Iran's largess

February 24, 2016 - Daily News Briefing

Unfreezing Iranian bank accounts doesn’t spell a bonanza for its allies.

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An island in Fiji took a direct hit from a powerful cyclone as the death toll climbed to 29, officials said Tuesday. Government spokesman Ewan Perrin told Radio New Zealand that Koro Island had been "pretty much flattened" by Cyclone Winston over the weekend and that there were very few buildings left standing on the island, which is home to about 4,500 people. Winds from Cyclone Winston, which tore through the Pacific Island chain Saturday and early Sunday, reached 177 miles per hour, making it the strongest storm in Fiji's recorded history.

Scientists hired by the auto industry have determined that multiple factors — including moisture and high humidity — can cause some Takata air bags to inflate with too much force and hurl shrapnel at drivers and passengers. The Independent Testing Coalition announced its findings Tuesday afternoon. Air bags made by Japan's Takata Corp. have caused at least 10 deaths and 139 injuries worldwide. Takata uses the chemical ammonium nitrate to create a small explosion and inflate the air bags in a crash. The Virginia rocket science company Orbital ATK, which was hired by the coalition, determined that three factors, working together, can cause the air bags to explode with too much force.

The hunt is on for a new United Nation's climate chief after Christiana Figueres announced last week she would step down in July – and at least one leading expert is suggesting that the UN look to Africa for a replacement. The next executive secretary of the UN's Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) should come from one of the world's poorest countries, said Saleemul Huq, director of the Dhaka-based International Centre for Climate Change and Development. “It’s time for the least developed countries to have a chance at that particular slot,” Mr. Huq told the Thompson Reuters Foundation, adding that poorer nations have played a significant role in shaping the global strategy to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius in the landmark deal forged in Paris last fall.

A woman convicted of killing a man in a deadly robbery a quarter century ago was set to be exonerated Tuesday, after an investigation into the case determined that she had been wrongfully convicted and that her confession had been false. In announcing the decision, Brooklyn District Attorney Kenneth Thompson said he would ask a judge to overturn Vanessa Gathers' manslaughter conviction, based on a confession that prosecutors now see as too vague and inaccurate to be valid beyond a reasonable doubt.

The city of Charlotte, N.C., leapt to the forefront of a national debate on LGBT rights on Monday with the passing of a law granting transgender people the right to use the bathroom that corresponds to their gender identity. The law, passed by the Charlotte City Council in a 7-4 vote and set to take effect in April, bans discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression in housing and places of public accommodation. Supporters of so-called bathroom bills see the provision as a preservation of the dignity and safety of transgender individuals. Opponents say that the measure opens the door for sexual predators to gain access to bathrooms of the opposite sex.

For nearly three millenniums, the Earth's oceans ebbed up and down by just three inches, rising no more than one or one and a half inches per century. After the Industrial Revolution, that crept up to five and a half. And since 1993, human activity has helped set a new, and worrying, record: at current rates, the seas would rise by a foot per century. Without big changes, the world could be on course to push seas up by as much as 52 inches by 2100, transforming coastal landscapes in ways we haven't seen since before the Iron Age.

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