, acknowledged that may seem unfair but said that it was the same all over the world. "Whatever the case, all liabilities point towards the vessel, which means the shipowners along with their insurers are in for quite a ride," Laurilla said.
The Washington Post

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The Suez Canal crisis is over but the blame game begins

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Ismailia: With the Ever Given freed and on the move, the spotlight now turns to the investigation of how the vessel got wedged into the Suez Canal, leading to billions of dollars in losses globally.

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The World (U.S. and U.K.) http://www.pri.org/programs/the-world
The Sydney Morning Herald (Australia)  http://www.smh.com.au/

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The World (U.S. and U.K.) is an audio source while The Sydney Morning Herald (Australia) is a web based source

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What will happen to our cities (and beaches) at 3 degrees of warming?

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What will happen to our cities (and beaches) at 3 degrees of warming?

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Climate change as it impacts Australias' ecosystems, flooding, insurance premiums, and cost of living.

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The reef had already started turning white when the little rat vanished. No one knows exactly how the rare rodent, known as the Bramble Cay melomys, first came to live on a tiny island at the tip of the Great Barrier Reef. But about a decade ago, the very last of them were wiped out, likely swept away by rising seas and storm surges in what is considered the world's first mammal extinction caused by climate change.

Our planet is changing fast and not just for unfortunately situated rodents. Climate science is concerned with what's in the air - the invisible, planet-warming build-up of carbon dioxide. But you no longer need graphs to see the impact. Rainforests are creeping into savannah. Ice sheets are plunging into the sea. Bright coral reefs are fading to white.

Six years ago, just months before Queensland researchers declared the Bramble Cay melomys extinct, world leaders met in Paris and agreed to keep global warming below 2 degrees (and as close to 1.5 degrees as possible). Yet, despite a slight decline in pollution in 2020 because of pandemic shutdowns and despite a new surge in commitments from governments to slash their emissions to net zero by 2050 (or 2060 in the case of China), the shift to a green economy isn't happening fast enough.

Australia has already warmed by about 1.4 degrees since the Industrial Revolution and the latest expert analysis for the United Nations says the globe is still headed for a 3-degree rise by the end of the century. Patricia Espinosa, executive secretary of UN Climate Change, has likened our current course to "walking into a minefield blindfolded".

Leading Australian scientists have considered what a 3-degree rise in global temperatures will look like for Australia in new detail, in a report from the Australian Academy of Science.

But they stress that the path out of such a future is still before us. While the 1.5-degree target will almost certainly be surpassed, if countries immediately set credible targets for 2030, we may still reach net zero by 2050, holding warming to about 2 degrees. Borrowing a well-worn phrase from the COVID pandemic, the report authors liken it to "flattening the curve" of climate change. Of course, even a delay of a few years could see us miss that deadline too - and set off dangerous climate "tipping points".

So how far away are 50-degree summers in our major cities? What will global warming mean for our natural environment and for agriculture? How do tipping points work? And how can we avoid the worst of the climate fallout?

On the Pacific island of Abaiang, people must use a boat to cross from one side of a village to another at high tide as the sea creeps further in. Credit:Justin McManus

What would 3 degrees look like in Australian cities?

January 2020 was Sydney's hottest January on record. On January 4, temperatures in far western Sydney nudged 50 degrees for the first time. Back then, Keith Heggart told the Herald and The Age how his airconditioner conked out and his family huddled inside, the curtains drawn against the sun and the windows shut against bushfire smoke.

Should Australia warm by 3 degrees, the number of days hotter than 35 degrees in Sydney would jump from an average of 3.1 to 11 each year, while in Melbourne the jump would be from 11 to 24. In Darwin, the average number of days hotter than 35 degrees would go from 11 to 265 - every day would be designated a heat stress day.

According to Professor Lesley Hughes of Macquarie University, the number of heatwaves would jump from three to seven a year and their duration would blow out from seven to 16 days. "Heatwaves are the silent killer in Australia. They're responsible for more deaths than any other climate-related disaster but they also affect our agricultural productivity," says Hughes.

Cities and towns will need more tree cover, and some outdoor sport will probably move inside, while airconditioning systems (and the electricity grid) will need to be optimised to avoid blackouts.

As the temperature soars, diseases normally found in the tropics could also spread to more temperate areas across Australia, including cities, the report says, noting climate-sensitive infectious diseases such as the Ross River virus will be of particular concern.

The vibrant corals of rhe Great Barrier Reef, one of the seven natural wonders of the world, are not expected to survive much longer as the planet continues to warm.

What about the rest of Australia?

Australia's high levels of heating have already led to mass bleaching events that have killed about half the hard corals in the Great Barrier Reef and contributed to the droughts, fires and floods of recent years, says Hughes. At 1.5 degrees we will lose between 70 and 90 per cent of today's corals but by 3 degrees 99 per cent will be gone, says Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, one of the report's authors. That almost certainly means no more Great Barrier Reef.

The kind of heat likely to come to Darwin is also expected across the entire Top End, severely affecting livestock and the people who manage them, according to the report. A 3-degree rise would reduce yields of key crops by between 5 and 50 per cent. Significant reductions are expected in oil seeds (35 per cent), wheat (18 per cent), fruits and vegetables (14 per cent), plant fibres (7 per cent), rice (2 per cent) and other fibres (11 per cent) in Australia. Already today, broadacre crops such as wheat and barley have fallen in profitability by up to 22 per cent since 2000.

And it's not just the heat that would be the problem. While severe, damaging storms will increase, rainfall overall will fall. The report predicts a 13 and 21 per cent drop across the Murray-Darling Basin, with hotter areas set to be far drier.

Australia is home to some of the most unique ecosystems in the world but they are already radically changing, and extinctions accelerating - and that could have big impacts on the tourism and recreation industries that rely on our wild places. At 3 degrees, many Australian ecosystems would simply be "unrecognisable", the report says.

During the Black Summer bushfires of 2019-20, an area roughly three times the size of Tasmania burnt including 80 per cent of the World Heritage Area in the Blue Mountains and 50 per cent of the ancient Gondwana rainforests on the east coast. These are forests, says Hughes, that may not have burnt for thousands of years. For wildlife, it was the single biggest catastrophe in recorded history - 3 billion creatures were killed or displaced.

At 3 degrees, Hughes says, we would see an increase of between 100 and 300 per cent in such extreme fire days. Most seasons will look like that record-breaking Black Summer, when smoke blanketed cities and flames raged for months, at times in every state at once.

Such fierce bushfire seasons will also change the shape of our urban fringes and small towns, experts predict, as more people move out of remote bush. Insurance premiums will go up, and water will probably be more heavily regulated as it grows scarce.

Well-loved holiday spots and hamlets along the coast could also be swept away under rising sea levels. The Earth's melting glaciers have already caused a rise of 14 millimetres between 2003 and 2019. If the sea rises by one metre by the end of the century, the report says an estimated 160,000 to 250,000 Australian properties will be at risk of coastal flooding.

Just as we adapt to fire and heatwaves, we will need to rethink how we live with floods. The hard surfaces used for driveways and footpaths may even be replaced with more permeable surfaces in the future.

Under most modelled scenarios, what would have been one-in-100-year coastal floods will be happening almost every year by 2100. Should temperatures rise between 2 and 3 degrees, the coastal flood area is projected to expand by about 33,200 square kilometres across Australasia, the report says. The impact would be particularly severe on Australia's densely populated east and south-east coasts. Properties on flood plains and in storm-surge zones in south-east Queensland would have a 33 per cent increase in tropical cyclone risk under a 3 degree warming scenario.

How would the rest of the world look at 3 degrees?

A world at 3 degrees is not a pretty picture anywhere, but parts of the world are warming faster and are likely to suffer more than others. Australia, already the land of drought and flooding rains, is not in a good position but many of its Pacific Island neighbours face total wipeout because of rising sea levels. And more "dead zones" are expected to open up at sea. As the waters acidify and warm, algae blooms will explode at the surface, starving marine life of oxygen. On land, some species are already adapting to rising temperatures, including by moving to cooler altitudes, but most will struggle to keep up with the wicked pace of a 3-degree rise by the end of the century.

People, in their hundreds of millions, will also be battling more displacement, monster storms, disease outbreaks and famine if we hit that temperature. The United Nation's special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston, has warned the world could face a kind of "climate apartheid" where only the rich can escape the worst of global warming. Africa, Asia and the Middle East, in particular, look set for more food and water insecurity.

Meanwhile, both El Nino and La Nina events are tipped to ramp up near Australia, but the powerful North Atlantic current, which carries warm water from the tropics up to North America, appears to be slowing down. This could cause unexpected cold snaps in parts of Britain, western Europe and the United States, further destabilising ecosystems as the same countries grapple with punishing drought and heat elsewhere.

Three degrees might not seem a lot when we check our own daily weather forecast. But, as the report notes, 5 or 6 degrees is all that separates the Earth's average surface temperature during the last ice age 20,000 years ago and its temperature today, and a whole lot was different back then. Half the planet was covered in ice, for one, and the sea was at least 100 metres below where it is now.

In that case, those 5 degrees of warming crept in over millennia. Today's human-driven climate change is happening lightning fast. Three degrees or more could now make vast swathes of the planet uninhabitable again, the report says, resulting "in a very different biosphere hardly recognisable compared to the conditions of the past 10,000 years in which humans have thrived, and one that would present significant challenges even for the technologically advanced society of today".

Scientists say apex predators, such as this grey wolf in America's Yellowstone national park, may help their ecosystems adapt to climate change, if they can stay ahead of temperature rises themselves.

What are climate tipping points?

Imagine rolling a ball up a hill. At first, you need to push it up the slope or it will keep rolling down but, once you reach the top of the hill, it will tip over and its momentum alone will drive it down the other side. That moment is the tipping point.

Of course, in climate science, the ball we are talking about is a vast, living Earth with many different systems, all interwoven, from its oceans to its winds. So there isn't just one clear tipping point, there are many. And the changes wrought by global warming could set them off in a cascade. Like a game of climate Jenga, at that point small changes can make a big difference, shaking the whole system.

Climate tipping points were once dismissed as alarmist and, by their very nature, too difficult to predict. Now, as they have emerged more clearly in the science, experts are increasingly warning that climate change could become its own self-fulfilling feedback loop, one that slips beyond our control if we don't cut emissions fast.

Take the Amazon rainforest, which helps shape the world's weather. When people burn and log it for farming and timber, less moisture evaporates from the forest's leaves to become rainfall, which drives drier conditions and more fires that eat the forest and so on - soon the jungle itself could reach a tipping point and turn into savannah. Or consider the massive Greenland ice sheet up north. As it rapidly melts and shrinks, more of the remaining ice is exposed to warmer temperatures, accelerating melting. And, if the world loses the reflective cover of its two polar ice caps, many experts say the climate system will unravel no matter how quickly emissions fall.

Until recently, most climate analysis assumed warming would increase at relatively the same rate as the build-up of carbon in the atmosphere. And that it would stabilise once humans got to net zero emissions. But if the world crosses a major climate tipping point, things could go haywire, even if we meet our targets thereafter.

Many of the key biological tipping points are already active, from the thawing permafrost releasing millennia of stored carbon to large-scale coral reef die-offs. Even the loss of that little rat off the coast of Australia created a gap in its local ecosystem. These gaps are building up all over the world as extinction rates skyrocket, and they could spell trouble for the broader biosphere, our life support system on Earth.

As the report's authors say, at no other time in the geological record, save the fallout from the meteor that killed the dinosaurs, has the world's climate changed as fast as it is now as a result of human emissions.

The greater the warming, the greater the risk of crossing a tipping point. Three degrees "means an increasing risk that planetary systems will fail, irreversibly pushing Earth towards a much hotter state with an increasing risk of rapid and effectively irreversible changes", the report says. But scientists agree there is still time to pull back from the brink.

Large areas of the Amazon rainforest have burnt in recent years, often due to farming and land-clearing. Scientists fear too much fire in the "lungs of the planet" could trigger a tipping point of irreversible landscape change from jungle to savannah. Credit:AP

So what's the way forward?

Despite all that bad news, experts stress that the window to avoid 3 degrees has not closed yet, and the costs of getting there are actually far cheaper than once thought.

Wind and solar are now in a position to largely replace fossil fuels in Australia's energy system, says Professor Frank Jotzo, director of the Australian National University's Centre for Climate and Energy Policy and a contributor to the report. And, because they are so much cheaper than coal or gas, we can afford to introduce them and spend on storage technologies such as batteries and pumped hydro, as well as necessary changes to the grid. Other experts have suggested the government subsidies now used to prop up fossil fuel industries could be spent supporting their workers into new jobs as old plants and mines shut.

After electricity, transport makes up a big chunk of Australia's emissions. The report's authors say electric cars will need far more support to displace our older internal combustion fleet.

We need to stop chopping down trees, too, but while agriculture is commonly seen as a difficult industry to decarbonise given our reliance on it for food, new technologies and greener farming methods could lead the way if given investment.

As the world prepares for the next major UN climate talks in Glasgow in November, nations have been declaring stronger climate ambitions. Over the past year, the amount of the global economy operating under a mid-century, net zero target has leapt from 25 per cent to 75 per cent.

Now the UN is pushing nations to declare steeper cuts for 2030. On April 22, US President Joe Biden will host 40 world leaders at climate talks where he is expected to lend America's clout to the cause.

All this is going on during another major global catastrophe, a pandemic. But while COVID has distracted nations from climate policy, experts say it has also shown them two key things: that big, "unprecedented" transformations are possible - fast; and what can happen when politicians take the gloomy warnings of scientists seriously.

Air pollution has long caused health problems in Beijing, which was also hit by a sandstorm in early 2021. Credit:AP

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What will happen to our cities (and beaches) at 3 degrees of warming?

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Jungle turning to savannah. Homes swept away by rising seas and monster storms. The world is on track for 3 degrees of warming by the end of the century. What does that mean? And what can we do about it?