New video footage released on April 11, 2024 shows that bleached corals on the southern part of the Great Barrier Reef extend to greater depths than has been reported during the current mass bleaching event. Australian Marine Conservation Society / Facebook screenshot
The Australian Marine Conservation Society (AMCS) has released video footage showing that the southern portion of the Great Barrier Reef is suffering from deep-sea coral bleaching, reported The Guardian.
The footage shows that the bleaching extends at least as far down as 59.1 feet — the deepest reported during this mass bleaching event, a press release from AMCS said. Some of the corals have begun to die in the face of record marine heat waves.
“I feel devastated. This bleaching event is the worst I have seen. It’s a severe bleaching event,” said Dr. Selina Ward, University of Queensland’s former academic director of the Heron Island Research Station, in the press release.
Ward reported extensive coral bleaching at all 16 southern Great Barrier Reef sites she had visited, saying it was the worst she had seen in three decades.
“I’ve been working on the Reef since 1992 but this [mass coral bleaching event], I’m really struggling with. The diversity of species involved has been hard to deal with. Look at bleached areas, there are many different species that are bleached – many of which are pretty resistant to bleaching so it’s not a pleasant one,” Ward added.
Last week, aerial survey data showed that 75 percent of the reef had experienced bleaching during the current bleaching event, with much of it classed as “high to extreme bleaching.”
During climate change-driven marine heat waves, extended periods of warmer ocean temperatures cause corals to become stressed, which leads them to expel the algae that live in a symbiotic relationship with them. These algae not only give corals their colorful appearance, but they are also their main source of energy, so long periods without them can lead to starvation.
“This new footage shows extensive coral bleaching in southern reefs, but there are images from the central and northern parts that show bleaching is extensive and severe in some of those areas too. Although in-water surveys will take months, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority has completed the aerial surveys but only released the data. The authority must urgently release the maps to show to the public the extent and severity of this bleaching event,” said Dr. Lissa Schindler, campaign manager with AMCS, in the press release.
Nearly 4,000 British Airways customers were affected by the protest
Just Stop Oil activist Cressida Gethin pictured with naturalist Chris Packham.
A Just Stop Oil protester who disrupted thousands of journeys at Heathrow by scaling a gantry above the M25 has said she would repeat the stunt.
Cressida Gethin, 22, climbed the gantry in July 2022 to protest the UK reaching its hottest temperature on record, 40C (104F), the day before.
As a result of the protest by the climate activist group, 3,923 British Airways customers were affected by cancellations and delays, a court heard in February.
The protester faces being sent to prison when she is sentenced next month.
In an interview with environmentalist Chris Packham, Gethin said she would like to speak to some of the people affected by the protest as she said that she would have no hesitation protesting in the same way again.
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Gethin added that she faced a “very real moral dilemma of knowing that people would be stuck in their cars and missing important events”.
She continued: “I heard one person missed their parent’s funeral, which I would never want. It doesn’t sit easy with me.”
The aftermath of Israel’s air strike on Iran’s consulate. (Xinhua via Alamy)
Israel’s bombing of the Iranian consulate in Syria was a grave violation of diplomatic protocol. Should the RAF have shielded Benjamin Netanyahu from Tehran’s inevitable retaliation?
Rishi Sunak’s decision to deploy RAF warplanes to shoot down Iranian drones heading for Israel raises serious questions about international law and the spectre of Britain’s involvement in a widening conflict in the Middle East.
The contents of Britain’s military cooperation agreement with Israel signed in 2020, and a defence pact signed a year later, are secret but they are not believed to require Britain to protect Israel if it comes under attack.
A more recent “2030 roadmap for UK-Israel bilateral relations” vaguely commits London to “tackle shared threats” with Tel Aviv.
Sunak justified the RAF’s deployment as “saving lives not just in Israel but in neighbouring countries like Jordan as well”.
His defence secretary, Grant Shapps, went further and described Iran’s combined drone and missile attack on Israel as posing “a threat to civilian lives in the Middle East”.
They delivered these sweeping justifications of British military activity seemingly unaware that this rationale would also oblige them to intercept Israel’s air strikes into Gaza, which have killed many thousands of civilians.
David Cameron stumbles while defending Israel on Sky News
The West jumps through rhetorical hoops to defend Israel and condemn Iran after Iranians respond to attack on diplomatic premises in Syria
It is difficult to dispute the major escalation that Israel undertook on April 1 when it bombed the Iranian embassy in Damascus, assassinating a top Iranian Commander. This was a major escalation that the West—namely, the US, UK, and France—failed to condemn during an April 2 UN Security Council meeting.
On April 13, after multiple warnings, Iran retaliated—becoming the first country to directly attack Israel in 33 years—launching “extensive” missiles and drone strikes at military targets within historic Palestine.
The attack did not result in any casualties. No hospital attacks, no mass graves, no thousands of women and children dead. Iran showed no intention of creating a mass casualty event, and predictably, many of the dozens of Iranian missiles were intercepted.
Although to some, this is a sign of Iranian weakness, not restraint. As New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman writes, Iran’s attack “showed the whole world that Israel and its Western allies have far superior anti-missile capabilities than Iran has missile capabilities.” Friedman also claims that Iran revealed “that President Biden was able to predict almost the exact hour of attack over a day in advance,” citing that fact that Biden warned Iran not to attack the day prior. Friedman does not take into account that Iranian officials had been openly stating their intention to retaliate against the Zionist state since the embassy attack in Damascus.
This is a point of view seemingly shared by Biden, who said shortly after the attack that “Israel demonstrated a remarkable capacity to defend against and defeat even unprecedented attacks—sending a clear message to its foes that they cannot effectively threaten the security of Israel.” It is unclear how the attacks were unprecedented, however, given that following the embassy attack, Iran’s Ambassador to Damascus Hossein Akbari, whose residence was bombed in the strike, said, “We will give a decisive response to this action.”
It is international relations common sense that the bombing of an embassy is a major escalation. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said, following Iran’s striking of Israel, that “the principle of inviolability of diplomatic and consular premises and personnel must be respected in all cases in accordance with international law, as I stated when condemning the 1 April attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus.”
David Cameron, British Foreign Secretary, went on Sky News to denounce the Iranian attack on Israel, but was thrown off guard when a journalist asked, “What would Britain do if a hostile nation flattened one of our consulates?”
Cameron stuttered through his response, “Well, we would take very strong action.”
David Cameron: Iran attacking Israel was "reckless"
Journalist: What would Britain do if our consulate was flattened?
David Cameron: Well, w-we would take very strong action…
Israel has been attacking both Iran and Iranian targets for years. On January 20, Israel killed five members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) in Damascus. At the time, Iranian foreign minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian claimed that, “although the Zionist enemy has destroyed Gaza on a large scale and martyred tens of thousands of people, it has not achieved any of its goals, so it is trying to make up for its defeat by resorting to blind terrorism.”
In February of last year, Iran accused Israel of attacking a military workshop complex in Isfahan. Iranian oil tankers carrying oil to Lebanon through Syria were attacked late on November 8. According to IRIB, Iran’s state news source, the attacks were carried out using “Israeli drones.” Israel has openly boasted about committing covert operations against Iran, including the assassination of a nuclear scientist in 2020.
Biden reiterated the US’s “ironclad” support for Israel, promising a Group of Seven (G7) diplomatic response. However, following a similar pattern of recent Biden administration responses to Israeli aggression, a Biden official leaked to Axios that the president privately warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the US would not support a counterattack against Iran. Biden has severaltimesexpressed private frustrations with Netanyahu as the genocide against Gaza continues to unfold, but continues to send massive weapons shipments to Israel and provide unconditional support in public.
Israel’s war cabinet is now meeting to discuss potential responses. According to a source communicating with NBC News, an Israeli counterattack could be imminent.
Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have engaged heavily with the financial services industry | Dan Kitwood/Getty Images
Labour top brass including Keir Starmer gave Bloomberg ‘exclusive’ look at party’s financial plan at private meeting
Labour leader Keir Starmer, shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves, and four other senior party figures met with a major media and financial information conglomerate weeks after it donated £150,000 to the party – sparking concerns of “cash for access” from transparency campaigners.
The meeting between Labour and the Bloomberg group, which took place in Edinburgh on 8 December last year, was described as “suspicious” and “highly unusual” by two Labour sources.
The private roundtable event came shortly after the US business conglomerate, majority owned by American businessman and politician Michael Bloomberg, made its first donation to Labour in seven years. The donation was made by a Bloomberg subsidiary called Bloomberg Trading Facility Limited.
The party used the meeting to offer Bloomberg and others in attendance “an exclusive dive” into its flagship financial services policy document, which was published the following month, according to a social media post by a person involved in coordinating the event.
Labour did not deny that the meeting was connected to the donation, with a spokesperson telling openDemocracy: “It is standard practice for the Labour Party to meet with the private sector.” The party did not reply to openDemocracy’s query about whether Bloomberg was given exclusive access to the flagship financial services policy document. Bloomberg declined to comment for this story.
The Edinburgh event was facilitated by Sovereign Strategy, a lobbying firm that has represented Bloomberg for almost two decades, which promises to get its clients’ “messages heard at the highest levels of government”, according to the firm’s website.
Lobbyists often hold such events to introduce their clients to Labour frontbenchers so they can try to shape the party’s policy on issues relevant to their businesses.
But two Labour sources, who spoke to openDemocracy on the condition of anonymity to avoid retaliation for appearing critical of the party’s leadership, said the Edinburgh meeting was “highly unusual” and “suspicious” due to the sheer number of senior politicians present.
Starmer and Reeves were joined at the event by shadow business secretary Jonathan Reynolds, shadow City minister Tulip Siddiq, as well as Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar and Daniel Johnson MSP, the party’s business spokesperson in Holyrood.
Other comparable meetings are typically attended by only one or two shadow ministers. openDemocracy has analysed more than 200 meetings attended by Labour frontbenchers in the past year based on publicly available data and triangulation through multiple sources, and found the Edinburgh meeting involved far more senior figures than any other.
The meeting took place less than two weeks after Bloomberg Trading Facility Ltd, a subsidiary of Bloomberg LP, donated £150,000 to Labour – with the conglomerate becoming one of the party’s top corporate donors for all of 2023 in a single day, according to Electoral Commission records.
A Bloomberg company last made a cash donation to the Labour Party in late 2016, when it gave the party £60,000. The firm has since handed the Conservatives £260,000, most recently donating £100,000 in June 2022.
Simon Youel, the head of policy and advocacy at not-for-profit advocacy group Positive Money, told openDemocracy that voters should be worried by the timing of the meeting – which took place as Labour finalised a key document to set out its policy on the financial services sector.
“What is most concerning is that weeks after this meeting, Labour published a plan for financial services that reads like a love letter to Big Finance, with much in there that could have been written by the industry itself,” Youel said.
Labour spent months drafting its financial services report, bringing in a staffer from City consultancy Oliver Wyman to put it together. After its publication in January, Reeves and Siddiq threw a lavish, no-press-allowed reception in the City of London’s famed Guildhall to thank the industry for its contributions.
In a since-deleted LinkedIn post, a Sovereign Strategy staffer said the roundtable discussion had a focus on the “outlook for the financial services industry and an exclusive dive into Labour’s launch of the financial services review”.
Youel added: “Rachel Reeves herself has acknowledged New Labour’s errors in relying on an under-regulated financial sector to generate wealth, yet the party seems set on repeating the mistake of letting the City of London dictate policy-making, which inevitably the public will again be left paying the price for.”
In a video from the event, Starmer can be heard telling the attendees: “What you now see is a Labour Party that is fundamentally different to the Labour Party that fought the last general election. Unrecognisably different. And very obviously pro-business.”
The video, which Labour released on the day of the meeting, made no reference to who was at the event or what was discussed.
Bloomberg holds a unique position within the financial sector, providing hardware, software, data and advisory services to all manner of financial services institutions.
Its computer systems, Bloomberg Terminals, are used by banks, institutional investors and financial analysts all over the world to access high-level investment data and place financial transactions. The company also has a news division and TV channel that employ over 2700 journalists in 120 countries, according to its website. Its eponymous billionaire founder and majority owner, Michael Bloomberg, is a fixture in US politics and one of the richest people in the world. He was mayor of New York City for 12 years, before running for President as recently as 2020.
Youel said that access to frontbench politicians could give Bloomberg a “value-add” for its clients, raising “serious concerns around cash for access in our democracy”.
The roundtable was also attended by investment manager Baillie Gifford, Aegon Asset Management and NatWest Group. For several months in 2022, NatWest provided a member of staff to Jonathan Reynolds’ office, valued at £13,800.
A Labour Party spokesperson said: “Donations from corporate entities are declared in line with Electoral Commission rules. Labour is proud to engage with the financial services sector as we develop policies to grow our economy after 14 years of Tory chaos and decline.”
Scottish Labour refused to provide any additional details about the meeting, with a spokesperson saying only that the party “meets with a range of stakeholders to discuss a range of issues”.
They added: “Boosting economic growth is at the heart of our plans to deliver a fairer and more prosperous Scotland, and we are working in partnership with both businesses and trade unions to deliver that.”
Partnership with business Lobbyist Sovereign Strategy has in recent months strengthened its links to the Labour Party, which is widely expected to win this year’s general election.
Keir Starmer is featured in a brochure published by the lobbying firm in September 2022. The Labour leader is pictured posing for a photo alongside Sovereign chairman Alan Donnelly, a former Labour MEP, in front of a display bearing Bloomberg’s branding.
The brochure goes on to quote a senior Bloomberg executive as saying that the firm has “expanded our influence with key decision-makers”.
Sovereign Strategy also donated £5,000 to deputy leader Angela Rayner “for campaigning activities” last month, according to the register of members’ financial interests. Just over a week after the donation from Sovereign to Rayner, Starmer met with Mike Bloomberg, the billionaire co-founder of Bloomberg, to discuss “Labour’s partnership with business”, .
This donation appears to be a breach of the Public Affairs Code set out by the Public Relations and Communications Association (PRCA), a trade body representing UK lobbyists including Sovereign Strategy. A breach of the code could result in a member being reprimanded or their membership of the organisation being suspended.
Section 8 of the code – a set of rules on the proper lobbying of governments – states that PRCA members must not “make any award of payment in money or in kind… to any MP”. There is no suggestion of wrongdoing on Rayner’s part.
A spokesperson for Sovereign told openDemocracy the donation was made by the company’s chairman in a personal capacity, but was unwilling to provide any further details. A Labour source, however, confirmed the donation was from the company and made by its company bank account.
The PRCA said it was reviewing the information openDemocracy provided.
In January this year, a senior account manager at Sovereign who was involved in organising the Edinburgh roundtable joined the executive committee of Labour Business, an affiliate of the party that focuses on fostering links between Labour and the business community, in January.
The Sovereign staffer in question previously worked for the Labour Party for a number of years in the business relations and endorsements team.
They are one of a large number of former Labour staffers to have left their positions at the party to join Westminster consultancies and lobbying firms the past 18 months, as firms look to beef-up their Labour bona fides in anticipation of a Conservative wipeout at the next election.
Steve Goodrich, the head of research and investigations at Transparency International UK, told openDemocracy: “Parties should scrupulously avoid the perception that they’re offering privileged political access in return for cash.
“The next general election looks set to be the most expensive in modern times so it’s crucial that politicians of all stripes avoid stumbling into quid pro quos in the rush for funds.
“Until we reduce the cost of politics, cases like these will continue to undermine public trust in our democracy, which is already perilously low.”
