WASHINGTON — Catastrophic Canadian wildfires last year pumped more heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the air than India did by burning fossil fuels, setting ablaze an area of forest larger than the U.S. state of West Virginia, new research finds.

Scientists at the World Resources Institute and the University of Maryland calculated how devastating the impacts were of the monthslong fires in Canada in 2023 that sullied the air around large parts of the globe. They figured it put 2.98 billion metric tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the air, according to a study update published in Thursday’s Global Change Biology. The update is not peer-reviewed, but the original study was.

The fire spewed nearly four times the carbon emissions as airplanes do in a year, study authors said. It’s about the same amount of carbon dioxide that 647 million cars put in the air in a year, based on U.S. Environmental Protection Agency data.

Forests “remove a lot of carbon from the atmosphere and that gets stored in their branches, their trunks, their leaves and kind of in the ground as well. So, when they burn all the carbon that’s stored within them, [it] gets released back into the atmosphere,” said the study’s lead author, James MacCarthy, a research associate with WRI’s Global Forest Watch.

When and if trees grow back, much of that can be recovered, MacCarthy said, adding, “It definitely does have an impact on the global scale in terms of the amount of emissions that were produced in 2023.”

MacCarthy and colleagues calculated that the forest burned totaled 77,574 square kilometers (29,951 square miles), which is six times more than the average from 2001 to 2022. The wildfires in Canada made up 27% of global tree cover loss last year; usually it’s closer to 6%, MacCarthy’s figures show.

These are far more than regular forest fires, but researchers focused only on tree cover loss, which is a bigger effect, said study co-author Alexandra Tyukavina, a geography professor at the University of Maryland.

Syracuse University geography and environment professor Jacob Bendix, who wasn’t part of the study, said, “The loss of that much forest is a very big deal, and very worrisome.

“Although the forest will eventually grow back and sequester carbon in doing so, that is a process that will take decades at a minimum, so that there is a quite substantial lag between addition of atmospheric carbon due to wildfire and the eventual removal of at least some of it by the regrowing forest,” he said.

“So, over the course of those decades, the net impact of the fires is a contribution to climate warming.”

It’s more than just adding to heat-trapping gases and losing forests; there were health consequences as well, Tyukavina said.

“Because of these catastrophic fires, air quality in populated areas and cities was affected last year,” she said, mentioning New York City’s smog-choked summer. More than 200 communities with about 232,000 residents had to be evacuated, according to another not-yet-published or peer-reviewed study by Canadian forest and fire experts.

One of the authors of the Canadian study, fire expert Mike Flannigan at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, British Columbia, puts the acreage burned at twice what MacCarthy and Tyukavina do.

“The 2023 fire season in Canada was [an] exceptional year in any time period,” Flannigan, who wasn’t part of the WRI study, said in an email. “I expect more fire in our future, but years like 2023 will be rare.”

Flannigan, Bendix, Tyukavina and MacCarthy all said climate change played a role in Canada’s big burn. A warmer world means a longer fire season, more lightning-caused fires and especially drier wood and brush to catch fire “associated with increased temperature,” Flannigan wrote.

The average May-to-October temperature in Canada last year was almost 2.2 degrees Celsius warmer than normal, his study found. Some parts of Canada were 8 to 10 degrees Celsius hotter than average in May and June, MaCarthy said.

There’s short-term variability within trends, so it’s hard to blame one specific year and area on climate change, and geographic factors play a role, Bendix said in an email, but still, “there is no doubt that climate change is the principal driver of the global increases in wildfire.”

With the world warming from climate change, Tyukavina said, “The catastrophic years are probably going to be happening more often, and we are going to see those spikier years more often.”
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Jakarta, Indonesia — Indonesia aims to launch 19 satellites into low-Earth orbit next year, part of an ambitious plan to move the country into the forefront of the world’s growing space industry and reduce its reliance on other countries for its satellite data.

The broader program, known as the 2045 space map, is set to begin next year. Officials hope to boost Indonesia’s economy and drive foreign direct investment by leveraging its unique geography as a near-equatorial, fuel-efficient launch point for space travel and research.

While the satellite launches would support key economic sectors such as agriculture and mining with remote-sensing technology to track weather patterns, mining emissions and mineral-rich areas, the longer-term plan includes development of a leading-edge spaceport to reduce reliance on foreign launch sites.

But according to officials at BRIN, Indonesia’s National Research and Innovation Agency, there’s still no confirmation of which company or government agencies would be responsible for the spate of launches planned for 2025.

“The main constraint was the government’s financial planning and budget cuts. We also couldn’t clinch foreign investment partners to join in developing the spaceport because it is high technology and high cost,” said BRIN researcher Thomas Djamalludin.

Starlink, SpaceX and Elon Musk

Jakarta has relied on Elon Musk’s SpaceX for launching its satellites from Cape Canaveral, Florida, since 2019, and the billionaire entrepreneur last month launched a Starlink internet services satellite directly from Bali.

Indonesian President Joko Widodo has repeatedly invited Musk to use the Papuan province island of Biak as a primary Starlink launch site, which has drawn outrage from locals who say developing the island as a spaceport will devastate its fragile ecology.

Although Biak has an airstrip, military base, deep-water seaport and ground stations, the 500 hectares (1.9 square miles) of government-owned land suitable for the spaceport would require foreign investment to cover the preliminary $613 million required to build the initial phase of the project. The total cost is dependent on what additional facilities investors want to build at the space port.

Luhut Pandjaitan, Indonesia’s coordinating minister for maritime affairs and investment, said that Starlink is mulling the offer but that there are no immediate plans for collaboration.

According to Djamalludin of BRIN, China, which has dominated Indonesia’s 5G market and is on track to be the nation’s largest foreign investor, had expressed interest. However, a catastrophic April 2020 rocket launch that destroyed Indonesia’s $220 million Nusantara-2 satellite has complicated Jakarta’s relationship with China’s state-owned China Great Wall Industry Corporation.

Beijing has since dialed back its financial interests, declaring the Biak location too distant, while Jakarta has doubled down on wooing SpaceX for the upcoming launches, deeming the company more reliable, offering more time slots and cheaper reusable rockets.

Indonesia’s director of investment promotion at the Investment Coordinating Board, Saribua Siahaan, told VOA that Jakarta continues offering financial incentives, along with an easy investment permitting process for public-private partnerships.

No takers in 2023

As recently as 2023, BRIN officials promoted their spaceport plans at the G20 Space Economy Leaders’ Meeting and Asia-Pacific Regional Space Agency Forum. China, Russia, Japan, South Korea and India were invited as potential partners, but none signed on.

“Despite the 2013 Space Law having been in effect for nearly a decade, [Indonesia’s] government has yet to finalize implementing regulations for commercialization of space and spaceport development,” said Indonesian space-law scholars Ridha Aditya Nugraha and Yaries Mahardika Putro in a recent Jakarta Post op-ed.

Indonesia was the first country in ASEAN to enforce national space legislation. The 2013 Space law provides a legal framework regarding outer space, and it lays the foundation for space industry growth.

Foreign direct investment in space activities brings legal certainty that can attract investors. In the past decade, though, implementation of regulations has not occurred and that has made it difficult for the related ministeries to make Indonesia a space-faring country.

“This must be resolved immediately if Indonesia is serious about making outer space a revenue center and the driver of the economy in the future,” the op-ed said.
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Washington — The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a nationwide settlement with OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma that would have shielded members of the Sackler family who own the company from civil lawsuits over the toll of opioids but also would have provided billions of dollars to combat the opioid epidemic.

After deliberating more than six months, the justices in a 5-4 vote blocked an agreement hammered out with state and local governments and victims. The Sacklers would have contributed up to $6 billion and given up ownership of the company but retained billions more. The agreement provided that the company would emerge from bankruptcy as a different entity, with its profits used for treatment and prevention.

Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the majority, said “nothing in present law authorizes the Sackler discharge.”

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor dissented.

“Opioid victims and other future victims of mass torts will suffer greatly in the wake of today’s unfortunate and destabilizing decision,” Kavanaugh wrote.

The high court had put the settlement on hold last summer, in response to objections from the Biden administration.

It’s unclear what happens next.

“Today’s Supreme Court ruling marks a major setback for the families who lost loved ones to overdose and for those still struggling with addiction,” Edward Neiger, a lawyer representing more than 60,000 overdose victims, said in a statement.

“The Purdue plan was a victim-centered plan that would provide billions of dollars to the states to be used exclusively to abate the opioid crisis and $750 million for victims of the crisis, so that they could begin to rebuild their lives. As a result of the senseless three-year crusade by the government against the plan, thousands of people died of overdose, and today’s decision will lead to more needless overdose deaths.”

An opponent of the settlement praised the outcome.

Ed Bisch’s 18-year-old son Eddie, died from an overdose after taking OxyContin in Philadelphia in 2001.

The older Bisch, who lives in New Jersey, has been speaking out against Purdue and Sackler family members ever since and is part of a relatively small but vocal group of victims and family members who opposed the settlement.

“This is a step toward justice. It was outrageous what they were trying to get away with,” he said Thursday. “They have made a mockery of the justice system and then they tried to make a mockery of the bankruptcy system.”

He said he would have accepted the deal if he thought it would have made a dent in the opioid crisis.

He’s now calling on the Department of Justice to seek criminal charges against Sackler family members

Arguments in early December lasted nearly two hours in a packed courtroom as the justices seemed, by turns, unwilling to disrupt a carefully negotiated settlement and reluctant to reward the Sacklers.

The issue for the justices was whether the legal shield that bankruptcy provides can be extended to people such as the Sacklers, who have not declared bankruptcy themselves. Lower courts had issued conflicting decisions over that issue, which also has implications for other major product liability lawsuits settled through the bankruptcy system.

The U.S. Bankruptcy Trustee, an arm of the Justice Department, argued that the bankruptcy law does not permit protecting the Sackler family from being sued. During the Trump administration, the government supported the settlement.

The Biden administration had argued to the court that negotiations could resume, and perhaps lead to a better deal, if the court were to stop the current agreement.

Proponents of the plan said third-party releases are sometimes necessary to forge an agreement, and federal law imposes no prohibition against them.

OxyContin first hit the market in 1996, and Purdue Pharma’s aggressive marketing of it is often cited as a catalyst of the nationwide opioid epidemic, with doctors persuaded to prescribe painkillers with less regard for addiction dangers.

The drug and the Stamford, Connecticut-based company became synonymous with the crisis, even though the majority of pills being prescribed and used were generic drugs. Opioid-related overdose deaths have continued to climb, hitting 80,000 in recent years. Most of those are from fentanyl and other synthetic drugs.

The Purdue Pharma settlement would have ranked among the largest reached by drug companies, wholesalers and pharmacies to resolve epidemic-related lawsuits filed by state, local and Native American tribal governments and others. Those settlements have totaled more than $50 billion.

But the Purdue Pharma settlement would have been only the second so far to include direct payments to victims from a $750 million pool. Payouts would have ranged from about $3,500 to $48,000.

Sackler family members no longer are on the company’s board, and they have not received payouts from it since before Purdue Pharma entered bankruptcy. In the decade before that, though, they were paid more than $10 billion, about half of which family members said went to pay taxes.
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WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court is putting the Environmental Protection Agency’s air pollution-fighting “good neighbor” plan on hold while legal challenges continue, the conservative-led court’s latest blow to federal regulations.

The justices in a 5-4 vote on Thursday rejected arguments by the Biden administration and Democratic-controlled states that the plan was cutting air pollution and saving lives in 11 states where it was being enforced and that the high court’s intervention was unwarranted.

The rule is intended to restrict smokestack emissions from power plants and other industrial sources that burden downwind areas with smog-causing pollution. It will remain on hold while the federal appeals court in Washington considers a challenge to the plan from industry and Republican-led states.

The Supreme Court, with a 6-3 conservative majority, has increasingly reined in the powers of federal agencies, including the EPA, in recent years. The justices have restricted the EPA’s authority to fight air and water pollution — including a landmark 2022 ruling that limited the EPA’s authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power plants that contribute to global warming. The court also shot down a vaccine mandate and blocked President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness program.

The court is currently weighing whether to overturn its 40-year-old Chevron decision, which has been the basis for upholding a wide range of regulations on public health, workplace safety and consumer protections.

Three energy-producing states — Ohio, Indiana and West Virginia — have challenged the air pollution rule, along with the steel industry and other groups, calling it costly and ineffective. They had asked the high court to put it on hold while their challenge makes it way through the courts.

The challengers pointed to decisions in courts around the country that have paused the rule in a dozen states, arguing that those decisions have undermined the EPA’s aim of providing a national solution to the problem of ozone pollution because the agency relied on the assumption that all 23 states targeted by the rule would participate.

The issue came to the court on an emergency basis, which almost always results in an order from the court without arguments before the justices.

But not this time. The court heard arguments in late February, when a majority of the court seemed skeptical of arguments from the administration and New York, representing Democratic states, that the “good neighbor” rule was important to protect downwind states that receive unwanted air pollution from other states.

The EPA has said power plant emissions dropped by 18% last year in the 10 states where it has been allowed to enforce its rule, which was finalized a year ago. Those states are Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin. In California, limits on emissions from industrial sources other than power plants are supposed to take effect in 2026.

The rule is on hold in another dozen states because of separate legal challenges. Those states are Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah and West Virginia.

States that contribute to ground-level ozone, or smog, are required to submit plans ensuring that coal-fired power plants and other industrial sites don’t add significantly to air pollution in other states. In cases in which a state has not submitted a “good neighbor” plan — or in which the EPA disapproves a state plan — the federal plan was supposed to ensure that downwind states are protected.

Ground-level ozone, which forms when industrial pollutants chemically react in the presence of sunlight, can cause respiratory problems, including asthma and chronic bronchitis. People with compromised immune systems, the elderly and children playing outdoors are particularly vulnerable.
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SAN DIEGO — A pair of giant pandas are on their way from China to the U.S., where they will be cared for at the San Diego Zoo as part of an ongoing conservation partnership between the two nations, officials said Wednesday.

Officials with the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance were on hand in China for a farewell ceremony commemorating the departure of the giant pandas, Yun Chuan and Xin Bao.

The celebration included cultural performances, video salutations from Chinese and American students and a gift exchange among conservation partners, the zoo said in a statement. After the ceremony, the giant pandas began their trip to Southern California.

“This farewell celebrates their journey and underscores a collaboration between the United States and China on vital conservation efforts,” Paul Baribault, the wildlife alliance president, said in a statement. “Our long-standing partnership with China Wildlife Conservation Association has been instrumental in advancing giant panda conservation, and we look forward to continuing our work together to ensure the survival and thriving of this iconic species.”

It could be several weeks before the giant pandas will be viewable to the public in San Diego, officials said.

Yun Chuan, a mild-mannered male who’s nearly 5 years old, has connections to California, the wildlife alliance said previously. His mother, Zhen Zhen, was born at the San Diego Zoo in 2007 to parents Bai Yun and Gao Gao.

Xin Bao is a nearly 4-year-old female described as “a gentle and witty introvert with a sweet round face and big ears.”

The San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance has a nearly 30-year partnership with leading conservation institutions in China focused on protecting and recovering giant pandas and the bamboo forests they depend on.
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WASHINGTON — Reality TV star Paris Hilton called for greater federal oversight of youth care programs at a U.S. House of Representatives committee hearing on Wednesday as she described her traumatic experience in youth care facilities.

Hilton, 43, the great-granddaughter of Hilton Hotels founder Conrad Hilton, has spoken publicly about the emotional and physical abuse she endured when she was placed in residential youth treatment facilities as a teen.

In remarks to the committee on Wednesday, she described being taken from her bed in the middle of the night at age 16 and transported across state lines to a residential facility where she experienced physical and sexual abuse.

“This $23 billion industry sees this population [of vulnerable children] as dollar signs and operates without meaningful oversight,” she said.

“There’s no education in these places; there’s mold and blood on the walls,” she said in response to lawmaker questions. “It’s horrifying what these places are like. They’re worse than some dog kennels.”

Hilton said private equity firms that have taken a greater stake in the industry in recent years focus on maximizing profits, prompting them to hire unqualified workers.

“They’re caring more about profit than the safety of children,” she said.

Hilton first described her experience at a Utah facility in 2021 and has been a vocal advocate for greater oversight of the system.

“These programs promised ‘healing, growth, and support,’ but instead did not allow me to speak, move freely, or even look out of a window for two years,” Hilton told the committee. “My parents were completely deceived, lied to and manipulated by this for-profit industry, so you can only imagine the experience for youth who don’t have anyone checking in on them.”

Several lawmakers agreed that more federal oversight was necessary.

“We must always be concerned about fraud and guard against Wall Street vultures snatching public funds to line their pockets,” Democratic Representative Bill Pascrell said. “We cannot allow the private equity octopus to reach its tentacles into child services.”
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WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court appears poised to allow emergency abortions in Idaho when a pregnant patient’s health is at serious risk, according to Bloomberg News, which said a copy of the opinion was briefly posted Wednesday on the court’s website. 

The document suggests the court will conclude that it should not have gotten involved in the case so quickly and will reinstate a lower court order that had allowed hospitals in the state to perform emergency abortions to protect a pregnant patient’s health, Bloomberg said. It does not appear likely to fully resolve the issues at the heart of the case. 

The Supreme Court acknowledged that a document was inadvertently posted Wednesday. That document was quickly removed. 

“The Court’s Publications Unit inadvertently and briefly uploaded a document to the Court’s website. The Court’s opinion in Moyle v. United States and Idaho v. United States will be issued in due course,” court spokeswoman Patricia McCabe said in a statement. 

The case would continue at the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals if the Supreme Court dismisses the proceedings. 

WATCH: Are abortion laws in Idaho hurting maternal health care?

The finding may not be the court’s final ruling because the justices’ decision has not been officially released. 

The Biden administration sued Idaho, arguing that hospitals must provide abortions to stabilize pregnant patients in rare emergency cases when their health is at serious risk. 

Most Republican-controlled states began enforcing restrictions after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade two years ago. Idaho is among 14 states that outlaw abortion at all stages of pregnancy with very limited exceptions. Idaho argued its ban does allow abortions to save a pregnant patient’s life and that federal law does not require the exceptions to expand. 

The opinion briefly posted would reverse the Supreme Court’s earlier order that allowed the Idaho law to go into effect, even in medical emergencies, while the case played out. Several women have since needed medical airlifts out of state in cases in which abortion is routine treatment to avoid infection, hemorrhage and other dire health risks, Idaho doctors have said. 

The Supreme Court’s eventual ruling could have ripple effects on emergency care in other states with strict abortion bans. Reports of pregnant women being turned away from U.S. emergency rooms spiked after the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling overturning the constitutional right to abortion, according to federal documents obtained by The Associated Press. 

The Justice Department’s lawsuit came under a federal law that requires hospitals accepting Medicare to provide stabilizing care regardless of a patient’s ability to pay. The law is the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, or EMTALA. 

Nearly all hospitals accept Medicare, so emergency room doctors in Idaho and other states with bans would have to provide abortions if needed to stabilize a pregnant patient and avoid serious health risks such as the loss of reproductive organs, the Justice Department argued. 

Idaho argued that its exception for a patient’s life covers dire health circumstances and that the Biden administration misread the law to circumvent the state ban and expand abortion access. 

Doctors have said Idaho’s law has made them fearful to perform abortions, even when a pregnancy is putting a patient’s health severely at risk. The law requires anyone who is convicted of performing an abortion to be imprisoned for at least two years. 

A federal judge initially sided with the Democratic administration and ruled that abortions were legal in medical emergencies. After the state appealed, the Supreme Court allowed the law to go fully into effect in January.
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New Delhi — Mushrat Parveen, a resident of a low-income neighborhood in the Indian capital, New Delhi, perches atop a tanker truck delivering water to her neighborhood to escape the chaos that ensues.

“Everyone keeps fighting for water, so I climb on top and use a pipe to make sure I fill two or three buckets. Then I help others,” says Parveen, who in recent weeks has been spending about two hours daily first waiting for the truck, then filling containers and lugging them home.

As taps in urban slums and working-class areas in Delhi run virtually dry, millions have been depending on water ferried by government tankers. It is not the only Indian megacity running low on water. Two months ago, a similar crisis afflicted India’s information technology hub, Bengaluru.

Water shortages are not new in urban India — the scramble for water in low-income areas has been a familiar scene during summer months for many years. But they have been worsening. Amid a weekslong, searing heat wave that gripped Delhi, the city became so parched this season that police were deployed to guard water pipes.

New Delhi’s water minister, Atishi, recently staged a hunger strike for four days, alleging that the neighboring Haryana state was not providing the city its share of water from the Yamuna river that runs through both places, resulting in acute scarcity.

“There are 2.8 million people in the city who are aching for just a drop of water,” she said. Her worsening health forced her to call off the protest on Tuesday.

Political disputes over sharing of water from common rivers have often erupted when shortages intensify.

Experts say rapid urbanization is exacerbating a problem that has been building in recent years.

“What’s happened is that most Indian cities have grown so fast that the water supply networks have not kept up with the rate of growth. Its unprecedented crazy growth,” said Veena Srinivasan, executive director with non-profit WELL Labs.

The populations of Delhi and Bengaluru have more than tripled in about three decades. Delhi is now home to nearly 20 million people while Bengaluru’s population is estimated at 14 million.

These cities have become home to upscale commercial hubs and industries as India’s economy booms, requiring more quality, fresh water. As a result, lakes and rivers harnessed to provide water have been shrinking and ground water levels plummeting.

A 2018 government report said that nearly 600 million people in the country are facing high to extreme “water stress.” That adds more than 40% of the country’s population.

While upscale neighborhoods in Delhi face virtually no scarcity of clean water, experts say slums are the most parched areas in the city.

“In some places especially the lower socioeconomic areas, we find that water availability is as low as 35 to 40 liters per capita per day. So, the distribution of water is iniquitous. On top, climate change comes as a force multiplier,” said Anjal Prakash, research director at the Bharti Institute of Public Policy.

He says lack of investment in infrastructure such as water pipes and storage tanks has made the problem worse. “We have done some patchwork, but we have not done an integrated analysis of how this should be running. Delhi, for example, the leakage from the water infrastructure is about 58%.”

While India is a water-stressed country, the severe shortages cannot just be blamed on a shortfall of water, according to experts. Pointing to poor water management, they say authorities have not paid enough attention to strategies such as recycling wastewater or rainwater harvesting that would help conserve monsoon rains.

Experts say low water tariffs charged in India have also discouraged sufficient investment in schemes that could augment supplies.

“If water is free most of the time, the incentive to invest in good technology to really treat water, the incentive to harvest every last drop of rainwater, simply is not there, because it is not seen as a precious resource that is scarce. That remains a problem we have to grapple with in urban India,” points out Srinivasan.

For many Delhi residents, lives are upended by the water crisis every summer. Elderly residents like 82-year-old Kamlesh Devi say they cannot cope with the elbowing and shoving that ensues when tankers arrive.

“Four to six people come from one household and corner many buckets. Some of us keep standing. If we object, a scuffle ensues,” she says as she carries back two small containers that she will keep aside for drinking.

Ayesha Khatun, a diabetes patient relies on her family members to fetch water for cooking and cleaning because she cannot carry the buckets. “Our work gets affected. My husband sometimes loses a day’s work. My daughter has to skip school,” says Khatun. “And it is common for people to get hurt during the scuffles while filling water.”

With heat waves and water shortages likely to worsen, the situation in urban India could become grimmer, experts warn.
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New York — The situation in the Gaza Strip remains catastrophic and there is a high and sustained risk of famine across all of Gaza as long as the Israel-Hamas war continues and humanitarian access is restricted, a United Nations-backed food security report concluded Tuesday.

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC, found that nearly a half-million Gazans are on the brink of famine, while 745,000 are facing emergency levels of hunger. Overall, the experts said about 96% of Gazans — some 2.15 million people — are currently facing high levels of acute food insecurity that will continue at least through the end of September.

Fears of a famine in northern Gaza, projected in the IPC analysis conducted in February, have been averted for now. The analysts said the quantity of food deliveries and nutrition services provided to the north have increased, temporarily alleviating the hunger situation. But the danger remains, with 225,000 people still in emergency or catastrophe levels of food insecurity.

In southern Gaza, especially in the Rafah governorate where more than 1 million Palestinians fled seeking safety in the spring, some 70,000 people are one step away from famine and another 70,000 are in emergency levels of food insecurity, the IPC said.

The latest IPC update is based on data collected remotely from May 27 to June 4 by more than 35 experts from 27 agencies, applying standard IPC protocols. The IPC does not declare famine but provides the evidence for an official declaration to be made.

“To truly turn the corner and prevent famine, adequate and sustained levels of humanitarian assistance must be provided, including: greater availability of fresh food and better nutritional diversity, clean water and sanitation, access to health care and the rebuilding of clinics and hospitals,” the World Food Program said in a statement following the report’s release. “A broad, multi-sectoral response is urgently needed.”

The IPC experts noted that after eight months of war and a poor diet and sanitary conditions, Gazans are more vulnerable, which can increase the probability of famine occurring.

The IPC — which comprises about 18 different U.N. and non-U.N. agencies — said only an end to the fighting and sustained humanitarian access can reduce the risk of famine from happening in Gaza.

Israel denies that it obstructs aid delivery into Gaza, saying it is the United Nations and aid agencies that are not delivering aid fast enough.

Under increased U.S. and international pressure, Israel has started allowing more aid to flow into Gaza, including the north. The Israel Defense Forces, or IDF, recently began daily tactical pauses of military activity along the road from the Kerem Shalom crossing into southern Gaza so humanitarians could move aid convoys.

A breakdown in public law and order, however, has impeded aid workers’ ability to collect aid from Kerem Shalom. The U.N. says criminal activities and the risk of theft and robbery have prevented their collecting any aid from Kerem Shalom since June 18.

“As the latest IPC report makes alarmingly clear, humanitarian needs inside Gaza are catastrophic, and humanitarian assistance must be scaled up and reach all in need across all of Gaza,” U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said at a U.N. Security Council meeting Tuesday about the situation in the Middle East.

She said the Biden administration continues to press Israel to create better conditions to facilitate aid delivery inside Gaza, including to improve the mechanism that coordinates aid deliveries with the Israeli military to prevent attacks on aid convoys.

“The figures in this report are a shameful testament to the failure of world leaders to heed earlier warnings and hold Israel to account for its deliberate use of starvation as a weapon of war,” said Sally Abi Khalil, international charity Oxfam’s regional director for the Middle East. “The slight improvement of conditions in the north shows that Israel can end human suffering when it chooses — but just as quickly those gains can vanish when access is again constrained, as the report warns it is now.”
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