World News

How we get off fossil fuels looks very roughly like this:

• Generate electricity without burning stuff (wind, solar, geothermal, storage, and maybe nuclear if it's cheap enough)
• Electrify everything we can (electric vehicles, elecrified mass transit, ebikes, heat pumps for home and district heat, nitrate fertilizer manufacturing, etc)
• Stop doing the things we can't (a few industrial processes)

Ukraine said it took a Russian position using just drones and ground robots.

Zelenskyy said it was a wartime first, and no Ukrainian infantry was involved.

He said robots have done over 22,000 missions in three months, keeping many soldiers from harm.

Swiss Ice Hockey coach Patrick Fischer has admitted he used a certificate falsely claiming he had been vaccinated against COVID-19 to get around China’s travel restrictions for the 2022 Winter Olympics, where he led his nation.

In a statement, Fischer, who remains in charge of the Swiss team, said he made a “serious mistake in this matter” by travelling to Beijing with the men’s team using false paperwork.

"I’m very sorry if I’ve disappointed people with this situation,” Fischer said. “I was in an extraordinary personal crisis because I didn’t want to be vaccinated. At the same time I certainly didn’t want to let my team down at the Olympic Games.”

Swiss public broadcaster SRF said it confronted Fischer with documents showing he was fined nearly 39,000 Swiss francs ($50,000) by local authorities in 2023 for document forgery after buying the certificate on social media. SRF said he went public with his admission shortly after.

A prolonged disruption in the Strait of Hormuz could result in a global food “catastrophe”, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has warned, as shipments of critical agricultural inputs remain blocked in the key waterway due to the US-Israel war on Iran.

Food prices have not risen yet because existing stocks are absorbing the shock, the United Nations body’s chief economist, Maximo Torero, said in an interview on Monday, alongside David Laborde, director of FAO’s agrifood economics division.

But if traffic through the strait does not resume, the shocks to energy and fertiliser markets will translate into higher commodity and retail prices later this year and into 2027, Laborde added.

Exports of 20 to 45 percent of key agrifood inputs rely on sea passage through the Strait of Hormuz, according to the FAO.

Italy has suspended a defence agreement with Israel that involves the exchange of military equipment and technology research, according to Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.

“In view of the current situation, the government has decided to suspend the automatic renewal of the defence agreement with Israel,” Meloni said on Tuesday on the sidelines of an event in Verona, according to the Italian news agencies ANSA and AGI.

Approved by Israel in 2006, the agreement is renewed automatically every five years. It calls for cooperation across defence industries, education and training of military personnel, research and development, and information technology.

Meloni’s right-wing government has been one of Israel’s closest allies in Europe, but in recent weeks, it has criticised Israeli attacks on Lebanon.

An 86-year-old French woman who moved to the US last year after rekindling a 1960s romance is being detained at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) centre in the state of Louisiana.

The son of Marie-Thérèse, from the city of Nantes, sounded the alarm after his mother was arrested in Anniston, Alabama, earlier in April.

"They handcuffed her hands and feet like she was a dangerous criminal," he told French outlet Ouest-France.

A former student opened fire at a high school in southeastern Turkey on Tuesday, wounding at least 16 people, before killing himself, an official said.

The 18-year-old attacker, armed with a shotgun, fired randomly inside a vocational high school in Siverek, Sanliurfa province. He later killed himself with the same shotgun after being “cornered by police,” Gov. Hasan Sildak said.

The attack left 10 students, four teachers, a canteen employee and a police officer hurt, Sildak said. While most of them were being treated in Siverek, five of the teachers and students were transferred to a hospital in the provincial capital because their conditions were more serious, the governor said.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/45587578

Does the world need more billionaires? Guess we will soon find out, as they multiplying now, and not even naturally!