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Britain could revive domestic production of super strong magnets used in electric vehicles and wind turbines with government support, to cut its reliance on China and achieve vital cuts in carbon emissions, two sources with direct knowledge said.

A government-funded feasibility study is due to be published on Friday, laying out the steps Britain must take to restart output of rare earth permanent magnets, the sources said.

A magnet factory would help Britain, hosting the COP26 U.N. climate talks in Glasgow, Scotland, meet its goal of banning petrol and diesel cars by 2030 and slashing carbon emissions to net zero by 2050.

British production of the magnets vanished in the 1990s when the industry found it could not compete with China. But with the huge growth in demand, the government is keen to secure enough supply.

Last month, the government set out plans to achieve its net zero strategy, which includes spending $1.15 billion to support the roll out of electric vehicles (EVs) and their supply chains.

The study outlines how a plant could be built by 2024 and eventually produce enough of the powerful magnets to supply 1 million EVs a year, the sources who have read the report said.

“We’re looking to turn the tide of shipping all this kind of manufacturing to the Far East and resurrect U.K. manufacturing excellence,” one of the sources said.

The government’s Department for Business declined to comment on details regarding a possible magnet factory because the report has not been released.

“The government continues to work with investors through our Automotive Transformation Fund (ATF) to progress plans to build a globally competitive electric vehicle supply chain in the U.K.,” a spokesperson said in an email.

EV ramp up

British rare earth company Less Common Metals put together the feasibility study and is considering seeking partners to jointly build the factory, the sources said.

LCM is one of the only companies outside of China that transforms rare earth raw materials into the special compounds needed to produce permanent magnets.

Automakers will need the magnets as they ramp up EV output in Britain. Ford said last month it would invest up to $310 million in an English plant to produce around 250,000 EV power units a year from mid-2024.

Rare earth magnets made of neodymium are used in 90% of EV motors because they are widely seen as the most efficient way to power them.

Electric cars with these magnets require less battery power than those with ordinary magnets, so vehicles can travel longer distances before recharging.

A race by automakers to ramp up EVs and countries to switch to wind energy is due to boost demand for permanent magnets in Europe as much as tenfold by 2050, according to the European Union.

The sources said government support would be vital so Britain could compete with China, which produces 90% of supply.

The strategy mirrors similar efforts by the EU and the United States to create domestic industries of raw materials, rare earth processing and permanent magnets.

Source: Voice of America

The U.S. government has added four foreign technology companies to its restricted companies list, saying they “developed and supplied spyware to foreign governments” and that the spyware was used “to maliciously target government officials, journalists, businesspeople, activists, academics, and embassy workers.”

The State Department accused the companies of “engaging in activities contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States.”

The companies are Israel’s NSO Group and Candiru, Russia’s Positive Technologies, and Singapore’s Computer Security Initiative Consultancy PTE. LTD.

These companies will now face severe restrictions in exporting their products to the U.S., and it will make it difficult for U.S. cybersecurity firms to sell them information that could be useful in developing their products.

“This effort is aimed at improving citizens’ digital security, combating cyber threats, and mitigating unlawful surveillance,” the State Department said.

According to Reuters, both NSO Group and Candiru have been accused of selling their products to authoritarian regimes. NSO said it takes actions to prevent the abuse of its products.

Positive Technologies has been in the crosshairs before, having been sanctioned by the Biden administration for allegedly providing assistance to Russian security forces. The company said it has done nothing wrong.

None of the companies commented on their blacklisting.

Source: Voice of America

No in-person school. Isolation from friends. Lost rites of passage like graduation ceremonies. The COVID-19 pandemic upended the lives of many children in the United States.

“A lot of children’s joy comes from being with friends or from play, and from social interaction. When you ask kids, ‘What’s making you happy?’ 90% of the time, it’s being around friends or doing things with friends,” says Elena Mikalsen, head of the Psychology Section at the Children’s Hospital of San Antonio in Texas. “That was kind of taken away during the pandemic. … For the longest time, all kids had was the academics and no joy.”

A recent report finds that the uncertainty and disruption caused by COVID-19 has negatively affected the emotional and mental health of about one-third of America’s youth. So much so that the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), along with other children’s health organizations, has declared a national emergency in child and adolescent mental health.

“Elevated symptoms of anxiety, depression or stress,” says Nirmita Panchal, a senior policy analyst at the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF), a nonprofit organization focusing on national health issues. “There’s also been a number of changes in behavior that parents have reported with some children having a poor appetite and difficulty sleeping. For others, it may be fear or irritability and clinginess.”

Panchal co-authored the report, which found that 8% of children between the ages of 3 and 17 currently have anxiety. That number rises to 13% among adolescents ages 12 to 17.

“During the pandemic, children, just like everybody else, have experienced a number of changes and disruptions,” Panchal says. “That includes school closures, possibly financial difficulties at home, isolation, perhaps the loss of loved ones and then difficulty accessing health care. So, all of these factors may be contributing to increased mental health issues among children.”

Rates of children’s mental health concerns and suicide steadily increased between 2010 and 2020, according to the AAP, which says the pandemic has made the crisis worse with “dramatic increases” in the number of young people visiting hospital emergency rooms for mental health-related concerns, including possible suicide attempts.

Maryland psychologist Mary Karapetian Alvord says uncertainty, as well as losing out on school activities, provoked varying levels of grief in young people.

“Particularly high school students, who really lost out on all of the fun activities, the fun clubs, and also graduations and homecoming, football games and all the social as well as the outlets that they have,” says Alvord, who is also an adjunct associate professor of psychiatry at The George Washington University School of Medicine. “So, those are themes that have dominated this pandemic, I think, grief, loss on all those different levels, and then just constant uncertainty. And we then get a rise in anxiety.”

Alvord says the young people being seen at her practice have a sense that they’re not moving forward, which has led to anger, frustration, sadness and anxiety.

“It runs the gamut, but kids have lost time,” she says. “They have a sense that they have lost time, and not in terms of only maybe some academic skills, which a lot of the schools are concerned about, but in terms of maturity. How do you mature as a kid? It’s not by being home 24/7.”

And while children missed being in school with their friends, the idea of returning to in-person classes also triggered some anxiety.

“Some kids were scared to go back to school because they were afraid of contracting COVID. They were afraid of what school might look like and what that would entail, especially kids that already were more predispositioned to have anxiety or depression,” says psychologist Nekeshia Hammond, former president of the Florida Psychological Association. “It basically made that process a lot more stressful. And not just school but going back into social situations.”

The pandemic has shaken the sense of safety most children feel. More than 140,000 children in the United States lost a primary and/or secondary caregiver to COVID-19.

“The majority of kids just have this innocence, in a way, that the world is safe. ‘I’m going to be OK. People are here to protect me,’” Hammond says. “And that got stripped away for a lot of kids who don’t feel the world is safe.”

Children of color have been disproportionately impacted by the losses caused by the pandemic. And not solely because they were more likely to lose a loved one to the virus.

Mikalsen, who works primarily with minority youth and inner-city youth in Texas, found that many of the children she spoke to were forced to use their smartphones for their schooling because they didn’t have computers at home. Spotty internet connections made it difficult to stay in touch with their schoolwork and to get their assignments.

Some of Mikalsen’s young patients were home alone all day because their parents are essential, front-line workers.

“A lot of the kids that I was talking to during the pandemic, they were completely alone at home, left to be there by themselves and, ‘Hey, if you can get connected to school, that’d be great, but if you don’t, no big deal,’” Mikalsen says. “So many kids that I talked to, they just slept all day and had nobody to talk to. Things like that can really cause a lot of depression and anxiety.”

And then there was the societal upheaval caused by the police murder of George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man in Minneapolis. Video of police officer Derek Chauvin pressing his knee into Floyd’s neck while Floyd struggled to breathe went viral, sparking nationwide protests against police brutality.

“All of that affects kids of color in a different way, on top of a global pandemic, on top of, ‘You can’t go to school, and you lost a loved one.’ It was basically more compounded,” Hammond says. “There were so many different stressors all at one time, which made it extremely difficult as far as coping, and as far as mental health.”

The AAP is calling for more federal funding for mental health screenings and treatment for all children from infancy through adolescence, with an emphasis on making certain kids from less privileged homes get the services they need.

“We don’t want to wait until it’s unmanageable. We want to have scaffolding and services in place to catch kids when they’re having that much trouble,” Alvord says. “We’re all tied to one another, and if your family is doing better, then those kids get sent to school and they’re doing better in school. Which helps the whole health of the classroom. Which helps the teachers do better to teach and do what they need to, instead of having to deal with the mental health crisis.”

Source: Voice of America

Philanthropist Bill Gates says the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will donate $315 million to help small farmers around the world grow crops that will adapt to climate change.

In an interview with VOA from Glasgow where he is attending the U.N. Climate Change Conference, Gates said the money will go to a seed consortium which will help farmers thrive in changing environments.

The interview was edited for brevity and clarity.

Q: Help us visualize the scope of the problem when it comes to climate change. What are we facing and how much should we be concerned?

A: Well, climate change is one of the biggest challenges mankind has ever faced. Year by year, because of these carbon emissions, the climate will be getting hotter and that means, particularly anywhere near the equator, the ability to do outdoor farming or outdoor construction work will become impossible. And so that’ll really destabilize people who live in these tropical zones. And so we have to do two things: we have to stop those emissions, where there’s an ambitious goal to do that by 2050, and then in the meantime we need to help countries adapt to these changing weather conditions, for example, you know, giving them better seeds.

Q: How are we going to know that COP 26 is a success?

A: We’ve deeply engaged the private sector. We’ve identified the need for innovation and how we get every sector working together to drive that innovation. And we’re now paying significant effort to adaptation. And so those three things were not there in Paris. I’m not saying that the commitments here are good enough. We need to see over the next five years the same type of increased engagement on the different issues, you know, better policies, more private sector and more innovation, including the innovation that’s focused on the adaptation.

Q: What else are you referring to in terms of innovation?

A: A number of countries are announcing increased resources, including President Biden. We’re announcing $315 million over the next three years for the seed consortium which is called the CG System. That makes the seeds for all the different countries and the big priority for that money will be seeds that can be even more productive despite the challenge of climate change.

And so overall we expect that an additional billion dollars, including our money, will be committed to that effort. That has the potential to benefit literally hundreds of millions of these smallholder farmers. So probably won’t get the attention it deserves, but probably the biggest move for adaptation using innovation for that will be announced here.

Q: What are your thoughts on the impact of climate change in underdeveloped countries, especially in a region like Africa?

A: Well, as you say, it’s a great injustice. And in fact, my interest in climate change came from seeing that through our agricultural work in Africa the farmers were often having a more difficult time. And so they’re already facing these difficulties, which will get significantly worse between now and the end of the century. And so I studied the issue of climate change and the Gates Foundation took on this adaptation as a big priority. That wasn’t getting much attention. So I joined together with some others to create the ‘Commission on Adaptation’ and we had …a lot of great participation and did a report that highlighted some of these key investments.

Q: What do you think all of us can do to contribute to this global solution in fighting climate change?

A: Well, certainly there are products that have lower emissions…In rich countries, you know, we are starting to have food indications of which kinds of food cause what emissions. And we have more and more electric cars. You know we have the ability to heat your home with what’s called an electric heat pump versus using a hydrocarbon like natural gas to your house. You know I would say that for the individual, political engagement is also important because this is a problem where we have to make near-term investments (and) even some short-term sacrifice to get the long-term benefit of having drastic climate change impacts. And so, educating people that this is very worth doing, particularly getting young people engaged.

Source: Voice of America

Chinese President Xi Jinping called on other nations to “step up cooperation” and act on climate targets, but offered no new commitments in a statement to the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland, known as COP26.

“Visions will come true only when we act on them. Parties need to honor their commitments, set realistic targets and visions, and do their best according to national conditions to deliver their climate action measures,” said Xi, who is not attending the talks in person. China is the world’s biggest carbon emitter.

China has been facing an energy shortage that sparked widespread power outages over two-thirds of the country in late September. This was one of China’s worst power shortages in a decade. The outages affected factories, leading to concerns about disruptions to global supply chains. China, meanwhile, said it has increased its production of coal — a fossil fuel — to ease the power crunch.

The Chinese leader’s long-anticipated statement shows that China cannot abandon fossil fuels during a power crunch without more infrastructure, analysts said.

Households may lack heating, while manufacturing could suffer due to the power shortage, said Jane Nakano, a senior fellow at the U.S.-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“I am a little disappointed that President Xi Jinping didn’t really go ahead and answer some of the key questions that many of us have had,” Nakano said. “I wonder if the power crunch that China is facing at the moment has really gotten in the Chinese leadership’s way of wanting to have perhaps a much broader commitment.”

Xi noted an earlier Chinese government plan to peak carbon dioxide emissions before 2030.

Last month, China announced a focus on green energy in a new version of its Belt and Road Initiative for infrastructure projects stretching from Asia to Europe.

Biggest global polluter

While most economies saw a CO2 emission drop of five to 10 percentage points in 2020 over recent years, China stood out as the only major economy to log an increase, the Paris-based International Energy Agency said. Its 2020 total reached 75 metric tons per kilowatt hour.

The research firm Rhodium Group reports more than 27% of total global emissions in 2019 came from China.

Lauri Myllyvirta, an analyst with the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air in Helsinki, recently said China’s CO2 emissions grew an unusually fast 15 percent year-on-year in the first quarter of 2021. She linked the surge to a post-COVID-19 rebound from lockdowns of the past year and an economic recovery that has “been dominated by growth in construction, steel and cement.”

At previous U.N. events and in its economic blueprints, China has said it will transition to greener, cleaner fuels while controlling coal consumption. It’s aiming for carbon neutrality by 2060.

But China isn’t ready yet, said Scott Harold, Washington-based senior political scientist with RAND Corporation, another research group.

“They recognize a desire to shift their energy mix away from coal and toward renewables, but in fact their energy mix keeps shifting the other way because it’s really, really hard to do and they have not invested in or owned the technologies that would enable to them to make some of those changes,” Harold said.

Xi said in his 500-word statement to COP26 that all countries should throttle rising temperatures by building on old U.N. agreements.

Xi’s statement seeks to cast China as a country that has championed a major world ambition after the United States pulled out of the Paris climate accord in 2017, Harold said. Current U.S. President Joe Biden apologized Monday for his predecessor’s decision to withdraw.

The U.S. is the second biggest greenhouse gas emitter after China. During the talks Tuesday, Biden announced plans to reduce methane emissions.

The Chinese leader said multilateralism, including U.N. agreements, is “the right prescription” for addressing problems such as climate change, which is seen as an existential threat for much of the world.

Analysts say it’s not clear whether China will make more statements during COP26, which is due to last through November 12.

Source: Voice of America

The COVID-19 pandemic global death toll has hit the 5 million mark, according to the John Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.

The tally comes a little more than four months after 4 million deaths from COVID-19 were recorded in June.

The milestone arrives as some countries struggle to get one vaccine into their citizens’ arms, while other countries have begun inoculating their population with booster shots.

“The current vaccine equity gap between wealthier and low resource countries demonstrates a disregard for the lives of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable,” the World Health Organization recently said in an open letter to the leaders of the G-20 nations who are meeting in Rome.“For every 100 people in high-income countries, 133 doses of COVID-19 vaccine have been administered, while in low-income countries, only 4 doses per 100 people have been administered.”

The WHO letter also warned, “Vaccine inequity is costing lives every day, and continues to place everyone at risk. History and science make it clear: coordinated action with equitable access to public health resources is the only way to face down a global public health scourge like COVID-19. We need a strong, collective push to save lives, reduce suffering and ensure a sustainable global recovery.”

Source: Voice of America