Perth records hottest April day ever as Easter beach crowds observe coronavirus measures

Perth has sweltered through its warmest April day on record, with police continuing to warn beachgoers about the importance of social distancing amid another eight WA cases of coronavirus.

Police patrolled Cottesloe Beach on Easter Saturday
to enforce physical distancing measures.

The temperature in the city reached 39.5 degrees Celsius just before 2:00pm, breaking the previous record of 37.6C set on April 9, 1910.

Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) duty forecaster Max Strack said warmer weather in the state's north-western Gascoyne region had been pushed south by a trough off the west coast.

Read the ABC News story by Garrett Mundy and James Carmody - “Perth records hottest April day ever as Easter beach crowds observe coronavirus measures.”

Mining protesters to be 'as disruptive as possible' in second day

Police have used capsicum spray on climate activists who are picketing a major mining conference in Melbourne and have so far arrested more than 20 people, including two for animal cruelty.

Environmental protesters clash with Police outside the
Melbourne Exhibition and Convention Centre on Tuesday.
Hundreds of climate protesters have converged on a
Melbourne conference centre in a bid to stop an
international mining conference from going ahead.

An injured police officer has been taken to hospital for treatment.One woman at the scene was treated by paramedics. She lay on the ground with her leg wrapped in a splint, while paramedics also put a neck brace on her.

Another protester said the woman had been pushed by an officer and trampled by a horse.

Read the story from The Age by Rachel Eddie - “Mining protesters to be 'as disruptive as possible' in second day.”

Climate change activists plan week of disruptive capital city protests

Police are promising to crack down on protesters ahead of a week of planned disruptive climate change demonstrations in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.

Extinction Rebellion protesters lie down on Brisbane's
 Queen Street on a weekday morning in June. 

Protest action, known as the Spring Rebellion, is planned for the capital cities next week (October 7-13) – beginning on Monday with a blockade of the Swanston and Flinders intersection in Melbourne’s CBD and a “human tide” marching along the Sydney harbour foreshore.

Protests are also planned for Perth and Adelaide.

The week of action is organised by Extinction Rebellion, a group of climate protesters that has already caused peak-hour chaos in Brisbane several times this year.

Extinction Rebellion was founded in Britain in 2018. Now a global organisation, it wants urgent action to prevent on climate change.

Nonviolent civil disobedience is at the core of its protest action.

Read the story from The New Daily -  “Climate change activists plan week of disruptive capital city protests.”

More than 100 people arrested in London climate change protests

Police have arrested more than 100 environmental protesters as the Extinction Rebellion demonstrations that brought chaos to central London enters their second day.

Police begin to arrest protesters on Waterloo Bridge.

Thousands of people blocked four well-known landmarks on Monday – Waterloo Bridge, Marble Arch, Parliament Square and Oxford Circus – to demand urgent action over the escalating climate crisis.

The blockades continued throughout the day but as night fell officers began to arrest people on Waterloo Bridge in an effort to clear it.

Read the story from The Guardian by Matthew Taylor and Damien Gayle - “More than 100 people arrested in London climate change protests.”

‘Shut the country down': British climate group Extinction Rebellion heads to US

Bea Ruiz, a veteran progressive coordinator, has been telling scores of first-time climate change protesters they face being harassed and beaten by police next week. Most seem happy with the deal.

A recent Extinction Rebellion protest in Oxford Circus
 targeted fashion’s toll on the environment.

“I told a 72-year-old volunteer that he will probably be targeted by police,” said Ruiz, who is based in Eureka, California and is helping organize the first US rollout of Extinction Rebellion, a group founded in the UK that has grabbed attention through disruptive protests leading to mass arrests.

Read the story from The Guardian by Oliver Milman - “‘Shut the country down': British climate group Extinction Rebellion heads to US.”

Australia has long had its freakishly hot days, but this summer feels different

One minute we are all in court watching interminable CCTV footage of me in a car getting pulled over by police on Bondi Road, and the next minute we are all sitting in darkness. The power is out. The courtroom has gone black.

‘The run of hot days in a row are longer, and hotter.
The minimum temperatures are rising, and it doesn’t
cool down dramatically at night. Records are tumbling
 all over the place’

It’s a brown-out – caused by stress on the electricity grid due to the Thursday’s extreme heat in Sydney.

In the sun all the cops, defendants, solicitors and a TV crew stand under a paltry few trees. The temperature is around 40 degrees and the air feels viscous and substantial. Our case is eventually moved into the main courtroom in the city.

There would be millions of these tiny vignettes being told all over Australia this summer, small stories of the things that happen to us (and happen to our infrastructure and our environment) in the heat. They are stories about the way things break down, or are interrupted or are made difficult because of the heat.

But these vignettes all add up to something, a sort of mosaic that shows us what it is like to live in this country at this moment.

Read the story from The Guardian by Brigid Delaney - “Australia has long had its freakishly hot days, but this summer feels different.”

Residents fear anarchy as Cape Town water shut-off looms

Cape Town: It sounds like a Hollywood blockbuster. "Day Zero" is coming to Cape Town this April. Everyone, be warned.

Residents collect water from a communal tap in an
informal settlement in Mitchells Plain outside of Cape Town.

The government cautions that the Day Zero threat will surpass anything a major city has faced since World War II or the September 11 attacks. Talks are underway with South Africa's police because "normal policing will be entirely inadequate". Residents, their nerves increasingly frayed, speak in whispers of impending chaos.

Read the story in today’s Melbourne Age - “Residents fear anarchy as Cape Town water shut-off looms.”

Cape Town to set up disaster operations HQ as the city faces Day Zero

South Africa's police and military will help secure water collection sites in drought-stricken Cape Town if authorities must turn off most taps on Day Zero, a date projected to fall in the first half of April, according to the city.

Some residents are supplementing water supply
by collecting from natural springs in the city.

Hospitals, key economic and industrial areas and densely populated areas with a higher risk of disease would be exempt from a water cut-off, municipal authorities said.

The authorities plan to open a disaster operations centre on Monday to prepare for a possible closure of taps in a city known internationally for its natural beauty and tourist attractions.

South Africa's second-biggest city ramped up contingency plans as the water crisis hurt tourism.

Politicians bickered over alleged failures to offset a looming disaster blamed on explosive population growth over the past two decades and several years of drought that scientists say was possibly exacerbated by man-made global warming.

Read the ABC News story - “Cape Town to set up disaster operations HQ as the city faces Day Zero.”

I’m a scientist who has gotten death threats. I fear what may happen under Trump

Michael E. Mann is a professor of atmospheric science and director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University. He co-authored, with Washington Post cartoonist Tom Toles, “The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial Is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy.”

Donald Trump’s pick of Scott Pruitt for
Environmental Protection Agency
administrator is just one of many ominous signs.

My Penn State colleagues looked with horror at the police tape across my office door.

I had been opening mail at my desk that afternoon in August 2010 when a dusting of white powder fell from the folds of a letter. I dropped the letter, held my breath and slipped out the door as swiftly as I could, shutting it behind me. First I went to the bathroom to scrub my hands. Then I called the police.

It turned out to be cornstarch, not anthrax. And it was just one in a long series of threats I’ve received since the late 1990s, when my research illustrated the unprecedented nature of global warming, producing an upward-trending temperature curve whose shape has been likened to a hockey stick.

Read the opinion piece by Michael E. Mann in The Washington Post - “I’m a scientist who has gotten death threats. I fear what may happen under Trump.”

Out-of-control bushfires are still raging in Tasmania

Out-of-control bushfires are still raging in Tasmania's north-west, with several communities at risk from falling embers.

Residents are leaving their homes voluntarily as authorities battle to bring the blazes under control.

Police revealed that one of the 80 fires burning around the state was deliberately lit.

Read the ABC story - “Tasmanian fires burning out of control prompt residents to evacuate.”