Features

WASHINGTON — US regulators have approved a $5 billion penalty to be levied on Facebook to settle a probe into the social network’s privacy and data protection lapses, The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.

The newspaper said the Federal Trade Commission approved the settlement in a 3-2 vote, with the two Democratic members of the consumer protection agency dissenting.

According to the report, the deal, which would be the largest penalty ever imposed by the FTC for privacy violations, still needs approval from the Justice Department before it is finalised.

Although details have not yet been released, the deal will likely include restrictions on how Facebook is able to use personal data.

Charlotte Slaiman of the consumer group Public Knowledge thinks it is unlikely the restrictions will be overly harsh.

“We don’t yet know key aspects of the settlement: whether Facebook must make any changes to its business model or practices as a result,” said Charlotte Slaiman, the group’s Competition Policy Counsel.

“By itself, this fine will not be sufficient to change Facebook’s behaviour.”

The outlook was more optimistic at the Centre for Democracy and Technology, whose president Nuala O’Connor said the fine underscored the importance of “data stewardship” in the digital age.

“The FTC has put all companies on notice that they must safeguard personal information,” O’Connor said.

Facebook did not immediately respond to an AFP query on the agreement.

Unlikely to hurt

The FTC announced last year it reopened its investigation into a 2011 privacy settlement with Facebook after revelations that personal data on tens of millions of users was hijacked by the political consultancy Cambridge Analytica, which was working on the Donald Trump campaign in 2016.

Facebook has also faced questions about whether it improperly shared user data with business partners in violation of the earlier settlement.

The leading social network with more than two billion users worldwide has also been facing inquiries on privacy from authorities in US states and regulators around the world.

The settlement would be in line with Facebook’s estimate earlier this year when it said it expected to pay $3 billion to $5 billion for legal settlements on “user data practices”.

The fine is unlikely to hurt Facebook, which logged a profit of $2.4 billion on revenue that climbed 26 per cent to $15.1 billion in the first three months of this year.

Facebook’s stock value increased 1.8 per cent after the fine was announced, closing at nearly $205, the highest it has been all year.

Break up Facebook

Some Facebook critics have argued the company should face tougher sanctions including monitoring of its data practices, or that Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg should be personally liable for penalties.

Faced with criticism, Facebook’s head of global affairs, Nick Clegg, called on governments to do more to regulate social networks, instead of leaving the work to companies.

“It’s not for private companies, however big or small, to come up with those rules. It is for democratic politicians in the democratic world to do so,” Clegg said in a June 24 interview with the BBC.

But there are increasing calls to dismantle the massive social network.

In May, one of Facebook’s co-founders called for the social media behemoth to be broken up, warning that Zuckerberg had become far too powerful.

“It’s time to break up Facebook,” said Chris Hughes in an editorial for The New York Times, saying it had become necessary to separate the social network from Facebook’s Instagram and WhatsApp services.

Zuckerberg’s “focus on growth led him to sacrifice security and civility for clicks”, said Hughes.

LOS ANGELES — “Beyoncé has to come.”

“She’s not on the tip sheet.”

“There’s no way.”

You couldn’t take a step down the red carpet at Tuesday’s “Lion King” world premiere at the Dolby Theatre without hearing whispers from the news media, fans, publicists and celebrity guests alike about a possible Beyoncé appearance.

The singer returns to the big screen July 19 as the voice of lioness Nala, opposite Donald Glover’s Simba in Disney’s reimagining of the 1994 animated classic. “The Lion King: The Gift” album, produced and curated by Beyoncé, drops the same day as director Jon Favreau’s remake.

Of course, just minutes before the carpet closed, the superstar made her grand entrance. Queen Bey and her princess, Blue Ivy Carter, stepped out in matching black and silver suits.

The deafening cries commenced, echoing a quarter mile down the Hollywood Boulevard city block. My ears rang for minutes.

Working with Beyoncé was simply “iconic,” said her costar Glover on the press line.

“They don’t make them like Beyoncé. She’s kind of like the last of the Johnny Carson stars, like people you have to see,” he said beneath an ombre orange tent. “I just learned and listened to her. I tried to put my best foot forward.”

Twenty-five years ago, Nala and Simba were voiced by Caucasian actors, Moira Kelly and Matthew Broderick, respectively. The casting of Glover, Beyoncé and recently Halle Bailey (a Beyoncé mentee) as Ariel in Disney’s upcoming live-action “Little Mermaid” exemplifies how the studio has been trying to add more diverse voices to its remakes of classics.

(Though some attempts to course-correct have highlighted previous missteps, like the quietly deleted casting couch scene in Disney-Pixar’s “Toy Story 2”.)

The directors of the 1994 original version of “The Lion King”, Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff, attended Tuesday’s premiere. Speaking with The Times, they described the casting of the new iteration as a “great evolution”.

Niles Fitch, who starred as young Simba in the Broadway adaptation of the film and who plays a teenage Randall Pearson on “This Is Us”, was also celebrating.

“It’s a cartoon, so I don’t believe there’s one certain look, especially when it’s voice-over,” Fitch said. “And with Ariel, there’s a lot of different Caucasian princesses, and I know how impactful it was for my sister to watch Tiana when she was younger.”

Tiana, the lead in 2009’s “The Princess and the Frog”, was the ninth Disney princess and first to be of African American heritage.

Glover put it this way: “I think anything that gets people used to seeing different types of people is good. I think labelling things as diversity for the sake of diversity, I actually don’t agree with.

“I think diversity of thought and diversity of representation is just an important part of growing as a culture, and I don’t think people should be afraid of it,” he added. “I think people should try and embrace it and just understand different things feel different to different people, so it’s important to just have it.”

Glover proudly shared that the original “Lion King” is his 3-year-old son Legend’s favourite movie. It’s a full-circle experience for Glover; when he was a kid, the 1994 film actually inspired his music career.

He recalled watching the videocassette, which included a segment with the child voice actors performing the “Lion King” tunes. Seeing them made him realise he could sing too.

Glover, who performs under the stage name Childish Gambino, said his love of the movie made dueting on “Can You Feel the Love Tonight?” with Beyoncé all the more emotional.

“I felt very close to that song. You try and do it the way it felt to you when you were a child.”

Sharing some of the giddiness of the event’s screaming fans, he added, “It’s crazy. It’s Beyoncé.”

IOWA — New US research has found that video games such as Minecraft may help increase creativity when players are given the freedom to play as they want, with no instruction.

Carried out by researchers from Iowa State University, the new study looked at 352 students at the university who were randomly assigned to one of four groups.

Two of the groups were asked to play Minecraft, a virtual Lego-style game where you can build anything that you can imagine. But while one of the groups was asked to play as they wished for 40 minutes, the other group received the instruction to play as creatively as possible.

A third group was asked to play a different style of video game, a racing car video game, which doesn’t allow players to be as creative as Minecraft, while participants in the fourth group were asked to passively watch a television show.

After 40 minutes of each activity, all participants were asked to complete several creativity tasks, one of which involved drawing a creature from another planet.

The more human-like the creature, the lower the participants scored low for creativity, and the less human-like the creature, the higher the creativity score.

The findings, published in the Creativity Research Journal, showed that the participants who were randomly assigned to play Minecraft without any instruction received significantly higher scores on the creativity task compared to those who played Minecraft with the instruction to “be creative,” as well as those who played the driving game and those who watched television.

The researchers commented that the results indicate that the effect on creativity is not just down to the type of game played — Minecraft being a good example of a game with few rules, a high amount of player freedom, and which encourages creative expression — but also the way the player plays.

“It’s not just that Minecraft can help induce creativity. There seems to be something about choosing to do it that also matters,” said study author Douglas Gentile.

Lead author Jorge Blanco-Herrera added that for the Minecraft players who received an instruction, “Being told to be creative may have actually limited their options while playing, resulting in a less creative experience.”

“It’s also possible they used all their ‘creative juices’ while playing and had nothing left when it came time to complete the test.”

Previous research on playing video games has provided mixed results on whether it has a harmful or beneficial effect on health and mental well-being. The team say that the new findings suggest that video games could have the potential to be an engaging way to learn and increase creativity.

“The research is starting to tell a more interesting, nuanced picture. Our results are similar to other gaming research in that you get better at what you practice, but how you practice might matter just as much,” Gentile said.

LOS ANGELES — After two weeks of dominance, Disney’s “Toy Story 4” was knocked from the top spot at the weekend box office by Sony and Marvel’s “Spider-Man: Far From Home”.

The third Marvel Cinematic Universe release of the year, “Far From Home” opened with $39.3 million on Tuesday before earning $93.6 million Friday through Sunday for a cumulative $185.1 million through the weekend, according to estimates from measurement firm Comscore, well above analyst predictions of $125 million.

Internationally, it’s earned $395 million since opening June 28, for a global cumulative of $580 million.

The result is a rare win in what has so far been a summer dominated by franchise fatigue. While movies such as “Men in Black: International”, “Dark Phoenix” and “Godzilla: King of the Monsters” have disappointed both critically and commercially, Marvel’s films have consistently performed well, with “Avengers: Endgame” continuing to do business after 11 weeks in theatres.

“Far From Home” follows this year’s Marvel blockbusters “Captain Marvel” and “Endgame”, picking up the MCU narrative where the latter left off.

The second solo Spider-Man outing starring Tom Holland as the web-slinger cost an estimated $160 million to produce and introduces Jake Gyllenhaal as new character Mysterio. It earned positive reviews from critics, with a 92 per cent “fresh” rating on review aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes.

The previous entry in the franchise, “Spider-Man: Homecoming”, opened with $117 million in 2017 before going on to gross $880 million in global receipts.

In second place, “Toy Story 4” added $34.3 million in its third weekend for a cumulative $306.6 million. Internationally, the picture earned $43.1 million for a worldwide cumulative of $650 million.

Universal’s “Yesterday” came in at No. 3, adding $10.8 million in its second weekend for a cumulative $36.9 million. It currently stands at $57 million in global grosses.

In fourth place, Warner Bros.’ “Annabelle Comes Home” added $9.8 million in its second weekend for a cumulative $50.2 million and $134.8 million worldwide.

Rounding out the top five, Disney’s “Aladdin” added $7.6 million in its seventh weekend for a cumulative $320.8 million and $921 million globally.

Also new this weekend, A24’s “Midsommar” earned $6.5 million over the weekend after its Wednesday opening for a cumulative $10.9 million, within range of analyst projections of $8 million to $10 million.

Directed by indie horror filmmaker Ari Aster, the movie follows a young couple who find themselves on a pastoral Swedish retreat that grows increasingly more sinister. The psychological thriller earned an 82 per cent “fresh” rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, but a lacklustre C-plus CinemaScore.

Aster’s directorial debut, “Hereditary”, opened with $13.6 million in June 2018 before earning $79.3 million in global grosses. The film was a critical and commercial hit, and it remains the highest-opening picture for A24.

In seventh place, Universal’s “The Secret Life of Pets 2” added $4.8 million in its fifth weekend for a cumulative $140.7 million.

At No. 8, Sony’s “Men in Black: International” added $3.6 million in its fourth weekend for a cumulative $72 million.

In ninth place, Disney’s “Avengers: Endgame” added $3.1 million in its 11th weekend for a cumulative $847.9 million.

Rounding out the top 10, Paramount’s “Rocketman” added $2.8 million in its sixth weekend for a cumulative $89.2 million.

“Marianne & Leonard: Words of Love”, Nick Broomfield’s documentary on singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen and muse Marianne Ihlen, led the specialty openings with a per-screen average of $11,078. The Roadside Attractions release brought in $44,311 on four screens in New York and Los Angeles.

Also in limited release, Sony Pictures Classics’ “Maiden” expanded into 18 additional locations for a total of 24, earning $147,467 in its third weekend, for a cumulative $224,216.

Neon expanded “Wild Rose” in its third weekend to 63 locations from 16, earning $209,000 and a cumulative $380,770.

Greenwich Entertainment’s “Echo in the Canyon” expanded into 144 locations to $336,132 for a cumulative $2 million.

CBS Films expanded the documentary “Pavarotti” into 250 theatres in its fifth weekend to $470,000 for a cumulative $3 million.

A24’s “The Last Black Man in San Francisco” is playing in 188 locations (up from 155 last week) and added $332,899 for a cumulative $2.7 million.

ArtAffects Entertainment’s “The Other Side of Heaven 2” added $177,975 in its second weekend for a cumulative $966,425.

This week, Paramount releases the horror film “Crawl”, and Fox opens the action comedy “Stuber”. In limited release, A24 reveals the comedy drama “The Farewell” starring Awkwafina, and Bleecker Street unveils the Jesse Eisenberg comedy “The Art of Self Defence”.

Following early car-based off-roaders like the Lada Niva, Matra-Simca Rancho and AMC Eagle, the Honda CR-V first arrived in 1994 and became the defining model in what was then referred to as a “soft roader” but now known as the ‘crossover’ segment. 

A trendsetting early adopter to the now highly popular automotive segment, which since spanned many competitors of different sub-categories, the CR-V has itself grown slightly bigger and become more advanced and overtly aggressive in design, yet has retained its practical daily drive sensibility.

Not quite as bigger than the original CR-V as its bulging body suggests, the fifth generation CR-V is, however, decidedly more aggressive in design, and now sports a big hexagonal grille, muscular bumpers, protruding wheel-arches, pronounced sills and scalloped bonnet.

Contrasting to earlier models in overall aesthetic effect, the CR-V long ditched the first two generation models’ big upright glasshouse in favour of a low arcing window profile, higher waistline and smaller glasshouse for a hunkered down aesthetic most pronounced in the latest generation.

Prodigious and efficient

Behind its chunky upright grille and under its ridged clamshell bonnet, the latest CR-V is powered by an entry-level naturally-aspirated 2.4-litre engine or a more powerful, efficient and downsized turbocharged 1.5-litre 4-cylinder unit coupled to a continuously variable transmission (CVT) for all-wheel-drive versions.

Producing 190BHP at 5,600rpm and 179lb/ft torque throughout a broad 2,000-5,000rpm band, the CR-V’s prodigious 1.5-litre engine carries its 1,598-1,705kg mass through the 0-100km/h benchmark in a reasonably quick 10-seconds and onto 200km/h, and can return restrained 7.1l/100km combined cycle fuel efficiency.

Quick spooling and responsive, with scant little turbo lag from idling, the CR-V’s engine well reconciles a flat, broad torque curve with progressive power delivery that makes it feel that there’s more on offer. Despite peak power arriving somewhat low, the CR-V’s engine nevertheless has a peaky and free-revving feel compared to most turbo engines. Its CVT transmission is meanwhile well-tuned to match its revvy engine and more readily allows it to reach for redline than most CVTs, and has a less elastic feel through ratios.

Smooth and eager

Smooth and efficient in managing engine speed and ratio changes, CVT transmissions aren’t usually the sportiest or most rewarding, but the CR-V’s system is one of the better such systems, and in sport mode, takes a more aggressive and responsive profile. A rewarding drive by usually uninspired mid-size crossover standards, the CR-V’s high rev engine noise has a slight but pleasant rasp. Meanwhile its electric-assisted steering is quick, direct, sharp and tidily eager into corners with a quick flick of the wrists and little under-steer.

Driving the front wheels under normal conditions and kicking power to the rear as needed to maintain traction and stability, the CR-V, however, proved agile for its segment. Happy being hustled along at brisk pace through switchbacks, the CR-V well controls body lean for a high-riding vehicle and is eager to shift weight to the outside rear wheels to tighten a cornering line, if asked to through tight fast corners. Smooth and stable with good grip, the CR-V is settled over crests, dips and road imperfections.

Generous quarters

Reassuring at speed and well-refined from road noise and vibrations, the CR-V rides comfortably with its unexaggerated 235/60R18 tyres in higher EX specification, but would be more supple over sudden sharp bumps with the lesser LX specification’s higher sidewall 235/65R17 tyres. 

Comfortable inside, the CR-V’s highly adjustable driving position offer commanding front views spacious and space, with its low console storage area allowing for an airy ambiance and good horizontal knee room. Meanwhile its infotainment screen menus and controls are user-friendly, and its instrumentation clear.

Particularly noteworthy is the CR-V’s generous second row seating, with roomy legroom and headroom for tall passengers, and wide rear door swing angles for easy access. Boot space meanwhile expands from 561-litres to 1,756-litres with rear seats folded. 

Pleasant in cabin design and using good materials and plenty of soft textures, the CR-V EX specification is well-equipped with safety and convenience features, including particularly useful reversing camera, parking sensors and blindspot warning, and dual-zone climate control, sunroof, and 8-speaker sound system with 2 USB ports and 7-inch screen.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Engine: 1.5-litre, transverse 4-cylinders

Bore x stroke: 73 x 89.5mm

Compression ratio: 10.3:1

Valve-train: 16-valve, direct injection, DOHC, variable valve timing and lift control

Gearbox: Continually variable transmission (CVT), four-wheel-drive

Transmission ratios: 0.405-2.645

Reverse/final drive: 1.265-1.859/5.641

Power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 190 (193) [142] @5,600rpm

Specific power: 126.8BHP/litre

Power-to-weight: 118.9BHP/tonne

Torque, lb/ft (Nm): 179 (243) @2,000-5,000rpm

Specific torque: 162.2Nm/litre

Torque-to-weight: 152Nm/tonne

0-100km/h: 10-seconds

Top speed: 200km/h

Fuel consumption, urban/extra-urban/combined:8.6-/6.2-/7.1-litres/100km

CO2 emissions, combined: 162g/km 

Fuel capacity: 57-litres

Length: 4,600mm

Width: 1,855mm

Height: 1,689mm

Track, F/R: 1,601/1,629mm

Luggage volume, min/max: 561-/1,123-1,756-litres

Unladen weight: 1,598-1,705kg

Steering: Electric-assisted rack & pinion

Steering ratio: 12.3:1

Lock-to-lock: 2.34-turns

Turning Circle: 11.4-metres

Suspension, F/R: MacPherson struts/multilink double wishbone

Brakes, F/R: Ventilate discs/discs

Tyres: 235/60R18

Price, starting from/as driven: JD32,500/JD36,500 (on-the-road, third party insurance)

PARIS — By landing on the Moon in 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin arrived at a place which, up until that point, had been the stuff of fantasy.

But even after they transformed fantasy into fact, it is a place that continues to capture the imagination of storytellers, as it has for centuries.

Literature, novels, cinema... from antiquity to the present, the Moon has been the object of any number of imaginary expeditions.

As far back as the second century BC, the satirist Lucian of Samosata, in “True Stories”, imagined a voyage to the Moon that saw the author and his fellow travellers find the King of the Moon caught up in a war with the King of the Sun.

In the 17th century, French writer Cyrano de Bergerac — the real one, not the character in Edmond Rostand’s famous play — wrote a tale titled “The Other World: Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon”.

Baron Munchausen travelled to the Moon in a flying boat in German writer Rudolf Erich Raspe’s 1785 fantasy.

And the 17th-century astronomer Johannes Kepler imagined demons on the Moon in his story titled “The Dream”.

In more modern times, science fiction pioneer H.G. Wells imagined a sophisticated race of insect-like creatures living below the satellite’s surface in “The First Men on the Moon”.

Wells’s adventurers reached the Moon using a substance that negated the forces of gravity.

Verne, in his 1865 tale “From the Earth the Moon”, was a little less fanciful, shooting his travellers across space in a giant cannon.

A century or so later Armstrong, travelling back from the Moon, referred to Verne’s tale in one of his television broadcasts.

More recently still, one of Herge’s 1950s Tintin adventures featured a visit to the Moon — and even Snowy, his loyal dog, got a spacesuit.

Cinema versions of the Moon have been equally fanciful.

In George Melies extraordinary 1902 work “A Trip to the Moon”, the travellers find giant mushrooms and excitable natives.

He follows Verne with a cannon-propelled space capsule — and a splashdown at sea on their return.

As technology brought the possibility of a lunar flight closer, that seemed to dampen the market for the more fanciful lunar tales.

Classic sci-fi writer Robert Heinlein still used the Moon as the setting for his 1966 novel “The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress”.

But by this time, humans inhabit it — and Heinlein’s tale is about the revolt of the lunar colony against rule from Earth.

And just a year before the real Moon landings, Stanley Kubrick’s epic 1968 film “2001” has astronauts at an outpost on the Moon finding a mysterious obelisk there.

Here, as in Clarke’s original story, the Moon has become little more than the stage for something far more important.

Perhaps what the 1969 Apollo mission to the Moon did was not so much end the telling of tales about the satellite as change the kind of stories being told.

After the Apollo landings, the Moon became a focus for pop culture.

The heroes of the achingly kitsch 1970s science fiction television series “Space 1999” are based on the Moon — and have to cope with a nuclear accident that knocks it out of orbit and sends them hurtling into space.

The Moon also featured in any number of comic-book adventures and cartoon series from the 1970s onwards.

David Bowie released his Kubrick-inspired classic 1969 single “Space Oddity” the same month as the Moon landings.

A generation later, in the 2013 version, Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield played his cover version of the song from the International Space Station.

And in 2009 Bowie’s son, Duncan Jones, broke into the cinema mainstream with his cult hit — sci-fi puzzler “Moon”.

By Dina Halaseh

Educational Psychologist

In a society that mostly puts the weight and responsibility of parenting on mothers, we tend to see absent fathers everywhere.

My job as a brain trainer requires me to sit with both parents to help their children; I see very few fathers attending and sharing the responsibility of raising their children. Unfortunately, many fathers believe that if they provide financial stability for their families, then their job is done.

Fathers play a huge role in the development of their children. Their involvement impacts emotional, cognitive and social development. Many studies show that children with both parents involved tend to have higher academic achievements and educational outcomes. Being a good father results in more balanced children — emotionally, socially and cognitively. Any man can be a father, but it takes someone special to be a baba. Here are a few tips for how fathers can be involved in their children’s lives. 

Being present for your children

We all need to feel like we have someone to fall back on, someone who is there no matter what and is willing to help us get through anything. Having a positive, involved and present father helps children develop a strong sense of security, wellbeing and high self-esteem.

Think about your childhood for a moment – do you remember what your father used to tell you? If it is positive, do you think it matters now? How does it make you feel? And if it were negative ones, do you want your child to feel that kind of pain? Do you still feel it?

Fathers are present when they take time away from work to be with their children. Instead of being silent in front of the television, a father can get involved and ask about their day and listen to what they have to say with full attention and no judgement. 

Admitting wrong

A father can admit mistakes and saying sorry is not something to be ashamed of. Children can achieve greater emotional understanding and better self-esteem when they can admit they are wrong and apologise for any misdoings. Many people believe this is a sign of weakness while it is absolutely the complete opposite. One of the hardest things to do is to apologise, but this shows your child your strength!

You’ll also be helping your child see that when someone does something wrong, it does not make them bad. Many children think that they are bad when they make a mistake. By teaching them that the action itself is bad, not them, that one can always apologise and fix mistakes, their self-esteem won’t be affected.

Praise and positivity

I still remember my father’s words growing up, and all the praise I received for all the little achievements I was able to do then. Even simple ones were huge to him. And I cannot help but smile when I think of how he thought of me. I’m sure for him as a wise baba, he saw many things that could be changed to the better, but with all his positivity and praise, I believed that he saw me as his little superstar. This image is imprinted in me now. When I think of my baba, I remember how much he loved and supported me all through the way.

Ensure that your words are filled with praise and love. Children get ridiculed all the time by so many people around them. Let them know that no matter what, “Baba” is proud of the smallest achievement. Answering many who ask, I always say that to get the behaviour you want from your child, model it and then praise it when they do it. Simply ignoring the negative behaviours and positively reinforcing the positive ones will do wonders! 

Giving children responsibility

We see many parents doing everything for their kids and assuming they’re helping them by taking away their burden. Kids need to understand that they need to work hard to get something out of life. Even if a parent is a millionaire with a child set for life, they still need to understand the value of everything, to take responsibility for their action, and to work hard. If they are not shouldering more responsibility as they grow, they might lose everything one day.

Fathers can help their children take responsibility for their studying, give them chores, have them make their beds and put away their dishes. Even getting them pets to foster will boost their sense of responsibility. They need to learn how to depend on themselves because one day, life will ask them to take full responsibility for themselves and even others. It doesn’t matter who you are as a father now, as you can always choose to be a better one. There is always something more that one can do to be there for their child. This is a special tribute to my baba Amer Halaseh. It’s sixteen years since he passed away, but he will always be in our hearts.

Reprinted with permission from Family Flavours magazine

WASHINGTON — Good news: we can help halt climate change through a massive campaign of reforestation, according to a new study published on Thursday.

Bad news: it would require covering an area the size of the United States in new trees, and even then some scientists are sceptical about the paper’s conclusions. 

Such an effort could capture two-thirds of manmade carbon emissions and reduce overall levels in the atmosphere to their lowest in almost a century, according to the research that was carried out by ETH Zurich and published in Science.

The study is the first to attempt to quantify how many trees the Earth can support, where to plant them and how much carbon they could store.

“We all knew restoring forests could play a part in tackling climate change, but we had no scientific understanding of what impact this could make,” said co-author Thomas Crowther.

“Our study shows clearly that forest restoration is the best climate change solution available today.”

The researchers studied around 80,000 high-resolution satellite photographs of protected forest areas, from the arctic tundra to equatorial rainforest, to establish a “natural level” of tree cover for each ecosystem.

They then used machine learning to identify 10 soil and climate variables that determine tree cover in each ecosystem, and created a predictive model to map potential tree cover worldwide under current environmental conditions.

The paper found that the Earth can support 891,000 hectares of trees that would sequester 205 billion tonnes of carbon.

Surprisingly, it found that these extra trees could be grown in croplands and urban areas, highlighting the major role agroforestry could play in tackling climate change.

The most recent report by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change proposed that limiting climate change to 1.5ºC will require up to an extra 2.47 billion acres of forest by 2050. 

The team said their study evaluated the UN claim for the first time, showing where the trees could be restored and how much carbon they could capture.

The scenario, they added, is “undoubtedly achievable under the current climate”.

But they warned that the need for action is urgent, since a warming climate was already reducing the amount of land that can support new forests. 

‘Too good to be true’

Some experts who were not involved with the study, however, expressed scepticism about some of its findings.

“Restoration of trees may be ‘among the most effective strategies,’ but it is very far indeed from ‘the best climate change solution available,’ and a long way behind reducing fossil fuel emissions to net zero,” said Myles Allen, a geosystem science professor at Oxford.

“Yes, heroic reforestation can help, but it is time to stop suggesting there is a ‘nature-based solution’ to ongoing fossil fuel use. There isn’t. Sorry,” he added.

Martin Lukac, a professor of ecosystem science at the University of Reading, added that one of the paper’s weaknesses was its reliance on overly optimistic modelling.

“Planting trees to soak up two thirds of the entire anthropogenic carbon burden to date sounds too good to be true. Probably because it is,” he said. 

“Humans have enhanced forest cover on a large scale only by shrinking their population size [Russia], increasing productivity of industrial agriculture [the West] or by direct order of an autocratic government [China]. 

“None of these activities look remotely feasible or sustainable at global scale.”

PARIS — A three-fold jump since 1975 in the percentage of adults worldwide who are obese has been driven mainly by a shift in diet and lack of exercise, but genes do play a role as well, according a large-scale study published on Thursday.

For people genetically predisposed to a wider girth, these unhealthy lifestyles compounded the problem, resulting in an even higher rate of weight gain, researchers reported in The BMJ, a peer-reviewed medical journal.

The standard measure for obesity, the Body-Mass Index (BMI), is calculated on the basis of weight and height.

A BMI of 25 up to 30 means that one is overweight. Thirty and above corresponds to obesity, a major risk factor for heart attacks, stroke, diabetes and some cancers. 

About four per cent of adults in the mid-1970s had a BMI of 30 or higher. By 2016, that share had risen to 13 per cent (11 for men and 15 for women), according to the World Health Organisation.

There are currently about two billion people 18 and older — 39 per cent of all adults — with a BMI above the “overweight” threshold of 25, and 700 million of them are clinically obese.

The prevalence of excess weight has risen even more dramatically among children, from four per cent in 1975 to over 18 per cent in 2016.

To tease out the relative impact of environment and genes on obesity, scientists led by Maria Brandkvist at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology combed through data on nearly 120,000 people in Norway whose height and weight were regularly measured between 1963 and 2008.

Adults began tipping the scales at significantly higher weights in the 1980s and 1990s, they found. 

Those born after 1970 were far more likely to have a substantially higher BMI as young adults than earlier generations.

‘Obesogenic’ environment

Half of the people monitored were divided into five groups depending on their genetic susceptibility to obesity.

Comparing the two groups at the extremes, the researchers found, for example, that 35-year-old men with genetic variants known to favour weight gain were already heavier in the mid-1960s than men the same age without those fat-inducing genes.

Four decades later — even as obesity rates increased across the board — that gap nearly doubled. 

Women showed the same trend, though the increase over time was somewhat smaller.

“Genetic predisposition would make a 35-year old man of average height 3.9 kilos heavier than his genetically protected peers in the 1960s,” explained Brandkvist. 

“In Norway today, his vulnerable genes would make him more than 6.8 kg heavier.” 

In addition, he will have gained an extra 7.1 kilogrammes “simply as a result of living in our ‘obesogenic’ environment”, she added.

“This man’s 13.9kg excess weight is caused mostly by today’s unhealthy lifestyle, but also by how his genes interplay with the environment.” 

While the correlation between the genetic profiles and degree of obesity was strong, the study — by its nature — cannot determine a direct cause-and-effect relationship, the authors caution. 

Only clinical trials can highlight causal relationships, but for many areas of interest such experiments are not possible with humans, for both practical and ethical reasons.