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Articles by Ike Walker
World Bank, IMF sideline climate at Bangkok meetings
Key points The World Bank and IMF sidelined climate at their annual meetings in Bangkok, focusing instead on jobs, private capital and small businesses. Campaigners criticised the shift, warning that communities living near polluting projects would bear the cost of weaker climate accountability. The World Bank still lends more to fossil fuels than to clean energy, and just 2.4% of multilateral development bank clean energy financing reached low-income countries.
World Bank, IMF sideline climate at Bangkok meetings
Key points The World Bank and IMF sidelined climate at their annual meetings in Bangkok, focusing instead on jobs, private capital and small businesses. Campaigners criticised the shift, warning that communities living near polluting projects would bear the cost of weaker climate accountability. The World Bank still lends more to fossil fuels than to clean energy, and just 2.4% of multilateral development bank clean energy financing reached low-income countries.
EU roundup: Europe’s climate and security issues now ‘inseparable’, says commissioner
Oil rig supply boats pas through Aberdeen Bay Wind Farm (also known as the European Offshore Wind Deployment Centre or EOWDC). Photo by Rab Lawrence / Wikimedia Commons. The roundup covers ongoing debates in Brussels on investment labels, carbon markets and border taxes, windfall-tax proposals and the bloc’s long-term climate-resilience planning. Europe is increasingly linking climate action with competitiveness, energy security and disaster preparedness.
Off-grid solar is powering Syria’s reconstruction
In a remote farming village in Syria, 24 households pay just US$0.20 a month for round-the-clock power. Villagers began rebuilding Khirais, Syria, in 2021. But after years of armed conflict, which left the area badly damaged, they faced an energy shortage, with electricity running just an hour a day. Refrigerated food spoiled, children could not study after dark and local producers could no longer rely on basic electrical equipment. Then, a regional nonprofit stepped in to help.
Inside Syria’s decentralised solar boom
Photo by Waseem Istanbuli via Pexels Key points The collapse of Syria’s electricity supply has pushed households, farms, businesses, humanitarian organisations and communities to install off-grid solar systems. Estimates suggest off-grid solar capacity rose from around 250MW in 2022 to more than 2GW in 2025, but the lack of a comprehensive registry means the figures are uncertain.
Roundup: UK pension fund wants a climate tipping points analysis
Photo by Joan Li on Unsplash The African Development Bank warns a “super El Niño” could cost affected African nations up to US$20bn, while Tajikistan has launched Central Asia’s first sovereign sustainable-finance framework, and Australia begins to explore expanding its green taxonomy to include climate adaptation.
Sublime highlights from the UK National Parks Photography Competition
A powerful shot of an osprey snatching its prey from a lake has won the 2020 National Parks Photography Competition, a contest designed to celebrate the natural beauty of the United Kingdom’s 15 National Parks. The contest this year garnered around 1,700 entries under the simple theme, "Inspired by Nature". The winning shot was taken by photographer Pete Stevens, in Scotland’s Cairngorms National Park.
Somali activist group protests outside Valley News Live studios
A small protest that was advertised as a "peaceful demonstration" by a local Somali activist group turned into a confrontation outside the Valley News Live studios on Sunday. Protestors confronted a Valley News Live photographer as she attempted to shoot video of the event. Fargo Police removed the protestors from the KVLY property. Moorhead Mayor Del Rae Williams and Fargo's Deputy Mayor Mike Williams also showed up for the event. Both support refugee resettlement in the area.
Flite Mechanics: Time Zone Conversions in MySQL
A wise man once said that the safest way to store date and time values in MySQL is to store Unix timestamps in an unsigned INT column. I agree with Baron, but most of us have to deal with DATE, DATETIME, and/or TIMESTAMP values sometimes, and it’s often useful to know how to convert values from one time zone to another. You can convert a temporal value in MySQL from one time zone to another using the CONVERT_TZ() function.
Buy-outs and layoffs hit Fargo Forum newspaper
Forum Communications is shedding people according to current and former staff in an effort to slim down their operation. The company publishes the Fargo Forum newspaper and owns WDAY and WDAZ television as well as other smaller newspapers. Several Forum employees spoke with Valley News Live to say they had taken buy-outs offered by the company but were told by management that not enough buy-outs were accepted and lay-offs were coming.
Buyouts and layoffs hit Fargo Forum newspaper
Forum Communications is shedding people according to current and former staff in an effort to slim down their operation. The company publishes the Fargo Forum newspaper and owns WDAY and WDAZ television as well as other smaller newspapers. Several Forum employees spoke with Valley News Live to say they had taken buyouts offered by the company but were told by management that not enough buy-outs were accepted and layoffs were coming.
Valley News Live scored most points to win Bison football TV contract
We know more today about how NDSU picked their media partners for the next three years. Valley News Live ultimately won the bid to continue carrying Bison football while Bison games on the radio move from KFGO to Radio Fargo-Moorhead. NDSU used a points system across six criteria to award the contracts.
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