Good morning.
Christopher Wray, the FBI director, has weighed in on the debate over the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic, endorsing the theory that it may have come from a leak in a Chinese laboratory.
“The FBI has for quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan,” Wray told Fox News’s Brett Baier. The FBI reportedly reached the conclusion in 2021 with “moderate confidence”.
Wray’s high-profile public comment highlights the divide within the US intelligence community about the origins of the pandemic, with some federal agencies, including the FBI and the Department of Energy, concluding that the Covid-19 virus likely originated from a lab leak in China, while others have concluded that it first spread from infected animals to humans.
China’s Communist party government put on show its sensitivity about Covid’s origin, with the state-run media outlet the Global Times issuing a warning to Elon Musk not to risk his relationship with China, after he sent tweets discussing the Department of Energy report on the lab leak theory.
Keeping an open mind. Some scientists and other observers argue that the lab leak theory cannot be ruled out and should be kept separate from the racist propaganda that often accompanies it.
‘Time is not on our side.’ The US Congress must act urgently to counter the economic and national security threats posed by the Chinese government, bipartisan lawmakers on a newly created committee have warned.
US justice department sues two companies over pollution in Louisiana’s ‘Cancer Alley’
The US justice department has sued the two petrochemical giants behind a facility in Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley” responsible for the highest cancer risk rates caused by air pollution in the US in a major federal lawsuit that seeks to substantially curb the plant’s emissions.
Unveiled on Tuesday, the lawsuit alleges emissions at the Pontchartrain Works facility in Reserve, Louisiana, violate the Clean Air Act and “present an imminent and substantial endangerment to public health and welfare”.
The justice department is now seeking a federal court order to compel Denka (DPE), the Japanese chemical firm operating the facility, to “immediately” curb emissions of the compound chloroprene, labeled by the EPA as a likely human carcinogen.
The facility is the only site in the US to emit the compound, which is a primary constituent of the synthetic rubber neoprene. EPA air monitoring around the facility has consistently shown readings well in excess of the recommended lifetime exposure limit of 0.2 micrograms a cubic meter.
Biden administration enforcement escalation. The move was instantly hailed by members of the predominantly Black community around the plant as a major victory in their ongoing campaign for clean air.
Finland starts building fence on Russian border as MPs prepare to vote on Nato bid
Finland has started construction of a fence along parts of its 1,340km border with Russia to boost security and tackle any attempt by Moscow to weaponise mass migration as a result of its invasion of Ukraine.
Finland announced the start of construction on Tuesday. Terrain work would begin “with forest clearance and will proceed in such a way that road construction and fence installation can be started in March”, the Finnish Border Guard said in a statement.
The announcement came as Finland’s parliament progressed with its bid to join Nato, increasing the likelihood it would leave its neighbour Sweden behind to rapidly enter the transatlantic defence pact. After debates on Tuesday, a vote is scheduled by Finnish MPs on Wednesday afternoon for speeding up the ascension process.
No significant border barrier currently. At present, Finland’s borders are secured primarily by light wooden fences, mainly designed to stop livestock from wandering to the wrong side.
In other news …
The world’s richest people lost a combined $10tn last year, a 10th of their wealth, as they suffered a triple shock – energy, economic and geopolitical, according to a new report. Despite the dips, the wealthy have still been dropping millions on new luxurious homes.
Germany’s agriculture minister has called for a ban on all advertising accessible by children of unhealthy food including sweets and items with a high salt, fat and sugar content, arguing that the future health of Germany’s young people is at stake.
Nigeria’s ruling party candidate, Bola Tinubu, was today declared the winner of the presidential election, after defeating two of his closest rivals in the most competitive election for years – signalling the continued dominance of the established political elite.
At least 36 people have been killed and 85 injured after two trains collided near the town of Tempe in central Greece, the fire brigade said. A passenger train, travelling from Athens, and a cargo train, going from Thessaloniki to Larissa, collided head-on.
Don’t miss this: the Brazilian forces driving out mining gangs from Indigenous lands
A recent military raid in the Amazon was part of what has been hailed by the government as a historic drive to expel miners from Yanomami lands and rescue the jungle after four years of chaos, criminality and bloodshed such as that which saw the British journalist Dom Phillips and the Indigenous specialist Bruno Pereira murdered last June.
The Guardian was one of the first media organisations granted access to those efforts, traveling deep into Yanomami territory to accompany Felipe Finger, a special forces commander for Brazil’s environmental protection agency, Ibama. Agents from Finger’s elite squad gathered early last Friday at a camp on the Uraricoera River – one of the main arteries miners use to invade the territory, which is the size of Portugal and where about 30,000 Yanomami live in more than 300 villages.
Climate check: carbon emissions from global SUV fleet outweighs that of most countries
The continued global rise in sales of SUVs pushed their climate-heating emissions to almost 1bn tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2022, according to the International Energy Agency. The 330m sport utility vehicles on the roads produced emissions equivalent to the combined national emissions of the UK and Germany last year. If SUVs were a country, they would rank as the sixth most polluting in the world.
The activist group Tyre Extinguishers said it had deflated the tyres of hundreds of SUVs in Europe on Monday night in the run-up to the first anniversary of its campaign. The vehicles are larger and heavier than regular cars and use on average 20% more fuel. The increased number of SUVs in 2022 were responsible for a third of the increase in global oil demand.
Last Thing: the scientist who lost his dad – and resolved to travel to 1955 to save him
Prof Ronald Mallett thinks he has cracked time travel. The secret, he says, is in twisting the fabric of space-time with a ring of rotating lasers to make a loop of time that would allow you to travel backwards. It will take a lot more explaining and experiments, but after a half century of work, the 77-year-old astrophysicist has got that down pat, writes Daniel Lavelle.
His claim is not as ridiculous as it might seem. Entire academic departments, such as the Centre for Time at the University of Sydney, are dedicated to studying the possibility of time travel. Massachusetts Institute of Technology is working on a “time-reversal machine” to detect dark matter. Of course there are still lots of physicists who believe time travel, or at least travelling to the past, is impossible, but it is not quite the sci-fi pipe dream it once was.
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