The latest climate summit has been as hypocritical and dysfunctional as previous ones, with most world leaders not even bothering to turn up. Still, 50,000 people flew in from across the world, while essentially telling the rest of us to stop flying. Poor-country politicians performatively staged a “walk-out,” while rich nations ended up promising a climate slush fund of $300 billion a year. This extravagant pay-off is unlikely to happen, just like previous pledges made over three decades of climate summits. While virtually every summit has promised to cut emissions, they’ve increased almost every year, and 2024 reached a new high. In 2021, the world promised to phase down coal. Since then, global coal consumption has only gone up. Carbon emissions continue to grow because cheap, reliable power, mostly from fossil fuels, drives economic growth. Wealthy countries like the United States and European Union members have started to cut emissions, but the rest of the world remains focused on eradicating poverty. The rich world has tried to bribe the poor to agree to emission cuts, mainly by rebranding existing development aid. Unsurprisingly, rich countries paying lip service to the pay-offs has led to poor countries paying lip service to the climate pageantry, while actually driving economic growth with even more fossil fuels. Green campaigners insist that the global transition away from fossil fuels is unstoppable, yet over the past decade, fossil fuel energy has increased twice as much as green energy. Meanwhile, green politicians insist solar and wind are cheaper than fossil fuels, but this is only true when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing. In reality, such renewables need massive subsidies and redistributive taxes, which has driven up electricity costs in the EU by 50 percent since 2000. The reality is that most countries don’t want to emulate virtue-signaling nations like Germany, which has hiked energy prices, sacrificed industry, and given up on economic growth for the sake of green energy. Despite economic hardships like its first two-year recession, on current trends it will take Germany half a millennium to entirely stop using fossil fuels. Recent years have seen politicians promising feverishly to cut even more carbon—but the election of Donald Trump, who campaigned on pulling out of the Paris Agreement and scrapping renewable energy projects, means this bubble is bursting. And these troubles began even before Trump’s election. Despite an exuberant stock market in recent years, clean energy shares have lost half their value. After the US election, they immediately tumbled further, based on the expectation that subsidy spigots will be turned off in the US. The “net zero” green agenda, based on massive subsidies and expensive legislation, will likely cost $27 trillion per year across the century, making it utterly unattractive to most nations. Trump will dump these policies. Without huge transfers of wealth, China, India, and many other growing, developing countries will in effect disavow these policies, too. This leaves a ragtag group mostly from the EU, which can scarcely afford their own policies but have no ability to pay off everyone else. Fortunately, there is a much better and cheaper way to tackle climate change. Climate economists have long shown that investment in green energy research and development is the most efficient approach. For just a tiny fraction of current, inefficient green spending, we could quintuple global green innovation to drive down the price of new technologies like better batteries and fourth-generation nuclear. Innovating the price of green energy below fossil fuels is the only way to get everyone to switch. This approach can even help convince policymakers who are skeptical about climate change because they see the vast potential in cheaper energy. A dose of realism could also end the elites’ singular preoccupation with climate. The rich world faces many challenges: rapid aging, an urgent need for pension reform, growing healthcare costs, flatlining education results, and more military threats. The trillions wasted on current climate policies could be better spent. For the world’s poorer half, problems of poverty, hunger, curable infectious diseases, and corruption need more attention. Instead of the immense, and mostly poorly spent, climate bribes, this money could boost development across the global south. Climate campaigners can spend the next four years doubling down on policies that have failed for the past three decades and protesting the Trump Administration for its policy shift. Or they can use the opportunity to refocus on a smarter and much cheaper green innovation policy and address all the other urgent problems facing the world. —————- Subscribe to our daily newsletter By providing an email address. I agree to the Terms of Use and acknowledge that I have read the Privacy Policy . Bjorn Lomborg is President of the Copenhagen Consensus, a Visiting Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, and author of “False Alarm” and “Best Things First.”
Pornhub is not a pornography website, but a social media platform, legally speaking. That is the company’s view, at least, and the basis on which it says it does not have to meet a January deadline for age verification. Instead of being “providers of pornographic content published or displayed on the service,” the company says the rules that apply to it are those for social media and search engines, since it publishes content provided by users. The Age Verification Provider’s Association ( ) specifically warned Ofcom earlier in the year that this would happen, notes, but the regulator says websites must determine for themselves which section of the applies to the them. What form will take is uncertain, as the company has where it would have been obligated to implement age checks. Facial biometric age estimation and ID document uploads are among the options. Whatever the site chooses is now expected to be introduced in July, along with age checks by other online service providers that fall under “part 3.” A Spain-based pornography site operated by TechPump is the first in the country to implement age verification, according to an announcement from , which is supplying digital identity wallets to perform the verification. Gataca’s digital identity wallet is offered for free to consumers, and enables them to prove their age without sharing their identity or date of birth. The company says this protects minors from access to potentially harmful content, while preserving the anonymity of users. Gataca provides decentralized and self-sovereign identity (SSI) technologies, and launched its age verification solution in September. Users are issued a credential stating that they are 18 or 21 years old, and another that corresponds with a verified identity document. The process is managed by Gataca, and the adult website is not involved until the age assurance check is performed. The company says its digital ID wallet has been approved by the Spanish Data protection Agency (AEPD) for age data processing, and the age assurance method complies with the EU’s . | | | | | | | | |Super Micro Computer’s Surge! What Does It Mean for Gaming?
K.Griffin 3-9 1-1 7, Williams-Dryden 6-12 7-9 19, Davis 3-12 1-1 7, M.Griffin 1-2 0-0 2, Johnson 2-6 1-4 5, Hardewig 1-5 0-0 2, Noel 1-6 0-0 2, Watson 6-8 1-1 14, Ballard 1-3 0-0 3, Releford 0-2 0-0 0. Totals 24-65 11-16 61. Feddersen 6-8 2-4 17, Moni 2-10 0-0 6, M.Miller 5-9 0-0 15, Watkins 4-5 3-3 14, White 3-12 5-5 12, Dissette 0-0 2-2 2, Kasubke 2-5 0-0 5, Stefonowicz 0-1 2-2 2, Anderson 0-0 0-0 0. Totals 22-50 14-16 73. Halftime_N. Dakota St. 33-32. 3-Point Goals_West Georgia 2-18 (Ballard 1-2, Watson 1-2, Noel 0-2, Davis 0-3, K.Griffin 0-3, Hardewig 0-3, Johnson 0-3), N. Dakota St. 15-37 (M.Miller 5-9, Feddersen 3-4, Watkins 3-4, Moni 2-7, Kasubke 1-3, White 1-9, Stefonowicz 0-1). Rebounds_West Georgia 28 (Williams-Dryden 8), N. Dakota St. 41 (Feddersen 9). Assists_West Georgia 6 (Hardewig, Noel 2), N. Dakota St. 15 (Moni, Watkins 4). Total Fouls_West Georgia 13, N. Dakota St. 17. A_123 (4,974).Fernando, a hitman for a Swedish narcotics gang, checks his phone as it pings with his latest orders: collect the guns, go to the target’s front door and fire until he runs out of bullets. “Yeah, I understand brother,” he replies casually. He collects two pistols, a Kalashnikov rifle and an accomplice, before hurrying to their target in a suburb of Stockholm. But this is no ordinary gang hit. Fernando is 14, a teenage assassin who was playing the video game Fifa in his youth club when the orders arrived by text. He is one among dozens of , recruited by gang middle-men on social media who pay as much as 150,000 kroner (£13,000) per job. The number of murder cases involving child suspects in Sweden, which has the highest per capita rate of gun violence in the EU, has exploded over the past year. The figures rose from 31 counts in the first eight months of 2023 to 102 in the same period of this year, according to Sweden’s prosecution authority. Swedish prosecutors and police say the use of children – many of them from an impoverished or foreign background – to commit murders on that scale is unprecedented. One recent case involved a boy of just 11 years old. Children are the ideal catspaw for Sweden’s gangs: those aged under 15 are too young to be prosecuted, a quirk of Swedish law that critics say is in urgent need of reform. In text messages seen by The Sunday Telegraph, Fernando’s “handler”, a member of Sweden’s Foxtrot gang, sent him tips on how to get into the target’s apartment block and avoid getting caught. “If the [entrance] is locked, take a stone and break it,” the handler, with the alias “Louise Gucci”, tells Fernando. “Then you do your thing. After, when you come back to the hood, you put the Kalashnikov in the same place. Then go home and shower and wash your clothes.” The Telegraph has seen mobile phone footage, filmed by Fernando himself to prove he did the job, in which he creeps down an apartment block stairwell with his young accomplice and approaches their victim’s front door. Fernando holds the camera up as his accomplice raises the Kalashnikov and cocks the weapon. He fires through the door at least 15, continuing to pull the trigger as the pair retreat back down the stairwell. Then, they vanish into the night. Social media has played a major role in the crime surge, with gang handlers posting contracts on online message boards as if they were pick-up missions in a video game. “The group chats have adventurous and exciting names, like and ‘who wants to shoot someone in Stockholm’,” Lisa dos Santos, a Swedish prosecutor, told The Telegraph. “It’s not like before, when they used encrypted phones on a closed network. Now you can take a gang job on Snapchat.” More recently the gangs have sought out girls and children with mental disabilities, as they are less likely to arouse suspicion when they close in on their target. Ms de Santos recalled one case where a 16-year-old boy fatally shot a father-of-two at his home in Västberga and then went upstairs to kill his wife and children. The boy told the mother to turn around and shot her in the back. The bullet passed through her body and continued through a Winnie the Pooh toy held by her two-year-old child, who was also wounded. “It’s so brutal that you can hardly believe it,” Ms de Santos said. “The father was shot lying on the couch, the mother was shot in the back. She was a doctor, so she tried to save herself and the child, and they both survived. I would say that’s the worst thing I’ve ever had in my career.” The next day, the same teenager carried out another contract killing of a 60-year-old grandmother and a 20-year-old woman in Tullinge. The victims simply happened to be relatives of a rival gang member. After he was caught, a Swedish court handed the boy a record jail sentence of 12 years. However, such convictions are rare, as the gangs focus on recruiting under-15s who cannot be prosecuted. The current wave of gang violence, from December 2022 onwards, is being fuelled by a power struggle between Foxtrot, one of Sweden’s largest organised crime networks, and the rival Dalen faction. Both deal heavily in narcotics and are responsible for hundreds of shootings and bombings across Sweden. Smaller gangs have also joined the fray, with as many as alone. Two men at the heads of Foxtrot and Dalen have fled abroad, where they run their operations via middle-men. Rawa Majid, the leader of Foxtrot under the alias “Kurdish Fox”, is believed to be hiding in Turkey or Iran. The whereabouts of Mikael Tenezos, the leader of Dalen using the alias “The Greek”, is less clear, though in June one of his associates was arrested in northern Greece. Swedish police chiefs say they have been deeply disturbed by the young age of the contract killers and the lack of emotion they display when taken into custody. “The investigators tell me that some of them are very calm, they don’t cry, they say nothing or ‘no comment’. They are totally lacking in empathy,” said Carin Götblad, a police chief in Stockholm at the National Operations Department. “Some people say, ‘they don’t understand what they have done’. They may not fully understand the consequences of what they have done, but if you are 14 years old and you shoot a person in the head – you will understand that this man is dead,” she said. Many of the children come from a migrant background, such as those who arrived in Sweden during the 2015 refugee crisis. Some have , and that is “one piece” of the puzzle, she said. She stressed that child contract killers represented a tiny proportion of young people in Sweden. “Some progress” is also being made in co-operating with the countries where gang leaders are hiding to bring them to justice, she added. Evin Cetin, an author of a book on youth gangs and a former Swedish lawyer, has argued that these children more resemble “child soldiers” than mere criminals, due to the ways that they are groomed by gang members. The drugs trade, along with urban poverty and a deep sense of alienation in some , is fuelling the problem, she said. “[Swedish authorities] opened up the borders and welcomed a lot of refugees but didn’t open up the society,” Cetin said. “They were put in areas where 99 per cent of the people living there had a foreign background. “You have these areas where people have no money, no opportunities, and no chance to get a job ... they see themselves as being at the bottom of society.” She said that many of the children now working as contract killers were gradually drawn into the world of organised crime, starting with petty and then becoming addicted themselves. Some would fund their addiction by taking on contracts, while others risked being blackmailed by handlers who threatened to go after their families if they refused to co-operate. “They are child soldiers,” she said, drawing comparisons to Isis and the Lord’s Resistance Army in parts of Africa. “They are getting used by older people who manipulate them. They are doing it with drugs, they are isolating them from society. It’s really easy to control children – and it is scary how fast they can actually do it.” During her own research, Cetin encountered young men with a deeply nihilistic view of their life prospects. One asked her: “I don’t care about my own life so why should I care about others’ lives or the society’s life?” The Swedish government, propped up by the populist, anti-immigration Sweden Democrats party, has sought to impose tougher sentences for child gangsters. The for court witnesses and “safe zones” where police can search youths without suspicion of a crime. Critics say those measures are a sticking plaster for much deeper issues: gang grooming on social media, a lack of integration in Swedish society and a failure to address the international nature of the gangs. Some teachers are taking matters into their own hands, working around the clock to monitor their pupils for warning signs that they are falling under the sway of gangs. In a northwestern suburb of Stockholm, Nina Frödin is deputy principal of a Fryshuset (Frozen House) school which specialises in helping youths in gang-controlled areas. The Fryshuset association used to help reform neo-Nazi teenagers, but its focus has shifted to children at risk of being groomed by gangs like Foxtrot, which operate in the suburbs. Ms Frödin’s school is based in Kista, where around 80 per cent of the population comes from a migrant background. The school itself is bright and cheery, with students nattering next to the lockers and politely greeting visitors. In the principal’s office, a motorcycle is propped against the wall – he is a motorsports fan, and the students are helping him to refurbish it. “What we try to do here, and have been successful in doing, according to the police, is to have a warm atmosphere. We give them hugs, we talk to them, and try to reason with them. Some of us give out our private phone numbers, which is not normal, but we have to make a difference,” Ms Frödin said. The students are also given paid jobs so that they have no need to seek quick cash from gangs, such as mending broken furniture. Fryshuset tries to foster a sense of pride among the students for themselves and their communities, to combat the feeling that wider Swedish society views them as “other”. “With the first generation [of refugees and migrants to Sweden], they may not learn the language, and do cleaning jobs, things like that, and their children may see that Dad is working around the clock but doesn’t get anything for it,” Ms Frödin said. As for young girls, they “feel stared at in Sweden for wearing the hijab and told that they are being oppressed. If they go into the city they are told to leave the shops”. Feysal Ahmed, a student mentor at the school, said virtually every young person in the neighbourhood has been directly affected by gang violence. “When I was their age, maybe one per cent would raise their hand if asked that question. Now everyone raises their hand. That really got to me.” Not all of Sweden’s teenage contract killers escape the clutches of the law. Those aged over 15 are sentenced to detainment in young offenders’ institutes run by the Swedish National Board of Institutional Care (SiS). One of those youth homes, Klarälvsgården, is nestled deep within the vast, river-laden countryside of western Sweden. Once a jail for Swedish draft-dodgers, it now houses child gang members. The home is surrounded by tall, chain-link fences topped with barbed wire. Staff said they recently had to reinstall tougher fences as children would try to cut through them and escape. Most of the doors can only be opened by staff members, and there is an on-site courtroom where youngsters attend criminal trials by video link. While it also has classrooms, a football pitch and a basketball court, it is in effect a high-security prison. Klarälvsgården is the “end of the line” for these young men, says Stefan Fjällklang, a SiS psychologist. It is the last chance to get through to them before they are lost to the gangs forever. Around a year and a half ago, there were around 70 youths detained across the entire SiS network. Now the youth homes hold more than 180 children, more than double their maximum capacity. “There has been an avalanche of these kids coming into SiS and we were not really prepared for it, but that is the reality,” Mr Fjällklang said. “Three, four years ago, if the kids had a weapons possession charge, that would raise our eyebrows. The severity of the criminal behaviour, the callousness of those involved, is worse than it used to be. And the age is going down.” Staff said they had limited documentation to work with and often had to start from scratch when a child entered SiS care. Some have undiagnosed mental illnesses or disabilities, such as ADHD, and struggle with basic communication. For many of his charges coming from single-parent households, he might be the first positive male role model they have ever encountered. Despite welcomed reforms allowing the confiscation of mobile phones to stop gangs from contacting detainees, staff say they need more support from the government as they are overwhelmed by gang-related cases. “As a society we need to understand that this is a complicated issue and there is no quick fix ... these boys are sometimes deeply involved with criminal networks and cannot get out even if they wanted to,” said Andreas Gustafsson, unit leader at the SiS youth home in Hässleholm, near Malmo. “SiS is under a lot of pressure to provide more space for the long line of young boys who need secure placements. SiS cannot fulfill this task since it is an impossible task. The government on the other hand lacks a long-term strategic plan,” he added. Gunnar Strömmer, the Swedish justice minister, declined an interview with The Telegraph and his office did not respond to a request for comment. The Telegraph later spoke to a young man, a former SiS detainee, who wanted to turn his life around. He said he was placed into state care as a teenager for leading a narcotics gang where at least 50 members each brought in 150,000 kroner (£13,000) per fortnight. “I started by stealing car tyres. Then I thought, if I am going to do something, make it something big,” he said. “I don’t like being told what to do.” Asked about the rise of child contract killers in the gang world, he reacted with disgust: “That’s terrible. We didn’t use kids.” He now plans to study economics and start his own business. As for Fernando, the Fifa fan who filmed his friend firing a Kalashnikov through a door, there is another grim twist to his tale. Fernando is not his real name. In text messages discussing his contracts, he used the alias “Fernando Soucre”, apparently borrowed from a character in the TV drama Prison Break. No one was killed or injured in the shooting spree. But in a sign of the extraordinary callousness of these gangs, the target turned out not to be a gang member, but his ex-girlfriend. Fernando’s accomplice was caught and sent to a young offenders’ institute, while his handler, alias Louise Gucci, was jailed for 18 years. But as Fernando himself was just 14 at the time, too young to be prosecuted or sent to an SiS home, he never faced justice. His current whereabouts are unknown.Littler, who won the Grand Slam of Darts last week, hit checkouts of 170, 164 and 136 as he threatened to overturn an early deficit, but Humphries held his nerve to win the last three legs. “I’m really, really proud of that one to be honest,” Humphries told Sky Sports. FOR THE SECOND TIME 🏆🏆 Luke Humphries retains his 2024 Ladbrokes Players Championship Finals title, beating Luke Littler 11-7 in the final. — PDC Darts (@OfficialPDC) “I didn’t feel myself this week playing-wise, I felt like I was a dart behind in a lot of the scenarios but there’s something that Luke does to you. He really drives me, makes me want to be a better player and I enjoy playing him. “He let me in really early in that first session to go 4-1 up, I never looked back and I’m proud that I didn’t take my foot off the gas. These big games are what I live for. “Luke is a special talent and he was right – I said to him I’ve got to get these (titles) early before he wins them all. “I’d love to be up here and hitting 105 averages like Luke is all the time but he’s a different calibre, he’s probably the best player in the world right now but there’s something about me that never gives up. “This is a great way to go into the worlds.” HUMPHRIES GOES BACK-TO-BACK! 🏆 Luke Humphries retains his Players Championship Finals title! Cool Hand puts on an absolute clinic to defeat Luke Littler 11-7 in an epic final! 📺 | Final — PDC Darts (@OfficialPDC) Littler, who lost the world championship final to Humphries last year, said: “It was tough, missed a few doubles and if you don’t take chances early on, it’s a lot to come back. “I hit the 170 and the 164 but just didn’t have enough in the end. “It’s been a good past two weeks. I just can’t wait to go home, chill out, obviously practice at home for the worlds. That’s it now, leading up to the big one.”
UCF and Tulsa will test their mettle against each other on Saturday afternoon in the Orange Bowl Basketball Classic in Sunrise, Fla. The Knights will make their first appearance in the event since recording a two-point loss to Missouri in 2022, while Tulsa's last trip to the Orange Bowl Classic was a loss to Florida State in 2012. UCF (7-2) may have something to prove being away from Addition Financial Arena. The Knights are 7-0 at home, whereas a November trip to the Greenbrier Tip-Off in West Virginia produced an 86-70 loss to Wisconsin and a triple-overtime setback against LSU. The Knights relied heavily on their defense in Sunday's 66-51 win over Tarleton State. After a sluggish start offensively, UCF found its rhythm during a 37-point second half. Jordan Ivy-Curry finished with a game-high 16 points and freshman center Moustapha Thiam collected 10 points, nine rebounds and six blocks. UCF's Big 12 opener draws closer (at Texas Tech, Dec. 31), but head coach Johnny Dawkins remains focused on daily improvement. "I feel a sense of urgency to get better, not with regards to Big 12 play to be quite frank, but every game," Dawkins said. "I don't look too far in the future. Pretty much I've always been in the moment as a player and as a person, and so for me it's about just getting better because it's our standards." Tulsa (4-6) looks to stop a three-game slide following a 70-66 home loss to Southern University last Saturday. Keaston Willis scored in double figures for the sixth time this season, netting a season-high 23 points off the bench. But Isaiah Barnes, one of three Golden Hurricane players to start all 10 games, was injured in the first half and played only eight minutes. To complicate matters, head coach Eric Konkol's team is 0-6 when trailing at halftime. "We got to get some guys healthy that can be healthy for next Saturday (against UCF)," Konkol said. "We got a couple other guys dealing with some different things, but then (also) having some planning to figure out what's the best way going forward for this group." --Field Level Media
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