MIT Technology Review: Weakening iPhone Security Could Make the Power Grid More Hackable, Says Apple

Apple’s public assaults on the FBI’s demand that it help unlock an iPhone used in last year’s San Bernardino shootings keep getting louder.

The company’s head of software, Craig Federighi, argued in the Washington Post on Monday that the security features of the iPhone keep important things like U.S. government agencies and America’s power grid safe from malicious hackers. The software a California court has ordered Apple to make for the FBI would weaken a crucial protector of national security, he said.

“Once created, this software -- which law enforcement has conceded it wants to apply to many iPhones -- would become a weakness that hackers and criminals could use to wreak havoc on the privacy and personal safety of us all,” he said in the article.

Reuters: China Sets Cap on Energy Consumption for First Time

China aims to keep energy consumption within 5 billion tons of standard coal equivalent by 2020, it said in its five-year plan published on Saturday, marking the first time the world's second-biggest economy has set such a target.

China has long been considering an energy consumption cap in a bid to improve its industrial efficiency, tackle smog and control greenhouse gas emissions, which are the highest in the world. Beijing is also pushing structural reforms to decouple economic growth from energy consumption.

"Energy consumption will be less than 5 billion tons if China's structural adjustment goes smoothly," said Xi Fengming, an expert on carbon emissions at the China Academy of Sciences, adding that the planned launch of a nationwide carbon emissions market next year would make it easier to achieve.

Mirror: EDF Boss Quits 'Over Costly Hinkley Point Nuclear Power Station Plans'

A top EDF boss has resigned over the firm's plans to build Britain's first new nuclear power plant for decades, according to reports.

Chief financial officer Thomas Piquemal quit the French energy giant as a new row erupted over its £18 billion plan for Hinkley Point C in Somerset.

Backers say the long-awaited plant will help control rising energy costs, secure Britain's future and create 25,000 jobs while it is being built.

Climate Progress: More Than Half of Ted Cruz’s Super PAC Money Comes From Fossil-Fuel Sources

Fossil-fuel interests have funneled more than $100 million into the Republican presidential campaign, according to analysis of Federal Election Committee data compiled by Greenpeace. That total means that about one in every three dollars given to Republican candidates came from someone with financial ties to the fossil-fuel industry, and, according to the Guardian, it represents “an unprecedented investment by the oil and gas industry in the party’s future.”

Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), the Republican perhaps most poised to steal the nomination away from current front-runner Donald Trump, received more than $25 million from fossil-fuel interests. The majority of the funds in his super PACs -- 57 percent -- came from backers attached to the oil and gas industry.

Guardian: During the Most Important Year for Climate News, TV Coverage Fell

Media Matters for America has published a report detailing U.S. broadcast news coverage of climate change in 2015, and its findings are stunning.

2015 was a banner year for climate news. February, June, October, November and December were each their respective hottest months on record, and 2015 shattered the record for hottest year. The pope delivered a climate encyclical. Investigative journalists at Inside Climate News discovered that Exxon knew about the dangers of human-caused global warming while it funded a climate misinformation campaign, and the New York attorney general launched an investigation into the company’s behavior. President Obama’s Clean Power Plan went into effect, and he rejected the Keystone XL pipeline. And most importantly, 195 countries agreed to cut carbon pollution as much as possible to stem global warming.

Despite all these critically important stories, as in the presidential debates, climate change was largely absent from U.S. broadcast news. Climate coverage fell in 2015.