
Scotland overwhelmingly voted to remain in the EU in 2016. As the Scottish Trade Minister Ivan McKee explained in an interview with DW, the country is eager to promote itself in the face of ongoing UK political chaos.

Scotland overwhelmingly voted to remain in the EU in 2016. As the Scottish Trade Minister Ivan McKee explained in an interview with DW, the country is eager to promote itself in the face of ongoing UK political chaos.
silly deja vu!

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro have been making a diplomatic show of their friendship, leaving Washington wary of Russia’s participation in a Venezuelan military exercise.
Local officials charged eight people in the assault and asked the F.B.I. to look into bringing federal hate crime charges.
As state officials look into suspicious voting in a general election House race, they are also examining this year’s Republican primary for signs of fraud.
Fascist trying to tie up Hungary in a noose of his making. Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government will control hiring and promotion of judges in the new courts, which will rule on politically crucial matters like electoral law.
The former housing secretary in the Obama administration and the former mayor of San Antonio announced he was forming a presidential exploratory committee.
There is no magic – we need to change the way we are living or we die

Dr. Hans Friederich, the Director General of the International Bamboo and Rattan Organisation (INBAR) is calling on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiators to acknowledge bamboo as an important crop that can rapidly sequester carbon from the atmosphere. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS
By Isaiah Esipisu
KATOWICE, Poland, Dec 12 2018 (IPS)
As thousands of environmental technocrats, policy makers and academics work round the clock to come up with strategies for mitigation and adaptation to climate change at the United Nations’ conference in Katowice, Poland, one scientist is asking Parties to consider massive bamboo farming as a simple but rapid way of sequestering carbon from the atmosphere.
“According to the Guinness Book of Records, bamboo is the fastest growing plant in the world,” said Dr. Hans Friederich, the Director General of the International Bamboo and Rattan Organisation (INBAR).
Bamboo is actually a giant grass plant in the family of Poaceae. Some species grow tall and many people refer to them as bamboo trees.
And because it is a grass, if you cut it, it grows back so quickly, making it one of the most the ideal crop for rapid actions in terms of sequestering carbon from the atmosphere, according to Friederich, who has a PhD in groundwater hydrochemistry.
Depending on the species, bamboo can reach full maturity in one to five years, making it perhaps the only tree-like plant that can keep up with the rate of human consumption in terms of fuel, timber and deforestation, according to experts. This is unlike hardwood trees, which can take up to 40 years to grow to maturity.
The latest International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report points out that limiting global warming to 1.5°C would require rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society.
That calls for mitigation measures. And currently many countries prefer investment in forestry and reforestation mitigation.
Under normal circumstances, trees absorb carbon, and therefore it forms part of the weight of its biomass, but they take several years to do so. But when they are cut down and burned for fuel, the carbon escapes back into the atmosphere.
But now, Friederich believes that with bamboos in place people will not need to cut down trees for charcoal production because despite of it being a grass, it produces excellent charcoal that has been equated to charcoal from trees such as the acacia, eucalyptus and Chinese Fir.
“Apart from charcoal, there are many other long-lasting products that can be made from bamboo, and while they remain intact, they hold onto carbon the giant grass sequestered while still on the farm,” he told IPS in an interview at the 24th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP24). Today on Dec. 12 INBAR will be hosting a side event at COP24 titled “Bamboo and Rattan for Greening the Belt and Road” where the organisation will share its successful experiences and exchange thoughts on bamboo and rattan for green sustainable development.
In China, for example, bamboo is used for making drainage pipes, shells for transport vehicles, wind turbine blades, and shipping containers, among other things. It can also be used for making long-lasting furniture, parquet tiles, door and window frames and can even be used in the textile industry, among many other things.
Already, bamboo is slowly gaining popularity in some parts of the world due to its fast growth, and ability to produce long-lasting products.
Victor Mwanga retired from Kenya’s capital city of Nairobi in 2007 where he was a transport manager for a private company. He decided to start a bamboo seed production business which he called Tiriki Tropical Farms and Gardens. He is currently based in Tiriki, Vihiga County in Kenya’s Western Province.
“I receive customers from different parts of the county,” he told IPS in a telephone interview. “This thing [bamboo] has really gained popularity to a point that we are not able to satisfy the market,” said the farmer who sells each bamboo seedling for two to three dollars, depending on the size.
Wilbur Ottichilo, the Governor of Vihiga County, told IPS that his government is already investing in bamboo production. “We have started by training communities in various parts of the county on the importance of growing bamboo, and how they can make easy money from the crop,” he said.
And now, because of its fast growth and ability to sequester carbon from the atmosphere, Friederich is calling on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiators to acknowledge bamboo as an important crop that can rapidly sequester carbon from the atmosphere.
“We are already discussing with the secretariat of the UNFCCC and the IPCC to include bamboo into the language,” he said. In some cases, he added, countries such as Kenya, Rwanda and Ghana have included bamboo in their environment, climate change and renewable energy strategies.
However, said the scientist, this calls for governments to develop policy frameworks that will allow things to happen, looking at incentives to support the private sector, build capacity – train people so they know better how to make bamboo products and roll out small and medium enterprises.
The post Bamboo — the Magic Bullet to Rapid Carbon Sequestration? appeared first on Inter Press Service.
It looked like a happy holiday reunion: A 4-year-old boy wearing a Spider-Man baseball shirt sprinted across an airport baggage claim area in Austin, Texas, late Tuesday night and flung himself into his father’s arms, then immediately pulled toys out of his bag as if trying to catch his father up on all that was new in his life.
He had a Woody doll from “Toy Story,” a coloring book and stickers. There were a lot more toys in his suitcase, the boy squealed, between hugs and kisses. And, he announced, his eyes widening at the sight of a couple of fake reindeer displayed on baggage carousel 1, he’d seen reindeer for real. “Some of them have horns,” the boy giggled, poking his index fingers from each side of his head.
This reunion wasn’t about the holidays, however. It was the bittersweet homecoming of a father and son from El Salvador who’d been separated for more than 11 weeks and 1,800 miles for reasons the United States government still has not made entirely clear. Brayan and his father, Julio, are among a small, new wave of family separations that immigration lawyers and advocates say signal an unofficial continuation of the Trump administration’s controversial zero-tolerance policy.
Brayan, with striking reddish-blond hair, and his 27-year-old father came to the U.S. seeking refuge from gang violence in September but were separated at a border detention facility in Texas. Brayan was sent to temporary foster care in New York, Julio to an immigration detention facility outside San Antonio. ProPublica is not using their last name because the family is worried that Julio’s wife and stepson could face gang threats in El Salvador.
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When ProPublica asked about their case, a Customs and Border Protection spokesperson said the agency had separated them for Brayan’s safety, and had evidence that Julio was a gang member. But the agency did not provide that evidence to ProPublica or to an immigration court or explain what made Julio a danger to his son. So, two weeks ago, an immigration judge released Julio from detention on bond to pursue his asylum claim. And late Tuesday night, authorities returned Brayan to his dad in Austin, where Julio’s mother lives.
While waiting for his son to arrive at the airport, Julio, still bewildered, kept revisiting the anguish he and his son had suffered during their separation. “I still don’t understand why they did this to us,” he said. “I guess they can do whatever they want.”
But when Brayan glided down the escalator, Julio was all tears of joy. “He feels skinnier to me,” Julio gushed. “Isn’t he beautiful?”
A Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman would not say why the agency had reversed course and allowed Brayan to be reunited with Julio.
But Anthony Enriquez, director of the unaccompanied minors program at Catholic Charities, said the reunion proved there had likely never been any justification for the separation.
The government, he said, had not provided Catholic Charities with any evidence or arguments that Julio was unfit or otherwise unable to care for Brayan. The same, he said, was true for other recent separation cases he’s handled. “Because the children were ultimately released without any attempt to justify the separation, there probably was no justification.”
That senselessness, he said, cast a pall over Julio and Brayan’s reunion. “As happy as these endings may be,” Enriquez said, “it’s hard to celebrate when we don’t know why they were separated and what the magic words were that got this reunification done.”
Julio waits to see his son after being separated for more than 11 weeks and 1,800 miles.
(Ilana Panich-Linsman for ProPublica)
As ProPublica reported last month, nearly six months after a court ordered the government to end its zero-tolerance policy and stop separating immigrant children from their parents at the border, the government continues to do so. Authorities have been justifying the new separations by deeming the parents unfit, often due to vague and unsubstantiated criminal accusations. The separations are being conducted by Border Patrol officers in secret, without oversight by courts and child welfare agencies.
Once separated, advocates and social workers say, the children are arriving at shelters or foster care facilities without any notice that they came to the U.S. with their parents. Meanwhile, they say, no records are being kept ensuring children are not lost to their parents for unnecessarily long periods of time.
DHS sent Brayan to New York without indicating that he’d been separated from his father, and that his father was being detained in Texas. Authorities did not explain to Julio why they took away his son. A lawyer at Catholic Charities, which represents children at the foster care agency that provided a temporary home for Brayan, learned of the separation from ProPublica. That’s also how Julio’s lawyer learned about the government’s allegations against him.
“Every state and county in the country would prohibit the separations we are seeing at the border,” said Lee Gelernt, an attorney who led the ACLU’s lawsuit against the zero-tolerance policy. “But the government apparently believes that — in the immigration context — it is free from all the rules and counts on its actions at the border never coming to light.”
The ACLU’s suit resulted in an injunction, ordering the administration to stop separating children except in cases where a child’s safety was at risk. The government, Gelernt said, appears to be misusing that exception.
“We would have expected the government to cease all separations except where there was hard evidence that a parent genuinely poses a risk to a child,” he said. “But that does not appear to be the standard the government is using, in flagrant violation of the injunction.”
“The result,” he said, “is that little children are spending months all by themselves in government facilities wondering what happened to their parents.”
Julio wipes away tears as he reads a book with Brayan.
(Ilana Panich-Linsman for ProPublica)
DHS spokeswoman Katie Waldman declined to comment, except to say that such separations are “rare.” She said there have been 81 cases since the administration retreated from its zero-tolerance policy. But she declined to provide a list of those cases, or the nationalities and ages of the children affected. She also declined to answer questions about how separation decisions are made; about why information about the separations is kept secret; about the agency’s allegations against Julio; or about whether separating Julio and Brayan was justified.
Julio’s lawyer, Georgia Evangelista, said she requested information from the agencies involved in the separation, and has gotten no response. She said she doubts the government has any evidence against Julio.
Tuesday night, under the bright lights of the airport, very little of that seemed to matter to Julio and Brayan. After scooping up his little boy, Julio made a video call to his wife in El Salvador, so that she could see Brayan for herself. As the two of them sniffled and wiped tears from their faces, Brayan seemed oblivious at first, still focused on showing his dad his new toys. Then he looked at the phone and saw his mom and started to cry, too.
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