UN chief calls rising seas a ‘worldwide catastrophe’ that especially imperils Pacific paradises

UN chief calls rising seas a ‘worldwide catastrophe’ that especially imperils Pacific paradises
A section of land between trees is washed away due to rising seas, in Majuro Atoll, Marshall Islands. (AP/File)
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Updated 27 August 2024
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UN chief calls rising seas a ‘worldwide catastrophe’ that especially imperils Pacific paradises

UN chief calls rising seas a ‘worldwide catastrophe’ that especially imperils Pacific paradises
  • Globally, sea level rise has been accelerating, the UN report said, echoing peer-reviewed studies. The rate is now the fastest it has been in 3,000 years, Guterres said

NUKU’ALOFA, Tonga: Highlighting seas that are rising at an accelerating rate, especially in the far more vulnerable Pacific island nations, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres issued yet another climate SOS to the world. This time he said those initials stand for “save our seas.”
The United Nations and the World Meteorological Organization Monday issued reports on worsening sea level rise, turbocharged by a warming Earth and melting ice sheets and glaciers. They highlight how the Southwestern Pacific is not only hurt by the rising oceans, but by other climate change effects of ocean acidification and marine heat waves.
Guterres toured Samoa and Tonga and made his climate plea from Tonga’s capital on Tuesday at a meeting of the Pacific Islands Forum, whose member countries are among those most imperiled by climate change. Next month the United Nations General Assembly holds a special session to discuss rising seas.
“This is a crazy situation,” Guterres said. “Rising seas are a crisis entirely of humanity’s making. A crisis that will soon swell to an almost unimaginable scale, with no lifeboat to take us back to safety.”
“A worldwide catastrophe is putting this Pacific paradise in peril,” he said. “The ocean is overflowing.”
A report that Guterres’ office commissioned found that sea level lapping against Tonga’s capital Nuku’alofa had risen 21 centimeters (8.3 inches) between 1990 and 2020, twice the global average of 10 centimeters (3.9 inches). Apia, Samoa, has seen 31 centimeters (1 foot) of rising seas, while Suva-B, Fiji has had 29 centimeters (11.4 inches).
“This puts Pacific Island nations in grave danger,” Guterres said. About 90 percent of the region’s people live within 5 kilometers (3 miles) of the rising oceans, he said.
Since 1980, coastal flooding in Guam has jumped from twice a year to 22 times a year. It’s gone from five times a year to 43 times a year in the Cook Islands. In Pago Pago, American Samoa, coastal flooding went from zero to 102 times a year, according to the WMO State of the Climate in the South-West Pacific 2023 report.
While the western edges of the Pacific are seeing sea level rise about twice the global average, the central Pacific is closer to the global average, the WMO said.
Sea levels are rising faster in the western tropical Pacific because of where the melting ice from western Antarctica heads, warmer waters and ocean currents, UN officials said.
Guterres said he can see changes since the last time he was in the region in May 2019.
While he met in Nuku’alofa on Tuesday with Pacific nations on the environment at their leaders’ annual summit, a hundred local high school students and activists from across the Pacific marched for climate justice a few blocks away.
One of the marchers was Itinterunga Rae of the Barnaban Human Rights Defenders Network, whose people were forced generations ago to relocate to Fiji from their Kiribati island home due to environmental degradation. Rae said abandoning Pacific islands should not be seen as a solution to rising seas.
“We promote climate mobility as a solution to be safe from your island that’s been destroyed by climate change, but it’s not the safest option,” he said. Barnabans have been cut off from the source of their culture and heritage, he said.
“The alarm is justified,” said S. Jeffress Williams, a retired US Geological Survey sea level scientist. He said it’s especially bad for the Pacific islands because most of the islands are at low elevations, so people are more likely to get hurt. Three outside experts said the sea level reports accurately reflect what’s happening.
The Pacific is getting hit hard despite only producing 0.2 percent of heat-trapping gases causing climate change and expanding oceans, the UN said. The largest chunk of the sea rise is from melting ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland. Melting land glaciers add to that, and warmer water also expands based on the laws of physics.
Antarctic and Greenland “melting has greatly accelerated over the past three to four decades due to high rate of warming at the poles,” Williams, who was not part of the reports, said in an email.
About 90 percent of the heat trapped by greenhouse gases goes into the oceans, the UN said.
Globally, sea level rise has been accelerating, the UN report said, echoing peer-reviewed studies. The rate is now the fastest it has been in 3,000 years, Guterres said.
Between 1901 and 1971, the global average sea rise was 1.3 centimeters a decade, according to the UN report. Between 1971 and 2006 it jumped to 1.9 centimeters per decade, then between 2006 and 2018 it was up to 3.7 centimeters a decade. The last decade, seas have risen 4.8 centimeters (1.9 inches).
The UN report also highlighted cities in the richest 20 nations, which account for 80 percent of the heat-trapping gases, where rising seas are lapping at large population centers. Those cities where sea level rise in the past 30 years has been at least 50 percent higher than the global average include Shanghai; Perth, Australia; London; Atlantic City, New Jersey; Boston; Miami; and New Orleans.
New Orleans topped the list with 10.2 inches (26 centimeters) of sea level rise between 1990 and 2020. UN officials highlighted the flooding in New York City during 2012’s Superstorm Sandy as worsened by rising seas. A 2021 study said climate-driven sea level rise added $8 billion to the storm’s costs.
Guterres is amping up his rhetoric on what he calls “climate chaos” and urged richer nations to step up efforts to reduce carbon emissions, end fossil fuel use and help poorer nations. Yet countries’ energy plans show them producing double the amount of fossil fuels in 2030 than the amount that would limit warming to internationally agreed upon levels, a 2023 UN report found.


Australia urges citizens to leave Israel citing rising tensions

Australia urges citizens to leave Israel citing rising tensions
Updated 15 October 2024
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Australia urges citizens to leave Israel citing rising tensions

Australia urges citizens to leave Israel citing rising tensions
  • Some airlines have reduced and suspended flights to Israel after the escalation in conflict caused airspace closures, the advisory said

SYDNEY: Australia has warned its citizens not to travel to Israel and urged Australians there to leave the country while commercial flights remained available, citing the conflict between Israel and the Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah.
“The Australian government has serious concerns the security situation in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories could deteriorate rapidly,” Foreign Minister Penny Wong said in a post on X late Monday.
There continues to be a high threat of military and terrorist attacks against Israel and Israeli interests across the region, the Australian government’s travel advisory said.
Some airlines have reduced and suspended flights to Israel after the escalation in conflict caused airspace closures, the advisory said.
Israel on Monday expanded its targets in its war with Hezbollah, killing at least 21 people in an airstrike in north Lebanon, health officials said, while millions of Israelis took shelter from projectiles fired back across the border.
Four Israeli soldiers were killed on Sunday in central Israel after a Hezbollah drone strike.
 

 


UN Security Council backs Lebanon peacekeepers after Israeli attacks

A general view of a Security Council meeting at United Nations headquarters, Friday, Sep. 1, 2024. (AP)
A general view of a Security Council meeting at United Nations headquarters, Friday, Sep. 1, 2024. (AP)
Updated 33 min 27 sec ago
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UN Security Council backs Lebanon peacekeepers after Israeli attacks

A general view of a Security Council meeting at United Nations headquarters, Friday, Sep. 1, 2024. (AP)
  • “UNIFIL peacekeepers remain in all positions and the UN flag continues to fly,” UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said in a statement

UNITED NATIONS, United States: The United Nations Security Council on Monday expressed strong concern after several UN peacekeeping positions in southern Lebanon came under fire amid clashes between the Israeli military and Iran-backed Hezbollah militants.
In a statement adopted by consensus, the 15-member council also urged all parties — without naming them — to respect the safety and security of the personnel and premises of the UN peacekeeping mission, known as UNIFIL.
“UN peacekeepers and UN premises must never be the target of an attack,” said the council, reiterating its support for UNIFIL and the operation’s importance for regional stability.
The Security Council also called for the full implementation of its resolution 1701, which was adopted in 2006 with the aim of keeping peace on the border between Lebanon and Israel. The council “recognized the need for further practical measures to achieve that outcome,” but did not offer specifics.
Since the start of Israeli ground operation in Lebanon on Oct. 1, UNIFIL positions have been affected 20 times, including by direct fire and an incident on Sunday when two Israeli tanks burst through the gates of a UNIFIL base, the UN said.
“Five peacekeepers have been injured during these incidents, including one peacekeeper who sustained a bullet wound,” UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told reporters on Monday. “The source of that gunfire has yet to be confirmed by UNIFIL.”
For the past two weeks Israel has been telling UN peacekeepers to move 5 km (3 miles) back from the so-called Blue Line — a UN-mapped line separating Lebanon from Israel and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights — for their own safety.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday in a statement addressed to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres: “The time has come for you to withdraw UNIFIL.”
UN peacekeeping chief Jean-Pierre Lacroix said on Monday that UN troops would not move. After briefing the Security Council behind closed doors, he told reporters that he would meet with Israeli UN Ambassador Danny Danon on Tuesday.
Lacroix added that the UN is “reviewing constantly the situation, and we have contingency planning for all scenarios.”
UNIFIL MANDATED ‘TO ASSIST’
Deputy US Ambassador Robert Wood told reporters ahead of the council meeting that it was important that UNIFIL be able to do its job.
The Security Council authorized UNIFIL — under resolution 1701 — “to assist” Lebanese forces in ensuring southern Lebanon is “free of any armed personnel, assets and weapons other than those of the government of Lebanon.”
“We have to stand against ... every suggestion that if resolution 1701 was not implemented it’s because UNIFIL did not implement, which was never its mandate,” said Lacroix, stressing that UNIFIL had a supporting role.
Danon said last week that the Lebanese army and UNIFIL had failed to gain control of the area.
He argued that Israel was now acting to enforce resolution 1701, telling the Security Council: “Our soldiers are now in the field, along the border in Lebanon, exposing and dismantling Hezbollah’s infrastructure.”
The United States and France have said that strengthening Lebanon’s army would be crucial to implementing resolution 1701.
“UNIFIL cannot prevent the hostilities,” Russian UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said on Monday. “UNIFIL is being jeopardized and endangered and one country openly threatens its personnel, which is unacceptable.”
UNIFIL is also authorized under resolution 1701 “to assist” – if requested by the Lebanese government – in preventing the illicit transport of weapons into the country. The resolution 1701 also bans parties from crossing the Blue Line by ground or air. UN officials have long reported violations by both sides.
Danon told the Security Council last week that it “must ensure the right mechanisms are in place for the Lebanese army and UNIFIL to meet their obligations.”
When asked what that might look like, Danon told Reuters on Monday that he wanted to see “a more robust mandate for UNIFIL to deter Hezbollah.”
Any changes to UNIFIL’s mandate would have to be authorized by the Security Council. Diplomats said there are no such discussions at the moment. The mission is currently authorized until Aug. 31, 2025.

 


Russia says it captured a southern Ukraine village in a push before winter comes

Russia says it captured a southern Ukraine village in a push before winter comes
Updated 15 October 2024
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Russia says it captured a southern Ukraine village in a push before winter comes

Russia says it captured a southern Ukraine village in a push before winter comes
  • Ukraine has deployed sophisticated long-range drones to strike targets inside Russia, including airfields, oil refineries and ammunition depots

KYIV, Ukraine: Russia said Monday it captured the village of Levadne in southern Ukraine as it probes for weaknesses along the war ‘s roughly 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front line, including in eastern areas that are the main focus of Moscow’s military effort before winter arrives.
Ukrainian authorities, meanwhile, reported no nighttime Shahed drone attacks on the country for the first time in about six weeks, after saying five days ago they struck a Shahed storage facility in Russia’s Krasnodar region where around 400 drones reportedly were being kept.
Levadne, in the Zaporizhzhia region, was seized by the Russians early on during the full-scale invasion, which began on Feb. 24, 2022, but was recaptured by Ukrainian forces during a counteroffensive in the summer of 2023.
Ukrainian officials made no comment about Levadne’s reported capture, though they had previously noted that the Russian army was assembling troops there and was conducting local assaults at the end of last week.
Ukraine’s troops are straining to hold back Russia’s military might, especially in the eastern Donetsk region, and don’t have the manpower or weaponry to launch their own offensive. Though Russia’s gains have been incremental, its steady forward movement is slowly adding up as the Ukrainians are pushed backward.
In his nightly address, President Volodymyr Zelensky said he was briefed on Russia’s autumn and winter plans for attacking Ukraine and said North Korea was supporting Moscow.
Ukraine says it needs more Western help to have a chance of holding back Russia’s invasion.
Zelensky said Monday that Ukraine’s victory plan will be publicly presented to Kyiv’s European partners and he dubbed it a strategy to compel Russia to come to a “just end to this war.”
Details of the plan have not been disclosed, but Zelensky has said the plan is about strengthening Ukraine “both geopolitically and on the battlefield” before any kind of dialogue with Russia.
Russia illegally annexed four regions of Ukraine, including Zaporizhzhia, in September 2022. Russian President Vladimir Putin has demanded the withdrawal of Ukrainian forces from all four regions as the main condition for a prospective peace deal — a demand Ukraine and the West have rejected.
Last week, the Ukrainian General Staff reported a direct hit on the Shahed drone warehouse inside Russia.
“The destruction of the Shahed drone storage base will significantly reduce the ability of Russian occupiers to terrorize peaceful residents of Ukrainian cities and villages,” it said at the time.
Ukrainian officials are keen to show the West that they aren’t giving up the fight against their much bigger neighbor. An incursion into Russia’s Kursk border region has put Ukrainian troops on Russian soil for more than two months.
The Russians are managing to retake some territory in Kursk but the Ukrainians are capturing even more, according to Oleksandr Kovalenko, a military analyst from Information Resistance, a Kyiv-based think tank.
He told The Associated Press that the onset of winter fog and rain will affect the use of drones — an important element in Ukraine’s military strategy.
Ukraine has deployed sophisticated long-range drones to strike targets inside Russia, including airfields, oil refineries and ammunition depots.
The Ukrainian Main Directorate of Intelligence said Monday that it destroyed a Russian military transport aircraft, a Tu-134, at a military airfield in Russia’s Orenburg region.
Russia, meanwhile, struck port infrastructure in the southern Ukrainian city of Odesa with a ballistic missile Monday, killing one person and wounding eight others, as well as damaging two merchant ships, officials said.
The attack damaged grain storage facilities, cargo cranes, administrative buildings, port equipment and vehicles, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister for Restoration Oleksii Kuleba said on his Telegram channel.
Recent attacks on Odesa port facilities appear intended to disrupt the country’s exports of grains and other food staples.


Dutch woman accused of enslaving Yazidi women while part of Daesh goes on trial

A view of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, Wednesday, June 26, 2024. (AP)
A view of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, Wednesday, June 26, 2024. (AP)
Updated 15 October 2024
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Dutch woman accused of enslaving Yazidi women while part of Daesh goes on trial

A view of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, Wednesday, June 26, 2024. (AP)
  • It viewed the Yazidis as devil worshippers and killed more than 3,000 of them, as well as enslaving 7,000 Yazidi women and girls and displaced most of the 550,000-strong community from its ancestral home in northern Iraq

THE HAGUE: A Dutch woman who joined Daesh in 2015 went on trial in the Netherlands on Monday for crimes against humanity for allegedly enslaving two Yazidi women in Syria.
Hasna Aarab, 33, faces charges of taking part in slavery as a crime against humanity for keeping two Yazidi women as domestic slaves, between 2015 and 2016, while she lived in Raqqa with her small son and her Daesh fighter husband.
The Netherlands is only the second country to put an alleged Daesh member on trial for crimes against humanity against Yazidis, an ancient religious minority who combine Zoroastrian, Christian, Manichean, Jewish and Muslim beliefs.
Daesh controlled swathes of Iraq and Syria from 2014-2017, before being defeated in its last bastions in Syria in 2019.
It viewed the Yazidis as devil worshippers and killed more than 3,000 of them, as well as enslaving 7,000 Yazidi women and girls and displaced most of the 550,000-strong community from its ancestral home in northern Iraq.
In previous cases Germany convicted two members for crimes against humanity and war crimes committed against Yazidis.
Aarab is also charged with membership of a terrorist organization from 2015 to 2022 and endangering her then 4-year old son by taking him to a war zone.
She told the court Monday that she felt alienated and depressed in the Netherlands and left Syria for a new life in 2015 but not to join Daesh.
“I heard some stuff (but) I did not think I would have to deal with IS atrocities,” she told judges.
In earlier procedural hearings Aarab’s lawyers said she was young and naive and was left in the house with the Yazidi by her then-husband, but did not command the women. The defense will present its full case later this week.
Under Dutch universal jurisdiction laws, national courts can try suspects for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide committed on foreign soil as long as the accused have a link to the Netherlands.  

 

 


UK orders sanctions against top Iranian military figures

Britain's Foreign Secretary David Lammy. (REUTERS)
Britain's Foreign Secretary David Lammy. (REUTERS)
Updated 14 October 2024
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UK orders sanctions against top Iranian military figures

Britain's Foreign Secretary David Lammy. (REUTERS)
  • Lammy, in Luxembourg at a meeting with EU foreign ministers, said in a statement that the sanctions were a way to hold Iran to account and expose those behind the attacks

LONDON: Britain on Monday ordered sanctions against top Iranian military figures after Iran’s Oct. 1 ballistic missile attack on Israel.
Foreign Secretary David Lammy said Iran had ignored repeated warnings that its “dangerous actions” — and those of its proxies — were fueling conflict in the Middle East.
Among the individuals subject to a travel ban and assets freeze are the commander-in-chief of the Iranian army, Abdolrahim Mousavi, and the air force, Hamid Vahedi.
Iran said it launched the missile attack in response to Israel’s killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon and the death of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in a Tehran bombing widely blamed on Israel.
It was Iran’s second direct attack on Israel after a missile and drone attack in April in response to an airstrike on the Iranian Consulate in Damascus that it blamed on Israel.
Lammy, in Luxembourg at a meeting with EU foreign ministers, said in a statement that the sanctions were a way to hold Iran to account and expose those behind the attacks.
“Alongside allies and partners, we will continue to take necessary measures to challenge Iran’s unacceptable threats and press for de-escalation across the region,” he added.
The British list also features the Revolutionary Guard Corps intelligence chief Mohammad Kazemi.
Two companies, including Iran’s space agency, whose technology can be used in cruise and ballistic missiles, were hit with an assets freeze.
Last week, the US government imposed restrictions on dozens of companies in Iran’s oil and petrochemicals sectors to cut off funding for what it said was the country’s “destabilizing activity.”
Also on Monday, the EU imposed sanctions on prominent Iranian officials and entities, including airlines, accused of taking part in the transfer of missiles and drones for Russia to use against Ukraine.
The bloc said that EU foreign ministers approved the sanctions on seven entities, including Iran Air, and seven individuals, including Deputy Defense Minister Seyed Hamzeh Ghalandari and the Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force senior officials.
Leading European powers Britain, France, and Germany adopted similar sanctions last month over Iranian missile transfers to Russia, as did the US.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen welcomed the adoption of the sanctions by the entire bloc, adding: “More is needed.”
“The Iranian regime’s support to Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine is unacceptable and must stop,” she posted on X.
Two other Iranian airlines, Saha Airlines and Mahan Air, were hit under the EU measures, along with two procurement firms blamed for the “transfer and supply, through transnational procurement networks, of Iran-made UAVs and related components and technologies to Russia.”
The sanctions also target two companies producing propellants to launch rockets and missiles.
Those targeted are subject to an asset freeze and banned from traveling to the EU.
Iran rejects Western accusations it has transferred missiles to Russia for use in Ukraine.
According to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, dozens of Russian military personnel have received training in Iran on using the Fath-360 missile, which has a range of 120 km.