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Friday 11.12.21

Do you have a boss who calls you outside your work hours? Maybe someone should tell them such behavior is now illegal in Portugal. Just some food for thought! Here's what else you need to know to Get Up to Speed and On With Your Day.
 

By AJ Willingham

Youth activists protest yesterday in Glasgow, where the COP26 climate summit is coming to a close. 

Climate

It's the last day of the COP26 climate summit in Scotland. After two weeks of talks, the big question is: What will the 197 participating parties have to show for it all? Negotiators are working hard on the final details of the Glasgow Agreement, a set of climate pledges and priorities that COP26 President Alok Sharma says will be the main artifact by which history judges this key global meeting. The first draft, revealed Wednesday, did not go down particularly well, with climate experts and advocacy groups criticizing it as vague and not ambitious enough. The latest version retains an unprecedented reference to fossil fuels, boosting pressure on major coal, oil and gas producers. Sharma has urged delegates to find common ground on climate financing: getting wealthy countries to help developing ones cut emissions and adapt.

Capitol riot

A federal appeals court has temporarily granted former President Trump's request to pause the release of key White House documents ahead of today's deadline to deliver them to the House committee investigating the January 6 attack. Trump appealed after a lower court decided he can't claim executive privilege to keep them secret. Now, the three-judge appeals panel has asked lawyers for Trump, Congress and the Biden administration to submit briefs before oral arguments are heard on November 30. Ex-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, one of many Trump-era officials served with subpoenas in the investigation, has said he will refuse to appear before the committee until courts rule on Trump's claim of executive privilege. The panel, in response, has given him an ultimatum: Appear by today, or risk being found in criminal contempt. 

Astroworld

A ninth person has died as a result of the crowd surge a week ago at a Houston music festival. The woman was just 22; every victim was younger than 30. Houston police now say the investigation into the crush could take months, and questions remain over who should be held accountable. A slew of lawsuits have been filed by families of victims and survivors against rapper and organizer Travis Scott and others. A security guard quit the day of the event after he says he didn't get enough training and heard about plans online for fans to storm the gate. The Houston firefighters union has complained about the lack of reliable communication between it and medics at the scene hired by the Astroworld event.

Coronavirus

More than 2 million at-home Covid-19 tests produced by Ellume have been recalled by the company due to "higher-than-acceptable" false positives. The FDA says there have been 35 reports of false positives, enough for the body to identify it as a Class I recall -- the most serious kind. However, there have been no deaths related to the test failures, and the reliability of negative test results is not affected. Meanwhile, a report this week found the pandemic has caused a 16% rise in expected deaths among the 38 member nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Life expectancy fell the most in Spain and the United States, with the US losing 1.6 years of life per capita on average over the course of the pandemic. 

Myanmar

A military court in Myanmar has sentenced American journalist Danny Fenster to 11 years in prison. Fenster, 37, had been detained in the country for more than five months. He is the former managing editor of Frontier Myanmar, an independent news outlet that covered current affairs, business and politics in Myanmar. The publication says the charges Fenster faced, including unlawful association with an illegal group and circulating comments that "cause fear" or are "false news," were based on the allegation that Fenster was working for a different, banned media outlet in the aftermath of the military coup. However, at the time of his arrest, Fenster had not worked for that outlet for several months. Fenster is one of about 100 journalists detained since the February coup, with about 30 still behind bars.

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Dive into the weekend
This is the most polite, premeditated plunge you'll ever see. (Click here to view.)