June 15, 2016 (this day)
Alke Stilwell
'The year to June' in a story dated today 'November 24 2022' here means 'the 12-month period that ended with June 2022'. The graph included with the story makes this clear. It shows an increasing trend in 12 month periods ending in the months of June 2020, 2021, and 2022.
In your example, this means UK net migration was continuously hitting 504,000 again and again for the 12 month period starting July 1 of last year and finishing June 30 of this year. After June 30, it either started hitting a different number, or stopped hitting any number.
To see the southernmost land border of Europe, you have to visit Africa. There, you'll find two cities perched on the edge of the Mediterranean Sea - Melilla and Ceuta. They're politically part of Spain, geographically surrounded by Morocco. Melilla tells a story about itself. You can find it on a stone tile in the narrow, winding streets of the old city. The tile has the letter M in four alphabets - Arabic, Latin, Hebrew and Hindi. It represents four groups of people who've lived in this city together for centuries. But like every story of a place, the one Melilla tells is part reality, part mythology. Muslims living here weren't granted citizenship until the 1980s. Before that, they were stateless. And today, the city's history as a cultural mixing bowl is at odds with its place on the front lines of a global upheaval.
SHAPIRO: The fence is actually multiple fences, four layers deep, more than 20 feet tall, fortified with armed guards patrolling the perimeter. All of that armor is paid for by the European Union to keep out people who've traveled thousands of miles to enter this fortified city.
SHAPIRO: Abdo Mohemad Ahmad left his home in Sudan when he was 19 years old. Now he's 23, in a holding pattern at this migrant center, waiting for permission to go to the Spanish mainland. He lists the countries that he's been through on this long, strenuous journey - Sudan, Egypt, Libya...
SHAPIRO: Be gone in 24 hours or there would be a problem, authorities said. That was June 23. When they charged the border crossing the next day, Steven reached the other side. His younger brother did not. After six years traveling together, they're now on opposite sides of the fence, in two different countries. The man who oversees this migrant center and others is based in Madrid. And while Carlos Montero wouldn't allow us to tour the facility in Melilla, he did agree to talk with us over Zoom.
You can still use DEN Reserve, a program that allows you to reserve a spot in line at Bridge Security. Basically, three days before your flight, you can book your spot between 5 a.m. and 5 p.m. and arrive either 15 minutes early or late. (Side note: I used this once in late July and got to my gate from passenger drop-off in less than 10 minutes.)
U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Steven T. Mnuchin delivered the closing remarks to the Plenary, highlighting the critical role of the FATF, the importance of the new global standards agreed by FATF this week to protect virtual assets from abuse by money launderers, terrorist financiers, and other illicit actors; action on Iran; and agreement to strengthen the standards to counter the financing of the proliferation of WMD.
Under the U.S. Presidency, in June 2019, the FATF agreed to pursue further work to strengthen the FATF Standards on countering the financing of proliferation by requiring jurisdictions and private sector entities to understand and mitigate their proliferation financing risks, as well as by enhancing requirements for domestic cooperation and coordination on proliferation financing. FATF has conducted extensive analysis on a range of proposals, but has agreed to prioritize this work moving forward. Other options considered included new requirements to use criminal justice measures and financial intelligence, expanded targeted financial sanctions tools, and more effective mechanisms to ensure international information sharing on proliferation financing activity. The FATF agreed to potentially consider these other options at a later date.
FATF has identified Panama as a jurisdiction with strategic AML/CFT deficiencies. The country has developed an action plan with the FATF to address the most serious deficiencies. The FATF welcomed the high-level political commitment of Panama to this action plan.
The FATF decided at its meeting this week to continue the suspension of counter-measures, with the exception of the FATF calling upon members and urging all jurisdictions to require increased supervisory examination for branches and subsidiaries of financial institutions based in Iran, in line with the February 2019 Public Statement.
Iran will remain on the FATF Public Statement until the full Action Plan has been completed. Until Iran implements the measures required to address the deficiencies identified with respect to countering terrorism financing in the Action Plan, the FATF will remain concerned with the terrorist financing risk emanating from Iran and the threat this poses to the international financial system. The FATF, therefore, calls on its members and urges all jurisdictions to continue to advise their financial institutions to apply enhanced due diligence with respect to business relationships and transactions with natural and legal persons from Iran, consistent with FATF Recommendation 19, including: (1) obtaining information on the reasons for intended transactions; and (2) conducting enhanced monitoring of business relationships, by increasing the number and timing of controls applied, and selecting patterns of transactions that need further examination.
Extreme heat this far north is particularly dangerous as these locations have a lot less experience with temperatures that high. Communities in the Southwest, for instance, have previous knowledge of temperatures over 100 degrees. Those in the Northwest and Canada simply do not. And this manifests itself through the built environment. Air conditioner use in the Southwest is virtually mandatory. Yet in Seattle, according to the New York Times, there is a culture against air conditioner use. NPR notes that Seattle ranked as the least air-conditioned city in a comparison of the top 15 metro areas in the U.S. Only 44% of homes in Seattle have primary air conditioning installed. Things are slightly better in Portland, at 78% of homes, but still far below the nationwide average.
Rain levels in June were generally lower than usual in southern and central parts of Finland. In the south and east, precipitation was unusually low in places. On average, the weather is this dry once in 10-30 years. In northern parts of the country precipitation levels were largely near the long-term average, but in some places, rain was unusually heavy.
The antlion larva excavate these depressions, bury themselves, face up, in the soil at the bottom and wait for an ant, beetle, or other insect to fall or stumble in. When this happens the larva grabs the prey with its large spiny jaws and eats it. Some interesting tidbits taken from the web site entitled, The Antlion Pit:
Climate negotiations kicked off once again this month in the German city of Bonn, as diplomats from around the world searched for common ground before the next big UN summit COP28 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE).
It is within this context that negotiators went into the Bonn climate change conference. As Tom Evans, policy advisor on climate diplomacy and geopolitics at E3G, explained during a briefing on the final day of the talks:
Ultimately, the MWP and the proposed item on financial support were dropped from the agenda, with an informal note set to be issued by the SB chairs capturing the work carried out on the MWP in Bonn. Vreuls additionally noted that this did not set a precedent for future work.
In the meantime, the missed $100bn target loomed large over proceedings. Developed countries have still not met this 2020 goal for financing developing countries and, while they expect to hit it this year, their failure has contributed to serious mistrust among parties.
The US rejected this, suggesting implementation and support should sit as a subsection under finance flows, but New Zealand, Canada and Australia disagreed, arguing financial flows are a broader issue than means of implementation.
The co-chairs of this agenda item, Alison Campbell (UK) and Joseph Teo (Singapore), attempted to find compromise. However, when delegates reconvened for an evening session on the penultimate day on Bonn, it was agreed that this subsection would include several options, rather than an agreed upon wording.
But that was far from the end of loss-and-damage negotiations. The Pakistani negotiator Nabeel Munir, who led the G77 and China group last year in their push for the fund, made this point early on at Bonn, in his new role as chair of the SBI:
There are also discussions around supplementing this money with new sources of finance, such as taxes on aviation, shipping or fossil fuels. (See: DeBriefed, 16 June 2023.) The chart below gives a sense of how civil society groups see different sources of money going towards loss and damage.
As it stands, this is not an option under Article 6. However, the Philippines has been a consistent voice pushing for this option within the system. As Jonathan Crook, a policy expert on global carbon markets at Carbon Market Watch, tells Carbon Brief:
Some countries, notably Switzerland and Japan, have already begun exploring this system as a way to help meet their climate targets. Yet there are various technical issues that remain unresolved. Parties at Bonn agreed a manual should be created to help developing countries participate in Article 6.2 trading.
For example, if a highly forested country sells forest-based credits to other countries, but then realises it is not going to be able to meet its own climate targets, it might want flexibility to revoke its ITMOs. As Crook explains, this could lead to complications:
The COP28 team has pushed back against this criticism and emphasised the importance of involving fossil-fuel companies in the energy transition. However, so far it has given little indication of its ambitions for a successful event.
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