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Overnight News Digest November 17, 2022 [1]

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Date: 2022-11-17

BBC

Adnan Oktar: TV cult preacher jailed for 8,658 years in Turkey

A court in Turkey has sentenced a televangelist, who surrounded himself with young women he referred to as his "kittens", to 8,658 years in prison. Adnan Oktar, who has been described as a cult leader, was convicted of sexual assault and abuse of minors. Oktar, 66, fronted his own television channel, through which he delivered religious sermons. He is a fierce opponent of the theory of evolution, and wrote a widely mocked book on creationism. He was originally given a jail sentence of 1,075 years but an appeal court ordered a retrial involving 215 defendants. Ten of them were also given 8,658 years in prison by the court in Istanbul. Many of the other defendants were given shorter terms. Oktar and hundreds of his followers were arrested in 2018 from his home on a litany of charges, including running a criminal organisation, tax offences, sexual abuse, and counter-terrorism laws.

NPR

James Webb telescope spots galaxies near the dawn of time, thrilling scientists

New baby pictures of the universe, taken by the James Webb Space Telescope, show that galaxies started forming faster and earlier than expected. The telescope launched back in December and it now orbits the sun about a million miles away from Earth. Its giant mirror allows it to detect faint light that's been traveling for almost the entire history of the 13.8 billion-year-old universe. That means it can effectively see what galaxies looked like way back in time. The snapshots captured so far have both thrilled and perplexed scientists, because it turns out that many luminous galaxies existed when the universe was very young. "Just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, there are already lots of galaxies," says Tommaso Treu, an astronomer at the University of California at Los Angeles. "JWST has opened up a new frontier, bringing us closer to understanding how it all began." In research papers published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, Treu and other astronomers report the discovery of one galaxy that dates back to just 450 million years after the beginning, and another that dates back to 350 million years.

NPR

Russia and Ukraine renew a grain export deal to help the hungry and keep prices down

ISTANBUL — Russia and Ukraine have agreed to extend an agreement to allow grain exports from Ukrainian ports through a safe corridor in the Black Sea. The deal, brokered by the United Nations and Turkey, was set to expire on Saturday, and will now continue for at least another 120 days. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said he welcomed the agreement by all parties to continue the Black Sea Grain Initiative, saying on Twitter that it shows the importance of "discreet diplomacy." The governments of Russia and Ukraine also confirmed the deal's extension Thursday. Nearly 11 million tons of grain and foodstuffs have been exported under the agreement, which has been a lifeline to Ukraine's battered wartime economy and helped ease food shortages around the world. The deal will continue with the same provisions as before. Ships will carry grain from three Ukrainian ports: Chornomorsk, Odesa and Yuzhny/Pivdennyi.

The Guardian

Lula vows to undo environmental degradation and halt deforestation

President-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has told the world that “Brazil is back” at Cop27, vowing to begin undoing the environmental destruction seen under his far-right predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, and work towards zero deforestation of the Amazon rainforest. Followed by a carnival atmosphere wherever he went on Wednesday, Lula told the climate summit that his administration would go further than ever before on the environment by cracking down on illegal gold mining, logging and agricultural expansion, and restoring climate-critical ecosystems. In his first big overseas speech since winning election, Lula said Brazil did not need to clear another hectare of rainforest to be a major agricultural producer, and he would use his presidency to demand that rich countries deliver on their promise of $100bn of climate finance for developing countries and to create a fund for loss and damage finance.

Deutsche Welle

World leaders crack down on methane pollution

Several countries that draw fossil fuels out of the ground, spewing vast amounts of methane gas in the process, have promised new laws to cheaply rein in their pollution. "It's basically plumbing," US climate envoy John Kerry told the COP27 climate summit on Thursday, asking every country to come to the next summit with national methane action plans. Canada will force oil companies to find and fix leaks every month. Nigeria will restrict practices like venting, where companies release methane gas into the air, and flaring, where they burn it. Seven of the biggest fossil fuel importers and exporters — the US, EU, UK, Canada, Singapore, Norway and Japan — announced last week they would take "immediate action" to stop methane belching out of coal, oil and gas facilities. On Thursday, Chinese climate envoy Xie Zhenhua surprised a meeting of ministers trying to cut methane emissions by announcing a national action plan for the world's biggest methane polluter. The document has been finalized but not yet approved, he said.

Reuters

To save salmon, U.S. approves largest dam removal in history

Nov 17 (Reuters) - A U.S. agency seeking to restore habitat for endangered fish gave final approval on Thursday to decommission four dams straddling the California-Oregon border, the largest dam removal undertaking in U.S. history. Dam removal is expected to improve the health of the Klamath River, the route that Chinook salmon and endangered coho salmon take from the Pacific Ocean to their upstream spawning grounds, and from where the young fish return to the sea. The U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued an order surrendering the dam licenses and approving removal of the dams. The project has long been a goal of several native tribes whose ancestors have lived off the salmon for centuries but whose way of life was disrupted by European settlement and the demand for rural electrification in the 20th Century.

Al Jazeera

Japan’s inflation soars to 40-year high

Japan’s inflation has risen to its highest level in 40 years as a weak yen drove up commodity prices already surging worldwide. Core consumer inflation, which excludes volatile fresh food prices, rose by 3.6 percent in October compared with the previous year, government data showed on Friday, the fastest pace of growth since 1982.

Buzzfeed

That Viral Post About 15,000 Protesters In Iran Being Sentenced To Death Is Misleading, But Activists Warn Executions Are A Strong "Possibility"

Viola Davis, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and thousands of social media users circulated a false claim that 15,000 Iranian protesters had been sentenced to death by the country’s government in response to the recent civil unrest. Independent fact-checkers determined that this figure, which was spread in viral Instagram graphics and across Twitter, is incorrect — but, they warned, the reality for demonstrators is still horrifying, and people should keep sharing accurate news about the Iran protests. “The Iranian regime is brutal enough. They’ve killed over 340 people in 60 days, including 52 children — the youngest an 8-year-old child — and certain outlets have somehow made this story even more horrific by conflating headlines through a failure to understand the full context,” Skylar Thompson, the head of advocacy at Human Rights Activists in Iran, told BuzzFeed News. “It’s dangerous.” Davis, like many other well-intentioned individuals, attempted to raise awareness by posting an image on Instagram of a demonstrator, captioned, “Iran sentences 15,000 protesters to death - as a ‘hard lesson’ for all rebels.”

New York Times (Opinion)

Is This the End Game for Crypto?

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