The Hague — The top United Nations court will take up the largest case in its history Monday, when it opens two weeks of hearings into what countries worldwide are legally required to do to combat climate change and help vulnerable nations fight its devastating impact.

After years of lobbying by island nations who fear they could simply disappear under rising sea waters, the U.N. General Assembly asked the International Court of Justice last year for an opinion on “the obligations of States in respect of climate change.”

“We want the court to confirm that the conduct that has wrecked the climate is unlawful,” Margaretha Wewerinke-Singh, who is leading the legal team for the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu, told The Associated Press.

In the decade up to 2023, sea levels have risen by a global average of around 4.3 centimeters (1.7 inches), with parts of the Pacific rising higher still. The world has also warmed 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.3 Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times because of the burning of fossil fuels.

Vanuatu is one of a group of small states pushing for international legal intervention in the climate crisis.

“We live on the front lines of climate change impact. We are witnesses to the destruction of our lands, our livelihoods, our culture and our human rights,” Vanuatu’s climate change envoy Ralph Regenvanu told reporters ahead of the hearing.

Any decision by the court would be non-binding advice and unable to directly force wealthy nations into action to help struggling countries. Yet it would be more than just a powerful symbol since it could serve as the basis for other legal actions, including domestic lawsuits.

On Sunday, ahead of the hearing, advocacy groups will bring together environmental organizations from around the world. Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change — who first developed the idea of requesting an advisory opinion — together with World Youth for Climate Justice plan an afternoon of speeches, music and discussions.

From Monday, the Hague-based court will hear from 99 countries and more than a dozen intergovernmental organizations over two weeks. It’s the largest lineup in the institution’s nearly 80-year history.

Last month at the United Nations’ annual climate meeting, countries cobbled together an agreement on how rich countries can support poor countries in the face of climate disasters. Wealthy countries have agreed to pool together at least $300 billion a year by 2035 but the total is short of the $1.3 trillion that experts, and threatened nations, said is needed.

“For our generation and for the Pacific Islands, the climate crisis is an existential threat. It is a matter of survival, and the world’s biggest economies are not taking this crisis seriously. We need the ICJ to protect the rights of people at the front lines,” Vishal Prasad, of Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change, told reporters in a briefing.

Fifteen judges from around the world will seek to answer two questions: What are countries obliged to do under international law to protect the climate and environment from human-caused greenhouse gas emissions? And what are the legal consequences for governments where their acts, or lack of action, have significantly harmed the climate and environment?

The second question refers to “small island developing States” likely to be hardest hit by climate change and to “members of “the present and future generations affected by the adverse effects of climate change.”

The judges were even briefed on the science behind rising global temperatures by the U.N.’s climate change body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, ahead of the hearings.

The case at the ICJ follows a number of rulings around the world ordering governments to do more to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

In May, a U.N. tribunal on maritime law said that carbon emissions qualify as marine pollution, and countries must take steps to adapt to and mitigate their adverse effects.

That ruling came a month after Europe’s highest human rights court said that countries must better protect their people from the consequences of climate change, in a landmark judgment that could have implications across the continent.

The ICJ’s host country of The Netherlands made history when a court ruled in 2015 that protection from the potentially devastating effects of climate change is a human right and that the government has a duty to protect its citizens. The judgment was upheld in 2019 by the Dutch Supreme Court.
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Mexico City — It’s been called the closest the world has ever come to a vaccine against the AIDS virus.

The twice-yearly shot was 100% effective in preventing HIV infections in a study of women, and results published Wednesday show it worked nearly as well in men.

Drugmaker Gilead said it will allow cheap, generic versions to be sold in 120 poor countries with high HIV rates — mostly in Africa, Southeast Asia and the Caribbean. But it has excluded nearly all of Latin America, where rates are far lower but increasing, sparking concern the world is missing a critical opportunity to stop the disease.

“This is so far superior to any other prevention method we have, that it’s unprecedented,” said Winnie Byanyima, executive director of UNAIDS. She credited Gilead for developing the drug but said the world’s ability to stop AIDS hinges on its use in at-risk countries.

In a report issued to mark World AIDS Day on Sunday, UNAIDS said that the number of AIDS death last year — an estimated 630,000 — was at its lowest since peaking in 2004, suggesting the world is now at “a historic crossroads” and has a chance to end the epidemic.

The drug called lenacapavir is already sold under the brand name Sunlenca to treat HIV infections in the U.S., Canada, Europe and elsewhere. The company plans to seek authorization soon for Sunlenca to be used for HIV prevention.

While there are other ways to guard against infection, like condoms, daily pills, vaginal rings and bi-monthly shots, experts say the Gilead twice-yearly shots would be particularly useful for marginalized people often fearful of seeking care, including gay men, sex workers and young women.

“It would be a miracle for these groups because it means they just have to show up twice a year at a clinic and then they’re protected,” said UNAIDS’ Byanyima.

Such was the case for Luis Ruvalcaba, a 32-year-old man in Guadalajara, Mexico, who participated in the latest published study. He said he was afraid to ask for the daily prevention pills provided by the government, fearing he would be discriminated against as a gay man. Because he took part in the study, he’ll continue to receive the shots for at least another year.

“In Latin American countries, there is still a lot of stigma; patients are ashamed to ask for the pills,” said Dr. Alma Minerva Pérez, who recruited and enrolled a dozen study volunteers at a private research center in Guadalajara.

How widely available the shots will be in Mexico through the country’s health care system isn’t yet known. Health officials declined to comment on any plans to buy Sunlenca for its citizens; daily pills to prevent HIV were made freely available via the country’s public health system in 2021.

“If the possibility of using generics has opened, I have faith that Mexico can join,” said Pérez.

Byanyima said other countries besides Mexico that took part in the research were also excluded from the generics deal, including Brazil, Peru and Argentina. “To now deny them that drug is unconscionable.” she said.

In a statement, Gilead said it has “an ongoing commitment to helping enable access to HIV prevention and treatment options where the need is the greatest.” Among the 120 countries eligible for generic version are 18 mostly African countries that comprise 70% of the world’s HIV burden.

The drugmaker said it is also working on establishing “fast, efficient pathways to reach all people who need or want lenacapavir for HIV prevention.”

On Thursday, 15 advocacy groups in Peru, Argentina, Ecuador, Chile, Guatemala and Colombia wrote to Gilead, asking for generic Sunlenca to be made available in Latin America, citing the “alarming” inequity in access to new HIV prevention tools while infection rates were rising.

While countries including Norway, France, Spain and the United States have paid more than $40,000 per year for Sunlenca, experts have calculated it could be produced for as little as $40 per treatment once generic production expands to cover 10 million people.

Dr. Chris Beyrer, director of the Global Health Institute at Duke University, said it will be enormously useful to have Sunlenca available in the hardest-hit countries in Africa and Asia. But he said the rising HIV rates among groups including gay men and transgender populations constituted “a public health emergency” in Latin America.

Hannya Danielle Torres, a 30-year-old trans woman and artist who was in the Sunlenca study in Mexico, said she hoped the government would find a way to provide the shots. “Mexico may have some of the richest people in the world but it also has some of the most vulnerable people living in extreme poverty and violence,” Torres said.

Another drugmaker, Viiv Healthcare, also left out most of Latin America when it allowed generics of its HIV prevention shot in about 90 countries. Sold as Apretude, the bi-monthly shots are about 80% to 90% effective in preventing HIV. They cost about $1,500 a year in middle-income countries, beyond what most can afford to pay.

Asia Russell, executive director of the advocacy group Health Gap, said that with more than 1 million new HIV infections globally every year, established prevention methods are not enough. She urged countries like Brazil and Mexico to issue “compulsory licenses,” a mechanism where countries suspend patents in a health crisis.

It’s a strategy some countries embraced for previous HIV treatments, including in the late 1990s and 2000s when AIDS drugs were first discovered. More recently, Colombia issued its first-ever compulsory license for the key HIV treatment Tivicay in April, without permission from its drugmaker, Viiv.

Dr. Salim Abdool Karim, an AIDS expert at South Africa’s University of KwaZulu-Natal, said he had never seen a drug that appeared to be as effective as Sunlenca in preventing HIV.

“The missing piece in the puzzle now is how we get it to everyone who needs it,” he said.
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The way the dinosaurs relinquished their long dominance is well known. An asteroid struck Earth 66 million years ago, triggering a horrific mass extinction. But the way the dinosaurs — modest creatures initially — came to supremacy is less well understood.

New research that relied heavily on fossilized feces and vomit — evidence of who is eating what and who is eating whom – provides new clarity on how dinosaurs bested the competition during the Triassic Period. The study focused on a region in Poland with extensive fossils from this pivotal time.

First appearing roughly 230 million years ago, dinosaurs were at first overshadowed by other animals including large crocodile relatives — both terrestrial and semi-aquatic — and various plant-eaters including elephant-sized ones related to mammals and four-legged armored reptiles. By about 200 million years ago, dinosaurs reigned, their main competitors extinct.

“We approached the rise of dinosaurs in a completely novel way. We analyzed feeding evidence to deduce the ecological role of dinosaurs across their first 30 million years of evolution,” said paleontologist Martin Qvarnström of Uppsala University in Sweden, lead author of the study published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

The earliest dinosaurs and close relatives were opportunists, eating foods including bugs, fish and insects. Subsequently, larger and more specialized dinosaur predators evolved along with herbivorous dinosaurs apparently better adapted than competitors to exploit new plants that arose when the climate became more humid.

Feces fossils are called coprolites. Vomit fossils are called regurgitates. Together they are called bromalites. So why study this stuff? By examining undigested food — plants and prey — in bromalites, researchers can discern feeding patterns of various species and reconstruct an ecosystem’s food webs.

Hundreds of bromalites were examined, primarily coprolites.

“We studied over 100 kilograms of fossilized feces,” said study senior author Grzegorz Niedźwiedzki, a paleontologist and geologist at Uppsala University and the Polish Geological Institute.

How can researchers tell who left the feces or vomit? Skeletal fossils and footprints showed what animals were present at a given time. And the researchers deduced who produced a given coprolite based on factors including its size and shape, the type of undigested food and the nature of the digestive systems of living relatives of these extinct animals.

Take, for example, the 6-meter four-legged meat-eater Polonosuchus, a type of reptile called a rauisuchian that was related to crocs and was an apex predator alongside the early dinosaurs.

“We know that today’s crocodiles and alligators digest food for a long time and thoroughly. In their feces, undigested bones are very rarely found. Such coprolites — large, sausage-shaped, with highly digested mass — we found in a site where bones of Polonosuchus were also found,” Niedźwiedzki said.

“In contrast, in sites where there were bones and tracks of predatory dinosaurs, we found coprolites containing a lot of undigested remains. Some of them are full of pieces of bones, fish remains, and there are also teeth. You can see that all this passed through the digestive tract quickly and was not digested in the crocodile way,” Niedźwiedzki added.

Early members of the dinosaur evolutionary lineage were omnivorous, like 2-meter Silesaurus.

“The first dinosaur relative in the area, Silesaurus, was an opportunistic little thing that ate bugs, fish and plants. Some of the insects were amazingly well preserved,” Qvarnström said.

Big herbivorous and carnivorous dinosaurs began appearing late in the Triassic, which ended 201 million years ago.

Environmental changes linked to Earth’s increased volcanic activity precipitated a wider range of plants that ever-larger herbivorous dinosaurs exploited. This proliferation of big plant-eating dinosaurs encouraged the evolution of larger carnivorous dinosaurs.

The large non-dinosaur meat-eaters disappeared before the start of the subsequent Jurassic Period, completing the transition to dinosaur dominion. By 200 million years ago, meat-eating dinosaurs 8 meters long were present, alongside plant-eating dinosaurs 10 meters long.

Smok, a 6-meter strong-jawed carnivorous dinosaur relative, lived about 210 million years ago. Coprolites showed Smok’s predilection for bone-crushing, obtaining nutritious marrow in a feeding trait associated with much later dinosaurs such as Tyrannosaurus.

The coprolites of herbivorous dinosaurs offered surprises.

“Another interesting and very mysterious discovery was the finding of geochemical signals in the coprolites from burnt plant remains, as well as pieces of charcoal. Did the dinosaurs eat charcoal from burnt plants? Ferns, whose remains are in coprolites, may be toxic, and the charcoal may have neutralized these toxins,” Niedzwiedzki added.
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BILLINGS, MONTANA — U.S. wildlife officials finalized a recovery plan for imperiled populations of Canada lynx on Wednesday and proposed new habitat protections in the southern Rocky Mountains for the forest-dwelling wildcats that are threatened by climate change.

The fate of the proposal is uncertain under President-elect Donald Trump: Officials during the Republican’s first term sought unsuccessfully to strip lynx of protections that they’ve had since 2000 under the Endangered Species Act.

Almost 20,000 square kilometers of forests and mountains in Colorado and northern New Mexico are covered under the habitat proposal. That’s different from a previous plan that left out the southern Rockies and concentrated instead on recovery efforts elsewhere, including Wyoming, Montana, Minnesota and Maine.

“This is a significant change and a good one,” said Matthew Bishop, an attorney for Western Environmental Law Center who has been involved in efforts to protect lynx through court actions. “They weren’t really committing to conserve lynx in Colorado anymore, and now they are.”

Areas of protected habitat also are being added in Idaho and Montana. Protected areas in Wyoming would be sharply reduced under Wednesday’s proposal.

Wildlife officials said they were removing locations where they consider lynx unlikely to thrive in the future, while adding new areas that the latest science suggests are more suitable to their long-term survival.

Lynx are elusive animals that live in cold boreal forests and prey primarily on snowshoe hares.

They originally received federal protections because the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management didn’t have sufficient regulations in place to shield their populations from potential harm. Those protective rules are now in place, but climate change has emerged as a new, worsening threat.

Warmer temperatures are melting away the lynx’s snowy habitat and could decrease the availability of snowshoe hares. Declines for lynx are expected across the contiguous U.S. under even the most optimistic warming scenario that officials have considered.

Most areas suitable for lynx are in Canada and Alaska, where the animals are widespread and hunting and trapping of them is allowed.

Their numbers never were great in the contiguous U.S., which is at the southern fringe of the species range, but the hope is to maintain some population strongholds so they can persist in a warmer world.

The changes announced Wednesday follow a 2016 court ruling that faulted federal wildlife officials for not designating protections for lynx habitat in Colorado and some parts of Montana and Idaho.

There are more than 1,100 lynx in the contiguous U.S., according to estimates from scientists. Those numbers are expected to plummet in some areas, and officials are aiming for a minimum contiguous U.S. population of a combined 875 lynx over a 20-year period.

More than 200 lynx were reintroduced in Colorado beginning in 1999 and at the time their prospects were considered uncertain.

“There were concerns about whether it would stick,” said U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service lynx biologist Jim Zelenak. “But they do seem to be hanging on.”

Now that area could become one of the future population strongholds, with the southern Rockies in Colorado and the region around Yellowstone National Park are most likely to have temperatures favorable to lynx for the longest time, he said.

Maine has the most lynx currently but is expected to be hit harder by climate change.

“We’ve got this overarching threat of climate warming, and so we want to do everything we can to minimize the effects that we can control,” Zelenak said. “So we don’t want to put roads in the wrong places. We don’t want to permanently convert very much of the habitat at all in the hopes that we can keep these populations viable coming into a warming future.”

Habitat protections in Maine and Minnesota would remain unchanged under the proposal.

A final decision is expected late next year.
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BUSAN, SOUTH KOREA — Dozens of countries warned Sunday that a handful of nations were obstructing efforts in South Korea to reach an ambitious landmark global treaty to curb plastic pollution.

With hours until negotiations are scheduled to end, delegates say a group of mostly oil-producing “like-minded countries” have refused to compromise on key sticking points.

Those include setting targets for reducing plastic production and phasing out chemicals known or believed to be harmful to human health.

“We also are worried by the continuing obstruction by the so-called like-minded countries,” Olga Givernet, France’s minister delegate for energy, told reporters.

Finding an agreement on an ambitious treaty “remains an absolute priority,” Givernet said, and “we are planning on pushing it.”

Plastic production is on track to triple by 2060, and over 90% of plastic is not recycled.

But while everyone negotiating in Busan agrees on the problem, they disagree on the solution.

Countries including Saudi Arabia and Russia insist the deal should focus only on waste and reject calls for binding global measures.

They have made their position clear in documents submitted in negotiations and during public plenary sessions, though neither delegation responded to repeated AFP requests for comment.

‘Blocking the process’

“It is disappointing to see that a small number of members remain unsupportive of the measures necessary to drive real change,” said Rwanda’s Juliet Kabera.

“We still have a few hours left in these negotiations, there is time to find common ground, but Rwanda cannot accept a toothless treaty,” she warned.

Fiji’s Sivendra Michael also called out a “very minority group” for “blocking the process.”

The latest draft text for the treaty contains a range of options, reflecting the ongoing divisions. A promised new version has been repeatedly delayed.

The talks are supposed to be the final round of negotiations after two years of discussion.

The venue has only been rented until mid-morning Monday, sources told AFP.

Portuguese delegate Maria Joao Teixeira said there were real fears talks could collapse and have to be extended to another round elsewhere.

“We are really trying to not have a weak treaty,” she told AFP.

Environmental groups have pushed ambitious countries to call a vote if progress stalls.

But observers caution that risks alienating even some countries in favor of a strong treaty.

Another option would be for the diplomat chairing the talks to simply gavel through an agreement over the objections of a handful of holdouts, they said.

That too holds risks, potentially embittering the remaining diplomatic process and jeopardizing adoption of a treaty down the road.

‘Hope in consensus’

Mexico’s head of delegation Camila Zepeda said she did not favor calling a vote.

“We have hope in consensus. The multilateral process is slow, but there is a possibility of having critical mass to move forward,” she told AFP.

“Showing this critical mass helps us so that the more contentious issues can be unblocked.”

German delegate Sebastian Unger also said many countries would prefer to avoid a vote.

“If you would leave out many important countries that you want to have on board, then the effects of the treaty [are impacted],” he told AFP.

Over 100 countries now support setting a target for production cuts, and dozens also back phasing out some chemicals and unnecessary plastic products.

But representatives of China and the United States, the world’s two top plastics producers, were absent from the stage at a news conference urging ambition.

“They are still considering, and we are hopeful that there will be some interest on their part,” said Mexico’s Zepeda.

“This coalition of the willing is an open invitation. And so it’s not like it’s them against us.”

Panama’s Juan Carlos Monterrey Gomez meanwhile told colleagues that “history will not forgive us” for leaving Busan without an ambitious treaty.

“This is the time to step up or get out.”
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BUFFALO, NEW YORK — The first big snowfall of the season blanketed towns along Lake Erie on Saturday in the middle of the hectic holiday travel and shopping weekend. Numbing cold and heavy snow are forecast to persist into next week and cause hazards in the Great Lakes, Plains and Midwest regions. 

The heavy snow led to a state of emergency declaration in parts of New York and a disaster declaration in Pennsylvania, with officials warning of dangerous conditions for Thanksgiving travelers trying to return home. 

“Travel will be extremely difficult and hazardous this weekend, especially in areas where multiple feet of snow may accumulate very quickly,” the National Weather Service said. 

Part of I-90 in Pennsylvania was closed, as were westbound lanes of the New York Thruway heading toward Pennsylvania. Nearly 2 feet (61 centimeters) of snow fell in parts of New York, Ohio and Michigan, and 29 inches (73 centimeters) was recorded in Pennsylvania’s northwestern tip. 

With roads in some parts impassable in northwestern Pennsylvania, scores of people took refuge overnight in the lobby and hallways of a fully booked Holiday Inn near I-90. Hotel staffer Jeremiah Weatherley said dozens of people rolled in as the snow piled up, and workers opened the conference room and gave them blankets to sleep on the floor. 

“It was hard to manage, but we had no choice,” he said. “They just showed up, and we don’t want to turn people away.” 

Weatherley was handing out bagels, juice and cereal Saturday morning as people helped one another dig out their cars from the snow. 

“Everyone helped each other,” he said. “It was pretty cool.” 

This week’s blast of Arctic air also brought temperatures of 10 to 20 degrees Fahrenheit below average to the Northern Plains, the weather service said, prompting cold advisories for parts of North Dakota. 

Frigid air was expected to move over the eastern third of the United States by Monday, with temperatures about 10 degrees below average. 

Parts of Michigan were battered by lake-effect snow, which happens when warm, moist air rising from a body of water mixes with cold dry air overhead. Bands of snow that have been rolling off Lake Superior for the past three days buried parts of the Upper Peninsula under 2 feet (61 centimeters) or more, said Lily Chapman, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s office in Marquette, Michigan. 

Twenty-seven inches (69 centimeters) of snow was on the ground just northeast of Ironwood, in the Upper Peninsula’s western reaches, she said. Another 2 feet (61 centimeters) fell in Munising, in the eastern part of the peninsula. 

Chapman said continued lake-effect snow could add more than a foot (30.5 centimeters) over the eastern Upper Peninsula through Monday morning, with 6 to 10 inches (15 to 25 centimeters) or higher to the west. 

Meanwhile steady winds that trained snow bands Friday on Gaylord, Michigan, dumped 24.8 inches (63 centimeters), setting a new single-day record for the city, which sits in a region dotted by ski resorts, said Keith Berger, a meteorologist with the weather service’s Gaylord office. The previous record of 17.0 inches (43 centimeters) was from March 9, 1942. 

The snowfall was good news for Treetops Resort, which features 80 acres (32 hectares) of ski hill terrain among its 2,000 acres (809 hectares), said Doug Hoeh, the resort’s director of recreation. It boosted the base that snowmaking machines will be adding to in the coming days before the resort opens for the season next weekend. 

“Obviously when you get that much snowfall, it’s great for the snow hills, but it’s bad for the parking lots, so we’re kind of digging out,” Hoeh said. “But we’re close to being ready to pull the trigger on skiing, and the natural snowfall definitely helps.” 

In Pennsylvania, Governor Josh Shapiro signed a proclamation of disaster emergency and said parts of Erie County in the state’s northwest had already received nearly 2 feet (1 meter) of snow with more expected through Monday night. 

State Police responded to nearly 200 incidents during the 24-hour period from 6 a.m. Friday to 6 a.m. Saturday, officials said. 
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