India to unveil world’s largest statue
The prime minister of India is set to unveil the world’s largest statue, dedicated to Sardar Patel, a nationalist who helped unite modern India after its independence from Britain, next month.
The prime minister of India is set to unveil the world’s largest statue, dedicated to Sardar Patel, a nationalist who helped unite modern India after its independence from Britain, next month.
It has to be seen to be believed – but it might still leave a driver scratching his or her head.
A sign along a highway in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia looks like an indecipherable patchwork of various other road signs, mainly because it is.
Local officials in New York’s Long Island say they have removed unauthorised vending machines dispensing drug paraphernalia.
The machines allegedly contained glass pipes and filters intended for smoking crack cocaine disguised as pens.
Climate-sensitive region the only in the world where rate of undernourishment has risen over the past 12 years
Climate change is making people hungry – with nearly 100 million people across the world needing humanitarian food aid because of climate shocks last year – and a growing number of people are malnourished across the Pacific, a new United Nations report says.
Last week, the Pacific Islands Forum stated formally that climate change represented the “single greatest threat to the livelihoods, security and wellbeing of the peoples of the Pacific” – a declaration Australia ultimately signed but had spent much of the forum attempting to undermine.
Worldwide, the number of undernourished people has been rising since 2014, reaching 821 million last year – or one in nine people across the globe – the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation’s State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report found.
The number of hungry people globally has returned to levels of nearly a decade ago, and nearly one in four (22.2%) children aged under five are stunted through malnutrition.
Low- and middle-income countries were especially acutely affected by more frequent climate extremes and natural disasters. Africa remains the region where malnourishment is most common at 20.4% of the population. But “Oceania” – broadly synonymous with the Pacific region but excluding Australia and New Zealand – is the only region in the world where the rate of undernourishment has increased over the past 12 years, to 7%.
Nutrition in Pacific countries is very sensitive to climate extremes.
Worldwide, five of the 15 countries considered the most vulnerable to natural hazards are Pacific small island developing states. Vanuatu is ranked as the world’s most vulnerable.
Recurring climate shocks such as drought, delayed monsoons, tropical cyclones and floods – and with insufficient recovery time between disasters – have undermined food security across the Pacific, increased dependence on food aid, and weakened the nutrition of those who live there.
“In some Pacific small island developing states (Sids), the recurrence of climate shocks that impact on national/local food production, coupled with insufficient recovery time, undermines food security and nutrition in the longer term,” the FAO report said.
“This is seen in reduced agricultural and fisheries productivity, increased reliance on short-term humanitarian food assistance, gradual erosion of traditional food systems and intensified permanent shifts away from diversified, healthy traditional diets to greater exposure to imported processed foods often high in salt, sugar and fat.”
In 2015 Vanuatu was devastated by the category 5 Cyclone Pam, which destroyed reefs, fishing boats and food crops. This was followed by a severe El-Niño-induced drought that further exacerbated food insecurity and led to widespread water scarcity.
A teacher on Emae Island, in Vanuatu’s Shepherd Islands, said the cyclone harmed food availability, water security and education for months afterwards.
“After Cyclone Pam, the water that belongs to you and me was not very good,” the teacher said. “I had to stop class sometimes – half days – and then we’d eat all together. Sometimes we tell the children not to come to school tomorrow because we don’t have enough food.”
In Timor-Leste households affected by drought limit the amount of food they eat, by limiting their portions, reducing the number of meals they eat each day, or selling household assets for food.
And in Papua New Guinea, 45% of children are stunted by malnutrition, and more than 15% are wasted, one of the highest rates in the world.
Oxfam Australia’s food, climate and humanitarian spokesman, Dr Simon Bradshaw, said the UN report found climate extremes “left 94.9 million people having to rely on humanitarian aid to feed themselves”.
“A hot world is a hungry world,” he said. “The cost of failing to act on climate change is being measured in devastating food crises, and more and more people going undernourished.”
Bradshaw said Australia’s failure to curb its climate pollution was contributing to increasing global hunger “and inflicting pain and hardship on the world’s most vulnerable communities”.
“Resolving conflict and war, tackling the drivers of inequality and poverty, and fighting the causes of climate change are crucial in the global effort to reduce hunger – and Australia has a role to play in each of these areas.”
There’s a 70% chance of a recurrence of the El Niño weather event before the end of this year, according to the World Meteorological Organisation.
The last El Niño occurred in 2015-16 and impacted weather patterns around the world.
Delegation at the International Whaling Commission argues stocks have recovered enough to allow ‘sustainable’ hunting
Japan has launched a controversial bid to end the ban on commercial whaling, claiming that populations of certain types of whale have recovered sufficiently to allow the resumption of “sustainable” hunting.
California has passed a law committing to exclusively carbon-free electricity sources by 2045, setting it against US President Donald Trump’s energy policy.
“There is no understating the importance of this measure,” Governor Jerry Brown said, and vowed to honour the 2015 Paris climate deal.
As mobile markets in developed world near saturation, Google rolls out Neighbourly, its first Indian-inspired social network
To check Instagram at home, Laveena must stand on the edge of her terrace, arm outstretched, hoping the signal is strong enough for her phone to blink to life.
A New York City subway station has reopened for the first time since it was destroyed 17 years ago in the 11 September 2001 terrorist attack.
Cortlandt Street on the 1 line was buried under debris when the two World Trade Center towers collapsed after hijackers crashed planes into them.
The death toll has hit 39 from a powerful earthquake that struck the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido last week, authorities said Sunday. One person remained missing in the hard-hit town of Atsuma, where multiple landslides triggered by the quake slammed into houses at the foot of steep hills.