Climate warnings must get better, UN body declares

CLIMATE early-warning systems need to be based on “what the weather will do” rather than “what the weather will be” and are at present inadequate, the report 2020 State of Climate Services concludes. It was published on Tuesday by the UN World Meteorological Organization (WMO). In 2018, 108 million people needed humanitarian aid after climate-related disasters: this could almost double by 2030 if people and businesses are not given the tools to plan ahead, the WMO says. It suggests that more than 11,000 such disasters over the past 50 years have killed more than two million people, and cost the global economy $3.6 trillion.

Free hunger-striking Chinese activist, says CSW

THE charity Christian Solidarity Worldwide has called on the Chinese government to free an activist, the former lawyer, Zhang Zhan, who is on hunger strike; she has been force-fed and her health is at risk, the charity says. She was imprisoned in Shanghai on 14 May after posting videos and articles about Covid-19 on social-media platforms, including YouTube and Twitter, which are blocked in China. She had questioned whether the authorities had violated human rights by covering up the pandemic. She faces a charge of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”.