Aug 8, 2023 04:43 AM
(This post was last modified: Aug 8, 2023 04:46 AM by C C.)
Most new doctors and nurses in UK came from India: What a study showed
https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-new...46900.html
INTRO: Majority of care workers who were sponsored for skilled work visas in the UK in 2022 came from non-EU countries, a study claimed, adding that the maximum were from India and just one per cent belonged to EU countries. The report was made by Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford. UK's immigration system brought unprecedented number of workers from overseas into health and care workforce in the year 2022-2023, it said.
The study observed that India was the top country of nationality for newly-recruited overseas doctors (20 per cent) and nurses (46 per cent), followed by Nigeria, Pakistan and the Philippines. India (33 per cent) was also among top countries of citizenship for workers using Certificates of Sponsorship (CoS) in 2022, followed by Zimbabwe and Nigeria, it added... (MORE - details)
Chinese political slogans in London's graffiti area sparks controversy, counterprotest
https://www.voanews.com/a/chinese-politi...15806.html
INTRO: London’s Brick Lane, famed for its street art, appears to be the scene of the latest face-off between pro-democracy supporters and Chinese loyal to President Xi Jinping's rule. Over the weekend, big red Chinese characters painted on a white background, extolled “core socialist values,” sentiments first expressed by Xi’s predecessor, Hu Jintao, and embraced by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Most of the slogans have since been covered by anti-CCP sentiments, and a Chinese student who led the sloganeers says he has received death threats.
Early on Saturday, people whitewashed a section of the street art wall, then spray painted a set of 12 two-character words in Chinese. The words included “Democracy,” “Civility,” “Freedom,” “Equality,” “Justice” and “The Rule of Law.”
As the slogans attracted negative comments online, people went to Brick Lane to paint comments critical of Beijing such as “Free Uighurs” and “Free Tibet.” There were references to the bloody Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989.
When Voice of America visited the site on Monday afternoon, only the word “Friendly” remained on the wall with the other sentiments covered up by slogans targeting the CCP. It remains unclear if the people who painted the original slogans were being serious or ironic... (MORE - details)
All the evidence against the UK’s plans to expand oil and gas drilling
https://www.globalpolicyjournal.com/blog...s-drilling
INTRO: The UK will extract as much oil and gas from the North Sea as possible, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said last week as he announced more than 100 new drilling licenses. Only a few days earlier, United Nations chief António Guterres declared that record heat and extreme weather signalled a new era of “global boiling” had arrived.
How many new oil and gas fields can the climate sustain? None says David Waltham, a professor of geophysics at Royal Holloway University of London who has spent 36 years training young geologists to work in the fossil fuel industry. “We cannot safely set fire to all the fuel we’ve already found, so why look for more?” he asks.
This assessment is shared by the International Energy Agency (IEA), the UN and the Climate Change Committee (CCC) – the government’s own advisers on climate policy. Instead of expanding how much fossil fuel they extract, experts say countries must urgently reduce and even close down fossil fuel production.
An analysis of the world’s reserves in 2021 revealed how stark this decline must be to prevent catastrophic warming. Daniel Welsby, James Price and Steve Pye, the UCL energy researchers behind the research, said 60% of known oil and gas must remain underground in 2050 to prevent global temperatures exceeding 1.5°C above the pre-industrial average – the point at which damage to the climate is expected to rapidly become irreversible.
“Almost all of the world’s coal – 90% – will need to be spared from factory and power plant furnaces. Our analysis also showed that global oil and gas production must peak immediately and fall by 3% each year until mid-century,” they say.
The prime minister argued that pumping oil and gas in UK waters is at least greener than importing it from dirtier producers abroad. [...] Fortunately, Sunak also promised to share £20 billion (US$25.4 billion) in public funding for carbon capture and storage technology with the Acorn project near Peterhead in Aberdeenshire, north-east Scotland.
Historical research by Marc Hudson, a visiting fellow in science policy at the University of Sussex, shows how the future potential of this technology has been used to justify prolonging coal power and building gas power plants several times over the last two decades.
And evidence gathered by Nils Markusson indicates that hyping the promise of carbon capture and storage to offset rising emissions can actually delay necessary cuts to greenhouse gases... (MORE - missing details)
https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-new...46900.html
INTRO: Majority of care workers who were sponsored for skilled work visas in the UK in 2022 came from non-EU countries, a study claimed, adding that the maximum were from India and just one per cent belonged to EU countries. The report was made by Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford. UK's immigration system brought unprecedented number of workers from overseas into health and care workforce in the year 2022-2023, it said.
The study observed that India was the top country of nationality for newly-recruited overseas doctors (20 per cent) and nurses (46 per cent), followed by Nigeria, Pakistan and the Philippines. India (33 per cent) was also among top countries of citizenship for workers using Certificates of Sponsorship (CoS) in 2022, followed by Zimbabwe and Nigeria, it added... (MORE - details)
Chinese political slogans in London's graffiti area sparks controversy, counterprotest
https://www.voanews.com/a/chinese-politi...15806.html
INTRO: London’s Brick Lane, famed for its street art, appears to be the scene of the latest face-off between pro-democracy supporters and Chinese loyal to President Xi Jinping's rule. Over the weekend, big red Chinese characters painted on a white background, extolled “core socialist values,” sentiments first expressed by Xi’s predecessor, Hu Jintao, and embraced by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Most of the slogans have since been covered by anti-CCP sentiments, and a Chinese student who led the sloganeers says he has received death threats.
Early on Saturday, people whitewashed a section of the street art wall, then spray painted a set of 12 two-character words in Chinese. The words included “Democracy,” “Civility,” “Freedom,” “Equality,” “Justice” and “The Rule of Law.”
As the slogans attracted negative comments online, people went to Brick Lane to paint comments critical of Beijing such as “Free Uighurs” and “Free Tibet.” There were references to the bloody Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989.
When Voice of America visited the site on Monday afternoon, only the word “Friendly” remained on the wall with the other sentiments covered up by slogans targeting the CCP. It remains unclear if the people who painted the original slogans were being serious or ironic... (MORE - details)
All the evidence against the UK’s plans to expand oil and gas drilling
https://www.globalpolicyjournal.com/blog...s-drilling
INTRO: The UK will extract as much oil and gas from the North Sea as possible, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said last week as he announced more than 100 new drilling licenses. Only a few days earlier, United Nations chief António Guterres declared that record heat and extreme weather signalled a new era of “global boiling” had arrived.
How many new oil and gas fields can the climate sustain? None says David Waltham, a professor of geophysics at Royal Holloway University of London who has spent 36 years training young geologists to work in the fossil fuel industry. “We cannot safely set fire to all the fuel we’ve already found, so why look for more?” he asks.
This assessment is shared by the International Energy Agency (IEA), the UN and the Climate Change Committee (CCC) – the government’s own advisers on climate policy. Instead of expanding how much fossil fuel they extract, experts say countries must urgently reduce and even close down fossil fuel production.
An analysis of the world’s reserves in 2021 revealed how stark this decline must be to prevent catastrophic warming. Daniel Welsby, James Price and Steve Pye, the UCL energy researchers behind the research, said 60% of known oil and gas must remain underground in 2050 to prevent global temperatures exceeding 1.5°C above the pre-industrial average – the point at which damage to the climate is expected to rapidly become irreversible.
“Almost all of the world’s coal – 90% – will need to be spared from factory and power plant furnaces. Our analysis also showed that global oil and gas production must peak immediately and fall by 3% each year until mid-century,” they say.
The prime minister argued that pumping oil and gas in UK waters is at least greener than importing it from dirtier producers abroad. [...] Fortunately, Sunak also promised to share £20 billion (US$25.4 billion) in public funding for carbon capture and storage technology with the Acorn project near Peterhead in Aberdeenshire, north-east Scotland.
Historical research by Marc Hudson, a visiting fellow in science policy at the University of Sussex, shows how the future potential of this technology has been used to justify prolonging coal power and building gas power plants several times over the last two decades.
And evidence gathered by Nils Markusson indicates that hyping the promise of carbon capture and storage to offset rising emissions can actually delay necessary cuts to greenhouse gases... (MORE - missing details)