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Hurricane Roslyn is now a category 4 storm as it approaches Mexico's Pacific coast

Hurricane Roslyn strengthened to a major Category 4 storm on Saturday as it approached Mexico’s Pacific coast, the US National Hurricane Center said, warning of potentially damaging winds, dangerous storm surge and flash flooding.

The storm was some 150 miles (240 kilometers) west-southwest of Manzanillo, with maximum sustained winds of 130 miles per hour, and is forecast to slam into the coast of Nayarit state on Sunday at or near major hurricane strength, the NHC said in its 1500 GMT update.

“Additional strengthening is forecast today. Although some weakening is possible beginning tonight, Roslyn is expected to still be near or at major hurricane strength when it makes landfall on Sunday,” the NHC said.

“On the forecast track, the center of Roslyn will move parallel to the southwestern coast of Mexico through midday today, then approach the coast of west-central Mexico, likely making landfall along the coast of the Mexican state of Nayarit Sunday morning.”

The NHC warned of flash flooding and landslides caused by the storm. 

“A dangerous storm surge is expected to produce significant coastal flooding near and to the east of where the center makes landfall,” it said.

Authorities have declared a precautionary alert in the Pacific coast states of Jalisco, Colima, Nayarit and Sinaloa.

Forecasts suggest Roslyn could make landfall near the town of San Blas, with a population of about 40,000 and where there are several fishing communities.

Tropical cyclones hit Mexico every year on both its Pacific and Atlantic coasts, usually between May and November.

At the end of May, Agatha, the first Pacific storm of the season, hit the coast of the state of Oaxaca (south), where heavy rain in mountainous towns killed 11 people.

Back in October 1997, Hurricane Pauline struck Mexico’s Pacific coast as a Category 4 storm, leaving more than 200 dead.

Hurricane Roslyn is now a category 4 storm as it approaches Mexico's Pacific coast

Hurricane Roslyn strengthened to a major Category 4 storm on Saturday as it approached Mexico’s Pacific coast, the US National Hurricane Center said, warning of potentially damaging winds, dangerous storm surge and flash flooding.

The storm was some 150 miles (240 kilometers) west-southwest of Manzanillo, with maximum sustained winds of 130 miles per hour, and is forecast to slam into the coast of Nayarit state on Sunday at or near major hurricane strength, the NHC said in its 1500 GMT update.

“Additional strengthening is forecast today. Although some weakening is possible beginning tonight, Roslyn is expected to still be near or at major hurricane strength when it makes landfall on Sunday,” the NHC said.

“On the forecast track, the center of Roslyn will move parallel to the southwestern coast of Mexico through midday today, then approach the coast of west-central Mexico, likely making landfall along the coast of the Mexican state of Nayarit Sunday morning.”

The NHC warned of flash flooding and landslides caused by the storm.

“A dangerous storm surge is expected to produce significant coastal flooding near and to the east of where the center makes landfall,” it said.

Authorities have declared a precautionary alert in the Pacific coast states of Jalisco, Colima, Nayarit and Sinaloa.

Tropical cyclones hit Mexico every year on both its Pacific and Atlantic coasts, usually between May and November.

In October 1997, Hurricane Pauline struck Mexico’s Pacific coast as a Category 4 storm, leaving more than 200 dead.

A partial solar eclipse in Iraq in 2019. Tuesday's eclipse is not expected to darken the sky

A partial solar eclipse will be visible across a swathe of the Northern Hemisphere on Tuesday, with amateur astronomers warned to take care watching the rare phenomenon.

The eclipse will start at 0858 GMT in Iceland and end off the coast of India at 1302 GMT, crossing Europe, North Africa and the Middle East on its way, according to the IMCCE institute of France’s Paris Observatory.

Solar eclipses occur when the Moon passes between the Sun and Earth, casting its shadow down onto our planet. 

A total solar eclipse happens when the Moon completely blocks the Sun’s disk, momentarily plunging a portion of the Earth into complete darkness.

However Tuesday’s eclipse is only partial, and the “Moon’s shadow will not touch the surface of the Earth at any point,” the Paris Observatory said in a statement.

The Moon will cover a maximum of 82 percent of the Sun over Kazakhstan, but it will not be enough darken the daylight, Paris Observatory astronomer Florent Deleflie said.

“To start getting the sense of darkness in the sky, to perceive a kind of cold light, the Sun needs to be at least 95 percent obscured,” Deleflie told AFP.

Those hoping to watch the eclipse should not look at the Sun directly, even through clouds, to avoid eye damage, according to experts. Protective eyewear should be worn instead.

“We will see that a small piece of the Sun is missing. It won’t be spectacular, but it’s always an event for amateur astronomers — and it can make for beautiful photos,” Deleflie said.

It will be the 16th partial solar eclipse of the century, and the second of this year.

The next total solar eclipse will cross North America on April 8, 2024, according to NASA.

Facility coordinator Roberto Corsini shows off a 40-metre linear particle accelerator at CERN which could push the boundaries of cancer treatment

Researchers at Europe’s science lab CERN, who regularly use particle physics to challenge our understanding of the universe, are also applying their craft to upend the limits to cancer treatment.

The physicists here are working with giant particle accelerators in search of ways to expand the reach of cancer radiation therapy, and take on hard-to-reach tumours that would otherwise have been fatal.

In one CERN lab, called CLEAR, facility coordinator Roberto Corsini stands next to a large, linear particle accelerator consisting of a 40-metre metal beam with tubes packed in aluminium foil at one end, and a vast array of measurement instruments and protruding colourful wires and cables.

The research here, he told AFP during a recent visit, is aimed at creating very high energy beams of electrons — the negatively charged particles in the nucleus of an atom — that eventually could help to combat cancerous cells more effectively.

They are researching a “technology to accelerate electrons to the energies that are needed to treat deep-seated tumours, which is above 100 million electron volts” (MeV), Corsini explained.

The idea is to use these very high energy electrons (VHEE) in combination with a new and promising treatment method called FLASH.

– Reducing ‘collateral damage’ –

This method entails delivering the radiation dose in a few hundred milliseconds, instead of minutes as is the current approach.

This has been shown to have the same destructive effect on the targeted tumour, but causes far less damage to the surrounding healthy tissue.

With traditional radiation therapy, “you do create some collateral damage,” said Benjamin Fisch, a CERN knowledge transfer officer.

The effect of the brief but intense FLASH treatment, he told reporters, is to “reduce the toxicity to healthy tissue while still properly damaging cancer cells.”

FLASH was first used on patients in 2018, based on currently available medical linear accelerators, linacs, that provide low-energy electron beams of around 6-10 MeV.

At such low energy though, the beams cannot penetrate deeply, meaning the highly-effective treatment has so far only been used on superficial tumours, found with skin cancer.

But the CERN physicists are now collaborating with the Lausanne University Hospital (CHUV) to build a machine for FLASH delivery that can accelerate electrons to 100 to 200 MeV, making it possible to use the method for much more hard-to-reach tumours. 

– ‘Game-changer’ –

Deep-lying cancer tumours that can’t be rooted out using surgery, chemotherapy or traditional radiation therapy are often today considered a death sentence.

“It is the ones which we don’t cure at the moment which will be the targets,” Professor Jean Bourhis, head of CHUV’s radiology department, told AFP.

“For those particular cancers, which may be one third of the cancer cases, it could be a game-changer.”

There are particular hopes that the FLASH method, with its far less harmful impact on surrounding tissue, could make it possible to go after tumours lodged in the brain or near other vital organs.

Bourhis said it might not relegate deaths from stubborn cancer tumours to the history books, “but at least there will be a new opportunity for more cures, if it works.”

– ‘Compact’ –

One challenge is making the powerful accelerator compact enough to fit inside a hospital.

At CERN, a large gallery has been dedicated to housing the CLEAR accelerator, which requires 20 metres to push the electrons up to the required energy level — and another 20 metres to condition, measure and deliver the beam.

But Corsini insisted that CERN had the know-how to “accelerate in a much more compact space”.

The prototype being designed with CHUV will aim to do the same job with a machine that is 10 metres overall.

This “compact” solution, Corsini said, “reduces the cost, reduces power consumption and variability, and you can easily put it into a hospital without having to build a whole building.” 

Construction of the prototype is scheduled to begin next February, and patient clinical trials could begin in 2025, Bourhis said, “if everything goes smoothly”.

The trials could kickstart a transformation in the forestry sector

Surrounded by rows of healthy saplings grown using the latest LED technology, Scottish forestry researcher Kenny Hay has been left in little doubt that the science can boost Britain’s net zero efforts.

The trays of young trees stacked nine metres (30 feet) high inside the James Hutton Institute near Dundee in eastern Scotland are budding proof for Hay and others that LED light can be relied on to speed up their growth.

The specimens housed in the vertical farm unit there grew six times faster than using traditional outdoor planting methods, according to Forestry and Land Scotland (FLS), a government agency that manages the nation’s forests.

Its growth trials — in partnership with indoor horticultural specialists Intelligent Growth Solutions (IGS) — could kickstart a transformation in the forestry sector and help the UK meet its net zero targets quicker.

“Initial results were astonishing,” Hay, a manager at FLS, told AFP during a tour of the vertical farm, as a technician controlled a mechanical elevator accessing the stacks of shelves filled with seedling trays.

“We can grow a huge amount of trees in a very, very small area, which is obviously going to help climate mitigation.

“We will now look very carefully at how we might be able to integrate this into our normal processes.”

– Specific ‘recipe’ –

The vertical farm project, which occupies just 300 square metres (360 square yards), has “tremendous potential” for tree production, according to Hay.

The trials found some saplings grew 40-50cm (16-20 inches) tall in 90 days. A similar rate of growth would take up to 18 months in an outdoor field.

The air inside the unit is warm and moist, adjusted to the ideal temperature and humidity level for the plants.

Researchers can tailor the light, humidity, water, temperature and soil so that each plant has its own specific “recipe”, Dave Scott, the founder of IGS, told AFP.

Water and nutrition are computer controlled and fed to plants through a network of plastic pipes.

Vertical farms operate with much higher humidity and lose far less water through transpiration compared to trees grown in polytunnels and glasshouses.

But Scott said advances in LED light technology were seen as the biggest factor behind the impressive results.

Each species of tree is assigned its own unique set of LED lights, mathematically adapted on the colour spectrum.

“Over the past years LED technology reached a tipping point, with efficiency doubling every year,” he said.

– ‘Stretch them’ –

The trial has also thrown up complications to overcome.

Some saplings grew too fast, leaving their roots too weak to withstand the wind once they were planted at the FLS’s nursery in Elgin in the more remote Highlands of Scotland.

FLS and IGS are now running a new test to slow down the growth in order to ensure the saplings can develop stronger roots.

The ability to adapt the environment for each tree sapling has helped researchers meet such challenges, Scott said.

“You can stretch them, dwarf them, you can stress them deliberately to make them fit for the outside world. There’s many things you can do,” he added.

Each trial, he added, yielded better results than the last.

FLS is aiming to plant around 24 million new trees a year, as demand for saplings spikes amid efforts to tackle climate change.

But the need to rapidly plant trees has also ramped up demand for high quality seed, another of the myriad challenges facing the sector.

French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna waits to speak at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington

France’s foreign minister voiced alarm Friday over a massive US climate spending package, saying it risked unfair competition, but said Europe did not want a green trade war.

Parts of President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which will pump $370 billion into green energy, “from our point of view impact the level playing field between the US and European actors,” Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

Her remarks echo German and French economic ministers who this week at a meeting in Berlin called for a strong response from the European Union against state support for US green businesses.

But asked if the tensions could fuel another trade rift along the lines of the long Boeing vs. Airbus showdown, Colonna said, “We are certainly not looking for any war.”

She acknowledged that the European Union had also long sought bolder action by the United States on climate change and welcomed the historic decision to take action.

“We will not complain that you are doing that speed-up that was needed,” she said.

But she called for discussion on whether the US investment would affect “the economic alignment of our two entities that is absolutely needed, I think, for our common prosperity down the road, especially in the current context of the war in Ukraine.”

Colonna said that France valued a strong relationship with the United States. Tensions have eased since earlier in the Biden administration when France was furious that Australia dropped a major French submarine deal to buy US-made nuclear models.

“France will be a troublesome ally as it always speaks its mind,” she said.

“But it is an ally that is able and willing, with a full-spectrum, combat-proven military and a strategic culture which has always led us to shoulder our responsibilities.”

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is on a visit to Vietnam

A “new wave of repression” in Vietnam is jeopardising progress in tackling climate change, human rights groups told UN chief Antonio Guterres Friday as he began a visit to Hanoi.

Vietnam, which has an economy heavily reliant on coal, has committed to reaching net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

But its authoritarian government has also handed down prison terms to four environmental human rights defenders this year, sentencing them on “trumped-up” charges of tax evasion, the rights organisations said in an open letter to Guterres.

“These political prisoners are emblematic victims of a new wave of repression in Vietnam which, through a combination of threats and judicial harassment, is threatening progress in combatting climate change,” read the letter, signed by 15 rights groups including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

Guterres, who is in the capital to mark the 45th anniversary of Vietnam joining the UN, warned in July that humanity was facing “collective suicide” over the climate crisis.

The letter urged Guterres to “publicly call on the Vietnamese government to release” Nguy Thi Khanh, Mai Phan Loi, Bach Hung Duong, and Dang Dinh Bach during his visit.

Khanh, a globally recognised climate and energy campaigner who won the Goldman Environmental Prize in 2018, was sentenced to two years in jail in June. 

Founder of Green ID, one of Vietnam’s most prominent environmental organisations, Khanh had been among the few in the communist nation challenging the government’s plans to increase coal power.

Dang Dinh Bach, a community lawyer and NGO worker, worked to inform local people whose health and livelihoods were threatened by coal projects and other dirty industries. He was sentenced to five years in prison.

The rights groups urged Vietnam to clarify the tax obligations of NGOs, warning the current regulations were “open to politically motivated attacks on civil society organisations”.

At a ceremony commemorating the 45th anniversary of the country’s accession to the UN on Friday, Guterres reminded Vietnam of its obligations “to ensure respect for fundamental freedoms including of expressions of association, to protect civil society”.

It should work “to bring these rights to life and to ensure the full engagement from journalists, human rights defenders to environmental advocates.”

Earlier, the UN chief met with Vietnamese President Nguyen Xuan Phuc and visited Ho Chi Minh’s memorial.

Stores in Paris must switch off outdoor lighting at night from December

Paris climate activists have found a new way to get across their message against energy waste in the City of Light — switching off store signs and advertising screens that are kept on all night even though the government has urged people to cut back electricity use.

At 9:00 pm on a recent evening, around 20 Extinction Rebellion members gathered for a tactical briefing before spreading out on another night-time raid.

If the police spot them “we absolutely don’t run”, says “Joad,” a 32-year-old veteran of the movement, detailing out the legal risks and advice for those who might be arrested.

“There are 12 million people going cold in France because they can’t heat their homes, and on the other hand we’re wasting this energy on advertising signs that are completely useless consumption,” he tells AFP.

After distributing posters and equipment, including telescopic poles to reach switches for outdoor lights, Joad’s team heads for the lively Marais district, a magnet for both Parisians and tourists, where dozens of retailers have outlets.

Click, and off goes a Levi’s sign. On other storefronts, the group tapes up posters saying “This isn’t Versailles!” — the scolding heard by generations of French children when they leave lights on needlessly.

The team targets opticians, jewellers, perfume boutiques and mattress stores as well as the numerous luminous billboards, prising open the frames to switch them off and replace ads with their own posters.

– ‘Political courage’ –

The government, under pressure as Russia crimps gas exports to Europe, has urged people to show energy “restraint” as winter approaches, notably by lowering home heating thermostats to 19 degrees Celsius (66 degrees Fahrenheit).

It has also issued a decree that illuminated signs and publicity must be turned off from 1:00 am to 6:00 am, starting in June 2023.

The city authorities in Paris have gone further, ordering lights out for signs and advertising from 11:45 pm to 6:00 am from December.

For the climate activists, that’s not soon enough.

“We know this is very symbolic because electricity used by illuminated signs is only a tiny fraction of the energy the country uses,” said “Pikou,” a 36-year-old who also used a pseudonym.

The bigger problem, for Pikou, is the government’s “double-speak”.

“What makes me angry, and that’s why I’m here tonight, is that the government asks ordinary people for restraint, with little gestures like turning their heating down or turning off Wi-Fi, but it doesn’t have the political courage to ask for the same restraint from businesses,” he said.

As the activists progress along the winding Marais streets, their actions often garner applause from passers-by.

“I completely agree with them,” says Federica, a tourist from Milan. Anna, who also stops to watch, call the illuminated signs “a disgrace”.

One store in particular draws the activists’ ire. It is a clothing boutique vaunting its environmental credentials with the slogan “Because there is no Planet B” — alongside three large advertising screens.

The screens are quickly covered with posters.

“This is phase one. It’s about raising awareness and prevention,” says Joad, adding that some store owners respond with messages of support and promises to turn the lights off.

“For those who keep the lights on and continue this wastage, we’ll advance to phase two, which will be a bit bolder, starting in December.”

Russia's war in Ukraine has sent gas prices spiralling

EU leaders on Friday reached agreement on a “roadmap” aimed at putting in place measures within weeks to shield European consumers from soaring energy prices.

The accord came after 11 hours of wrangling over broad proposals to lower energy bills as gas prices pushed skywards by the war in Ukraine.

The bloc’s 27 member states have been squabbling for months over which joint initiatives to adopt, riven by the fact that energy mixes in the countries vary greatly.

While the announcement of the summit text made a public show of unity, it was clear that the coming negotiations would remain difficult. One step in that would come next week with a meeting of EU energy ministers in Luxembourg.

The summit agreement set out a “solid roadmap to keep on working on the topic of energy prices”, European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen told a media conference.

The published text calls on the European Commission and EU countries in coming weeks to find ways to shield consumers from the high prices “while preserving Europe’s global competitiveness… and the integrity of the Single Market”.

European Council President Michel said, “the energy crisis represents a threat to the internal market” of the EU and stressed “maximal coordination” was needed to protect it.

At least 15 EU countries — more than half the bloc — are pushing for an ambitious cap on prices and are increasingly unsettled by strikes and protests over the cost of living spreading across France, Belgium and other member states. 

But the price-cap idea has met resistance from Germany, the EU’s biggest economy, fearing that gas supplies could end up shifting to more lucrative markets in Asia. 

Several smaller economies are also furious that the German government will not back a gas cap and for going it alone in helping its citizens pay for high prices with a 200-billion-euro ($196-billion) spending bonanza.

In the end, the agreed text said a “cost and benefit analysis” of a price cap for electricity generation should be carried out, and  that the impact beyond Europe would be assessed.

French President Emmanuel Macron, who had gone into the summit saying Germany was isolating itself, expressed satisfaction with the result.

“The next two or three weeks will allow the commission to come up with these mechanisms” to be implemented.

He said it sent a “very clear signal to the markets of our determination and our unity”. 

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said “good progress” had been made.

“We wanted, together, to limit fluctuations that could be caused by speculation.”

– Franco-German discord –

There was no hiding, however, a general Franco-German discord that is simmering. That became more evident on Wednesday when the two countries delayed a regular meeting between cabinet ministers.

But France’s Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire sought to downplay fears of a rift at the heart of Europe, telling the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper that “no one can split up the Franco-German couple”.

How he said there was a need for a “strategic redefinition” of bilateral relations to create “a new alliance”.

In another sign the two were not in concert, France did not consult Germany before agreeing with Spain and Portugal to scrap a planned gas pipeline that Berlin has been pushing for years.

Leaders of the three countries met just before the summit and “decided to abandon the MidCat project and instead create, as a matter of priority, a Green Energy Corridor connecting Portugal, Spain and France with the EU’s energy network.”

The MidCat, a project that emerged a decade ago, called for an overland gas pipeline to be built to connect gas terminals in Spain and Portugal, across France, to European networks supplying Germany, among others.

In its place, they said, an underwater pipeline — called BarMar — would be laid from Barcelona in Spain to Marseille in France. It will initially be used for natural gas but, over time, more and more for more climate-friendly hydrogen. 

But the agreement released by Macron and his Spanish and Portuguese counterparts laid out no timetable for BarMar’s completion, and did not say how it would be funded, leaving experts sceptical.

In another nod to Germany’s concerns, the summit agreement on energy backed joint purchases by the EU energy giants in order to command cheaper prices to replenish reserves, as long as “national needs” were taken into account.

It also set limits aimed at “preventing increased gas consumption”.

Another point gives the EU’s executive arm the power to establish a pricing “corridor” on Europe’s main gas index to intervene when prices get out of control.

Many states in Nigeria have been facing devastating floods that have destroyed farmland and displaced more than one million people

Usman Musa had spent more than $1,300 on his 10-hectare rice farm in Nigeria’s Kogi state, now submerged by the country’s worst floods in a decade.

In a wooden canoe, the 38-year-old father of four paddled his way through the murky waters, passing by his and relatives’ houses, the local hospital and school. 

Only the roofs were visible.

Across Africa’s most populous country, communities and crops of sorghum, maize, rice and vegetables are under water, with farmers and aid workers warning of a possible food crisis.

The country, home to more than 200 million people, was already grappling with high inflation and worrying levels of food insecurity.

Now the situation will worsen, with nearly 110,000 hectares (272,000 acres) of farmland completely destroyed by flooding since August according to the latest government figures.

“Flooding is still ongoing but we can safely say that between 60 to 75 percent of the yield we expected is going to be lost,” Kabir Ibrahim, president of All Farmers Association of Nigeria, told AFP this week.

“It’s monumental. So many people are crying.”

More than 600 people have died and 1.3 million others were forced to leave their homes according to the latest figures given by the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs Sadiya Umar Farouq.

– Risk of hunger –

Floods are not uncommon in Nigeria during the rainy season from May to November but they have been extreme this year.

Officials and residents blame climate change but also poor planning and the release of excessive water from dams, a process that is meant to ease pressure.

“If you don’t open the water through the spillways, then dams will break,” said Ibrahim, and then “it would be like Pakistan. All of Nigeria would be under water like Pakistan.”

Farmers were warned ahead of time but it wasn’t enough. 

“We used the predictions and avoided planting along flood-prone areas,” said Ibrahim, “but now you can see that the devastation is all over.”

As a result, Ibrahim, whose organisation represents 20 million farmers, believes “there will be more hardship towards the end of the year and beginning of next year.”

Food inflation year-on-year was already at 23.3 percent last month, in part because of ripple effects on the import-dependent country from the coronavirus pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war.

Rampant insecurity with gunmen repeatedly attacking rural communities also forced many farmers to abandon their fields.

The World Food Programme and the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said last month that Nigeria was among six countries facing a high risk of catastrophic levels of hunger, even before the floods. 

Now, “the impact of the floods on food production is a real threat to the country and could lead to a major food crisis,” said Hussaini Abdu, Nigeria director of the CARE charity.

The FAO representative in Nigeria, Fred Kafeero, said he was “deeply concerned” as food supplies were expected to be low “due to anticipated reduction in household production”.

The aid official said the floods were also affecting livestock and had increased the risk of vector-borne disease outbreaks such as cholera.

– Preventive measures –

The floods have not just destroyed farmlands, they have also prevented the transport of trucks and damaged roads and bridges, further pressuring the food supply.

“We were hoping inflation would get a break with the (upcoming) harvest but now with the floods, it puts a big question mark on our forecast on inflation,” said Ari Aisen, the IMF’s Resident Representative for Nigeria.

“It looks very serious but it’s difficult to judge at this point,” he told AFP, adding that while it was early to assess, “there is an upside risk for inflation, for food price increases.”

The last massive floods in Nigeria in 2012 cost nearly $17 billion, according to the World Bank.

While immediate assistance is now needed, the International Monetary Fund said it would be less costly to invest in preventive measures and policies.

Countries should invest to “help populations adapt to these types (of) events rather than using resources after the fact,” said Aisen. 

But in the meantime, the government said it was ramping up support to affected communities.

President Muhammadu Buhari approved the release of 12,000 metric tons of assorted grains from a national strategic reserve stock.

But farmers are not sure it will be enough.

Buhari restricted the import of rice in 2015, to increase local production and self-sufficiency.

For Ibrahim, resuming those imports “should not be ruled out, if the situation becomes dire”.

Weather forecast agencies have warned there could be more floods until the end of November.