Germany is heading down a blind alley, the authors boldly state, because electric vehicles will "barely help to cut emissions" as battery-powered cars emit between 10% and "up to a quarter" more CO2 than a conventional diesel car.

The research trio compared the CO2 footprint of a Tesla Model 3 with those of a Mercedes 220d diesel car and a Mercedes C Class model converted from petrol to liquefied natural gas (LNG).

Their focus was on the cars' whole life cycle emissions — from the first nut welded right down to the cars' final kilometer. The life cycle in terms of distance driven was arbitrarily set at 150,000 kilometers (93,205 miles) for better judgement.

Prosecutors have filed new hate crime charges against a white man accused of burning down three African-American churches in the US state of Louisiana. Holden Matthews, 21, the son of a local sheriff deputy, learned of the new charges during a court appearance on Monday when he pleaded not guilty. During the hearing, the judge denied his bond request due to a "substantial amount of evidence" against him.
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Among evidence presented during the pre-trial appearance, in which Mr Matthews was displayed on video feed from jail, Mr Browning testified that the suspect documented his alleged crimes through videos and photos on his phone. After he was arrested, prosecutors found pictures of the flames that appeared to have been taken before firefighters arrived to extinguish them.

They also found news reports on his phone in which he had superimposed himself on those reports in order to claim responsibility while talking to a friend online. "He actually superimposed himself on those news reports, claiming responsibility for these fires," Mr Browning said. Location data from his mobile phone and surveillance footage of his vehicle also tied him to each of the crime scenes.

Harris also listens to music—shocking, I know. Her 45-track Black Music Month playlist, created for Huffington Post in June 2017, included A Tribe Called Quest, Lauryn Hill, The Notorious B.I.G., Childish Gambino and Andra Day.

The media loves a politician who works out. Look no further than Gillibrand, who has run two marathons and plays on the congressional women's softball team.

Sen. Klobuchar enjoys hiking and is a barre-class devotee. (“It’s a reminder that we must all be humble," she told Vogue, "because I’m like the worst in the class.”)

Artemis O'Rourke may get all the glory, but have you met Warren's own First Dog contender, Bailey the golden retriever? Warren's preferred beer is Michelob Ultra, or, as she jokingly calls it, "the club soda of beers."

If our politics is becoming less rational, crueller and more divisive, this rule of public life is partly to blame: the more disgracefully you behave, the bigger the platform the media will give you. If you are caught lying, cheating, boasting or behaving like an idiot, you’ll be flooded with invitations to appear on current affairs programmes. If you play straight, don’t expect the phone to ring.
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In the US, the phenomenon is more advanced. G Gordon Liddy served 51 months in prison as a result of his role in the Watergate conspiracy, organising the burglary of the Democratic National committee headquarters. When he was released, he used his notoriety to launch a lucrative career. He became the host of a radio show syndicated to 160 stations, and a regular guest on current affairs programmes. Oliver North, who came to public attention for his leading role in the Iran-Contra scandal, also landed a syndicated radio programme, as well as a newspaper column, and was employed by Fox as a television show host and regular commentator. Similarly, Darren Grimes, in the UK, is widely known only for the £20,000 fine he received for his activities during the Brexit campaign. Now he’s being used by Sky as a pundit.

The most revolting bigots, such as Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump, built their public profiles on the media platforms they were given by attacking women, people of colour and vulnerable minorities. Trump leveraged his notoriety all the way to the White House. Boris Johnson is taking the same track, using carefully calibrated outrage to keep himself in the public eye.

On both sides of the Atlantic, the unscrupulous, duplicitous and preposterous are brought to the fore, as programme-makers seek to generate noise. Malicious clowns are invited to discuss issues of the utmost complexity. Ludicrous twerps are sought out and lionised. The BBC used its current affairs programmes to turn Nigel Farage and Jacob Rees-Mogg into reality TV stars, and now they have the nation in their hands.

Despite its age, the Spencer Dam was still functional, and valuable.

Built in the late 1920s and owned by the Nebraska Public Power District since the early 1970s, it could still generate electricity when the utility needed it.

And it was in transition. NPPD was in the process of selling the dam, and its easements and water rights, to several northern Nebraska natural resources districts for $9 million, said utility spokesman Mark Becker.

He wasn't sure where the deal stood after its failure, he said. And NPPD didn't yet know why Spencer Dam failed, though a helicopter carried a crew to the site Friday to examine what remained.

It was a flow-through hydroelectric dam, with garage-type doors that let water through, and Becker said it wasn't known whether the doors had been open or closed at the time. They disappeared downstream, he said.

Spencer Dam, about 50 miles (80 km) from the mouth of the Niobrara, was the last operational hydroelectric plant on the river. The dam was built in 1927 and was operated by the Nebraska Public Power District. It includes two Westinghouse generators, with a combined capacity of 3,000 KW. In a 2015 agreement with Nebraska local and state government entities, NPPD agreed to decommission the dam in 2017. The dam was breached by flooding caused by a March 2019 storm.

The world’s optimum population is less than two billion people – 5.6 billion fewer than on the planet today, he argues, and there is an increasing toxification of the entire planet by synthetic chemicals that may be more dangerous to people and wildlife than climate change.

Ehrlich also says an unprecedented redistribution of wealth is needed to end the over-consumption of resources, but “the rich who now run the global system – that hold the annual ‘world destroyer’ meetings in Davos – are unlikely to let it happen”.
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“Population growth, along with over-consumption per capita, is driving civilisation over the edge: billions of people are now hungry or micronutrient malnourished, and climate disruption is killing people.”
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“It is a near certainty in the next few decades, and the risk is increasing continually as long as perpetual growth of the human enterprise remains the goal of economic and political systems,” he says. “As I’ve said many times, ‘perpetual growth is the creed of the cancer cell’.”

It is the combination of high population and high consumption by the rich that is destroying the natural world, he says. Research published by Ehrlich and colleagues in 2017 concluded that this is driving a sixth mass extinction of biodiversity, upon which civilisation depends for clean air, water and food.

The solutions are tough, he says. “To start, make modern contraception and back-up abortion available to all and give women full equal rights, pay and opportunities with men. “I hope that would lead to a low enough total fertility rate that the needed shrinkage of population would follow. [But] it will take a very long time to humanely reduce total population to a size that is sustainable.”

He estimates an optimum global population size at roughly 1.5 to two billion, “But the longer humanity pursues business as usual, the smaller the sustainable society is likely to prove to be. We’re continuously harvesting the low-hanging fruit, for example by driving fisheries stocks to extinction.”
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He treats this risk with characteristic dark humour: “The first empirical evidence we are dumbing down Homo sapiens were the Republican debates in the US 2016 presidential elections – and the resultant kakistocracy. On the other hand, toxification may solve the population problem, since sperm counts are plunging.”

Multiple fatalities at two locations and situation ongoing, with one suspect in custody, police confirm

New Zealand police confirm that there have been multiple fatalities at two locations – one mosque on Dean’s Road and one on Linwood Avenue. The police say one suspect is in custody, but that the situation is still ongoing and it is an active shooter situation.

KEY POINTS:

• Dozens feared killed as at least two gunmen open fire at two central Christchurch mosques

• City in lockdown, with reports of a third shooting scene and a car bomb in Strickland St

• One gunman, believed to be Australian, filmed as he shot victims in the mosque - and wrote a manifesto declaring his intentions