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Britain and France both posted record high rises in the daily number of coronavirus cases on Saturday evening.
France reported 17,000 new cases, with 49 additional deaths on the same day. More than 32,000 people have now died of the virus in France, and more than 606,625 people have been infected. The rate of positive coronavirus tests rose to 7.9% from 7.7% in the country.
Bars and restaurants are closed in the southern port of Marseilles, and rising infection rates mean similar closures could soon apply in the capital, Paris. Mask-wearing is compulsory, even outdoors, in a number of French cities.
In Britain, the Health Ministry reported almost 13,000 new cases, almost double the cases reported on Friday. The British government said the sudden spike was due to a "technical issue" which caused a delay in reporting previous cases.
Britain's coronavirus death toll stands at 42,317 — higher than any other country in Europe. In a bid to curb the spread of the virus, the government has imposed restrictions on social gatherings and warned that tougher measures could follow if infection rates don't start to drop.
Europe
Europe is in the middle of another surge in cases, as new restrictions are being placed across the continent.
Germany: Data from the Robert Koch Institute showed that cases increased by 2,279 on Sunday. The death toll rose by 2, taking the total to 9,529.
Italy: The country reported 2,844 new cases on Saturday, its highest tally since April, when the country was still in lockdown. The death toll rose by 27. The Italian government announced measures to curb the rise in numbers to be introduced soon, which will make wearing masks in public compulsory.
Ukraine: Former President Petro Poroshenko has been hospitalized for double pneumonia, according to his wife. "Despite the fact that my husband has double pneumonia, he is strong-willed and is demonstrating this in the fight against the disease," Maryna Poroshenko said. The 55-year-old tested positive for the virus just a few days ago.
Ireland: The chief medical officer of Ireland said the country was seeing rising numbers after the country reported the highest rise in cases since April. Ireland has taken measures such as banning indoor restaurants and travel in and out of the capital, Dublin.
Poland: After reporting 1,934 new cases on Sunday, Poland's total caseload has cracked the 100,000 mark. The country has registered 100,074 cases and 2,630 since the pandemic began. Though it was one of the first countries to go into lockdown, Poland's conservative government has not committed to another despite recording three daily case records in the past week.
Asia
India: The South Asian nation has recorded 75,829 new coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours, bringing the total number of infections to 6.5 million, according to data from the Health Ministry.
India's death toll of almost 102,000 is the world's third-highest behind the United States and Brazil.
The world's second-most populous country is registering the highest number of daily cases globally, but it's also reporting that ill people are recovering at a rate of more than 83%. Still, experts warn India's lower rates of testing compared to many other countries could mean its real tally may be much higher.
As infections continue to surge, India's Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said the country hopes to have 500 million doses of coronavirus vaccine by July of next year.
Americas
USA: President Donald Trump, who tested positive for coronavirus, put out a video of himself saying the coming days will be "most crucial." He and First Lady Melania Trump are receiving treatment at the Walter Reed Hospital.
Africa
Tunisia: The North African nation is set to ban all public gatherings, and reduce working hours for public sector employees. The decision was taken due to the rise in coronavirus cases, over fears that the healthcare sector would be unable to cope with the high numbers. The country faces a shortage of intensive care beds.
Reposted with permission from Deutsche Welle.
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By Peter Giger
The speed and scale of the response to COVID-19 by governments, businesses and individuals seems to provide hope that we can react to the climate change crisis in a similarly decisive manner - but history tells us that humans do not react to slow-moving and distant threats.
A Game of Jenga
<p>Think of it as a game of Jenga and the planet's climate system as the tower. For generations, we have been slowly removing blocks. But at some point, we will remove a pivotal block, such as the collapse of one of the major global ocean circulation systems, for example the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), that will cause all or part of the global climate system to fall into a planetary emergency.</p><p>But worse still, it could cause runaway damage: Where the tipping points form a domino-like cascade, where breaching one triggers breaches of others, creating an unstoppable shift to a radically and swiftly changing climate.</p><p>One of the most concerning tipping points is mass methane release. Methane can be found in deep freeze storage within permafrost and at the bottom of the deepest oceans in the form of methane hydrates. But rising sea and air temperatures are beginning to thaw these stores of methane.</p><p>This would release a powerful greenhouse gas into the atmosphere, 30-times more potent than carbon dioxide as a global warming agent. This would drastically increase temperatures and rush us towards the breach of other tipping points.</p><p>This could include the acceleration of ice thaw on all three of the globe's large, land-based ice sheets – Greenland, West Antarctica and the Wilkes Basin in East Antarctica. The potential collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet is seen as a key tipping point, as its loss could eventually <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/324/5929/901" target="_blank">raise global sea levels by 3.3 meters</a> with important regional variations.</p><p>More than that, we would be on the irreversible path to full land-ice melt, causing sea levels to rise by up to 30 meters, roughly at the rate of two meters per century, or maybe faster. Just look at the raised beaches around the world, at the last high stand of global sea level, at the end of the Pleistocene period around 120,0000 years ago, to see the evidence of such a warm world, which was just 2°C warmer than the present day.</p>Cutting Off Circulation
<p>As well as devastating low-lying and coastal areas around the world, melting polar ice could set off another tipping point: a disablement to the AMOC.</p><p>This circulation system drives a northward flow of warm, salty water on the upper layers of the ocean from the tropics to the northeast Atlantic region, and a southward flow of cold water deep in the ocean.</p><p>The ocean conveyor belt has a major effect on the climate, seasonal cycles and temperature in western and northern Europe. It means the region is warmer than other areas of similar latitude.</p><p>But melting ice from the Greenland ice sheet could threaten the AMOC system. It would dilute the salty sea water in the north Atlantic, making the water lighter and less able or unable to sink. This would slow the engine that drives this ocean circulation.</p><p><a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/atlantic-conveyor-belt-has-slowed-15-per-cent-since-mid-twentieth-century" target="_blank">Recent research</a> suggests the AMOC has already weakened by around 15% since the middle of the 20th century. If this continues, it could have a major impact on the climate of the northern hemisphere, but particularly Europe. It may even lead to the <a href="https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/handle/10871/39731?show=full" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">cessation of arable farming</a> in the UK, for instance.</p><p>It may also reduce rainfall over the Amazon basin, impact the monsoon systems in Asia and, by bringing warm waters into the Southern Ocean, further destabilize ice in Antarctica and accelerate global sea level rise.</p>The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation has a major effect on the climate. Praetorius (2018)
Is it Time to Declare a Climate Emergency?
<p>At what stage, and at what rise in global temperatures, will these tipping points be reached? No one is entirely sure. It may take centuries, millennia or it could be imminent.</p><p>But as COVID-19 taught us, we need to prepare for the expected. We were aware of the risk of a pandemic. We also knew that we were not sufficiently prepared. But we didn't act in a meaningful manner. Thankfully, we have been able to fast-track the production of vaccines to combat COVID-19. But there is no vaccine for climate change once we have passed these tipping points.</p><p><a href="https://www.weforum.org/reports/the-global-risks-report-2021" target="_blank">We need to act now on our climate</a>. Act like these tipping points are imminent. And stop thinking of climate change as a slow-moving, long-term threat that enables us to kick the problem down the road and let future generations deal with it. We must take immediate action to reduce global warming and fulfill our commitments to the <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Paris Agreement</a>, and build resilience with these tipping points in mind.</p><p>We need to plan now to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, but we also need to plan for the impacts, such as the ability to feed everyone on the planet, develop plans to manage flood risk, as well as manage the social and geopolitical impacts of human migrations that will be a consequence of fight or flight decisions.</p><p>Breaching these tipping points would be cataclysmic and potentially far more devastating than COVID-19. Some may not enjoy hearing these messages, or consider them to be in the realm of science fiction. But if it injects a sense of urgency to make us respond to climate change like we have done to the pandemic, then we must talk more about what has happened before and will happen again.</p><p>Otherwise we will continue playing Jenga with our planet. And ultimately, there will only be one loser – us.</p>Trending
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