AlastairJNZ

Victory! We’ve won major legal battle exposing car industry lobbying After two years we can finally reveal “backdoor channels where corporate money hijacks our democracy.”

🚨 SCOOP: Toyota and Aston Martin secretly lobbied a Conservative cabinet minister to weaken Britain’s climate policy.

We only know this because Democracy for Sale won a two-year legal fight to force the government to hand over the documents.

democracyforsale.substack.com/p/victory-we...

What RFK Jr. doesn’t want you to know is that in 2019, his anti-vax nonsense caused a measles outbreak in Samoa that infected 5700 and killed 83 people, most of them children.

Cop30 live: standoff over inclusion of fossil fuel phaseout in final text escalates Following a dramatic fire yesterday, the climate summit is due to finish this evening, but disagreements over the final text look difficult to resolve

Full text of letter leaked to Guardian saying at least 29 nations won't agree a deal without a road map for a phase-out of fossil fuels

"true leadership is .. not lowering expectations to accommodate the most reluctant"

#cop30
www.theguardian.com/world/live/2...

Excerpt from a BBC article: ""We usually work, 10, 11 or 12 hours a day," says a 49-year-old woman from Jiangxi unwilling to give her name. "On Sundays we work around three hours less." She is in an alleyway, where a dozen people are huddled around a row of bulletin boards. They are reading the job ads on the board, while examining the stitching on a pair of chinos draped over it. This is Shein's supply chain. The factories are contracted to make clothes on order - some small, some big. If the chinos are a hit, orders will ramp up and so must production. Factories then hire temporary workers to meet the demand their permanent staff cannot fulfil. The migrant worker from Jiangxi is looking for a short-term contract - and the chinos are an option. "We earn so little. The cost of living is now so high," she says, adding that she hopes to make enough to send back to her two children who are living with their grandparents. "We get paid per piece," she explains. "It depends how difficult the item is. Something simple like a t-shirt is one-two yuan [less than a dollar] per piece and I can make around a dozen in an hour.""

The people who make Shein's clothes labor for ten to twelve hours per day (in violation of China's labor laws), some up to seven days a week, and earn as little as 15 to 30 cents per t-shirt.

Time to move past the neverending trial stage. Yes, basic income reduces homelessness.

Stuff NZ has a headline that it's "not always predictable" that a man will murder his family AND an article about a murderer with decades of partner stalking & sex crime history that police weren't concerned by before he murdered, AND one about *yet another* cop covering up other cop sex crimes

Nice pink form of Thelymitra ixioides (spotted sun orchid) near Mallacoota, East Gippsland, VIC.

Nice pink form of Thelymitra ixioides (spotted sun orchid) near Mallacoota, East Gippsland, VIC. Have seen one or two pink forms at this location in past years but haven't seen them every spring. #Orchids #OzPlants #InTheField

CIA concludes Saudi crown prince ordered Jamal Khashoggi’s assassination Audio recordings, intercepted phone calls and other intelligence link Mohammed bin Salman to killing that Saudis say was conducted by rogue elements.

A reminder that seven years ago almost to the day, the CIA determined that Mohammed Bin Salman ordered the killing of @washingtonpost.com journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

I hired and worked with Jamal for a year.

www.washingtonpost.com/world/nation...

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A grass spikelet with green and white overlapping scales (glumes and lemmas, each with a long bristle at the tip. One floret is open and its three yellow anthers are dangling out on very thin filaments. Two feathery stigmas are also poking out.

Red tussock (Chionochloa rubra) is flowering in the garden now. One floret in this spikelet is open, presenting two fluffy stigmas, one on each side of the spikelet, and three dangling stamens. #bloomscrolling 🇳🇿🌱

Kash Patel’s Acts of Service The F.B.I. director isn’t just enforcing the President’s agenda at the Bureau—he’s seeking retribution for its past investigations of Donald Trump.

“A foreign counterintelligence agent was pulled off a case involving China to walk around D.C., making D.W.I. arrests...”

www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

Fast-track changes may speed up ministers’ pet projects, critic warns

Ministers are accused of trying to get their hands back on the wheel with amendments to the Fast-track Approvals Act

A Collision with Space Debris Leaves 3 Chinese Astronauts Stranded in Orbit The only craft docked at Tiangong space station has been damaged and “does not meet the release conditions for a safe manned return.”

The only craft docked at Tiangong space station has been damaged and “does not meet the release conditions for a safe manned return.”

Bloody Hell. Carbon price crashes under NZ$40/tonne.

As dozens of frog species have declined across Central America, scientists have witnessed a remarkable chain of events: With fewer tadpoles to eat mosquito larvae, rates of mosquito-borne malaria in the region have climbed, resulting in a fivefold increase in cases. https://wapo.st/4paBuuT

Why continue to pretend that Tr*mp ever had any intention of actually fixing inflation?

This Edwardian glass slide shows St Leonard's Church, also known as Church in the Wood, in Hollington, Hastings. The church dates to the 13th century, built on the site of an earlier chapel. As a church crawler, I'm especially drawn to the shape of the tower - very different to the ones I'm used to in the West Country. I'd love to visit one day! 📸 Church in the Wood, Hollington, Hastings. Likely Edwardian era. The Schoolmasters Slides – associated with Chas F. Hayward. Lemuel Lyes Collection.

I’ll be sharing more images as I work through them – so if scenes of life in Edwardian Britain interest you, then keep an eye out!

Also, feel free to follow my Facebook page for more information about this series - www.facebook.com/historygeeknz

Church in the Wood, Hollington, Hastings.

Candid photo of two young Edwardian scholars, possibly students of Uppingham School, lying on the grass with their books out, looking towards the camera. The Schoolmaster's Slides. Lemuel Lyes Collection.

Something special to share. I’ve been up to my old tricks again – scanning, restoring, and researching a collection of over 600 Edwardian-era glass slides that were found in an attic.

I've connected them to Birmingham schoolmaster and amateur photographer Charles Francis Hayward.

Real reason this govt wants to spend 100 billion on roads finally becomes clear: they’re creating fresh assets for future National govts to sell so they can go on claiming to be “grown up” and “mature” about “economic reality”

Department of Education Proposal Excludes Public Health Degrees from “Professional Degree” Definition Discover the new results and implications of Dept of Ed consensus regarding professional degree programs and public health education.

It really seems like this administration is trying to eliminate the field of public health. MPHs and DrPHs will no longer be considered "professional degrees" by the DOE and, therefore, will face limits to accessing federal student loans.

aspph.org/department-o...

One ~182km x ~211km solar thermal plant could provide all of America’s electricity, including a fully-electrified land transport sector.

100% clean power from just 0.39% of U.S land.

That’s why renewables are constantly under attack from the fossil fuel industry and their paid mouthpieces.

Top police executive who ‘did not disclose’ McSkimming material for reference now works for Justice A former senior police employee who the IPCA found failed to disclose relevant information in a McSkimming reference now works for the Ministry of Justice

Latest from the McSkimming files

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Rain radar map of Auckland region at 7:20am, showing bands of rain in shades blue and yellow approaching the city from the south west. Hand-sketched red arrows indicate the direction of travel

A towering cumulonimbus cloud looms over the Auckland waterfront skyline

Big cloud energy

We’re with Meridian, but got no email like that - just a bill on Monday.

‘Like a cockroach’ - Regulatory Standards Bill passes third reading NZ’s Regulatory Standards Bill passes final reading, creating a board to judge laws by “good lawmaking” principles, amid strong opposition over Te Tiriti and democratic impacts.

Shameful

Carbon Catch-Up: Climate change, greenhouse gas emissions of NZ's largest companies under microscope New Zealand’s largest listed companies are facing changing requirements to reveal their carbon footprints – and BusinessDesk’s latest Carbon C...

Nearly half of NZ top 50 companies increased their climate pollution. Biggest increase from the biggest polluter - Fonterra businessdesk.co.nz/article/poli...

One frame from a crazy multi coloured aurora dancing in the southern skies as I was taking a timelapse.

Only 1/2hr after sunset, while taking a timelapse, this was happening in front of my camera (timelapse processing later).

This was about 1/4 of the #Aurora happening off the South Otago coast.

#Nikon #NZ #AuroraAustralis

Nikon Z7ii 20mmS ISO f/1.8 1.3 seconds

Remember when the Trump admin kept promising to release the Epstein files? No? We’ve got you.

Watch this supercut: zeteo.com/p/every-time...