Greenland is losing ice seven times faster than it was in the 1990s.

The assessment comes from an international team of polar scientists who’ve reviewed all the satellite observations over a 26-year period.

They say Greenland’s contribution to sea-level rise is currently tracking what had been regarded as a pessimistic projection of the future.

It means an additional 7cm of ocean rise could now be expected by the end of the century from Greenland alone. This threatens to put many millions more people in low-lying coastal regions at risk of flooding. It’s estimated roughly a billion live today less than 10m above current high-tide lines, including 250 million below 1m.

“Storms, if they happen against a baseline of higher seas – they will break flood defences,” said Prof Andy Shepherd, of Leeds University.

“The simple formula is that around the planet, six million people are brought into a flooding situation for every centimetre of sea-level rise. So, when you hear about a centimetre rise, it does have impacts,” he told BBC News.(BBC)…[+]

Police say they found guns and drugs on the private jet that carried rapper Juice Wrld to Chicago before he died on Sunday morning. Law enforcement officials were waiting for the plane when it landed, having received information that banned substances might be onboard.

It was during a subsequent search of the aircraft that the rapper had a seizure that led to his death. An autopsy on the 21-year-old has proved inconclusive. The Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office said on Monday that additional studies were needed before they could determine the cause of death.

Police in Chicago said they did not suspect foul play; but gave some additional details that shed light on the sudden death of one of hip-hop’s brightest rising stars.

Their search uncovered 41 “vacuum-sealed” bags of marijuana, six bottles of prescription codeine cough syrup, two 9 mm pistols, a .40-caliber pistol, a high-capacity ammunition magazine and metal-piercing bullets, authorities told the US media, including the Chicago Tribune and the New York Times.

Two men identified by police as Juice Wrld’s security guards have been charged with illegally possessing guns and ammunition.(BBC)…[+]

LAUSANNE/MOSCOW- Russia was banned from the Olympics and other major world championships today after sporting officials decided to punish it for tampering with doping-related laboratory data in another blow to Russia’s already tarnished sporting reputation.

WADA’s executive committee took the decision after concluding that Moscow had tampered with laboratory data by planting fake evidence and deleting files linked to positive doping tests that could have helped identify drug cheats. The decision to punish Russia with a ban was unanimous, a WADA spokesman said.(Reuters)…[+]

British stars are well represented in this year’s Golden Globe nominations, with Rocketman’s Taron Egerton and Phoebe Waller-Bridge up for awards. Waller-Bridge is up for a lead actress prize for Fleabag, while her Irish co-star Andrew Scott is also nominated.

Marriage Story, a Netflix production, is the most nominated film, having received six citations in all. The Irishman, another Netflix film, and Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, have five nominations each. The Crown, Chernobyl and US crime thriller Unbelievable lead the way on the TV side of things, having received four nominations apiece.

Marriage Story and Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman are both up for best film drama, as are Joker, The Two Popes and Sam Mendes’ World War I epic 1917.

Tarantino’s film is up for best musical or comedy, alongside Nazi satire Jojo Rabbit, murder mystery Knives Out, Elton John biopic Rocketman and comic biopic Dolemite Is My Name.(BBC)…[+]

A serial rapist who carried out a string of sex attacks on 11 women and children across England has been given 33 life sentences. Joseph McCann’s victims were aged between 11 and 71 and included three women who were abducted off the street at knifepoint and repeatedly raped.

He was found guilty of 37 offences at the Old Bailey on Friday. Mr Justice Edis said McCann, who must serve a minimum of 30 years, was “a threat to children” and “a paedophile”. The judge described him as a “classic psychopath” and called for an “independent and systematic” investigation into why “the system failed to protect” McCann’s victims.

The convicted burglar had been released from prison following a probation error in February before he embarked on a cocaine and vodka-fuelled rampage. The 34-year-old’s “spree of sex attacks” started in Watford in April before he moved to London, Greater Manchester and Cheshire over a two-week period.  Sentencing McCann at the Old Bailey, Mr Justice Edis described him as “a coward, a violent bully and a paedophile”. He said his victims would probably “never properly recover”, adding: “This was a campaign of rape, violence and abduction of a kind which I have never seen or heard of before.” (BBC)…[+]

The daughter of former Australian PM Bob Hawke has alleged she was raped in the 1980s but he asked her to stay silent to avoid harming his career. Rosslyn Dillon’s allegations are made in court documents seen by Australian site the New Daily.

She says she was raped by Bill Landeryou, an MP in Hawke’s Labor Party. Both men are now dead. Ms Dillon, 59, is currently pursuing an A$4m (£2m; $2.7m) claim on her father’s estate. In an affidavit, Ms Dillon alleges she was raped by Landeryou while working for his office. At the time Hawke was attempting to become Labor leader.

According to the papers, Ms Dillon says she was sexually assaulted three times, in 1983. After the third time she told her father she had been raped and wanted to go to the police, but he responded by saying: “You can’t. I can’t have any controversies right now. I am sorry but I am challenging for the leadership of the Labor Party,” the documents show.(BBC)…[+]

US puppeteer Caroll Spinney, famous for playing Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch on children’s TV show Sesame Street, has died at the age of 85. He passed away at his home in Connecticut after living with dystonia for some time, a Sesame Workshop statement said.

He had retired last year at the age of 84. Spinney had portrayed the characters – including providing their voices – since the show’s start in 1969. “Caroll was an artistic genius whose kind and loving view of the world helped shape and define Sesame Street from its earliest days in 1969 through five decades, and his legacy here at Sesame Workshop and in the cultural firmament will be unending,” the statement said. He had previously spoken of the show’s importance to his life.

“Before I came to Sesame Street, I didn’t feel like what I was doing was important,” he said. “Big Bird helped me find my purpose.”(BBC)…[+]

Ranks of the Customs Anti-Narcotic Unit (CANU) on Thursday arrested a West Coast Demerara resident, who along with three others, who are yet to be arrested, were said to have been in possession over 68 pounds of cannabis. A press release by the agency stated that around 11 pm, the 30-year-old Zeeburg, West Coast, Demerara resident along with three others were transporting 30.902 kilogrammes (equivalent to 68.1 pounds) of cannabis in a car PPP 7690, when CANU ranks began chasing the vehicle. They were able to intercept the car at De Willem Village, West Coast Demerara, where they discovered a quantity of cannabis stashed in the vehicle. They are still in the search of the three other suspects. The man in custody was reported to be the driver of the car.(stabroeknews)…[+]

Despite a report by a psychiatrist that said that he was not mentally fit to face trial, Devon Johnson, a 24-year-old labourer, was yesterday remanded to prison after he was charged with the murders of two vagrants last month.

Johnson of Cummings Street, Bourda, was not required to plead to the capital offences when he appeared before Chief Magistrate Ann McLennan in the Georgetown Magistrates’ Court One.

The first charge stated that on November 11th, 2019, at Regent Street, Georgetown, Johnson murdered Andrew Benjamin.  It is also alleged that on the same date and at the same location, Johnson murdered Raymond Samaroo.(stabroeknews)…[+]

More than 50 polar bears have descended on a village in Russia’s far north. All public activities in Ryrkaypiy, in Chukotka region, have been cancelled, and schools are being guarded to protect residents from the bears.

Conservationists say climate change could be to blame, with weak coastal ice forcing the bears to search for food in the village rather than at sea. Other experts have said polar bear visits are now so frequent, Ryrkaypiy should be permanently evacuated.

Tatyana Minenko, head of Ryrkaypiy’s bear patrol programme, told Ria Novosti that they had counted 56 polar bears in the village.

The animals were “both adult and young… there were females with cubs of different ages”, she said – adding that almost all of them appeared to be thin.(BBC)…[+]