Experts are optimistic about energy and drug production breakthroughs but also fear its potential misuse
When better to hold a conference on artificial intelligence and the countless ways it is advancing science than in those brief days between the first Nobel prizes being awarded in the field and the winners heading to Stockholm for the lavish white tie ceremony?
It was fortuitous timing for Google DeepMind and the Royal Society who this week convened the AI for Science Forum in London. Last month, Google DeepMind bagged the Nobel prize in chemistry a day after AI took the physics prize. The mood was celebratory.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
11/22/2024 - 08:20
11/22/2024 - 07:51
Cop29 is taking place in a country whose economy has long been dependent on its oil reserves
Oil runs deep in Azerbaijan, the host country of this year’s UN climate summit. Just 30 minutes south-west of the Cop29 conference centre lies the site of the world’s first industrially drilled oil well, opened in 1846.
Just metres away sit a handful of operating oil wells, nodding away. The Guardian spoke to an employee of Azerbaijan’s state-owned oil and gas company, Socar, who was working on one of the wells. Asked what oil meant for Azerbaijan, the 47-year-old worker said: “Too much!”
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11/22/2024 - 06:00
Levels in people’s blood for 37 chemicals linked to health issues declined after they were designated under Prop 65
California’s nation-leading restrictions on toxic chemicals in consumer products reduced the population’s body levels for many dangerous compounds linked to cancer, birth defects, reproductive harm and other serious health issues.
New peer-reviewed research showed levels in residents’ blood for 37 chemicals the authors analyzed had declined after the substances were designated under Proposition 65, which regulates toxic chemicals in consumer goods.
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11/22/2024 - 03:00
The best of this week’s wildlife photographs from around the world
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11/22/2024 - 03:00
Labour inherited a dire situation that needed desperate change – but powerful lobbies make any tax reform near-impossible
That was a state-of-the-nation image, those thousands of farmers in Whitehall protesting about inheritance tax (IHT). Their little inheritors on toy tractors could hardly have offered a better portrait of a Britain where even modest reforms of wildly irrational tax reliefs are near-impossible. The country loves Old MacDonald and detests IHT.
This is a symbol of the great malaise those same contrary voters feel about the profound unfairness in this most unequal of countries. Few think it’s OK for the top 1% to own almost a quarter of all wealth, or the top 0.1% to take about 60 times more income than their population share, while we are living through the greatest decline in living standards since records began.
Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist
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11/22/2024 - 02:34
Petrostate’s rebuke comes as Saudi Arabia and allies try to derail transition promise made at climate talks last year
Cop29 climate summit – live updates
The world must stand behind a historic resolution made last year to “transition away from fossil fuels”, the United Arab Emirates has said, in a powerful intervention into a damaging row over climate action.
The petrostate’s stance will be seen as as a sharp rebuke to its neighbour and close ally Saudi Arabia, which had been trying to unpick the global commitment at UN climate talks in Azerbaijan this week.
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11/22/2024 - 02:20
Text ‘decides’ on $250bn for developing countries by 2035 – but faces criticism from African Group of Negotiators
A new text of the Cop29 deal has yet to emerge, but civil society activists have not given up hope, reports Damian Carrington, Guardian environment editor.
Hilda Nakabuye, 27, from Fridays for Future campaign group in Uganda, said:
We are holding on to hope. As a mother I am here to represent my people, my community, but also future generations that we hold close and dear to our hearts and why we are all in this fight. The ones least responsible for climate change undergo its worst effects.
We know what power we hold: the power to act. We are in an emergency. This COP is all about the money, but communities on the ground are not seeing the money. When the climate hits we need to respond like any other emergency, because it is an emergency. We all know deep down there is more than enough money to fill the loss and damage fund with trillions, so why are we still pleading for the bare minimum?
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11/22/2024 - 01:57
In today’s newsletter: After two weeks of fraught negotiations, the draft text still contains an ‘X’ in place of a number. Is consensus on a trillion-dollar funding target for developing nations possible?
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Good morning. For a clear symbol of how much work lies ahead at what is supposed to be the last session of the Cop29 climate summit today, you only have to look at the figure included in the draft text on new climate finance for developing countries: “[X] trillion dollars”.
That placeholder on the most important single detail under consideration – included in two rival versions of the text – was supposed to leave space for negotiation. But it also suggests how much still has to be decided if any kind of positive momentum is to be rescued from two very difficult weeks in Azerbaijan.
Israel | The international criminal court has issued arrest warrants for the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, the country’s former defence minister Yoav Gallant and the Hamas leader Mohammed Deif for alleged war crimes relating to the Gaza war. It is the first time that leaders of a democracy and western-aligned state have been charged by the court.
Ukraine | Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the use of an experimental ballistic missile by Russia amounted to “a clear and severe escalation” in the war and called for worldwide condemnation of the move. Vladimir Putin said that the missile lauch “was a response to US plans to produce and deploy intermediate and short-range missiles”.
US politics | Matt Gaetz, the former Florida congressman, withdrew from consideration to serve as Donald Trump’s attorney general on Thursday amid intense scrutiny of allegations of sexual misconduct. Later, Trump nominated former Florida state attorney general Pam Bondi in Gaetz’s place.
Farming | New inheritance tax rules for farmers could be changed to make it easier for those 80 and over to hand down their farm without it incurring the tax, in what would be a partial climbdown by the government after a bruising row with farmers and a huge protest march in Westminster on Tuesday.
Art | A banana bought for 35 cents and taped to a gallery wall with duct tape by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan has sold for $5.2m, making it surely the most expensive piece of edible fruit on the planet. One of three editions of the 2019 work was bought by crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun at Sotheby’s New York for four times the initial estimate.
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11/22/2024 - 01:08
Who better to ask than corvids
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11/22/2024 - 00:45
Reforms include public registers to track how developers are meeting their commitments and avoiding damaging endangered ecosystems
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The New South Wales parliament has passed the “biggest reforms to the biodiversity offsets scheme since its inception” after inquiries triggered by a 2021 Guardian Australia investigation.
The legislation, promised by the Minns government before the 2023 election, introduces changes aimed at reversing the decline of the state’s biodiversity and improving the integrity of the offsets scheme.
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