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Deutsche Welle;VW intends to shut 3 German factories, works council says;https://www.dw.com/en/vw-intends-to-shut-3-german-factories-works-council-says/a-70618400?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | The move is expected to slash thousands of jobs in Volkswagen, according to workers' representatives. Germany is experiencing a sluggish economy and automakers deal with high production costs. |
Deutsche Welle;Biodiversity: The bizarre world of ants;https://www.dw.com/en/biodiversity-the-bizarre-world-of-ants/a-70207379?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | Ants are complex creatures that have been around since the dinosaurs. These tiny critters can wage wars and tend their own gardens, but that's just the start. |
Deutsche Welle;'Tetris': What happens when you reach the final level?;https://www.dw.com/en/tetris-what-happens-when-you-reach-the-final-level/a-70599180?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | 'Tetris' was considered unbeatable for decades, then a 16-year-old managed to beat its final level. Some video games are truly infinite — or hide the ending unless you put in extra work. |
Deutsche Welle;India sees remarkable winter sports transformation;https://www.dw.com/en/india-sees-remarkable-winter-sports-transformation/a-70588536?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | India's winter sports athletes are preparing for a historic year in a country with a huge potential for sports like snowboarding, alpine skiing and Nordic skiing. |
Deutsche Welle;German business eyes India to reduce Chinese dependence;https://www.dw.com/en/german-business-eyes-india-to-reduce-chinese-dependence/a-70570272?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | German firms have long focused on the Chinese market but India is now becoming increasingly important amid rising geopolitical tensions between Beijing and the West. |
Deutsche Welle;Scholz backs increasing defense cooperation with India;https://www.dw.com/en/scholz-backs-increasing-defense-cooperation-with-india/a-70608664?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | The German chancellor wrapped up a three-day visit to the South Asian country, promising more arms cooperation. Scholz signed 27 new agreements in areas such as renewable energy, research and critical technologies. |
Deutsche Welle;What can stop the rise of populism in Germany and elsewhere?;https://www.dw.com/en/what-can-stop-the-rise-of-populism-in-germany-and-elsewhere/a-70585362?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | Populist parties are on the rise in Germany as they are all over the world. What can open societies do to protect democracy? |
Deutsche Welle;ISS astronauts hospitalized after SpaceX splashdown;https://www.dw.com/en/iss-astronauts-hospitalized-after-spacex-splashdown/a-70602698?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | A crew of US and Russian astronauts were treated after landing off the coast of Florida on Friday. The four were onboard the ISS for over seven months, with Hurricane Milton delaying their return. |
Deutsche Welle;Should Germany return Nefertiti bust to Egypt?;https://www.dw.com/en/should-germany-return-nefertiti-bust-to-egypt/a-70601354?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | An Egyptian archaeologist has demanded the repatriation of the iconic bust of Queen Nefertiti that was shipped to Berlin over a century ago. German officials insist the sculpture will stay put. |
Deutsche Welle;Germany promises India more visas for skilled workers;https://www.dw.com/en/germany-promises-india-more-visas-for-skilled-workers/a-70601884?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | Berlin will increase travel documents for skilled Indian workers. This follows a migration agreement signed two years ago between India and Germany to enhance mobility for professionals and students. |
Deutsche Welle;Can eating invasive species stop them spreading?;https://www.dw.com/en/can-eating-invasive-species-stop-them-spreading/a-69217731?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | Introduced to ecosystems where they don’t naturally belong, non-native species of plants and animals are often able to sprawl unchecked. Does consuming them help? |
Deutsche Welle;Tell us your favorite Love Matters topic to win a DW prize package!;https://www.dw.com/en/tell-us-your-favorite-love-matters-topic-to-win-a-dw-prize-package/a-70500940?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | As we enter into a new season, we want to know which subjects are the most interesting to our audience. Which past episode of our podcast did you like best? Let us know for your chance to win some fabulous DW prizes. |
Deutsche Welle;Alexandra Popp set for Germany swan song;https://www.dw.com/en/alexandra-popp-set-for-germany-swan-song/a-70362423?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | The Olympic gold medalist is set to play her last match for Germany where her international football career began 14 years ago. |
Deutsche Welle;'Quantum leap' in climate ambition needed, says UN report;https://www.dw.com/en/quantum-leap-in-climate-ambition-needed-says-un-report/a-70578486?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | The latest UN emissions report shows current policies put the world on track for over 3C warming, with catastrophic climate consequences. The good news? We already have the technical solutions to prevent this. |
Deutsche Welle;Two lost medieval Silk Road cities mapped in Central Asia;https://www.dw.com/en/two-lost-medieval-silk-road-cities-mapped-in-central-asia/a-70589851?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | Tugunbulak and Tashbulak, in the mountains of Uzbekistan, were bustling medieval centers of Silk Road trade between China, Arabia and Europe. Researchers have now mapped the cities using drone-borne LiDAR. |
Deutsche Welle;Hezbollah finances: Israel attacks funding network of the terrorist militia;https://www.dw.com/en/hezbollah-finances-israel-attacks-funding-network-of-the-terrorist-militia/a-70579683?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | This week, Israel began a series of bombing raids on sites associated with Hezbollah's financial system. Its primary focus has been a de facto bank, but experts say the militia has multiple revenue streams. |
Deutsche Welle;Menopause: German lawmakers push to break a taboo;https://www.dw.com/en/menopause-german-lawmakers-push-to-break-a-taboo/a-70577659?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | Nine million women in Germany live with menopause, a severe health condition little understood and discussed even less. Lawmakers take up the issue one year before the general election, hoping to attract female voters. |
Deutsche Welle;Germany's Scholz and India's Modi to discuss economic ties;https://www.dw.com/en/germany-s-scholz-and-india-s-modi-to-discuss-economic-ties/a-70584052?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | German Chancellor Scholz is heading to India with several high-ranking ministers in tow for talks with PM Modi and his government. The goals include deepening economic cooperation and allowing for skilled immigration. |
Deutsche Welle;How watching movies can change political views;https://www.dw.com/en/how-watching-movies-can-change-political-views/a-70566016?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | Watching a biopic about a wrongly convicted man boosted empathy towards incarcerated people and increased support for reforms to the US criminal justice system, according to a new scientific study. |
Deutsche Welle;German car giants alarmed by Donald Trump's trade threats;https://www.dw.com/en/german-car-giants-alarmed-by-donald-trump-s-trade-threats/a-70530326?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | German carmakers are growing nervous about the US election after Donald Trump called for more production in the United States. How can BMW, Audi, Volkswagen and Mercedes respond? |
Deutsche Welle;Germany's AI strategy: Closing the gap with the US and China;https://www.dw.com/en/germany-s-ai-strategy-closing-the-gap-with-the-us-and-china/a-70573169?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | As the global AI race heats up, Germany has a strategy to compete with global leaders like the US and China. But will the plan succeed? |
Deutsche Welle;Take our podcast poll for the chance to win DW swag!;https://www.dw.com/en/take-our-podcast-poll-for-the-chance-to-win-dw-swag/a-70484979?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | Do you listen to DW's podcast Don't Drink the Milk – The curious history of things? If so, take part in this poll based on their latest episode about the history of the lawn! |
Deutsche Welle;Female footballers speak out against FIFA-Saudi deal;https://www.dw.com/en/female-footballers-speak-out-against-fifa-saudi-deal/a-70568958?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | In an open letter to FIFA, more than 100 players have criticized the cooperation agreement between football's world governing body and the Saudi oil company Aramco. |
Deutsche Welle;New COVID XEC variant: What you need to know;https://www.dw.com/en/new-covid-xec-variant-what-you-need-to-know/a-70266402?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | KP.3 was the "predominant" SARS-CoV-2 variant in the US, and was also spreading in Europe. It has now joined with another variant and has become XEC. |
Deutsche Welle;Ancient Peru: New discoveries highlight women's rule;https://www.dw.com/en/ancient-peru-new-discoveries-highlight-women-s-rule/a-70559915?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | Archaeologists have uncovered a throne room and detailed wall paintings indicating that a woman likely ruled Moche society in Peru over 1,300 years ago. |
Deutsche Welle;Sports stars weigh in on US election;https://www.dw.com/en/sports-stars-weigh-in-on-us-election/a-70545215?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | Sports and politics continue to collide ahead of the 2024 US presidential election. But do endorsements from Steph Curry and fellow athletes make a difference? And how do the candidates use them to their advantage? |
Deutsche Welle;Polio: All you need to know about the viral disease;https://www.dw.com/en/polio-all-you-need-to-know-about-the-viral-disease/a-63542779?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | Health ministries in Pakistan have confirmed 39 cases of polio after a million children missed polio vaccinations. |
Deutsche Welle;What is biodiversity and why does it matter?;https://www.dw.com/en/what-is-biodiversity-and-why-does-it-matter/a-69145973?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | A diverse array of interconnected living organisms is the foundation of healthy and resilient ecosystems that provide food, shelter and clean air. The loss of a single species can upset the balance. |
Deutsche Welle;Obama, Trump, Biden: Presidential impact on the US economy;https://www.dw.com/en/obama-trump-biden-presidential-impact-on-the-us-economy/a-70512276?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | Over the past 15 years, the US economy has fared well compared with those of other countries, no matter who was in the White House. |
Deutsche Welle;Germany inaugurates new naval HQ on the Baltic Sea;https://www.dw.com/en/germany-inaugurates-new-naval-hq-on-the-baltic-sea/a-70553331?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | The Command Task Force (CTF), headquartered in the Baltic Sea port city of Rostock, is intended to boost NATO's defense readiness in the region. |
Deutsche Welle;How to fix Germany's ailing health care system;https://www.dw.com/en/how-to-fix-germany-s-ailing-health-care-system/a-69236520?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | The German parliament has passed a law aiming to reorganize the health sector, slashing the number of hospitals, boosting clinics and digitalizing bureaucracy. Health Minister Karl Lauterbach called it a "revolution." |
Deutsche Welle;UN biodiversity talks: Is the world at a tipping point?;https://www.dw.com/en/un-biodiversity-talks-is-the-world-at-a-tipping-point/a-70525683?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | Two years on from a historic deal to halt nature's decline, there's concern about the lack of progress. Species are vanishing at an alarming rate, threatening human food supply, health and security. |
Deutsche Welle;Male contraception — a growing business with game changers?;https://www.dw.com/en/male-contraception-a-growing-business-with-game-changers/a-70453644?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | There is fresh hope for men to control their fertility. Some promising new products are out there, but in many cases there is insufficient funding. |
Deutsche Welle;Charlie Chaplin: Keeping a comedy genius in business;https://www.dw.com/en/charlie-chaplin-keeping-a-comedy-genius-in-business/a-70485037?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | Film legend Charlie Chaplin has an office in Paris. And the man in charge of the business is on a mission to keep "The Tramp's" legacy alive one contract at a time. |
Deutsche Welle;Germany: Will city of Wolfsburg survive Volkswagen's crisis?;https://www.dw.com/en/germany-will-city-of-wolfsburg-survive-volkswagen-s-crisis/a-70497428?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | Almost everybody in Wolfsburg in northern Germany works for VW or their business depends on the company. Now, as the car giant considers cuts, an entire city is afraid of its downfall. |
Deutsche Welle;'Aura' is German youth word of the year 2024;https://www.dw.com/en/aura-is-german-youth-word-of-the-year-2024/a-70534660?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | Selected by Germany's youth as their trendiest slang of the year, the word "aura" has been given new meaning by quantifying cool. |
Deutsche Welle;Germany: Socialist Left Party elects new leaders;https://www.dw.com/en/germany-socialist-left-party-elects-new-leaders/a-70542425?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | Journalist Ines Schwerdtner and former lawmaker Jan van Aken were picked to lead the party into next year's election. The Left Party has been rocked by the departure of a key figurehead and plummeting voter support. |
Deutsche Welle;India's IPO record shattered with $5.5 billion launch;https://www.dw.com/en/india-s-ipo-record-shattered-with-5-5-billion-launch/a-70499104?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | India is the world's third-largest auto market, set for further huge growth before the end of the decade. South Korean carmaker Hyundai is banking on a Bombay listing to solidify its market position. |
Deutsche Welle;Africa's debt crisis: The need for multilateral solutions;https://www.dw.com/en/africa-s-debt-crisis-the-need-for-multilateral-solutions/a-70531996?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | Many African countries are struggling to service their debts. Observers are urging global action and greater involvement of African stakeholders in developing solutions. |
Deutsche Welle;Sports scientist: Top footballers will be forced to retire early because of packed schedule;https://www.dw.com/en/sports-scientist-top-footballers-will-be-forced-to-retire-early-because-of-packed-schedule/a-70535464?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | More matches and bigger tournaments – demands on players continue to grow. They're threatening to go on strike, but their concerns have fallen on deaf ears at FIFA and UEFA, despite fears some will quit in their 20s. |
Deutsche Welle;SpaceX catches rocket, search for life near Jupiter sets off, Sun reaches max magnetism;https://www.dw.com/en/spacex-catches-rocket-search-for-life-near-jupiter-sets-off-sun-reaches-max-magnetism/a-70526237?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | Space agencies have been busy with three major launch milestones occurring in the space of a week. Meanwhile, the sun is at peak solar activity during its current cycle. DW takes a look at this week's space news. |
Deutsche Welle;Why we should care about airplane contrails and their impact on the climate;https://www.dw.com/en/why-we-should-care-about-airplane-contrails-and-their-impact-on-the-climate/a-70473327?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | Condensation trails or contrails — the white, feathery lines behind airplanes — could have as big an impact on the climate as the aviation sector's CO2 emissions. Here's why, and what we can do mitigate the effects. |
Deutsche Welle;German Peace Prize winner Anne Applebaum: A voice against autocrats;https://www.dw.com/en/german-peace-prize-winner-anne-applebaum-a-voice-against-autocrats/a-70524941?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | The US-Polish historian focuses on researching autocratic regimes. She has warned the world of Vladimir Putin's expansionist policy long before the full-scale war in Ukraine. |
Deutsche Welle;One Direction singer Liam Payne dies aged 31;https://www.dw.com/en/one-direction-singer-liam-payne-dies-aged-31/a-70518579?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | Former One Direction singer Liam Payne has been found dead after he fell from a hotel balcony in Argentina. Payne had been vocal about his struggles with alcohol. |
Deutsche Welle;Mount Everest: The 100-year-old mystery of Mallory and Irvine;https://www.dw.com/en/mount-everest-the-100-year-old-mystery-of-mallory-and-irvine/a-70524517?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | US mountaineers recently discovered the boot, sock and foot of Andrew Irvine on Mount Everest. But does this mean he might have made history before anyone else? DW examines the evidence. |
Deutsche Welle;Columbus stays Italian until Spanish scientists publish data;https://www.dw.com/en/columbus-stays-italian-until-spanish-scientists-publish-data/a-70513162?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | A Spanish TV documentary has broadcast claims that Christopher Columbus was a Sephardic Jew from Western Europe and not from Genoa, Italy. But scientists want to see the data before the history books get rewritten. |
Deutsche Welle;Will Google finally cave in under US regulatory pressure?;https://www.dw.com/en/will-google-finally-cave-in-under-us-regulatory-pressure/a-70505887?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | Google has long been successfully fighting a multitude of legal battles seeking to curb its market power. Now as US antitrust regulators have taken on the internet behemoth, the air is getting thinner. |
Deutsche Welle;European Central Bank cuts key interest rate to 3.25%;https://www.dw.com/en/european-central-bank-cuts-key-interest-rate-to-3-25/a-70521077?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | The decision came after new figures showed inflation across the bloc had fallen to its lowest level in more than three years. |
Deutsche Welle;What are the La Nina and El Nino climate phenomena?;https://www.dw.com/en/what-are-the-la-nina-and-el-nino-climate-phenomena/a-68772863?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | Meteorologists are predicting a possible return of La Nina, linked to cooler temperatures and heavy rain. Here's how the Pacific weather phases of El Nino and La Nina can influence extreme weather across the globe. |
Deutsche Welle;Depression remaps people's 'attention brain networks';https://www.dw.com/en/depression-remaps-people-s-attention-brain-networks/a-70522302?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | A brain network involved in motivation and attention is larger in people with depression. The difference is also visible in people before they develop depression symptoms. |
Deutsche Welle;Kurov documentary traces Russian crackdown on free speech;https://www.dw.com/en/kurov-documentary-traces-russian-crackdown-on-free-speech/a-70516970?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | Filmmaker Askold Kurov's documentary "Of Caravan and the Dogs" shows how Russia shut down independent media outlets after invading Ukraine. |
Deutsche Welle;Europe-wide train links marred by steep costs, construction;https://www.dw.com/en/europe-wide-train-links-marred-by-steep-costs-construction/a-70506418?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | Delays, steep costs and construction work are undermining the dream of a Europe-wide high-speed rail network, with night trains especially susceptible to disruptions. |
Deutsche Welle;75 years of Frankfurt Book Fair: World stage for protests;https://www.dw.com/en/75-years-of-frankfurt-book-fair-world-stage-for-protests/a-70283991?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | The Cold War, neo-Nazis, as well as Iran's fatwa on Salman Rushdie all had an impact on the Frankfurt Book Fair, which opens with another controversy from Italy. |
Deutsche Welle;Italy's spotlight at Frankfurt Book Fair sparks controversy;https://www.dw.com/en/italy-s-spotlight-at-frankfurt-book-fair-sparks-controversy/a-70515205?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | As the guest of honor at the world's biggest book fair in Frankfurt, Italy has prompted fury by not inviting anti-Mafia author Roberto Saviano, with dozens of his fellow writers decrying it as censorship. |
Deutsche Welle;War in Ukraine: Landmines to hurt food exports for years;https://www.dw.com/en/war-in-ukraine-landmines-to-hurt-food-exports-for-years/a-70448256?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | Mines and explosives have become one of the biggest challenges for Ukrainian farmers. With huge swathes of fertile land being heavily contaminated, what does this mean for the world's dinner plates? |
Deutsche Welle;Tuchel new England men's football team coach — a smart move?;https://www.dw.com/en/tuchel-new-england-men-s-football-team-coach-a-smart-move/a-70513412?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | German tactician Thomas Tuchel will manage England's men's football squad. What led to his appointment, and how has it been received? |
Deutsche Welle;Chilean author Antonio Skarmeta dies at 83;https://www.dw.com/en/chilean-author-antonio-skarmeta-dies-at-83/a-70509672?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | Skarmeta wrote his most famous novel, "Burning Patience" — adapted into the Oscar-winning "The Postman" — while in exile in Berlin, having fled the Pinochet regime. |
Deutsche Welle;Plant-based milk — a greener, healthier dairy alternative?;https://www.dw.com/en/plant-based-milk-a-greener-healthier-dairy-alternative/a-70199688?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | Stores sell scores of different plant-based milks. But are these dairy alternatives — variously made from soy, almond, rice, peas or cashews — really better for the environment and our health? |
Deutsche Welle;What is a supermoon?;https://www.dw.com/en/what-is-a-supermoon/a-62130848?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | Supermoons are a rare chance to get close to the moon and see it bigger and brighter with your own eyes. The next opportunity will be on October 17. |
Deutsche Welle;Surrealism movement turns 100;https://www.dw.com/en/surrealism-movement-turns-100/a-70491553?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | "The Surrealist Manifesto" was published a century ago. Artists such as Andre Breton and Salvador Dali aimed to create a better future. How has their legacy changed the way we see the world? |
Deutsche Welle;Football: Tuchel reportedly to become England head coach;https://www.dw.com/en/football-tuchel-reportedly-to-become-england-head-coach/a-70507268?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | Thomas Tuchel is reportedly set to become only the third foreign head coach of the England men's national team — and the first German. The 51-year-old left Bayern Munich in the summer. |
Deutsche Welle;Kylian Mbappé rejects Swedish rape claim;https://www.dw.com/en/kylian-mbappé-rejects-swedish-rape-claim/a-70506313?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | The Real Madrid star has furiously denied reports in Sweden that he is the unnamed person in a rape investigation. He also appeared to link the reports to his ongoing wage dispute with former club Paris Saint-Germain. |
Deutsche Welle;Libya blames Nigeria for AFCON qualifier cancellation;https://www.dw.com/en/libya-blames-nigeria-for-afcon-qualifier-cancellation/a-70505269?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | Libya's footballing body says Nigeria is to blame for the postponement of a scheduled Africa Cup of Nations qualifier. The Super Eagles had refused to play the match citing mistreatment upon their arrival to Libya. |
Deutsche Welle;Germany's new era starts with Freigang as the big hope;https://www.dw.com/en/germany-s-new-era-starts-with-freigang-as-the-big-hope/a-70500494?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | New coach Christian Wück has had to make tweaks in his first squad given the impending exits of top stars including Alexandra Popp. It's up to in-form Laura Freigang to seize the initiative against England and Australia. |
Deutsche Welle;Germany's Fiebich and Sabally win WNBA championship for New York;https://www.dw.com/en/germany-s-fiebich-and-sabally-win-wnba-championship-for-new-york/a-70502811?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | The New York Liberty won their first WNBA title after a dramatic overtime win in game five. German stars Leonie Fiebich and Nyara Sabally made big contributions. |
Deutsche Welle;Martina Hefter wins coveted 2024 German Book Prize;https://www.dw.com/en/martina-hefter-wins-coveted-2024-german-book-prize/a-70500570?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | Martina Hefter has won Germany's top literary award for her story of a woman who cares for her ill husband while chatting online at night with a Nigerian love scammer. |
Deutsche Welle;How hospitals are dealing with climate change challenges;https://www.dw.com/en/how-hospitals-are-dealing-with-climate-change-challenges/a-70490852?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | From offering telemedicine to producing their own food or energy, hospitals around the world are getting creative to cope with threats like flooding, heat waves or power cuts in the wake of rising temperatures. |
Deutsche Welle;Leweling stars as Germany reach Nations League quarterfinals;https://www.dw.com/en/leweling-stars-as-germany-reach-nations-league-quarterfinals/a-70493715?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | Julian Nagelsmann's side has made the Nations League final phases, a first in four tries for Germany. A Stuttgart attacker was the star of the show in the 1-0 win over the Netherlands. |
Deutsche Welle;Nigeria's Super Eagles boycott Libya match over 'mind games';https://www.dw.com/en/nigeria-s-super-eagles-boycott-libya-match-over-mind-games/a-70493378?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | The Nigerian men's soccer team has pulled out of its Africa Cup of Nations qualifier in Libya in protest at being abandoned at an airport after their plane was diverted. |
Deutsche Welle;AI research uncovers 160,000 new RNA viruses;https://www.dw.com/en/ai-research-uncovers-160-000-new-rna-viruses/a-70465441?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | AI algorthim helps scientists identify a treasure trove of viruses from environmental samples across the planet. None are likely to be harmful. |
Deutsche Welle;Dresden: Robo-conductor takes the baton;https://www.dw.com/en/dresden-robo-conductor-takes-the-baton/a-70490890?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | The Dresden Symphony Orchestra revisits the relationship between man and machine — and the results are surprising. Is this the future of classical music? |
Deutsche Welle;Nobel Prize: Trio win 2024 award for economics;https://www.dw.com/en/nobel-prize-trio-win-2024-award-for-economics/a-70484442?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James A. Robinson were picked for their studies on how institutions shape the economic success of nations. The $1 million prize was announced at a news conference in Stockholm. |
Deutsche Welle;A Haydn project feted at Opus Klassik awards;https://www.dw.com/en/a-haydn-project-feted-at-opus-klassik-awards/a-70466340?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | Germany's top classical music prize, the Opus Klassik, goes to a recording of Joseph Haydn's music by the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen. The making of the album is featured in a new DW documentary. |
Deutsche Welle;Ruth Chepngetich breaks marathon world record for women;https://www.dw.com/en/ruth-chepngetich-breaks-marathon-world-record-for-women/a-70482013?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | Kenyan runner Ruth Chepngetich smashed the women's marathon world record in the Chicago Marathon. She dedicated the surprise run to a late compatriot who set the men's record last year. |
Deutsche Welle;Germany national team: Goalkeeper Baumann's wait is over;https://www.dw.com/en/germany-national-team-goalkeeper-baumann-s-wait-is-over/a-70481640?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | Oliver Baumann will become the third oldest man to make his debut for Germany at 34. The Hoffenheim goalkeeper may have had to wait for his chance, but his coach thinks he is ready to grab it. |
Deutsche Welle;Bosnia's Barbarez falls to second homeland in home debut;https://www.dw.com/en/bosnia-s-barbarez-falls-to-second-homeland-in-home-debut/a-70475585?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | Bosnia and Herzegovina's head coach, Sergej Barbarez, failed to pull off a miracle against his country of residence. Deniz Undav made sure of that. |
Deutsche Welle;Why South Korean culture is a global hit;https://www.dw.com/en/why-south-korean-culture-is-a-global-hit/a-60105618?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | Already popular through K-pop, the TV series "Squid Game" and the Oscar success "Parasite," South Korean culture is once again in the spotlight with Han Kang's Nobel Prize win. But how did the K-wave start? |
Deutsche Welle;India: When stick figure cartoons are seen as a threat;https://www.dw.com/en/india-when-stick-figure-cartoons-are-seen-as-a-threat/a-70447153?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | Amid India's crackdown on freedom of speech, political cartoonist Rachita Taneja, creator of the Sanitary Panels webcomic, faces threats and a possible prison sentence. |
Deutsche Welle;Why Germany's dying forests could be good news;https://www.dw.com/en/why-germany-s-dying-forests-could-be-good-news/a-70461269?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | Germany is losing its forests — and fast. In the central Harz region, over 90% of spruce trees are dead or dying because of climate change and pests. But there may be a silver lining to these withering landscapes. |
Deutsche Welle;Hurricane Milton: What's fueling stronger storms?;https://www.dw.com/en/hurricane-milton-what-s-fueling-stronger-storms/a-67233959?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | Why have devastating hurricanes like Milton become so common? Ocean warming may be a key factor driving the increase in frequency and severity of storms worldwide. |
Deutsche Welle;Hundreds of viruses live on showerheads and toothbrushes;https://www.dw.com/en/hundreds-of-viruses-live-on-showerheads-and-toothbrushes/a-70447438?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | No one showerhead or toothbrush bristle is the same, with US researchers finding a rich, diverse world of viruses living in biofilms coating surfaces in bathrooms across the US and Europe. |
Deutsche Welle;Nobel Prize: Baker, Hassabis, Jumper win award for chemistry;https://www.dw.com/en/nobel-prize-baker-hassabis-jumper-win-award-for-chemistry/a-70374543?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | David Baker, Demis Hassabis and John M. Jumper have been awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry for their research into designing proteins and predicting their structures. |
Deutsche Welle;John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton win Nobel physics award;https://www.dw.com/en/john-hopfield-and-geoffrey-hinton-win-nobel-physics-award/a-70374538?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | Physicists John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton have been awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics. They were honored for their research on machine learning with artificial neural networks. |
Deutsche Welle;Is the US really experiencing a boom in green energy jobs?;https://www.dw.com/en/is-the-us-really-experiencing-a-boom-in-green-energy-jobs/a-70333893?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act has revved up the US green energy economy and created thousands of jobs. Can the landmark climate bill continue to deliver the goods? |
Deutsche Welle;Can hydropower hold its own against weather extremes?;https://www.dw.com/en/can-hydropower-hold-its-own-against-weather-extremes/a-68929058?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | Recent droughts in Colombia and Ecuador have severely hampered energy supplied by hydropower. How viable is the low-carbon renewable in an increasingly hot and dry world? |
Deutsche Welle;Nobel Prize in medicine goes to Victor Ambros, Gary Ruvkun;https://www.dw.com/en/nobel-prize-in-medicine-goes-to-victor-ambros-gary-ruvkun/a-70374530?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | US scientists Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun have been awarded the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for their research into microRNA. |
Deutsche Welle;Is the Nobel Prize still relevant today?;https://www.dw.com/en/is-the-nobel-prize-still-relevant-today/a-70346756?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | The Nobel Prize is considered the "Mount Everest of science." But it faces criticism over how winners are chosen, and may give a warped idea of scientific progress. |
Deutsche Welle;How Europe's creating the moon on Earth;https://www.dw.com/en/how-europe-s-creating-the-moon-on-earth/a-70343435?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | Getting to the moon takes a lot of small steps, like Europe's new LUNA training facility. But it's not there yet. Next step: a moon gravity simulator. |
Deutsche Welle;How to protect the Amazon and who should pay;https://www.dw.com/en/how-to-protect-the-amazon-and-who-should-pay/a-70309693?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | The world’s largest rainforest is battling deforestation, drought and record wildfires. Where is the money to save it coming from? |
Deutsche Welle;Marburg outbreaks: One of the world’s deadliest viruses;https://www.dw.com/en/marburg-outbreaks-one-of-the-world-s-deadliest-viruses/a-64724490?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | While outbreaks of Marburg virus are rare, there have been several in recent years across sub-Saharan Africa. It's one of the deadliest viral diseases and can be fatal. Here's what you need to know. |
Deutsche Welle;Grounds for debate: Is tea or coffee the greener sip?;https://www.dw.com/en/grounds-for-debate-is-tea-or-coffee-the-greener-sip/a-70213415?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-02 02:00:07 | In this caffeinated clash, DW spills the beans on which of our favorite morning beverages makes for a more sustainable brew — and stirs up some ways to make an eco-friendlier blend. |
The Guardian;Eighty years after thousands of Greek Jews were murdered, Thessaloniki’s Holocaust museum is finally set to open;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/03/eighty-years-after-thousands-of-greek-jews-were-murdered-thessalonikis-holocaust-museum-is-finally-set-to-open;2024-11-03T05:00:34Z | Few places are more representative of the horrors that befell Greece during Nazi occupation than the old railway station of Thessaloniki. It was here, in what is now a dusty building site on the outer edges of this northern city, that thousands of Greek Jews were loaded with brutal efficiency on to cattle trucks that took them to the gas chambers of Auschwitz. And it is here, on ground set aside for the construction of a long-awaited Holocaust museum, that Germany’s head of state, Frank–Walter Steinmeier, last week launched an emotionally fraught three-day visit, declaring: “Anyone who stands and speaks here as German president is filled with shame.” The eight-storey, octagonal-shaped Holocaust museum has been branded the most important behemoth to be erected in Thessaloniki since the second world war. Construction workers have been laying its foundations since the year began, with the building due to be completed in 2026. Germany was the first to commit €10m in funds. “Finally it’s happening,” says David Saltiel, who heads Thessaloniki’s now vastly diminished Jewish community. “We’ve waited for this for so many years.” More than 80 years have passed since the Third Reich’s war machine orchestrated the death convoys that would see an estimated 50,000 of the city’s men, women and children killed in Nazi concentration camps. It was a loss of life that destroyed one of the great centres of European Jewry – about 90% of Thessaloniki’s population was eradicated – paralleled only by Poland, where similar mortality rates also occurred. Before the Nazi occupation, Salonika, as it was then called, had been known as the “Mother of Israel”, a reflection of the community’s ancient roots in a Balkan metropolis where Jews far outnumbered Christians well after its incorporation into the Kingdom of Greece in 1912. Most were Ladino-speaking Sephardic Jews who had settled in the trading port after their expulsion from Spain in the 15th century. Elsewhere, about 17,000 perished, ensuring that as much as 90% of Greece’s total prewar Jewish population fell victim to the “final solution”. For Saltiel, a straight-talking businessman who has headed Greece’s central board of Jewish communities for 25 years, the Holocaust museum is long overdue. Replacing a small if resplendent Jewish museum that opened its doors in 2001, it will, he believes, finally allow a “wound to be healed”. “I feel I am the voice of all those Jews who were put on trains, with no one stopping them and everyone looking,” he says, visibly shaken as his own voice rises a little. “As the generation after the Holocaust, we have a responsibility to speak on behalf of those who could not say anything.” News of the museum has come not a moment too soon for Lola Hassid Angel, among the few survivors still alive in Greece. A feisty great-grandmother, the 88-year-old still vividly recalls being deported with her parents, both Spanish passport holders, on one of the last trains to leave Athens, where her family had fled earlier in the occupation from Thessaloniki. It was April 1944 – three years after the Wehrmacht marched into the Greek capital – and their destination was the concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen. It was mooted that there they, and other “foreign Jews”, would be exchanged with German prisoners of war, a plan quashed by the D-day landings a month later. “I remember the train journey very well. It was terrible, the smell, the stench, the people crying. And my father taking me, then barely six years old, in his arms and putting me up to an opening [in the freight car] and saying in French: ‘Breathe Lola, take in the fresh air’,” she tells the Observer. They were things, she said, that were impossible to forgive or forget. “They stole my childhood. There are memories that can never be erased. They took away my seven uncles and eight aunts, and all their children and, in the end, Thessaloniki, which we would never go back to. “But I beat Hitler because I managed to have a big family, and I hope to live long enough to see this Holocaust museum, which, of course, should have happened long ago.” For Saltiel, the delay is testimony “to the silence” that has haunted Sephardic communities in Greece. By the time the first death train left Thessaloniki on 15 March 1943, German bureaucrats had mastered the art of mass murder that underpinned the racial restructuring envisaged by the Nazi regime. But the silence of those who looked on as Thessaloniki’s Jews were shunted into ghettoes and then deported was also deafening. In sharp contrast to Athens and other parts of Greece, where the Orthodox Church, resistance fighters and leftists rallied to hide Jews, in Thessaloniki the community was left to fend for itself. Fewer than 2,000 survived. Those who returned invariably encountered a city whose inhabitants were not only overwhelmingly Christian but reluctant to face the horrors at all. “In Thessaloniki silence prevailed,” explains Saltiel, estimating the city’s community today at around 1,000. “The majority did not want to talk about what happened, and certainly not about what did not happen.” The 9,000-sq ft museum is not only a belated tribute to those who suffered in Thessaloniki at the hands of the Nazis and their collaborators. It will also celebrate the history of Greek Jewry, including the 39 other Jewish communities that, prewar, were dotted around Greece and, it is hoped, be an educational hub and human rights centre at a time when hard-right parties and Holocaust deniers are resurfacing and gaining momentum across Europe. Greece’s centre-right government, which has sought to improve ties with Israel despite mounting disquiet over its actions in the Middle East, has pledged to contribute €18m. A further €10m will come from private donors, including Albert Bourla, the CEO of Pfizer, who will commit $1m in prize money received for the discovery of an effective Covid vaccine. Bourla was born in Thessaloniki to Jewish parents who narrowly survived the Holocaust. Yet all agree that had it not been for Yiannis Boutaris, the city’s charismatic former mayor, the museum, even at this stage, might still not exist. A prominent wine-maker who went into local politics to “give back to the community”, Boutaris was bent on opening up Thessaloniki and highlighting its Jewish and Ottoman Muslim heritage. By reviving its once fabled multicultural past, the progressive businessmen stated bluntly that he hoped to tackle the blatant antisemitism that, for years, had stalked socially conservative northern Greece. Central to that was a proper Holocaust museum. Under his stewardship, a site was found and permits signed. “Boutaris was unique because he didn’t care about the political cost, and that really helped break taboos in a place where so many pretended the Holocaust never happened,” says Giorgos Antoniou, assistant professor of Jewish studies at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. Now 82, the tattooed, chain-smoking Boutaris regards the venture as one of his greatest achievements. On being sworn into office for a second time in 2014, he donned a yellow star to show far-right municipal councillors from the now defunct neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party that he meant business. “Wherever I went I’d be asked, ‘why do you want this museum?’” he says. “There was push-back, for sure. With the Holocaust, Thessaloniki lost its future. All the good merchants, bankers and academics were Jewish. It was a huge loss.” Five years on, Boutaris shakes his head in disbelief that there is still so much to do. A memorial park he had planned to create in Eleftherias [Freedom] Square, the plaza where thousands of Jewish men were first rounded up in 1942, remains a car park because his successor refused to sign off on the project. As a result, the city’s Holocaust memorial stands nearby on the corner of a busy intersection, half hidden by trees. Even worse, he says, was the decision to build the University of Thessaloniki over an ancient Jewish cemetery. “For a long time, there was no sign or monument on the site, just as there are no signs to suggest that there were once 30 synagogues in this town before all but one was destroyed by the Nazis.” But Boutaris is optimistic. Plans to transform Freedom Square into a memorial park with the Holocaust memorial sculpture as its centrepiece have been resurrected. And the new museum itself, he says, will not fail to impress. “There are Holocaust museums all over the world but none have been dedicated solely to the history and culture of Sephardic Jews in this part of the world. And none will tell their story like this.” |
The Guardian;Moldova votes for president in runoff election as Russia hovers;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/03/moldova-votes-president-unoff-election-as-russia-hovers;2024-11-03T05:00:34Z | Moldovans will head to the polls on Sunday for a second-round vote to choose between the incumbent pro-EU president, Maia Sandu, and a Russia-friendly challenger. Despite securing 42% of the vote in the first round, Sandu faces a tough challenge in the runoff against an opposition bloc led by Alexandr Stoianoglo of the Socialist party, which aligns with Moscow. The election in this small nation of under 3 million people in south-eastern Europe follows a referendum in which a slim majority voted in favour of pursuing membership of the EU. Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, Moldova has gravitated between pro-western and pro-Russian courses. But under Sandu, a former World Bank adviser, the impoverished country has accelerated its push to escape Moscow’s orbit amid its war in neighbouring Ukraine. The results of the referendum and first round of the election were marred by allegations of a Moscow-backed vote-buying scheme. Sandu and her allies have accused Russia and its proxies of leading a large-scale campaign involving vote-buying and misinformation to sway the election. They accuse the fugitive Moldovan businessman Ilan Shor, a vocal opponent of EU membership, of running a destabilising campaign from Moscow. “Moldova has faced an unprecedented assault on our country’s freedom and democracy, both today and in recent months,” Sandu told supporters in the capital of Chișinău after the election results were announced. Before the vote, her team said it had “mobilised every available resource” to counter what they describe as “a sprawling Kremlin-backed vote-buying scheme”. “Moldova has had a monumental task before it – just two weeks to stop a sprawling Kremlin-backed vote-buying scheme that proved effective in the twin vote on 20 October,” Olga Roşca, a foreign policy adviser to Sandu, told the Observer. “Protecting the integrity of tomorrow’s runoff has required urgent, decisive action. Authorities, working around the clock, have been executing a twofold strategy: dismantling the network and deterring would-be participants,” Roşca added. “Every available resource has been mobilized—from law enforcement to public service announcements in trolleybuses and supermarkets,” the advisor said. The tight results of the EU referendum have weakened Sandu’s standing, placing her in direct opposition to former prosecutor general Stoianoglo, who exceeded expectations with 26% of the vote on the Party of Socialists’ ticket. In the presidential debate, Sandu accused Stoianoglo of being a “Trojan horse” candidate for outside interests bent on seizing control of Moldova. Stoianoglo has denied working on behalf of Russia. In an earlier interview with the Observer, he claimed that he was in favour of joining the EU, but boycotted the vote, calling it a “parody.” He has also declined to criticise the Kremlin for its invasion of Ukraine and called for improved relations with Moscow. “The level of Russian interference in Moldova is highly exaggerated,” he said, adding that he would seek a “reset of relations” with Moscow. While Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has shocked many in Chișinău, just a few hours’ drive from Ukraine’s Black Sea port city of Odesa, the Kremlin’s shadow still looms large. Moscow has 1,500 troops stationed in Transnistria, a region run by pro-Russian separatists who broke away from Moldova’s government in a brief war in the 1990s. The vote comes after Saturday’s parliamentary election in Georgia, another ex-Soviet country trying to join the EU, where a ruling party viewed by most countries as increasingly Moscow-friendly and anti-liberal won an vote that was marred by reports of voting violations and fraud. |
The Guardian;Spain floods: 10,000 troops and police drafted in to deal with disaster;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/02/spain-floods-disaster-5000-more-troops-drafted-in-to-deal-with-aftermath;2024-11-02T21:47:34Z | Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has ordered the country’s largest peacetime military deployment, announcing that 10,000 troops and police officers will be drafted in to help deal with the aftermath of this week’s devastating floods, which have killed at least 211 people in eastern, southern and central regions. Speaking after chairing a meeting of the flood crisis committee, Sánchez said the government was mobilising all the resources at its disposal to deal with the “terrible tragedy”, which stuck hardest in the eastern region of Valencia. He also acknowledged that much of the help still wasn’t getting through and called for unity and an end to political bickering and blame games. “There are still dozens of people looking for their loved ones and hundreds of households mourning the loss of a relative, a friend or a neighbour,” he said in a televised address on Saturday morning. “I want to express our deepest love to them and assure them that the government of Spain and the entire state, at all its different administrative levels, is with all of them.” Describing the torrential rains and floods as “the worst natural disaster in our country’s recent history” and the second deadliest European floods of the century, the prime minister announced a huge increase in the numbers of army and police personnel taking part in the relief effort. In the first 48 hours of the crisis, he said, Spain had witnessed “the largest deployment of armed forces and police personnel that’s ever been seen in our country during peacetime. It has so far carried out 4,800 rescues and helped more than 30,000 people in their homes, on the roads, and in flooded industrial estates.” However, he said much of the help was taking too long to reach blocked and flooded houses and garages and isolated villages. “That is why the Spanish government is today sending 4,000 more personnel from the military emergencies unit to Valencia province,” said Sánchez. “Tomorrow, another 1,000 military personnel will arrive … I’ve also ordered the deployment of an amphibious navy boat that has operating theatres, helicopters and a fleet of vehicles that will arrive at Valencia port in the coming hours.” The prime minister also said 5,000 more national police and civil guard officers would be sent to the region. There are already 2,500 soldiers and 5,000 police officers deployed in the region. “Our second priority is identifying and recovering the bodies of the dead and we need to do it quickly but with all the dignity and guarantees that the victims and their families deserve,” he said. “Over the past 48 hours, military and security personnel have inspected thousands of garages, riverbeds and roads, and recovered the bodies of 211 mortal victims.” Specialist forensic personnel and mobile morgues were already in the disaster zone, he added, and would work “day and night; night and day for as long as it takes until all the victims have been located”. Sanchez’s address came as thousands of volunteers turned up to Valencia’s City of Arts and Sciences centre, which has been transformed into the nerve centre of the clean-up operation. On Friday, the spontaneous mass arrival of volunteers complicated access for emergency workers to some areas, prompting authorities to devise a deployment plan. The prime minister said power had been restored to 94% of affected homes, while phone lines were scheduled to be repaired over the weekend. Sánchez also acknowledged the deep public anger over the handling of the emergency – many have questioned why the Valencian government did not send out an emergency alert until after 8pm on Tuesday – but called for unity. “The situation we’re experiencing is tragic and dramatic,” he said. “We’re almost certainly talking about the worst flood our continent has seen so far this century. I’m aware that the response we’re mounting isn’t enough. I know that. And I know there are severe problems and shortages and that there are still collapsed services and towns buried by the mud where people are desperately looking for their relatives, and people who can’t get into their homes, and houses that have been buried or destroyed by mud. I know we have to do better and give it our all.” He said there would be time later to look into what had gone wrong and to learn lessons “about the importance of our public services and how to reinforce them in the situations we’re living through as a consequence of climate change … But now we need to focus all our efforts on the colossal task we face and to forget our differences and put ideologies and disagreements to one side and act together.” This week’s flash floods, caused by torrential rains that scientists have linked to the climate emergency, have inundated cities, towns and villages, sweeping away bridges, cars, trees and streetlights. The number of missing people remains unknown. Thousands more have no access to water or reliable food, while parts of the heaviest-hit areas remain inaccessible. The piles of vehicles and debris have trapped some residents in their homes while others are without electricity or stable phone service. An orange weather warning remained in place on Saturday for Castellón, a province in Valencia, and for a stretch of coast in Tarragona, a province in Catalonia. |
The Guardian;Israel captures Lebanese sea captain and claims he is a Hezbollah operative – as it happened;https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/nov/02/middle-east-latest-iran-israel-gaza-lebanon-hamas-hezbollah;2024-11-02T21:28:31Z | Here’s a wrap-up of the day’s key events: Israeli naval forces have captured a senior Hezbollah operative in north Lebanon, an Israeli military official said on Saturday. The operative appears to be a Lebanese sea captain. Earlier, Lebanese authorities said it was investigating whether Israel was behind the capture of a sea captain who was taken away by a group of armed men who had landed on the coast near the northern town of Batroun on Friday. Lebanon’s state-run national news agency said an “unidentified military force” carried out a “sea landing” on the shore of Batroun, south of Tripoli, at dawn on Friday. The force “went with all its weapons and equipment to a chalet near the beach, kidnapping a Lebanese man … and sailing away into the open sea on a speedboat.” Israeli forces have struck the Sheikh Radwan healthcare center in northern Gaza, injuring four children, according to reports. In a statement on Sunday, World Health Organization head Tedros Ghebreyesus wrote: “These vital humanitarian-area-specific pauses must be absolutely respected. Ceasefire!” Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei has released the following statement on the US’s military support to Israel amid its deadly wars in Gaza and Lebanon: “Ongoing events in Lebanon & Gaza have resulted in the martyrdom of 50,000 ppl in the last year, mostly women & children… The US that claims to be an advocate of human rights, supports & is complicit in those crimes. Plans & weapons used are from the US.” UNRWA, the main UN relief aid agency in Gaza, as well as the World Health Organization and the UN Children’s Fund has resumed the polio vaccination campaign in northern Gaza amid Israeli blockages on aid and food. “This polio campaign is critical, but while we protect children with vaccines, they will continue to die & suffer each day until there is a comprehensive & lasting ceasefire, which is needed more urgently than ever,” the agencies said. At least 43,314 Palestinians have been killed and 102,019 injured in Israel’s military offensive on Gaza since 7 October 2023, Gaza’s health ministry said on Saturday. The toll includes 55 deaths in the previous 24 hours, according to the ministry. Two Microsoft employees who were fired last week after organising a vigil for Palestinians killed in Gaza say the company retaliated against them for their pro-Palestinian activism. The two, Abdo Mohamed, a researcher and data scientist, and Hossam Nasr, a software engineer, organised the event outside Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington, on 24 October. They were fired later that evening. Here are some images coming through the newswires from Lebanon where Israeli forces have killed nearly 3,000 people across the country in recent weeks while injuring more than 13,000 survivors: Israeli forces have struck the Sheikh Radwan healthcare center in northern Gaza, injuring four children, according to reports. In a statement on Sunday, World Health Organization head Tedros Ghebreyesus wrote: We have received an extremely concerning report that the Sheikh Radwan primary health care centre in northern #Gaza was struck today while parents were bringing their children to the life-saving #polio vaccination in an area where a humanitarian pause was agreed to allow vaccination to proceed. Six people, including four children, were injured. Israeli forces have routinely targeted healthcare facilities across Gaza, leaving only 17 out of 36 hospitals across the narrow strip partially functional. In a report last month, Medecins Sans Frontieres detailed Israel’s attacks on healthcare facilities and aid blockades across Gaza, saying: “The lack of access to health care is compounded by the lack of humanitarian and medical supplies in Gaza. Israeli authorities have routinely imposed unclear, unpredictable criteria for authorizing the entry of supplies.” Here is the Guardian’s Beirut correspondent William Christou’s report on the Israeli forces’ abduction of the alleged Hezbollah official during a sea raid: The Israeli military abducted who it said was a senior Hezbollah official in an unprecedented operation on Saturday morning during which Israeli commandos landed on the shores of Batroun, northern Lebanon, captured the alleged official and escaped via speedboat. In a statement, an Israeli military official said its forces captured a “senior operative of Hezbollah” and transferred him to its territory to be investigated by military intelligence. Axios media outlet cited Israeli sources as saying the captured man – Imad Amhaz – was responsible for Hezbollah’s naval operations. Lebanon’s caretaker minister of transport, Ali Hamie, said that Amhaz was a civilian boat captain, while Hezbollah did not comment on allegations that he belonged to the organisation. Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, said Lebanon would be submitting a complaint to the UN security council, and that he had asked both Lebanon’s military and the UN’s peacekeeping mission to investigate the incident. For the full story, click here: The Lebanese man captured in Batroun was “a trainee marineer”, according to reports. Lebanon’s state-run national news agency said an “unidentified military force” carried out a “sea landing” on the shore of Batroun, south of Tripoli, at dawn on Friday. The force “went with all its weapons and equipment to a chalet near the beach, kidnapping a Lebanese man … and sailing away into the open sea on a speedboat”. According to Agence France-Presse, an acquaintance of the abductee identified him as a student at the state-run Maritime Sciences and Technology Institute in Batroun, Lebanon’s primary training college for the shipping industry. He was taken from student housing near the institute, but was a resident of the Shiite-majority town of Qmatiyeh, said the acquaintance, who wished to remain anonymous. He was completing courses to become a sea captain, the source told AFP, adding that the man was in his 30s and was well known by the teaching staff at the institute. US has warned Iran that it won’t be able to restrain Israel if it attacks again. The US has warned Iran against launching another attack on Israel, adding that Washington will not be able to restrain Israel if it attacks again, the American news website Axios has reported, citing a US official and a former Israeli official. Axios previously reported that Israeli intelligence suggests Iran is preparing to attack Israel from Iraqi territory in the coming days, possibly before the US presidential election on 5 Nov. The Israeli military has named the Hezbollah commander it has killed in southern Lebanon as Jaafar Khader Faour, a commander of Hezbollah’s Nasser Brigade rocket unit. A spokesperson told Reuters Faour had been responsible for multiple attacks on Israel since October 2023. Israeli forces capture senior Hezbollah operative in north Lebanon, Israeli military official says. Israeli naval forces have captured a senior Hezbollah operative in north Lebanon, an Israeli military official said on Saturday. The operative appears to be a Lebanese sea captain. Earlier, Lebanese authorities said it was investigating whether Israel was behind the capture of a sea captain who was taken away by a group of armed men who had landed on the coast near the northern town of Batroun on Friday. “The operative has been transferred to Israeli territory and is being investigated,” the Israeli military official said, without naming the captive. Two Lebanese military officials confirmed to the Associated Press that a naval force landed in Batroun, about 30 kilometers (18 miles) north of Beirut, and abducted a Lebanese citizen. Neither gave the man’s identity or said whether he was thought to have links to Lebanon’s Hezbollah group. They did not confirm whether the armed men were an Israeli force. Three Lebanese judicial officials told reporters the incident occurred at dawn on Friday, adding that the captain might have links with Hezbollah. The officials said an investigation is looking into whether the man is linked to Hezbollah or working for an Israeli spy agency and an Israeli force came to rescue him. Hezbollah issued a statement calling what happened a “Zionist aggression in the Batroun area”, but did not confirm whether one its members had been captured by Israeli forces. The Israeli military is reporting that two more soldiers have been killed in southern Gaza, Reuters reports. The latest reported deaths brings the total number of Israeli soldiers killed since last October to 780. Israeli forces have killed more than 43,300 Palestinians in the past year across Gaza while displacing nearly 2 million survivors. In recent weeks since Israel’s war on Lebanon, Israeli forces have killed more than 2,890 people across the country while wounding more than 13,000 survivors. Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei has released the following statement on the US’s military support to Israel amid its deadly wars in Gaza and Lebanon: Ongoing events in #Lebanon & #Gaza have resulted in the martyrdom of 50,000 ppl in the last year, mostly women & children. Is this a small matter? The US that claims to be an advocate of human rights, supports & is complicit in those crimes. Plans & weapons used are from the US. Egypt is hosting meetings between Fatah and Hamas in regards to forming a committee to run Gaza following Israel’s war on the strip, Reuters reports, citing a senior Egyptian security source speaking to Egypt’s state-affiliated Al Qahera News. According to the source, Hamas insists that the discussions should lead to a comprehensive agreement on ending the war, as well a deal to release the hostages and Palestinians detained across Israeli prisons. UNRWA, the main UN relief aid agency in Gaza, as well as the World Health Organization and the UN Children’s Fund has resumed the polio vaccination campaign in northern Gaza amid Israeli blockages on aid and food. “This polio campaign is critical, but while we protect children with vaccines, they will continue to die & suffer each day until there is a comprehensive & lasting ceasefire, which is needed more urgently than ever,” the agencies said. An Israeli airstrike has hit the border post of Joussieh, Syria, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees said. In a tweet on X, Filippo Grandi wrote: A new Israeli airstrike hit the border post of Joussieh, where many Lebanese and Syrians cross from Lebanon to Syria. Humanitarian structures were also struck. Even fleeing (and taking care of those who flee) are becoming difficult and dangerous as the war continues to spreads. It has just gone 5.30pm in Gaza City, Tel Aviv and Beirut. Here is a summary of the latest developments: Israel on Saturday again carried out deadly airstrikes on north Gaza, where the UN calls conditions “apocalyptic”, as Lebanon’s Hezbollah intensified rocket fire near Israel’s commercial hub of Tel Aviv. “The situation unfolding in north Gaza is apocalyptic,” said a joint statement by UN agency heads. Witnesses told Agence France-Presse (AFP) that Israeli warplanes twice hit Beit Lahia, adjacent to Jabalia, overnight. Israel’s military on Saturday said dozens of militants were killed around Jabalia “in aerial and ground activity”. Iran’s supreme leader on Saturday threatened Israel and the US with “a crushing response” over attacks on Iran and its allies. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei spoke as Iranian officials are increasingly threatening to launch yet another strike against Israel after its 26 October attack that targeted military bases and other locations and killed at least five people. Troops were also operating in central Gaza and Rafah in the territory’s far south, the Israeli military said, while witnesses told AFP that Israeli drones and boats opened fire on al-Mawasi in south Gaza. Israeli airstrikes on Friday killed at least 52 people and injured scores more, the Lebanese health ministry said. In Lebanon’s north-eastern Bekaa valley, rescuers searched for survivors after airstrikes killed nine people and brought down a building that had housed 20 people in the town of Younine. Israeli strikes also killed 12 people in the town of Amhaz and 31 others across at least a dozen villages, bringing the total death toll to 52, the health ministry said. The bombardment left 72 people injured, the ministry added. There was no immediate comment from Israel on the strikes. Israeli police said 19 people were injured before dawn on Saturday in the central town of Tira. Three projectiles crossed into Israel from Lebanon, Israel’s military said, and some were intercepted. The Magen David Adom ambulance service said two of those injured were in moderate condition from the attack, and the others had lesser injuries. A photo the service released showed damage to what appeared to be an apartment building. Medics and Gaza’s civil defence rescuers on Saturday reported three people killed in a strike on Nuseirat, in central Gaza, a day after AFP images showed the blood-stained shrouds of several people killed there in an Israeli strike. A strike in Israel’s Sharon area north of Tel Aviv injured 19 people, police said early on Saturday, after the army reported three projectiles fired from Lebanon into central Israel. Four of the injured were “in moderate condition”, the Israeli police said. Hezbollah said it had again launched rockets at Israel’s Glilot intelligence base near Tel Aviv. At 2.30am (12.30am GMT) militants “fired a salvo of rockets at the Glilot base of the 8200 military intelligence unit in the suburbs of Tel Aviv” the group said in a statement. Israel’s military said a strike around the southern Lebanese city of Tyre on Friday killed two fighters “responsible for firing over 400 projectiles at Israel over the last month alone”. Lebanon’s health ministry said 11 people were injured on Saturday in an Israeli strike on Hezbollah’s south Beirut stronghold. The ministry announcement came as the official National News Agency said the “Israeli enemy launched a raid near Karout mall... in the southern suburbs of Beirut”. The strike was not preceded by an Israeli evacuation warning, reported AFP. Hezbollah said on Saturday it carried out a rocket attack against Israeli “military industries” in Zvulun, near the northern city of Haifa, after a drone attack on a base south of Tel Aviv. Twice on Saturday, “salvoes of rockets” were fired at “the Zvulun base for military industries north of the city of Haifa”, the group said in a statement. Earlier, it said it had launched drones at the Palmachim airbase south of Tel Aviv. On Saturday the Israeli military said it had intercepted three drones over the Red Sea, after late Friday reporting seven drones had been launched from “several fronts”. A coalition of pro-Iran groups in Iraq said it carried out four drone attacks on the Israeli resort of Eilat on Saturday, after Israel said it intercepted three drones approaching from the east. In a statement, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq said it was behind the attacks on what it called “four vital targets” in the resort on Israel’s Red Sea coast, all conducted within one hour. A suspected Israeli naval force landed in the northern Lebanese coastal town of Batroun early on Saturday and captured one person, a security source said, while another source confirmed the incident but did not say who was responsible, reported Reuters. There was no immediate comment from Israeli and Lebanese authorities. Pro-Hezbollah journalist Hassan Illaik shared CCTV footage on X that appeared to show soldiers walking in a street, two of them holding a person. Lebanese transport minister Ali Hamiye, who represents Hezbollah in Lebanon’s government, said the video was accurate but did not provide further details. Axios has reported that Israeli naval forces captured a senior Hezbollah official, Imad Amhaz, in an operation in northern Lebanon. Barak Ravid wrote the news on X, citing an Israeli official. Unicef has warned that the ongoing conflict in Lebanon is “massively impacting children’s mental health”. In its post on X on Saturday, Unicef wrote: “True healing can only begin when this war on childhood ends. Ceasefire now.” At least 43,314 Palestinians have been killed and 102,019 injured in Israel’s military offensive on Gaza since 7 October 2023, Gaza’s health ministry said on Saturday. The toll includes 55 deaths in the previous 24 hours, according to the ministry. It does not distinguish between combatants and non-combatants. Israel’s military says 37 soldiers have been killed in Lebanon since it began ground operations on 30 September. According to Israeli figures, at least 63 people have been killed on the Israeli side since October last year. Two Microsoft employees who were fired last week after organising a vigil for Palestinians killed in Gaza say the company retaliated against them for their pro-Palestinian activism. The two, Abdo Mohamed, a researcher and data scientist, and Hossam Nasr, a software engineer, organised the event outside Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington, on 24 October. They were fired later that evening. A Lebanese military source said on Saturday that unidentified naval commandos abducted a trainee mariner in the coastal city of Batroun, in an operation a judicial official said was likely carried out by Israel. “A naval commando force kidnapped a civilian,” the military source told Agence France-Presse (AFP) on condition of anonymity, adding an investigation was under way to determine whether the operation was carried out by Israel. A Lebanese judicial official said Israel was likely behind the “kidnapping operation”, the first of its kind since the Israel-Hezbollah war erupted in September. Speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, the official told AFP there was a “90% chance” that Israel was responsible. Contacted by AFP, the Israeli military said they were checking reports of the incident. Lebanon’s official National News agency (NNA) said an “unidentified military force” carried out a “sea landing” on the shore of Batroun, south of Tripoli, at dawn on Friday. The force “went with all its weapons and equipment to a chalet near the beach, kidnapping a Lebanese man … and sailing away into the open sea on a speedboat,” the NNA said. An acquaintance of the abductee identified him as a student at the Maritime Sciences and Technology Institute (MARSATI) in Batroun, reports AFP. He was taken from student housing near the Batroun institute, but was a resident of the town of Qmatiyeh farther south, said the acquaintance who spoke on the condition of anonymity for security concerns. He was completing courses to become a sea captain, the source told AFP, adding that the man was in his 30s and was well known by the teaching staff at the centre. Unicef has warned that the ongoing conflict in Lebanon is “massively impacting children’s mental health”. In a post on the UN agency’s X account on Saturday, Unicef shared a video and written message that read: The ongoing war in Lebanon is shattering children’s lives, inflicting severe physical wounds and deep emotional scars. With prolonged periods of traumatic stress, children face severe health and psychological risks, and the consequences can last a lifetime. True healing can only begin when this war on childhood ends. Ceasefire now.” Unicef said it had reached more than 10,000 children and caregivers with psychological and community support. The video also included the story of nine-year-old Mira, who shared the following: We were at home. Suddenly, there was the threat of bombing near our house. At that moment, we got scared and ran away. We don’t know if our house was damaged, but the windows might be broken because they bombed near our house. Here we’re doing social activities. I’m making new friends, studying and learning. They’re [Unicef] giving us blankets and supplies. I feel a strong sense of longing to return home, to sleep in my own bed and play with my toys. Once the war ends, the first thing I want to do is visit my relatives. I want to check on them, and I’ll hope we’ll all be safe and well.” Lebanon’s health ministry said 11 people were injured on Saturday in an Israeli strike on Hezbollah’s south Beirut stronghold, which has been hard hit by the Israel-Hezbollah war, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP). The ministry announcement came as the official National News Agency said the “Israeli enemy launched a raid near Karout mall... in the southern suburbs of Beirut”. The strike was not preceded by an Israeli evacuation warning, reports AFP. Two Microsoft employees who were fired last week after organising a vigil for Palestinians killed in Gaza say the company retaliated against them for their pro-Palestinian activism. The two, Abdo Mohamed, a researcher and data scientist, and Hossam Nasr, a software engineer, organised the event outside Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington, on 24 October. They were fired later that evening. “Microsoft really crumbled under pressure, internally and externally, to fire me and to shut down and retaliate against our event, not because of policy violations, simply because we were daring to humanize Palestinians, and simply because we were daring to say that Microsoft should not be complicit with an army that is plausibly accused of genocide,” said Nasr, who has been criticized on social media and in internal Microsoft employee communication groups over his support for Palestine. Both employees were members of No Azure for Apartheid, a group of Microsoft workers protesting the company’s sale of its cloud computing technology to Israel. The group demands Microsoft sever all Azure contracts and partnerships with the Israeli military and government, disclose all ties with Israel, call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in the conflict in Gaza, and protect and uphold the free speech of employees. Axios is reporting that Israeli naval forces captured a senior Hezbollah official, Imad Amhaz, in an operation in northern Lebanon. Barak Ravid wrote the news on X, citing an Israeli official. A suspected Israeli naval force landed in the northern Lebanese coastal town of Batroun early on Saturday and captured one person, a security source said, while another source confirmed the incident but did not say who was responsible, reports Reuters. There was no immediate comment from Israeli and Lebanese authorities. According to Reuters, the pro-Hezbollah journalist Hassan Illaik said in a post on X that a large group of Israeli troops made a landing in the resort town and captured the man, before departing on speed boats. He reportedly shared CCTV footage appearing to show soldiers walking in a street, two of them holding a person. Lebanese transport minister Ali Hamiye, who represents Hezbollah in Lebanon’s government, said the video was accurate but did not provide further details, reports Reuters. Here are some of the latest images coming in via the newswires: Hezbollah said on Saturday it carried out a rocket attack against Israeli “military industries” in Zvulun, near the northern city of Haifa, after a drone attack on a base south of Tel Aviv, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP). Twice on Saturday, “salvoes of rockets” were fired at “the Zvulun base for military industries north of the city of Haifa”, the group said in a statement. Earlier, it said it had launched drones at the Palmachim airbase south of Tel Aviv. At least 43,314 Palestinians have been killed and 102,019 injured in Israel’s military offensive on Gaza since 7 October 2023, Gaza’s health ministry said on Saturday. The toll includes 55 deaths in the previous 24 hours, according to the ministry. The ministry does not distinguish between combatants and non-combatants. Israel’s military says 37 soldiers have been killed in Lebanon since it began ground operations on 30 September, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP). According to Israeli figures, at least 63 people have been killed on the Israeli side since October last year. On Saturday the Israeli military said it had intercepted three drones over the Red Sea, after late Friday reporting seven drones had been launched from “several fronts”. Troops were also operating in central Gaza and Rafah in the territory’s far south, the Israeli military said, while witnesses told Agence France-Presse (AFP) that Israeli drones and boats opened fire on al-Mawasi in south Gaza. Medics and Gaza’s civil defence rescuers on Saturday reported three people killed in a strike on Nuseirat, in central Gaza, a day after AFP images showed the blood-stained shrouds of several people killed there in an Israeli strike. A strike in Israel’s Sharon area north of Tel Aviv injured 19 people, police said early on Saturday, after the army reported three projectiles fired from Lebanon into central Israel. Four of the injured were “in moderate condition”, the Israeli police said. Hezbollah said it had again launched rockets at Israel’s Glilot intelligence base near Tel Aviv. AFP images from Tira, a predominantly Arab town about 25 kilometres (15 miles) northeast of Tel Aviv, showed the upper wall blown out in what appeared to be a residential building. Several cars below were crushed. Israel’s military said a strike around the southern Lebanese city of Tyre on Friday killed two fighters “responsible for firing over 400 projectiles at Israel over the last month alone”. Israel on Saturday again carried out deadly airstrikes on north Gaza, where the UN calls conditions “apocalyptic”, as Lebanon’s Hezbollah intensified rocket fire near Israel’s commercial hub of Tel Aviv. Since 6 October Israeli forces have carried out a major air and ground assault on north Gaza, centred on the Jabalia area, vowing to stop attempts by Hamas militants from regrouping. “The situation unfolding in north Gaza is apocalyptic,” said a joint statement by UN agency heads, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP). “The area has been under siege for almost a month, denied basic aid and life-saving supplies while bombardment and other attacks continue,” the heads of the humanitarian, health and other agencies said. The entire Palestinian population in north Gaza is at imminent risk of dying from disease, famine and violence.” Witnesses told AFP that Israeli warplanes twice hit Beit Lahia, adjacent to Jabalia, overnight. Israel’s military on Saturday said dozens of militants were killed around Jabalia “in aerial and ground activity”. Hezbollah said it had targeted Israel’s Palmachim airbase in southern Tel Aviv on Saturday with drones, reports Reuters. There was no immediate comment from Israel on the attack. Bin bags were piling up at one end of the chaotic main thoroughfare in Shuafat refugee camp on Friday morning as shoppers walked by, stepping over a stream of wastewater trickling from a nearby drainpipe. Poor sanitation is just one of the UN-administered Palestinian camp’s problems – but things will get much worse. Despite huge international pressure not to jeopardise the work of Unrwa, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, the Israeli parliament voted this week to ban the organisation from operating on its soil. It also declared it a terror group, in effect severing all cooperation and communication between the UN agency and the Jewish state. At present it is unclear how the new laws, which are supposed to come into effect in 90 days, will affect aid in Gaza, where UN officials say humanitarian efforts for 2.3 million people are “completely dependent” on Unrwa staff, facilities and logistical capabilities. Another 900,000 Palestinians in the West Bank rely on the organisation for basic services, which the semi-autonomous Palestinian Authority does not have the capacity to take over, leading to fears it could collapse altogether. “I have studied Unrwa for many years; I can emphatically say there is no alternative. It is not like other UN agencies in terms of the scope and scale of what the international community and Israel has asked it to provide while there is no solution to the conflict,” said Dr Maya Rosenfeld, a sociologist and anthropologist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. “Emergency providers can step in for a short time, but they cannot replace what Unrwa does long-term. It is too big to fail,” she added. The new bills could yet be vetoed by the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, if he can be persuaded to by western allies who support Unrwa’s activities, and they will almost certainly be challenged in petitions made by human rights groups to Israel’s supreme court. At stake are 96 schools in the West Bank serving 45,000 students, as well as 43 health centres, food distribution services for refugee families, and psychological support services, according to the agency’s website. Before the war in Gaza, it operated 278 schools for 290,000 students, ran 22 medical centres, and distributed food packages to 1.1 million people, and now serves as a crucial emergency lifeline. The anti-Unrwa legislation, passed by a 92-10 vote in the Knesset late on Monday evening, marks an all-time low in Israel’s relationship with the UN, which it has long accused of bias. A coalition of pro-Iran groups in Iraq said it carried out four drone attacks on the Israeli resort of Eilat on Saturday, after Israel said it intercepted three drones approaching from the east, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP). In a statement, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq said it was behind the attacks on what it called “four vital targets” in the resort on Israel’s Red Sea coast, all conducted within one hour. Iraqi pro-Iran groups say they have carried out a drone attack on Israel’s Eilat, according to a breaking news line by Agence France-Presse (AFP). More details soon … Hezbollah said on Saturday it had launched rockets at an Israeli intelligence base near Tel Aviv in the early hours of Saturday, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP). At 2.30am (12.30am GMT) militants “fired a salvo of rockets at the Glilot base of the 8200 military intelligence unit in the suburbs of Tel Aviv” the group said in a statement. The Israeli military said on Saturday it had intercepted three drones launched from the east over the Red Sea, without specifying where they came from, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP). “A short while ago, three UAVs that were launched from the east were intercepted over the Red Sea …. the UAVs were intercepted prior to crossing into Israeli territory,” the military said in a statement. Israeli airstrikes on Friday killed at least 52 people and injured scores more, the Lebanese health ministry said, while rockets fired from Lebanon fell on Israel on Saturday. Israeli police said 19 people were injured before dawn on Saturday in the central town of Tira. Three projectiles crossed into Israel from Lebanon, Israel’s military said, and some were intercepted. The Magen David Adom ambulance service said two of those injured were in moderate condition from the attack, and the others had lesser injuries. A photo the service released showed damage to what appeared to be an apartment building. In Lebanon’s north-eastern Bekaa valley, rescuers searched for survivors after airstrikes killed nine people and brought down a building that had housed 20 people in the town of Younine. Further Israeli strikes killed 12 people in the town of Amhaz and 31 others across at least a dozen villages, bringing the total death toll to 52, the health ministry said. The bombardment left 72 people injured, the ministry added. There was no immediate comment from Israel on the strikes. The latest violence comes against the backdrop of a renewed diplomatic push by Joe Biden’s administration, days before the US presidential election, to reach temporary ceasefire deals. In central Gaza, Palestinians recovered the bodies of 25 people killed in a barrage of Israeli aerial attacks that began on Thursday, hospital officials said. Iran’s supreme leader on Saturday threatened Israel and the US with “a crushing response” over attacks on Iran and its allies, reports the Associated Press (AP). Ayatollah Ali Khamenei spoke as Iranian officials are increasingly threatening to launch yet another strike against Israel after its 26 October attack that targeted military bases and other locations and killed at least five people. Any further attacks from either side could engulf the wider Middle East, already teetering over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip and Israel’s ground invasion of Lebanon, into a wider regional conflict just head of the US presidential election this Tuesday. “The enemies, whether the Zionist regime or the United States of America, will definitely receive a crushing response to what they are doing to Iran and the Iranian nation and to the resistance front,” Khamenei said in video released by Iranian state media. The AP reports that Khamenei did not elaborate on the timing of the threatened attack, nor the scope. Khamenei had struck a more cautious approach in earlier remarks, saying officials would weigh Iran’s response and that Israel’s attack “should not be exaggerated nor downplayed.” In other developments: Israeli airstrikes on Friday killed at least 52 people and injured scores more, the Lebanese health ministry said, while rockets fired from Lebanon fell on Israel on Saturday. Israeli police said 19 people were injured before dawn on Saturday in the central town of Tira. Three projectiles crossed into Israel from Lebanon, Israel’s military said, and some were intercepted. The situation in the northern Gaza Strip is “apocalyptic” as Israel pursues a military offensive against Hamas militants in the area, top United Nations officials have warned. “The entire Palestinian population in north Gaza is at imminent risk of dying from disease, famine and violence,” they said in a statement on Friday signed by the heads of UN agencies, including the UN children’s agency Unicef and the World Food Programme, and other aid groups. The US asked Lebanon to declare a unilateral ceasefire to revive stalled talks to end hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah, according to a report later denied by the Lebanese prime minister. Two unnamed sources, a Lebanese political source and a senior diplomat, made the claim to Reuters, saying the US envoy, Amos Hochstein, had communicated the proposal to Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, this week. |
The Guardian;Israel abducts alleged Hezbollah official in unprecedented sea raid;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/02/israeli-military-abducts-alleged-hezbollah-official-in-sea-raid;2024-11-02T19:30:31Z | The Israeli military abducted who it said was a senior Hezbollah official in an unprecedented operation on Saturday morning during which Israeli commandos landed on the shores of Batroun, northern Lebanon, captured the alleged official and escaped via speedboat. In a statement, an Israeli military official said its forces captured a “senior operative of Hezbollah” and transferred him to its territory to be investigated by military intelligence. The media outlet Axios cited Israeli sources as saying the captured man – Imad Amhaz – was responsible for Hezbollah’s naval operations. Lebanon’s caretaker minister of transport, Ali Hamie, said that Amhaz was a civilian boat captain, while Hezbollah did not comment on allegations that he belonged to the organisation. Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, said Lebanon would be submitting a complaint to the UN security council, and that he had asked Lebanon’s military and the UN’s peacekeeping mission to investigate the incident. The Israeli naval raid was a first of its kind, with Israeli soldiers landing in north Lebanon – an area unaffiliated with Hezbollah and almost 100 miles from the Lebanon-Israel border. “An unidentified military force carried out a landing operation on the beach of Batroun, and moved … to a chalet near the beach, where it kidnapped the citizen Imad Amhaz and … left by speedboats to the open sea,” Lebanon’s National News Agency reported. Surveillance footage of the incident showed a man with his hands pinned behind his back being led by a column of soldiers. “The IDF [Israel Defense Forces] will continue to act wherever necessary to protect the state of Israel and its citizens,” an Israeli military official said in a statement. The Lebanese transport minister, Ali Hamieh, said that the abduction of the Amhaz could be a violation of UN resolution 1701, which is supposed to govern security dynamics between Israel and Lebanon after the 2006 war. “The kidnapping of Amhaz took place 100 metres from his place of residence. If it is proven that the kidnapping took place via a naval landing, where is the implementation of resolution 1701?” Hamieh said. Fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, which started on 8 October 2023 after the militant group launched rockets at Israel “in solidarity” with Hamas’s attack a day prior, has generally spared north Lebanon. Israeli troops have been conducting ground raids into south Lebanon since 30 September, but within a few kilometres of the border. Previous Israeli operations against Hezbollah in non-border areas have been conducted via aerial bombing. Israeli warplanes continued their aerial campaign across the country on Saturday afternoon, killing one and injuring 15 others in a rare daytime bombing of Beirut’s southern suburbs, which occurred without warning. Israel also struck Lebanon’s Bekaa valley, the focal point of much of its bombing over the past week. Hezbollah fired rockets and drones on Saturday, with a rocket injuring 19 people in Tayibe in central Israel. Fighting between Israel and Hezbollah has killed 2,968 people and wounded more than 13,300 over the past year, the vast majority of whom were killed and injured during the past five weeks. |
The Guardian;‘Death is everywhere’: fears grow that Israel plans to seize land in Gaza;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/02/fears-grow-israel-plans-seize-land-gaza-siege-netanyahu-war-aims;2024-11-02T16:44:35Z | Israel has tightened its siege of northern Gaza in the face of warnings from the UN and other aid agencies that hundreds of thousands of Palestinian lives at are risk, raising questions over whether the Netanyahu government’s ultimate war aims include territorial expansion. The IDF says it is hunting Hamas militants but suspicions are growing that Israel is putting into practice a blueprint it had officially distanced itself from, known as the “generals’ plan”. The plan, named after the retired senior officers promoting it, was intended to depopulate northern Gaza by giving the Palestinians trapped there an opportunity to evacuate and then treating those that stayed as combatants, laying total siege. The government insisted the plan had not been adopted, but some IDF soldiers in Gaza, as well as Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups, say it is being implemented on a daily basis, but with a major difference: the Palestinians in northern Gaza were not given a realistic chance to evacuate. They are trapped. “It is impossible for me to leave my house because I do not want to die out there. There are many people who lost their lives away from their homes, even in the south. Death is everywhere,” said Ramadan, a 19-year-old in Beit Lahiya whose family has been displaced seven times over the course of the 13-month war. “There is a lot of shooting and all kinds of bombing. Gatherings are being bombed, shelters are being bombed, and schools are being bombed. The area is overcrowded, so that even a small bomb kills and injures a lot of people.” “Even if there are people who want to go south, they can’t because there is no safe road,” Ramadan said. Israeli ground troops have laid siege to three areas – Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun and the Jabalia refugee camp – in the northern Gaza governorate, where there are estimated to be about 75,000 people. But the reality for almost all the 400,000 trapped across the northern half of Gaza is that there is no escape. Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN relief agency Unrwa, made an emergency appeal on 22 October, calling for “an immediate truce, even for a few hours, to enable safe humanitarian passage for families who wish to leave the area and reach safer places”. There was no response from the Israeli authorities, whose official position is not to deal with Unrwa, by far the biggest aid agency in Gaza. “Nothing happened when we sent that SOS out,” said Unrwa spokesperson Juliette Touma. On Monday, the Knesset voted to ban Unrwa altogether within the next 90 days. The amount of aid reaching north Gaza has been heavily restricted since the start of the war on 7 October last year. Now the quantities of relief supplies entering the whole strip have hit a new low, and barely anything is reaching the north. The UN humanitarian affairs coordination agency, OCHA, reported that, as of Thursday, “no bakeries or public kitchens in north Gaza are operational, and only two of 20 health service points and two hospitals remain operational, albeit partially”. “With no electricity or fuel allowed since 1 October, only two of eight water wells in Jabalia refugee camp remain functional, both of them partially,” OCHA said. In an emergency statement on Friday, the heads of OCHA and 14 other UN and independent aid agencies raised the alarm that the area was at the brink of an abyss. “The situation unfolding in north Gaza is apocalyptic,” the appeal said. “The entire Palestinian population in north Gaza is at imminent risk of dying from disease, famine and violence.” The residual health facilities inside the besieged zone, the Kamal Adwan, al-Awda and Indonesian hospitals, have been targeted. The third wave of a polio vaccination campaign got under way on Saturday, but not for children trapped in that zone. In the past week, Kamal Adwan was raided by the IDF, its medics detained, and then, after the soldiers withdrew, the hospital was bombed, destroying supplies recently delivered by the World Health Organization (WHO). “Kamal Adwan hospital has been reduced from a hospital helping hundreds of patients, with dozens of health workers, to a shell of itself,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO director general. The situation is hardly any better at al-Awda hospital. Mohammad Salha, its acting director, said: “There is a shortage of fuel, of medication, medical supplies and food. There is no healthy water in the north.” Salha added: “There are no ambulances,. The people are bringing the injured from the field on donkeys and on their shoulders. Some are dying in the streets because no one can take care of them, or they are carrying them the wrong way.” The beds in the inpatient, maternity and other wards are all full of patients injured by bombing, and there is just a single surgeon left. Al-Awda has no O-positive, O-negative, B-positive or B-negative blood units left, Salha said, “so if any cases come in and need these blood groups, they will die”. “We are making a lot of appeals to the WHO, and we have a promise [of deliveries], but the Israelis refuse to allow a mission through to the hospital,” he said, adding: “We don’t know how to deal with this situation.” The “generals’ plan” was presented as a means of using siege warfare to put pressure on Hamas to release its Israeli hostages. Defending it in an article in Haaretz on Friday, its principal author, the retired major general Giora Eiland, argued that siege was not a war crime if civilians were evacuated first, and that the occupation would be temporary, as a way of putting real pressure on Hamas. “Had Hamas understood that not returning hostages means losing 35% of the strip’s territory, it would have compromised long ago,” Eiland wrote. Other analysts argued that the plan made little military sense, as Hamas could reconstitute anywhere and return later. For those under fire in northern Gaza, it does not seem like a counter-insurgency measure. “They kill all people without separating a civilian or a fighter,” said Ahlam al-Tlouli, a 33-year-old from Jabalia camp. He said his father, stepmother and sister were killed by snipers and his brother had been missing since Ramadan. “We had opportunities to head south but refused because we know that the bombing is everywhere and there is no safe place.” The ferocity of what is happening in northern Gaza has added to suspicions that there are more wide-reaching objectives at play. Idan Landau, a Tel Aviv University linguistics professor and political commentator, wrote on his blog, Don’t Die Stupid, that “the ultimate goal of the plan is not military but political – resettling Gaza”. That is how it looks to Ramadan in Beit Lahiya. He said: “I am afraid that if we go, they will not let us return. They will take our lands and homes and annex them to Israel or turn them into settlements.” The UN secretary general, António Guterres, called on Wednesday for the international community to stand firm to prevent “ethnic cleansing” in Gaza, but the US and other western allies of Israel have so far been reluctant to use the leverage of their arms supplies to influence policy. On 21 October, the radical movement Nachala held a festival on the Sukkot holiday titled: “Preparing to Settle Gaza”. It was attended by senior members of Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet as well as representatives of his Likud party. The finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, said on his way to the event that the Gaza strip is “part of the land of Israel”, adding that settlements were the only true form of security. “All the signs indicate that Israel is not planning to let the displaced return,’ Landau wrote on his blog, translated and republished by the +972 magazine. “In this sense, the destruction in northern Gaza is unlike anything we have seen before.” |
The Guardian;The global fertility crisis: are fewer babies a good or a bad thing? Experts are divided;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/02/the-global-fertility-crisis-are-fewer-babies-a-good-or-a-bad-thing-experts-are-divided;2024-11-02T15:46:04Z | According to one leading demographer the most consequential announcement last week relating to future tax revenues and demands on the NHS was not to be found in the budget. It was instead a statistic released by the Office for National Statistics: the average fertility rate is now 1.44 children per woman – the lowest figure since records began. For Paul Morland, author of No One Left: Why the World Needs More Children, it’s just the latest milestone in a long term and worrying trend. “We’ve had a below replacement level fertility rate now for 50 years,” he says. “We now have more deaths than births, and we are not alone.” Most countries in the world have below replacement fertility – which in the UK is about 2.1 children per woman, and slightly higher in countries where infant mortality is a greater threat. The exception is sub-Saharan Africa, where high fertility rates are still common, though dropping. The pattern is well established. As societies grow wealthier and more secular, and woman gain greater agency, birthrates come down. Morland believes the world is teetering on the edge of a population collapse. But to those concerned about overpopulation, increasing human consumption and climate change, pro-natalism is alarmist, nostalgic for women’s domestication, and indifferent to the effect ever-expanding humanity has wrought on the planet. “The World Wildlife Fund says that we’ve lost 73% of our wildlife population in the last 50 years,” says Amy Jankiewicz, chief executive of Population Matters, a campaign group in favour of sustainable human population. The plunging fertility rate, she says, is “cause for celebration”. As she points out, the current UK population is about 68.3 million and is expected to reach 78 million by 2050. “It’s not sustainable,” she says. But behind those headline figures, another picture emerges. The demographic makeup of the UK and the rest of Europe, not to mention North America and most of Asia, is radically changing. And it’s this factor that is central to matters of fiscal revenue and public expenditure. Not only is the fertility rate going down, but longevity is going up. We are getting older as a nation and a global society. This ageing can be seen in what is known as the old age dependency ratio (OADR), which is the number of people of retirement age versus the number of people of working age. Or to put it another way, the number of people paying tax versus the number of people receiving pension support, as well as a disproportionate amount of NHS and care services. In the UK the OADR was below 20% in the 1950s – there were more than five workers for every retiree – whereas it is more than 30% today (or just three workers for every retiree). Morland notes that by the end of the century it “will be approaching 60%”, which would be 1.7 workers for every retiree. That, too, is likely to be unsustainable. Just look at the NHS. When it was established, writes Morland, there were around a quarter of a million people in Britain in their late 80s or older. Members of this cohort require six to seven times as much health spending as those in the prime of their lives. Today, he says, there aremore than 1.5 million in that age group and by the end of the century the figure is predicted to be almost 6 million. Here’s another statistic to conjure with: in Italy in 1950 there were 17 under-10s for every one person over the age of 80. Today, writes Morland, “the two groups are matched roughly one-to-one”. It’s no coincidence, he says, that the countries with the most ageing populations, such as Greece, Italy and Japan, have the worst levels of government debt to GDP. Europe’s solution to this growing shortfall in the labour force is immigration. The UK’s population would now be in decline if it wasn’t for the massive number of immigrants that keep service, health and care industries going. But to sustain this policy, argues Morland, almost half the population of the UK would have to be foreign-born by the end of the 21st century. Jankiewicz counters that the good thing about immigrants is that they don’t add to the world’s population, but merely shift its distribution. Large-scale immigration, however, has been cited for the rise of right-wing parties in Europe, Brexit in the UK, and the popularity of Donald Trump in the US. Moreover, says Morland, the developed world routinely strips the developing world of its brightest and most dynamic people in what amounts to a post-colonial raid on those economies. In any case, it won’t be long before sub-Saharan Africa moves, like India and China, to similarly low fertility rates, adds Morland. So what’s the answer? There is no doubting the effects of the Anthropocene epoch, and it stands to reason that the world’s population can’t keep growing indefinitely. But unlike with almost every other vital aspect of the economy, democratic governments have almost no involvement in the fertility rate, either in its move up or down. The decision to have a child is rightly a private one, usually made between two people. It’s extremely doubtful that any couple has ever set about trying to have a baby to solve a future labour shortage – that really would be a passion killer. Thus any governmental attempt to influence the parenthood decision could appear intrusive, and has in the past been draconian. China famously implemented a one child policy between 1979 and 2015 to halt the country’s population growth. It was a flagrant curtailment of its citizens’ human rights, and yet now that all restrictions are lifted, economic development has left China with a fertility rate of 1.0. Recently its government has been accused of pressuring women into having more children. When the fertility rate drops, the number of girls born obviously drops (even more so in countries like China, where female foetuses are more often aborted than male). That means that there will be fewer women of child-bearing age, which in turn means that the fertility rate required to maintain the population goes up even higher. Rapid depopulation is the inevitable outcome.. For Jankiewicz, this can only be a good thing. “The fewer people the better is what we stand for,” she says. Even a pro-natalist like Morland, who describes himself as “unapologetically rightwing”, accepts that humanity must have a population limit. But he argues that its decline needs to be better managed and should be delayed until AI and robotics can replace labour. He calls for a “cultural revolution” in which the idea of having larger families is seen as desirable or even cool. After all, he notes, “women in the UK and the US have about three-quarters of a child less than they say they want”. He emphasises that any cultural change would have to entail an equitable sharing of childcare duties between parents. But while a man with many children might be viewed as a potent paterfamilias figure or someone, like Elon Musk, with many willing partners, there aren’t many have-it-all role models for women – mother-of-six investment banker Nicola Horlick with her nanny-back-ups, or perhaps the Yorkshire Shepherdess Amanda Owen, with her nine children? The point is they’re well known because they are such striking exceptions. The paradox of fertility is that it is highest in poor countries, but in the developed countries people cite high costs as one of the main reasons for limiting or not having children. Some governments have attempted to alleviate the problem by subsidising childcare, offering extended parental leave and various tax breaks for families. Yet while there are signs such measures may have small effects, they are not of the kind that will reverse current trends. Hungary, for example, is estimated to spend 5% of its GDP on pro-natal policies. As a result the fertility rate has climbed from 1.25 to 1.5, yet that is a long way from replacement level. And given that the Hungarian government is right-wing, populist and anti-immigrant, it has helped foster the belief that pro-natalism is really just another form of pro-nationalism. There aren’t any easy answers to this problem, and even the questions are complex. But some kind of public debate is required because the implications of population decline (or indeed increase) are too great to be left to just happen. The British government is right to avoid advising citizens on their procreative choices. But it should be clear about what the consequences are for the generations to come. |
The Guardian;Spain’s apocalyptic floods show undeniable truths: the climate crisis is getting worse and Big Oil is killing us | Jonathan Watts;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/02/spain-apocalyptic-floods-climate-crisis-worse-big-oil-cop29;2024-11-02T15:44:47Z | Move on. Nothing to see here. Just another ordinary, everyday apocalypse. If past experience is any guide, the world’s reaction to the floods in Spain last week will be similar to that of motorway drivers at a crash scene: slow down, take in the horror, outwardly express sympathy, inwardly give thanks that fate picked someone else – and foot on the accelerator. That is the pattern in our climate-disrupted era when extreme-weather catastrophes have become so commonplace that they risk being normalised. Instead of outrage and determination to reduce the dangers, there is an insidious sense of complacency: these things happen. Someone else is responsible. Somebody else will fix it. Nothing could be further from the truth. The unnatural disaster in Spain – Europe’s deadliest flash floods in at least half a century – is evidence of two undeniable truths: the human-caused climate crisis is just starting to pick up ferocity, and we need to quickly kill the fossil fuel industry before it kills us. That should be the primary message at the UN Cop29 climate summit that opens in Baku next week because halting the combustion of gas, oil, coal and trees is the only way to stabilise the climate. For this to happen, we must fight the tendency to normalise scenes of disaster. Cars skittled like bowling pins in urban streets, cars bobbing in rivers of mud, cars turning into death traps. The images from Valencia and other regions of Spain are both shocking and familiar. In Italy last month, vehicles were swept away as roads turned to rivers. Before that, it was the turn of France , and in September, central Europe, where 24 died in floods in Poland, Austria, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. There have also been freakish downpours in England. Of course, there have always been floods, while local factors – atmospheric, geographic, economic and political – contribute to the impact, but it is the global physics of a fossil fuel-destabilised world that is loading the dice towards disaster. The warmer the atmosphere gets, the more moisture it can hold. That means longer droughts and more intense downpours. In Spain, a year’s worth of rain was dumped in less than half a day in some regions, killing at least 205 people. “Events of this type, which used to occur many decades apart, are now becoming more frequent and their destructive capacity is greater,” said Dr Ernesto Rodríguez Camino, a senior state meteorologist and member of the Spanish Meteorological Association. Nobody can say they were not warned. Thirty-two years have passed since governments agreed to tackle climate concerns at the first Rio de Janeiro Earth summit and nine years since the Paris Agreement to limit global heating to 1.5 degrees celsius above pre-industrial levels. Yet global temperatures continue to hit record highs and emissions are rising faster than the average for the past decade. In other words, the foot is still on the gas although the pile-ups are getting so close they are almost banal. Governments continue to focus on economic speed rather than climate safety. They have been slow to reduce the risks and prepare societies, but many, including the UK, have been quick to lock up those who scream warnings and who hold up traffic. The legal system is effectively compelling citizens to accept catastrophe. What else to call it? In recent years, apocalyptic images appear to have migrated from Hollywood disaster movies: Commuters swept off subway platforms or trapped in carriages as the waters rose up to their necks during the Zhengzhou metro line 5 flooding disaster in China , the glass wall being ripped off the side of a Vietnamese office tower during the super-typhoon Yagi, which also snapped giant wind turbines like twigs in Hainan, China. Each grotesque clip deadens the impact. We are living in a time of unwelcome climate superlatives: the hottest two years in the world’s recorded history, the deadliest fire in the US, the biggest fire in Europe, the biggest fire in Canada, the worst drought in the Amazon rainforest. The list goes on. This is just the start. As long as people pump gases into the atmosphere, such records will be broken with increasing frequency until “worst ever” becomes our default expectation. But we should not let our baselines shift so easily. These are not isolated cases. They are part of a disturbing patternthat has been predicted by scientists and the UN. The cause is clear and so is the remedy. The scientists at World Weather Attribution have shown on a case-by-case basis how much more intense and likely storms, droughts, floods and fires have become as a result of human-caused climate disruption. This includes the late summer flooding in the Sudan, Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon that killed more than 2,000 people and displaced millions, the torrents that left at least 244 dead in Nepal from 26-28 September, the floods in the south of Brazil that took more than 169 lives earlier in the year, as well as the devastating hurricanes - particularly Helene and Milton – in the US that killed 360 people and caused more than $100bn of damage. In every case, the poor and elderly are most vulnerable. In Spain too, many of the bodies that filled the mobile morgues are of those of old people unable to escape first floor homes and delivery drivers caught in the torrents that deluged the streets. That all of this is already happening with just 1.3 degrees celsius of global heating should be an urgent warning to slash emissions, said the authors of these studies. “At COP29 global leaders really need to agree to not only reduce, but stop burning fossil fuels, with an end date. The longer the world delays replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy, the more severe and frequent extreme weather events will become,” said Friederike Otto, Lead of World Weather Attribution at the Centre for Environmental Policy, Imperial College London. The UN seems to be running out of vocabulary to describe how serious the danger is. UN secretary-general António Guterres has declared “code red for humanity”. UN executive climate secretary Simon Stiell has warned “we have two years to save the world.” And last week the head of the UN environment programme, Inger Andersen, insisted “It’s climate crunch time for real.” Yet the agenda is being set by those who want to expand fossil fuel production. Azerbaijan is the third Cop host in a row, after the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, that plans to increase oil and gas production. Next year’s host Brazil also intends to boost output. So do many of the world’s richest nations , including the US, Australia and Norway. This year’s talks will address how to finance a “transition away from oil and gas” – the vague goal finally accepted at Cop last year after three decades of talks. The dissonance between this sluggish response and the apocalyptic scenes in Spain and elsewhere should be a jolt to the global consciousness. After all, the original meaning of apocalypse is revelation – lifting the cover off, laying things bare. But for that to happen, we need to truly take in and respond to the horror of what the world is going through, and stop pretending we can carry on as usual. • Jonathan Watts is the Guardian’s global environment editor |
The Guardian;Pakistani firm apologises for directing Dubliners to nonexistent Halloween event;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/02/pakistan-firm-apologises-for-directing-dubliners-to-nonexistent-halloween-event;2024-11-02T13:27:10Z | A Pakistan-based company has issued an apology to Dubliners after a “human error” on its events website led to thousands of people turning up on the Irish capital’s main thoroughfare for a nonexistent Halloween parade. Footage on Thursday night showed throngs of people lining both sides of O’Connell Street waiting for a supposed procession of giant Halloween puppets made by one of Ireland’s best-known theatre groups, the Galway performance company Mácnas. The film-maker Bertie Brosnan said: “I was there filming for 40 minutes. From Parnell Square West – both sides of the street – people were packed five to 10 deep, lined up all the way down around the corner as far as the spire. Thousands were there. The Luas [tramline] was completely blocked on both lines.” The crowds had turned up to see the event which was listed as taking place on the My Spirit Halloween website. When bemused crowds began to be dispersed by gardaí who told them no such parade was taking place, they suspected a scam, or some seasonal tricker. But the company behind the website now says the phoney event was neither. Instead, it was a simple human error. The website falsely advertised that the Mácnas parade would take place between 7pm and 9pm on Thursday after a member of their team had cut and paste the notice for last year’s event and inserted it into this year’s calendar. The site, which aggregates content all over the world was one of the highest ranking Google Halloween entries in the days before 31 October, and the posting on the parade was shared widely on social media. The Pakistan-based man behind the site has since apologised saying he was “depressed” and “embarrassed”. “We are highly embarrassed and highly depressed, and very sorry,” Nazir Ali told the Irish Times. “It was our mistake and we should have doubled checked it to make sure it was happening. But newspapers are reporting that we posted it intentionally and this is very, very wrong,” Ali said. After the error became apparent to people who had turned up for the event, a wave of amusement on social media – but also warnings about the dangers of misinformation and AI deepfakes – was unleashed. Some joked that there would have to be a “parades commission” set up, like in Northern Ireland. The Belfast journalist Allison Morris said on social media that she “laughed at the fake parade story” but it showed “how easy it is to spread misinformation”. One user on X said: “This is just halloween, now think of how many people are fed with misinformation online on other issues.” Gary Gannon, a Social Democrat TD – a member of parliament – said it showed the power of misinformation and deepfakes. He referred to a deepfake of Taylor Swift endorsing the Kerry politician Michael Healy-Rae. “That was quite funny, but all of a sudden when that becomes something a little bit more serious and people are putting out AI images of me, for example, saying something that I would never say contrary to my own values, that’s something that’s not too far off the horizon,” he told RTÉ. |