News Round-Up: Dimming the Sun for Climate’s Sake, Ramping Up Surveillance in the US, and French Court Shuts Down Wind Farm To Protect Wildlife
Every week, the editorial team of Freedom Research compiles a round-up of news that caught our eye, or what felt like under-reported aspects of news deserving more attention.
Over the past week, the following topics attracted our attention:
The UK government planning to back geoengineering projects, dim the Sun for climate’s sake.
US ramps up digital suveillance on all to counter illegal immigration.
French court shuts down a wind farm for killing a golden eagle.
RFK Jr might pull the Covid-19 vaccine recommendation for children.
Slovakia to refund fines imposed during Covid crisis.
The UK government planning to back geoengineering projects, to dim the Sun for climate’s sake
The UK government is planning to fund experiments to dim sunlight to fight global warming, The Telegraph reports. Outdoor field trials which could include injecting aerosols into the atmosphere, or brightening clouds to reflect sunshine, are being considered by scientists as a way to prevent climate change.
Aria, the Government’s advanced research and invention funding agency, has set aside £50 million (€ 58.5 million) for projects, which will be announced in the coming weeks. Prof Mark Symes, the programme director for Aria, said there would be “small controlled outdoor experiments on particular approaches”. “We will be announcing who we have given funding to in a few weeks and when we do so, we will be making clear when any outdoor experiments might be taking place,” he said adding that the experiments are going to be safe.
Geoengineering projects that seek to artificially alter the climate have proven controversial, with critics arguing they could bring damaging knock-on effects.
One major area of research is sunlight reflection methods, which includes stratospheric aerosol injection whereby tiny particles are released into the stratosphere to reflect sunlight. Another potential solution is marine cloud brightening in which ships would spray sea-salt particles into the sky to enhance the reflectivity of low-lying clouds. In recent decades, experts noticed that the clouds above shipping routes were far brighter than usual, as pollution caused them to become more reflective, bringing an overall dimming effect.
Other ideas for geoengineering include seeding cirrus clouds to allow more heat to escape into space. Currently, the wispy high-altitude clouds act as a blanket, trapping the heat.
US ramps up digital surveillance on all to counter illegal immigration
The US under President Donald Trump is ramping up use of surveillance systems and artificial intelligence (AI) to track and arrest immigrants, raising fears that risks to accuracy and privacy could put almost anyone in danger of getting caught up in the crackdown.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and other immigration control agencies are using a suite of AI tools as part of the crackdown on illegal immigration. The technology includes facial recognition cameras in public areas and robotic dogs patrolling the southern border.
Many of the AI tools that immigration agents are using have been in place for years and are a legacy of previous administrations. But now these tools have "a ramped-up scope in terms of who (they are) targeting," and a wider range of people will have access to the data these tools collect, Saira Hussain, an attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights advocacy group, said to The Japan Times.
The pumped-up surveillance dragnet also includes services run by private contractors like Babel Street, which trawl immigrants' social media accounts to collect personal information. Once that information is collected, agencies like DHS and the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) use it to track the locations of immigrants, map out their family trees, and justify arrest warrants and deportation decisions.
An example of the widening scope is the government’s new "Catch and Revoke” program, launched under Secretary of State Marco Rubio in March.
It uses AI to monitor the public speech of foreign nationals, particularly student visa holders, to locate those "who appear to support Hamas or other designated terror groups,” the Axios news website reported.
Anyone caught by the program is at immediate risk of losing their visa, and more than 300 foreign nationals, including those with student and visitor visas, have had their visas revoked under the initiative, according to Rubio.
Digital rights advocates point to the tendency of AI tools to spout false "hallucinations" — answers or information that looks real but is fabricated — which make them dangerous to use in situations that require precision, like immigration enforcement. Since Trump took office in January, there have been numerous cases of immigration officials acting on inaccurate AI data, rights advocates say.
An executive order signed by Trump in January suggested the possible return of "Rapid DNA testing," a process used to verify migrant family connections that was scrapped in 2023 due to privacy and accuracy concerns.
Surveillance systems do not just target immigrants but rather all U.S. residents, citizens or not, researchers say.
French court shuts down a wind farm for killing a golden eagle
In early April, a French court ruled that the Bernagues wind farm must be shut down for a year because protected bird species are being killed by the blades of the wind turbines. More specifically, the reason lay in a proven case from last year in which a golden eagle had been killed by the blades, Watts Up With That? writes.
The case on which the court's decision was based took place on January 10, 2023, when a golden eagle equipped with a GPS device collided with a rotating blade of a wind turbine at the speed of 50 km/h and was killed. The victim was the male of a pair of golden eagles that had built their nest in 2008, 3 km from the site where the wind farm was built in 2016. Although this distance is considered greater than the usual disturbance buffer required for the protection of wildlife, this case showed that it is not sufficient. Based on the case, the court ruled that wind farm operator Energie Renouvelable du Languedoc must shut down the wind farm for one year and fined the operator €200,000. The company's director, François Daumard, was personally fined €40,000.
This is not the only decision of its kind in France. A two-week closure order has also been imposed on the Aumelas wind farm, located about 20 km west of Montpellier (Hérault), where at least 160 birds have been confirmed dead. The operator, EDF Renewables, must also pay a fine of €5 million.
In recent years, scientific studies have also been published highlighting the great risk posed by wind farms to various birds, including golden eagles. In the latter case, according to an article published in the journal Ecological Applications, bird mortality already exceeds the level that eagle populations can tolerate. A study published in Biological Conservation looked at eagle deaths related to wind turbines in the western United States between 2013 and 2024. It found that the number of eagles killed had doubled: while 110 eagles were killed in 2013, there were as many as 270 deaths in 2024.
The French court rulings to close wind farms, even if temporarily, show that the legal system is undergoing major changes in how the impact of wind farms is assessed. The deaths of birds caused by wind turbines have been ignored and underestimated for years. They have been described as regrettable but acceptable compromises in the race towards Net Zero. However, the Bernagues ruling shows that even a single case can carry enough weight to halt a wind farm for a year.
RFK Jr might pull the Covid-19 vaccine recommendation for children
US Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr is weighing pulling the Covid-19 vaccine from the government’s list of recommended immunizations for children, POLITICO reports. The directive under consideration would remove the Covid shot from the childhood vaccine schedule maintained by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and widely used by physicians to guide vaccine distribution.
RFK Jr has questioned the need for kids to get the shot, raising doubts about its safety and citing studies showing healthy children face an extremely low risk of death from Covid.
RFK Jr has advocated internally to take the Covid vaccine off the schedule, arguing that there is minimal scientific evidence for including it among the earliest vaccines given to kids. Children are unlikely to become severely ill or die from Covid, studies have shown, and most European countries no longer recommend additional annual doses for young people who are healthy.
Twenty-two states have instead enacted a ban on student Covid vaccine mandates, according to the National Academy for State Health Policy. In February this year, Trump signed an executive order threatening to strip federal aid from any schools that require the vaccine.
The CDC added the Covid vaccine to its immunization schedule in 2022. At the time, CDC officials said the decision would “normalize” the shot and encourage people to stay up to date on their vaccinations.
Slovakia to refund fines imposed during Covid crisis
The Slovakian parliament has approved the government's plan to create a fund of more than €3 million to compensate people who were fined for violating health measures during the Covid crisis, Europe1 reports.
In Slovakia, 65,000 fines were imposed for not wearing a mask or violating movement restrictions. It is now possible to claim back all these fines from the state under the pandemic protection law passed in early April. Citizens can submit claims for compensation for fines until October, providing proof of the violation.
The Slovakian government's decision was led by Prime Minister Robert Fico, whose government calls the fund a corrective measure. The aim is to eliminate the injustice caused by the previous government's overly strict pandemic policy. The model for this is US President Donald Trump, whom PM Fico supports and who has made a similar decision to pay compensation to military personnel who were fired for refusing to be vaccinated against Covid-19.
The bill was passed by a narrow majority in the Slovak parliament, as opposition parties consider the measure scandalous. In their view, it rewards those who disregarded public health measures and also puts vulnerable groups at risk. In addition, the opposition believes that since the Covid crisis was managed by the previous government, this is a politically motivated decision.