James Watson — the Nobel laureate co-credited with the discovery of DNA’s double-helix structure, but whose reputation was tainted by his repeated racist remarks — has died aged 97.The eminent American biologist died Thursday in hospice care on Long Island in New York, said the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he was based for much of his career. Watson went down as among the 20th century’s most storied scientists for his 1953 discovery of the double helix, a breakthrough made with research partner Francis Crick.Along with Crick and Maurice Wilkins, Watson shared the 1962 Nobel Prize for their momentous work that gave rise to modern biology and opened the door to insights including on genetic code and protein synthesis.That ushered in a new era of modern life, allowing for revolutionary technologies in medicine, forensics and genetics, like criminal DNA testing or genetically manipulated plants.Watson was just 25 when he joined in on one of science’s greatest discoveries. He later went on to do groundbreaking work in cancer research and mapping the human genome. His 1968 memoir “The Double Helix” was a best-seller praised for its breezy writing about fierce competition in the name of scientific advancement. But on a personal level Watson was known as at best cantankerous and frank, at worst mean and bigoted.He routinely disparaged female scientists, including Rosalind Franklin, whose work on X-ray diffraction images of DNA offered the clue that made Watson and Crick’s modeling possible.Franklin, who worked with Wilkins, did not receive the Nobel. She died in 1958, and the prestigious prize is neither shared by more than three people nor given posthumously. Watson faced few consequences for his behavior until 2007 when he told a newspaper he was “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours — whereas all the testing says not really.”He apologized — but was swiftly removed as his lab’s chancellor and his public image never recovered.- ‘Twisting ladder’ -Born on April 6, 1928 in Chicago, Illinois, at the aqe of 15 James Dewey Watson won a scholarship to the University of Chicago.He received a Ph.D. in zoology in 1950 from Indiana University Bloomington, and embarked on an academic path that took him to European universities including Cambridge, where he met Crick and began a historic partnership.Working with X-ray images obtained by Franklin and Wilkins, researchers at King’s College in London, Watson and Crick started parsing out the double helix.Their first serious effort came up short.But their second attempt — an image of Franklin’s proved key, and the duo had it without her knowledge — resulted in Watson and Crick presenting the double-helical configuration.The now iconic depiction resembles a twisting ladder.Their model also showed how the DNA molecule could duplicate itself,  answering a fundamental question in the field of genetics.Watson and Crick published their findings in the British journal “Nature” in 1953 to great acclaim.Watson taught at Harvard for 15 years before becoming director of what today is known as the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, which he transformed into a global hub of molecular biology research.From 1988 to 1992, Watson was one of the directors of the Human Genome Project at the National Institutes of Health, where he oversaw the mapping of the genes in the human chromosomes.He shared two sons, Rufus and Duncan, with his wife Elizabeth.And he received honorary degrees from dozens of universities, wrote many books and was heavily decorated. Jeff Goldblum played him in a BBC-produced film about the double helix.On Friday his former lab commended his “extraordinary contributions.”But the institution had ultimately severed ties with the scientist, including stripping him of his emeritus status — in a PBS documentary that aired in 2019, Watson once again made “reprehensible” remarks.

Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said Friday that Earth can no longer sustain humanity’s dependence on fossil fuels, and warned the climate fight could be lost without a rapid transition to cleaner energy.The leftist leader spoke at a summit in the Brazilian Amazon where heads of state and government implored nations to start weaning themselves off the coal, oil and gas responsible for most planet-warming emissions.Evidence of dangerous warming has never been clearer: the last decade has been the hottest on record, marked by intensifying hurricanes, heatwaves and wildfires.Lula said tackling the urgent question over the future of energy would determine “success or failure in the battle against climate change.””Earth can no longer sustain the development model based on the intensive use of fossil fuels that has prevailed over the past 200 years,” he said in Belem, where an annual UN climate conference dubbed COP 30 kicks off next week.It comes two years after the world’s nations agreed to “transition away from fossil fuels.”Brazil is hoping for a roadmap towards this goal, but has faced resistance.Mexico’s Environment Secretary Alicia Barcena told AFP that “setting a specific date for the elimination of fossil fuels is always problematic because there are still many oil-producing countries.”It is very difficult to get everyone to agree to eliminate them by 2030, for example. But it can be proposed as a long-term goal,” she said.Lula is presiding over the climate negotiations just weeks after his government approved new oil drilling in the Amazon region.Rwanda’s environment minister Bernadette Arakwiye stressed that countries face a stark choice.”We can continue with incremental progress while the planet burns, or we can rise to meet the scale of this crisis,” she said.- Luxury flight tax -A shadow has been cast over the talks by the absence of leaders of the world’s biggest polluters — including the United States, whose President Donald Trump has dismissed climate science as a “con job” — but it has also catalyzed calls for greater mobilization.France, Spain and Kenya are among a group of countries spearheading a drive for a new tax on luxury air travel, rooted in the idea that premium flyers should pay more for their outsized contribution to global warming.”It is only fair that those who have more and pollute more should pay their fair share,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez told the summit. The initiative is sure to face headwinds from the aviation sector, responsible for about 2.5 percent of the world’s carbon emissions.- Roadmap support -Climate change has slipped down the agenda as nations grapple with economic pressures, trade disputes, wars, and the Trump administration’s aggressive push for more fossil fuels.Brazil has won support for a new fund to save the world’s forests, quickly raking in over $5 billion in pledges to reward tropical countries for not chopping down carbon-absorbing trees.The world remains off track to keep end-of-century global warming below 1.5C compared to pre-industrial levels. It is the primary target of the Paris Agreement struck in 2015, and deemed necessary to avert the worst catastrophes of climate destabilization.A coalition of hundreds of NGOs representing the interests of women, Indigenous peoples, workers, small-scale farmers and other disadvantaged communities was unimpressed by what world leaders brought to the two-day summit.”The national plans of rich countries are not talking at all about a commitment they made two years ago… to move away from this brutal and cannibalistic fossil fuel economy,” said Jacobo Ocharan of Climate Action Network International, an NGO network that is part of an alternative so-called People’s Summit.”Nor have we seen absolutely anything regarding climate financing, financing that reaches the populations suffering from this climate crisis,” he told reporters in Belem.UN climate chief Simon Stiell stressed that, 10 years on from the Paris deal, global cooperation was delivering results.”Without that act of collective courage, we would still be heading for an impossible future of unchecked heating, of up to five degrees,” he said. “Because of it, the curve has bent below 3C — still perilous, but proof that climate cooperation works.”burs-np/ia/des/mlr/des