First Thing: White House gives major boost to electric vehicle charging points

Biden administration unveils $623m in funding amid concern that transition to zero-carbon transportation not keeping pace with climate crisis. Plus, Ai Weiwei on AI art

Good morning.

Joe Biden’s administration has unveiled $623m in funding to boost the number of electric vehicle charging points in the US, amid concerns that the transition to zero-carbon transportation is failing to keeping pace with goals to tackle the climate crisis.

The funding will be distributed in grants for dozens of programs across 22 states, such as EV chargers for apartment blocks in New Jersey, rapid chargers in Oregon and hydrogen fuel chargers for freight trucks in Texas. In all, it is expected the money, drawn from the bipartisan infrastructure law, will add 7,500 chargers to the US total.

“We are building the charging network to win the EV race,” said Pete Buttigieg, the US transportation secretary. “The electric vehicle revolution isn’t coming, it is here. I take very personally the importance of the fact that America led the world in the automotive revolution. Now we are in the midst of a second automotive revolution, it’s critical America do so once more.”

How many electric charging points are there in the US? There are about 170,000 electric vehicle chargers in the US, a huge leap from a network that was barely visible before Biden took office. The White House has set a goal for 500,000 chargers to help support the shift away from gasoline and diesel.

Republican debate: Haley and DeSantis exchange barbs in fight for second place

The fifth Republican presidential debate started and ended with barbed exchanges between Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis, with neither likely to have moved closer to eclipsing the frontrunner, Donald Trump, in the Iowa caucus next week.

The Florida governor derided Haley for running “to do her donors’ bidding”, and the former UN ambassador called DeSantis a habitual liar. The tone early in the Iowa debate matched previous GOP debates, which were frequently hostile, with candidates hurling personal attacks at each another.

Trump has repeatedly declined to debate his party’s opponents, and skipped this debate as well, instead participating in a town hall hosted by Fox News, also in Iowa.

Unlike the previous debates, this one was not coordinated by the Republican National Committee (RNC), which decided in December to stop hosting GOP debates for the rest of the primary season.

What else has happened in the race? Chris Christie, Trump’s most vociferous critic among the Republican contenders, announced yesterday that he was ending his bid for the presidency, after polling low ahead of the first primary in Iowa.

Who is left? Christie leaves Haley, DeSantis, Trump and Vivek Ramaswamy in the race for the Republican nomination.

‘Astounding’ ocean temperatures in 2023 intensified extreme weather, data shows

“Astounding” ocean temperatures in 2023 supercharged “freak” weather around the world as the climate crisis continued to intensify, new data has revealed.

The oceans absorb 90% of the heat trapped by the carbon emissions from the burning of fossil fuels, making it the clearest indicator of global heating. Record levels of heat were taken up by the oceans in 2023, scientists said, and the data showed that for the past decade the oceans have been hotter every year than the year before.

The heat also led to record levels of stratification in the oceans, where warm water ponding on the surface reduces the mixing with deeper waters. This cuts the amount of oxygen in the oceans, threatening marine life, and also reduces the amount of carbon dioxide and heat the seas can take up in the future.

Reliable ocean temperature measurements stretch back to 1940, but it is likely the oceans are now at their hottest for 1,000 years and heating faster than at any time in the past 2,000 years.

What are experts saying? “The ocean is the key to telling us what’s happening to the world and the data is painting a compelling picture of warming year after year after year,” said Prof John Abraham, of the University of St Thomas in Minnesota, part of the team that produced the new data.

In other news …

Two Russian missiles struck a hotel late last night in the centre of Ukraine’s second largest city, Kharkiv, reports Reuters. The attack has left 13 people injured, including foreign journalists, local authorities said. One person had been seriously injured, the regional governor added.

Donald Trump told the president of the European Commission in 2020 that the US would “never come help” if Europe was attacked and also said “Nato is dead”, a senior European commissioner said. According to the Jerusalem Post, Trump added: “And by the way, you owe me $400bn, because you didn’t pay, you Germans, what you had to pay for defence.”

An avalanche roared through a section of expert trails at a California ski resort near Lake Tahoe yesterday, sweeping up four people and killing one,as a major storm with snow and gusty winds moved into the region, authorities said. Authorities said nobody else was missing.

A UK virology team has confirmed the first bird flu infections in elephant and fur seals in the sub-Antarctic region, as the highly contagious virus continues to spread around the world. Scientists warn further spread could threaten the fragile ecosystem, as tests show seals died of H5N1 on South Georgia island.

Don’t miss this: art that can be easily copied by AI is ‘meaningless’, says Ai Weiwei

Art that can be easily replicated by artificial intelligence is “meaningless”, according to the Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei, who believes even Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse would have had to rethink their approach if AI had existed in their era. His comments feed into the charged debate about the rise of AIs that use data scraped from artists’ websites to create “original” images in their style, writes Lanre Bakare. There have been several class-action lawsuits in the US, and artists whose aesthetic is popular among users of AIs have already reported thousands of images that use their work as a base, often without permission.

… or this: I thought 2024 would be grim and predictable, then I saw the words ‘secret illegal tunnel under Brooklyn’

With storms battering the US and Donald Trump back in court claiming immunity this week, light relief comes in the form of a news story we didn’t know we needed: the discovery in Brooklyn of a secret tunnel, apparently dug by a faction within the ultra-religious Chabad-Lubavitch community, writes Emma Brockes. The tunnel, which runs for 15 metres (50ft), starts under the synagogue and peters out beneath a ritual bath house several buildings along. When cops arrived on Monday to fill it with concrete, they encountered strong resistance from the tunnellers. What can only be described as a melee ensued. Even to hardened New Yorkers, a tale of renegade religious diggers pursued by shovel-wielding police officers is irresistible.

Climate check: world’s renewable energy capacity grew at record pace in 2023

Global renewable energy capacity grew by the fastest pace recorded in the last 20 years in 2023, which could put the world within reach of meeting a key climate target by the end of the decade, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). The world’s renewable energy grew by 50% last year to 510 gigawatts (GW) in 2023, the 22nd year in a row that renewable capacity additions set a new record, according to figures from the IEA. The “spectacular” growth offers a “real chance” of global governments meeting a pledge to triple renewable energy capacity by 2030 to significantly reduce consumption of fossil fuels, the IEA added.

Last Thing: Tasmanian garden wins prize for world’s ugliest lawn

It is not so much a lawn as a moonscape: pitted craters dug by bandicoots, exhausted tufts of withered yellow grass plucked by wallabies and pitiful plants shrivelled brown under the Australian sunshine. But Kathleen Murray is the proud winner of the first World’s Ugliest Lawn competition after the Swedish contest to encourage water-saving, environmentally-friendly gardening went global. Murray’s lawn in Sandford, Tasmania, beat competition from parched grass patches in Germany, France, Canada, Croatia, Sweden, the US and the UK. The contest was devised by the municipality of Gotland. Water consumption in Gotland has fallen by 5% thanks to the competition and other measures.

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