Good morning.
The tentative deal reached between Hollywood and studio executives has been received well by those on strike and others within the industry.
Members from the Writers Guild of America (WGA), who took on the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers with demands that included better pay and residuals, and safeguards on the use of artificial intelligence, shared their collective relief.
The WGA said on Sunday: “We have reached a tentative agreement on a new 2023 MBA, which is to say an agreement in principle on all deal points, subject to drafting final contract language. What we have won in this contract – most particularly, everything we have gained since 2 May – is due to the willingness of this membership to exercise its power, to demonstrate its solidarity, to walk side-by-side, to endure the pain and uncertainty of the past 146 days.”
The organization called the deal “exceptional”.
What did Joe Biden say about the deal? The president issued a statement on the strike’s imminent end and praised the power of collective bargaining. “This agreement, including assurances related to artificial intelligence, did not come easily. But its formation is a testament to the power of collective bargaining. There simply is no substitute for employers and employees coming together to negotiate in good faith toward an agreement that makes a business stronger and secures the pay, benefits, and dignity that workers deserve.
Is the Hollywood writers’ strike really over? While there is still much that is unclear – the nature of the deal, which needs to be ironed out in contractual language and ratified by union leadership and its 11,500 members, has yet to be revealed – the picture of a post-strike Hollywood is coming into focus. Here is what we know so far.
‘Staggering’ green growth gives hope for 1.5C, says global energy head
The prospects of the world staying within the 1.5C limit on global heating have brightened owing to the “staggering” growth of renewable energy and green investment in the past two years, the chief of the world’s energy watchdog has said.
Fatih Birol, the executive director of the International Energy Agency and the world’s foremost energy economist, said much more needed to be done though the rapid uptake of solar power and electric vehicles was encouraging.
“Despite the scale of the challenges, I feel more optimistic than I felt two years ago,” he said. “Solar photovoltaic installations and electric vehicle sales are perfectly in line with what we said they should be, to be on track to reach net zero by 2050, and thus stay within 1.5C. Clean energy investments in the last two years have seen a staggering 40% increase.”
Birol also noted that greenhouse gas emissions from the energy sector were “still stubbornly high”, and that the extreme weather seen around the world this year had shown the climate was changing “at frightening speed”.
What else did the report say? The IEA, in a report entitled Net Zero Roadmap, published this morning, also called on developed countries with 2050 net zero targets to bring them forward by several years. Some already have closer dates, such as Germany with 2045 and Austria and Iceland with 2040 – and for many developing countries are much later, at 2060 in the case of China, and 2070 in India’s case.
Bob Menendez refuses to quit and says $480,000 in cash was for personal use
Insisting he would not resign after being indicted on corruption charges, the embattled New Jersey Democratic senator Bob Menendez told reporters the $480,000 in cash found in a safe, clothing and closets at his home was kept there for emergency personal use.
He said: “For 30 years, I have withdrawn thousands of dollars in cash from my personal savings accounts, which I have kept for emergencies and because of the history of my family facing confiscation in Cuba.”
The senator’s parents are from Cuba and he was born in New York. Last week, he said: “It is not lost on me how quickly some are rushing to judge a Latino and push him out of his seat.” In Union City, New Jersey, on Monday, Menendez spoke in English and in Spanish. A group of people he said were “everyday people and constituents who know me” stood behind him as he spoke.
The senator continued: “Now this may seem old-fashioned, but these were monies drawn from my personal savings accounts based on the income that I have lawfully derived over those 30 years. I look forward to addressing other issues in trial.”
What is Menendez accused of? Under an indictment unsealed last week, Menendez and his wife, Nadine Menendez, 56, were accused of using his seat in the Senate, as chair of the foreign relations committee, to benefit the government of Egypt.
In other news …
Actor David McCallum, who became a teen heartthrob in the hit series The Man from Uncle in the 1960s and was the eccentric medical examiner in the popular television show NCIS 40 years later, has died. He was 90. McCallum died on Monday of natural causes, surrounded by family, CBS said.
The FBI warned at least three Americans active in the Sikh community that their lives were in danger in the immediate aftermath of the murder of a Sikh activist in Canada in June. The Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, has blamed the apparent assassination on the Indian government.
The National Transportation Safety Board said it has opened an investigation into a JetBlue flight that experienced sudden severe turbulence yesterday, injuring seven passengers and a crew member. The injured were taken to hospital for evaluation and treatment.
A third person has been charged in the death of a toddler apparently poisoned by fentanyl in a New York City daycare center, as the search continues for the alleged ringleader of the drug-peddling operation. Renny Antonio Parra Paredes, 38, was charged with narcotics distribution resulting in death.
Hopes are fading for the “reawakening” of India’s moon lander after Indian scientists were unable to communicate with the spacecraft since it went into shutdown mode to survive the freezing lunar nights. There is a 50% chance that the devices could endure the low temperatures.
Stat of the day: Antarctic sea ice shrinks to lowest annual maximum level on record, data shows
Antarctica is likely to have broken the record for the lowest annual maximum amount of sea ice around the continent, beating the previous low by a million square kilometres. The new mark is the latest in a string of records for the region’s sea ice, as scientists fear global heating could have shifted the region into a new era of disappearing ice with far reaching consequences for the world’s climate and sea levels.
Each September, Antarctica’s sea ice reaches its maximum extent. The average between 1981 and 2010 was 18.71m sq km. But the US National Snow and Ice Data Center said preliminary analysis suggested the sea ice reached a maximum of 16.96m sq km on 10 September and had fallen since then.
Don’t miss this: I survived three days in a capsized boat on the ocean floor – praying in my air bubble
Harrison Okene was sitting on the toilet – surely the worst place to be as disaster strikes – when a freak wave hit the tugboat he was working on, and turned it upside down. Now he was on the floor, and the toilet was above him. “I was trying to open the door to get out, when the toilet fell and hit me on the head,” he says. He just had time to see blood pour from the wound before the lights went off. “Everywhere was dark.” The bathroom began to fill with water. “It didn’t take long,” he says. “One minute, two minutes” – and he felt the boat touch the seabed. Thirty metres (100ft) below the surface, it came to rest.
Okene had no choice but to listen in the dark as the shouts of his colleagues fell silent. His throat throbbed and his tongue peeled. Ten years on, he explains why he loves the sea more than ever – and decided to become a diver,
Climate check: ‘Whatever it takes’ – students at 50 US high schools launch climate initiative
Students at more than 50 high schools across the US are proposing a Green New Deal for Schools, demanding that their districts teach climate justice, create pathways to green jobs after graduation and plan for climate disasters, among other policies. The campaign, coordinated by the Sunrise Movement, a youth-led climate justice collective, is a reaction to rightwing efforts to ban or suppress climate education and activism at schools. The national effort could include teach-ins and walkouts, as well as targeted petitions to school boards and districts in the coming weeks, organizers with Sunrise told the Guardian. “We are prepared to do whatever it takes,” said Adah Crandall, 17, an organiser for the Sunrise Movement based in Portland, Oregon.
Last Thing: Eat yogurt to ward off garlic breath, say scientists
If you have ever skipped the garlic for fear of romantic rejection, take note: you can have your date and eat garlic – provided you follow up with a spoonful of yogurt. Research suggests the fat and protein that yogurt contains prevents almost all of the smelly volatile compounds in garlic from escaping into the air. Manpreet Kaur and Prof Sheryl Barringer at the Ohio State University in Columbus, US, tested the capacity of yogurt – and the water, fat and protein in it – to neutralize the sulfurous compounds that give raw and cooked garlic its characteristic odor. Their results, published in the journal Molecules, suggested yogurt alone reduced 99% of the most odor-producing volatiles in raw garlic. They found higher-fat yogurt was better than lower-fat yogurt.
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