President-elect Donald Trump says he intends to nominate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Kennedy disagrees with much of the scientific community on subjects including vaccines and HIV/AIDS. VOA’s Anita Powell has our story.
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HARARE, ZIMBABWE — Ahead of World AIDS Day on December 1, the U.N. has released a report saying that upholding human rights is essential for ending the AIDS pandemic.

The report says human rights violations, including discrimination against girls and women, and criminalization of LGBTQ+ people, obstruct efforts to end AIDS.

UNAIDS Executive Director Winnie Byanyima released a report online called “Take the Rights Path to End AIDS.”

The report says the world can meet the goal of ending AIDS by 2030 if leaders protect the human rights of everyone living with and at risk of HIV.

She said advances in medicine are helping reduce new cases of HIV.

“But big gaps still remain in the protection of rights. When there is impunity for gender-based violence; when people can be arrested for who they are, or who they love; when a visit to health services is dangerous for people because of their gender — the result is that people are blocked from care, this drives the AIDS pandemic,” she said. “Only rights can fix these wrongs. There is an urgent need to enact laws that protect the human rights of everyone.”

Zimbabwe was one of the countries hit hardest by HIV/AIDS until it introduced an AIDS levy in 1999, a 3% tax on income and business profits which is managed by the National AIDS Council.

Dr. Bernard Madzima, the executive officer of the Zimbabwe National AIDS Council, said the country is aiming to end HIV as a public health threat by the end of the decade. He said the country enforces a policy of no discrimination against HIV patients.

“In Zimbabwe there is no one who has been stigmatized whether they are HIV positive or whether they are HIV negative, they will get access. Our approach in HIV intervention is based on it being a public health approach,” he said. “So our interventions are to make sure that HIV is no longer a public health threat by 2030.”

Madzima said the government is also attempting to reach marginalized groups like sex workers, prison inmates and informal miners with care. In the past, Zimbabwean authorities targeted sex workers and organizations such as Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe.

The UNAIDS report noted that police only stopped arresting sex workers for “loitering” in 2015, after Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights successfully argued in court that the police conduct was illegal. The report said the move has resulted in sex workers being able to seek health services.

The report commended Zimbabwe for stopping the criminalization of HIV transmission in 2022, adding that criminalization and stigmatization of marginalized communities obstruct access to life-saving HIV services.
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JACKSON, Mississippi — Medical marijuana businesses in the southern U.S. state of Mississippi don’t have the right to advertise on billboards or other places because marijuana itself remains illegal under federal law, an appeals court says. 

The owner of a medical marijuana dispensary argued that the First Amendment protects the right to advertise because Mississippi law permits the sale of cannabis products to people with debilitating medical conditions. The state enacted its law in 2022. 

A three-judge panel of 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday rejected the arguments about advertising. They cited the federal Controlled Substances Act, which since 1970 has prohibited the manufacture, distribution, dispensing and possession of marijuana. 

The federal law applies in all states, and Mississippi “faces no constitutional obstacle to restricting commercial speech relating to unlawful transactions,” the judges wrote. 

The Mississippi attorney general’s office praised the court decision for upholding “Mississippi’s reasonable restrictions on advertising for medical marijuana dispensaries by print, broadcast and other mass communications,” said the office spokesperson, MaryAsa Lee. 

Clarence Cocroft II operates Tru Source Medical Cannabis in the northern Mississippi city of Olive Branch. He sued the state in 2023 to challenge its ban on medical marijuana advertising on billboards or in print, broadcast or social media or via mass email or text messaging. 

“Upholding this ban makes it incredibly difficult for me to find potential customers and to educate people about Mississippi’s medical marijuana program,” Cocroft said in a statement Monday. “I remain committed to continuing this fight so my business can be treated the same as any other legal business in Mississippi.” 

The state allows medical marijuana businesses to have websites or social media accounts that provide information about their retail dispensing locations and a list of products available. It allows them to be listed in phone books or business directories and to display cannabis in company logos. The businesses can also sponsor not-for-profit charity or advocacy events. 

Cocroft is represented by the Institute for Justice, a nonprofit libertarian law firm. The firm said Monday that it was considering its next steps in the lawsuit, including possibly asking the entire appeals court to reconsider the case or an appeal to the Supreme Court. 

“Mississippi cannot on the one hand create an entire marketplace for the sale of medical marijuana, and on the other hand rely on an unenforced federal law to prohibit buyers and sellers from talking about it,” said Ari Bargil, an Institute for Justice attorney.
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BAKU, AZERBAIJAN — Anger and frustration from developing nations vulnerable to climate impacts are likely to linger following the conclusion of the climate change summit in Azerbaijan, COP29, as nations adopted a $300 billion global finance target to help poorer nations cope with climate change, a deal that many recipient nations slammed as severely insufficient.

Global North countries, often historic emitters responsible for global warming, agreed on Sunday to pledge $300 billion a year until 2035 for their developing counterparts to stave off the direst effects of climate change — less than a quarter of the acknowledged $1.3 trillion needed annually to reduce emissions and build resilience in vulnerable countries.

The $300 billion figure, also, is an increase by $200 billion each year, compared to the agreement in place since 2009, which is expiring.

Spirited disappointment and rage from Global South countries was expressed at the closing plenary, with some national representatives calling adoption of the new funding package “insulting.”

“We are extremely disappointed,” said Indian negotiator Chandni Raina, who called the figure “abysmal.”

Her Cuban counterpart, Pedro Luis Pedroso, described the deal as “environmental colonialism,” pointing out that, when factoring in today’s inflation, the pledged funding is lower than the $100 billion agreed to in 2009. Bolivia’s negotiator called the deal “insulting” to developing nations.

Some Western representatives were more upbeat.

“COP29 will be remembered as a new era of climate finance,” top EU climate negotiator Wopke Hoekstra said, calling the target amount “ambitious” and “achievable.”

Some experts told VOA that the structure and composition of the $300 billion deal was more important than the actual monetary figure. The final deal allows for both public and private sources of funds to be tapped to bolster climate preparation efforts in the developing world.

Negotiators for developing countries expressed concern that private sources of funding could come in the form of more loans, which could lead to challenging debt accumulation by poorer nations, rather than funding in the preferred form of grants.

Global South countries argued for a new target for green finance and have consistently called for such climate finance to come in the form of public grants. The tense and fraught negotiations of the past week dragged on for two extra days and included at least one episode of negotiators from small island nations and some of the poorest nations in the world walking out of a meeting room with wealthy nations in protest. They asserted that their voices and perspectives were not heard.

”This COP has been a disaster for the developing world,” said Mohammed Adow, director of Kenya-based climate and energy research group Power Shift Africa. ”It’s a betrayal of both people and planet, by wealthy countries, who claim to take climate change seriously.”

The adopted finance package also stated that a further roadmap is set to be discussed at the next conference – likely COP30, set for Belem, Brazil in late 2025 — on how to reach the trillion-dollar figure.

Independent South African climate consultant Gillian Hamilton called the $300 billion core funding target “insufficient,” particularly for building resilience against climate impacts — also known as climate adaptation.

“Developed nations should have shown more leadership and transparency,” Hamilton told VOA. “The biggest emitters need to rapidly decrease their emissions so that adaptation costs for developing countries don’t increase exponentially.”

Campaigners staged multiple environmental protests each day here during the past week-plus of meetings.

Though negotiators for developing nations repeatedly asked for climate finance in the form of grants instead of loans, in the final deal, developed countries stopped short of guaranteeing that could be done.

Adaptation finance

The deal adopted Sunday acknowledges that funding sources for adaptation finance should be public and transparent.

With 2024 going down as the hottest year in history, the world has experienced a slew of climate disasters, ranging from devastating floods in Nepal and Spain, to Hurricane Helene in the Americas, droughts in the Mediterranean and typhoons in the western Pacific region.

Despite the disasters and renewed calls to finance climate-resilient infrastructure across the Global South to guard against rising sea levels and wildfires, funding has been falling short for years, according to a November report from the U.N. Environment Program.

The so-called adaptation projects include developing more advanced disaster warning systems, reforestation, and building catchment mechanisms to ensure water security in regions most affected by climate change.

At COP29, Germany pledged $62 billion, to the adaptation fund; France highlighted its 2023 pledge of $2.9 billion, in adaptation; the U.S. said it pays $3 billion into it each year. A total of 14 Global North countries including Spain, Sweden, South Korea and Switzerland promised to provide $300 million this year, according to a separate negotiation text in the conference.

Despite pledges in recent years, countries didn’t completely deliver on promises. This year, for example, more than $122 million of pledged financial support to poor nations for adapting to climate risk is still up in the air, even though this assistance has been a stated priority at recent COP meetings.

What to expect in Belem?

Countries will be tasked at the Brazil meeting next November with ironing out the details of a global carbon trade system governed by a centralized U.N. regulatory body. They also will try to find a path for wealthy, developed countries to reach the target of $1.3 trillion to support efforts in the Global South to address the consequences of climate disasters. A major component will be reviewing national climate plans, which are due to be submitted in February. Britain, Brazil and the UAE are among the nations that this past week aimed to get ahead of the February deadline and shared some of the goals in their national climate preparation plans.

Harjeet Singh, global engagement director of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, said it is likely that ‘most’ nations will not meet the February deadline to submit their updated plans to address climate change.

The future participation of Argentina is unclear, after hardline President Javier Milei — who has called climate change a hoax — reportedly told his government delegates here to pack their bags and leave the negotiations on the third day of the summit.

Singh was asked by VOA whether wealthy nations would deliver on their promises to lead the effort toward $300 billion in climate finance support, and he responded that the key lies in their ‘willingness, as the money has always been there.’
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As delegates from 175 countries gathered in Busan, South Korea, on Monday for the fifth round of talks aimed at securing an international treaty to curb plastic pollution, lingering divisions cast doubts on whether a final agreement is in sight.

South Korea is hosting the fifth and ostensibly final U.N. Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-5) meeting this week, after the previous round of talks in Ottawa in April ended without a path forward on capping plastic production.

Instead, the meeting issued a direction for technical groups to focus on chemicals of concern and other measures after petrochemical-producing countries such as Saudi Arabia and China strongly opposed efforts to target plastic production.

The United States raised eyebrows in August when it said it would back plastic production caps in the treaty, putting it in alignment with the EU, Kenya, Peru and other countries in the High Ambition Coalition.

The election of Donald Trump as president, however, has raised questions about that position, as during his first presidency he shunned multilateral agreements and any commitments to slow or stop U.S. oil and petrochemical production.

The U.S. delegation did not answer questions on whether it would reverse its new position to support plastic production caps. But it “supports ensuring that the global instrument addresses plastic products, chemicals used in plastic products, and the supply of primary plastic polymers,” according to a spokesperson for the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

Inger Andersen, executive director of the U.N. Environment Program, said she was confident the talks will end with an agreement, pointing to the communique from the Group of 20 nations at a summit last week calling for a legally binding treaty by the end of this year.

“This is a very powerful message,” Andersen told Reuters in Baku, on the sidelines of the UN climate negotiations, before traveling to Busan for the talks. “We know that it is often down to the wire, but if there is a will, I think we will get there.”

For a Pacific island country like Fiji, a global plastics treaty is crucial to protect its fragile ecosystem and public health, said Sivendra Michael, Fiji’s climate minister and chief climate and plastics negotiator.

He told Reuters on the sidelines of the 29th U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP29) this month that despite not producing any plastic, Fiji is bearing the brunt of its downstream pollution.

“Where do these plastics end up? It ends up in our oceans, in our landfill, in our backyards. And the impact of the plastics breaking down into little substances has detrimental effects, not only on the environment, but on us as individuals, on our health,” he said, noting studies that showed most of the fish consumed in the country was polluted with microplastics.

While supporting an international treaty, the petrochemical industry has been vocal in urging governments to avoid setting mandatory plastic production caps, and focus on solutions on reducing plastic waste, like recycling.

“We would see a treaty successful if it would really put … emphasis on ending plastic pollution. Nothing else should be the focus.” said Martin Jung, president for performance materials at chemical producer BASF.

Previous talks have also discussed searching for forms of funding to help developing countries implement the treaty.

At COP29, France, Kenya and Barbados floated setting up a series of global levies on certain sectors that could help ramp up the amount of money that could be made available to developing countries seeking support to aid their clean energy transition and cope with the increasingly severe impacts of climate change.

The proposal included a fee of $60-$70/ton on primary polymer production, which is on average around 5-7% of the polymer price, seen potentially raising an estimated $25 billion-$35 billion per year.

Industry groups have rejected the idea, saying it will raise consumer prices.
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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Planet Earth is parting company with an asteroid that’s been tagging along as a “mini moon” for the past two months. 

The harmless space rock will peel away on Monday, overcome by the stronger tug of the sun’s gravity. But it will zip closer for a quick visit in January. 

NASA will use a radar antenna to observe the 10-meter (33-foot) asteroid then. That should deepen scientists’ understanding of the object known as 2024 PT5, quite possibly a boulder that was blasted off the moon by an impacting, crater-forming asteroid. 

While not technically a moon — NASA stresses it was never captured by Earth’s gravity and fully in orbit — it’s “an interesting object” worthy of study. 

The astrophysicist brothers who identified the asteroid’s “mini moon behavior,” Raul and Carlos de la Fuente Marcos of Complutense University of Madrid, have collaborated with telescopes in the Canary Islands for hundreds of observations so far. 

Currently more than 3.5 million kilometers (2 million miles) away, the object is too small and faint to see without a powerful telescope. It will pass as close as 1.8 million kilometers (1.1 million miles) of Earth in January, maintaining a safe distance before it zooms farther into the solar system while orbiting the sun, not to return until 2055. That’s almost five times farther than the moon. 

First spotted in August, the asteroid began its semi jog around Earth in late September, after coming under the grips of Earth’s gravity and following a horseshoe-shaped path. By the time it returns next year, it will be moving too fast — more than double its speed from September — to hang around, said Raul de la Fuente Marcos. 

NASA will track the asteroid for more than a week in January using the Goldstone solar system radar antenna in California’s Mojave Desert, part of the Deep Space Network. 

Current data suggest that during its 2055 visit, the sun-circling asteroid will once again make a temporary and partial lap around Earth.
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ACCRA, Ghana — In a sprawling secondhand clothing market in Ghana’s capital, early morning shoppers jostle as they search through piles of garments, eager to pluck a bargain or a designer find from the stalls selling used and low-quality apparel imported from the West.

At the other end of the street, an upcycled fashion and thrifting festival unfolds with glamour and glitz. Models parade along a makeshift runway in outfits that designers created out of discarded materials from the Kantamanto market, ranging from floral blouses and denim jeans to leather bags, caps and socks.

The festival is called Obroni Wawu October, using a phrase that in the local Akan language means “dead white man’s clothes.” Organizers see the event as a small way to disrupt a destructive cycle that has made Western overconsumption into an environmental problem in Africa, where some of the worn-out clothes end up in waterways and garbage dumps.

“Instead of allowing (textile waste) to choke our gutters or beaches or landfills, I decided to use it to create something … for us to use again,” said Richard Asante Palmer, one of the designers at the annual festival organized by the Or Foundation, a nonprofit that works at the intersection of environmental justice and fashion development.

Ghana is one of Africa’s leading importers of used clothing. It also ships some of what it gets from the United Kingdom, Canada, China and elsewhere to other West African nations, the United States and the U.K., according to the Ghana Used Clothing Dealers Association.

Some of the imported clothes arrive in such poor shape, however, that vendors dispose of them to make room for the next shipments. On average, 40% of the millions of garments exported weekly to Ghana end up as waste, according to Neesha-Ann Longdon, the business manager for the Or Foundation’s executive director.

The clothing dealers association, in a report published earlier this year on the socioeconomic and environmental impact of the nation’s secondhand clothing trade said only 5% of the items that reach Ghana in bulk are immediately thrown out because they cannot be sold or reused.

In many African countries, citizens typically buy preowned clothes — as well as used cars, phones and other necessities — because they cost less than new ones. Secondhand shopping also gives them a chance to score designer goods that most people in the region can only dream of.

But neither Ghana’s fast-growing population of 34 million people nor its overtaxed infrastructure is equipped to absorb the amount of cast-off attire entering the country. Mounds of textile waste litter beaches across the capital, Accra, and the lagoon which serves as the main outlet through which the city’s major drainage channels empty into the Gulf of Guinea.

“Fast fashion has taken over as the dominant mode of production, which is characterized here as higher volumes of lower-quality goods,” Longdon said.

Jonathan Abbey, a fisherman in the area, said his nets often capture textile waste from the sea. Unsold used clothes “aren’t even burned but are thrown into the Korle Lagoon, which then goes into the sea,” Abbey said.

The ease of online shopping has sped up this waste cycle, according to Andrew Brooks, a King’s College London researcher and the author of Clothing Poverty: The Hidden World of Fast Fashion and Second-hand Clothes.

In countries like the U.K., unwanted purchases often end up as charity donations, but clothes are sometimes stolen from street donation bins and exported to places where the consumer demand is perceived to be higher, Brooks said. Authorities rarely investigate such theft because the clothes are “seen as low-value items,” he said.

Donors, meanwhile, think their castoffs are “going to be recycled rather than reused, or given away rather than sold, or sold in the U.K. rather than exported overseas,” Brooks said.

The volume of secondhand clothing sent to Africa has led to complaints of the continent being used as a dumping ground. In 2018, Rwanda raised tariffs on such imports in defiance of U.S. pressure, citing concerns the West’s refuse undermined efforts to strengthen the domestic textile industry. Last year, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni said he would ban imports of clothing “from dead people.”

Trade restrictions might not go far in either reducing textile pollution or encouraging clothing production in Africa, where profits are low and incentives for designers are few, experts say.

In the absence of adequate measures to stop the pollution, organizations like the Or Foundation are trying to make a difference by rallying young people and fashion creators to find a good use for scrapped materials.

Ghana’s beaches had hardly any discarded clothes on them before the country’s waste management problems worsened in recent years, foundation co-founder Liz Ricketts said.

“Fast forward to today, 2024, there are mountains of textile waste on the beaches,” she said.
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HOUSTON — Kimberly Rubit had one priority in mind as Hurricane Beryl ripped through Houston this summer: her severely disabled daughter.

The 63-year-old worked nonstop to prevent Mary, 42, from overheating without air conditioning, water or lights after Beryl knocked out power to their home for 10 days. At least three dozen other people suffered heat-related deaths during the extended outage.

“It was miserable,” Rubit said. “I’m sick of it.”

Electric grids have buckled more frequently and outages have become longer across the U.S. as the warming atmosphere carries more water and stirs up more destructive storms, according to an AP analysis of government data. In the Pacific Northwest this week, a “bomb cyclone” caused roughly half a million outages.

People with disabilities and chronic health conditions are particularly at risk when the power goes out, and many live in homes that lack the weatherizing and backup power supplies needed to better handle high temperatures and cold freezes, or can’t pay their electricity bills, said Columbia University sociomedical sciences professor Diana Hernandez, who studies energy instability in U.S. homes.

At any given time, 1 in 3 households in the U.S. is “actively trying to avoid a disconnection or contending with the aftermath of it,” Hernandez said.

In Texas, as another winter approaches, people can’t shake fears of another blackout like the one during a cold freeze in 2021 that left millions without power for days and killed more than 200 people. Despite efforts to create more resilience, a winter storm that powerful could still lead to rolling blackouts, according to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages most of the state’s power grid.

Beryl also knocked out power to millions for days, sickening many in the sweltering July heat. Local and state officials showered criticism on CenterPoint Energy, Houston’s power utility, saying it should have communicated more clearly, taken more preventive measures such as tree trimming before the storm hit and repaired downed power lines more quickly. The utility’s response remains under investigation by the Texas attorney general.

CenterPoint says it is focused now on improving resiliency, customer communications and community partnerships with the one defining goal: “to build the most resilient coastal grid in the country that can better withstand the extreme weather of the future.”

Texas lawmakers, meanwhile, are debating whether assisted living facilities need more regulation. One suggestion: requiring them to have enough emergency generator fuel to power lifesaving equipment and keep indoor temperatures safe during an extended blackout, as Florida did after a scandal over hurricane-related nursing home deaths.

The legislative panel also reviewed emergency responses this month. Regulated facilities and nursing centers fared better than places such as senior communities that aren’t subject to strict oversight, according to city and state officials. This meant hundreds of apartment complexes catering to older adults, as well as private homes, were likely more susceptible to losing power and going without food.

“We’ve got to find a way to mark these facilities or get it entered into the computer dispatch systems,” said Nim Kidd, chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management. “There are so many places in our own city that we have no idea until that 911 call comes into that facility,” he said.

Texas energy companies have been required since 2003 to provide advance notice of scheduled outages to medically vulnerable households that submit a form with physician approval. But that law didn’t require the utilities to share these lists with state or local emergency management agencies.

Numerous states have similar regulatory requirements and 38 have policies aimed at preventing disconnections during extreme weather, according to the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program. In Colorado, medically vulnerable residents are protected from disconnection for up to 90 days. In Arkansas, utilities can’t disconnect power to people who are 65 or older if temperatures are forecast to reach above 34 degrees Celsius.

In Houston, Rubit and her daughter share one of the roughly 3,000 households where unreliable power can quickly spiral into a life-and-death issue because at least one person requires a medical device powered by electricity, according to public filings from CenterPoint. The utility offers such households payment plans to keep the electricity on when they fall behind on their bills.

The utility’s efforts bring little solace to community members at a Houston living center for seniors, Commons of Grace, where outages have become a haunting facet of life for more than 100 residents, said Belinda Taylor, who runs a nonprofit partnered with the managing company.

“I’m just frustrated that we didn’t get the services that we needed,” Taylor said. “It’s ridiculous that we have had to suffer.”

Sharon Burks, who lives at Commons of Grace, said it became unbearable when the power went out. She is 63 and uses a breathing machine for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which causes shortness of breath. She had to resort to her battery-powered breathing pump, which isn’t meant to be used for long periods.

“I didn’t expect anything from CenterPoint,” Burks said. “We’re always the last to get it.”
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BAKU, AZERBAIJAN — United Nations climate talks adopted a deal to inject at least $300 billion annually in humanity’s fight against climate change, aimed at helping poor nations cope with the ravages of global warming in tense negotiations in the city where industry first tapped oil.

The $300 billion will go to developing countries who need the cash to wean themselves off the coal, oil and gas that causes the globe to overheat, adapt to future warming, and pay for the damage caused by climate change’s extreme weather. It’s not near the full amount of $1.3 trillion that developing countries were asking for, but it’s three times a deal of $100 billion a year from 2009 that is expiring. Some delegations said this deal is headed in the right direction, with hopes that more money flows in the future.

It was not quite the agreement by consensus that these meetings usually operate with and developing nations were livid about being ignored.

COP29 President Mukhtar Babayev gaveled the deal into acceptance before any nation had a chance to speak.

When they did, they blasted him for being unfair to them, the deal for not being enough, and the world’s rich nations for being too stingy.

“It’s a paltry sum,” India negotiator Chandni Raina said, repeatedly saying how India objected to rousing cheers. “I’m sorry to say we cannot accept it.”

She told The Associated Press that she has lost faith in the United Nations system.

Nations express discontent

A long line of nations agreed with India and piled on, with Nigeria’s Nkiruka Maduekwe, CEO of the National Council on Climate Change, calling the deal an insult and a joke.

“I’m disappointed. It’s definitely below the benchmark that we have been fighting for for so long,” said Juan Carlos Monterrey, of the Panama delegation. He noted that a few changes, including the inclusion of the words “at least” before the number $300 billion and an opportunity for revision by 2030, helped push them to the finish line.

“Our heart goes out to all those nations that feel like they were walked over,” he said.

The final package pushed through “does not speak or reflect or inspire confidence and trust that we will come out of this grave problem of climate change,” India’s Raina said.

“We absolutely object to the unfair means followed for adoption,” Raina said. “We are extremely hurt by this action by the president and the secretariat.”

Speaking for nearly 50 of the poorest nations of the world, Evans Davie Njewa of Malawi was more mild, expressing what he called reservations with the deal.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a post on X that he hoped for a “more ambitious outcome.” But he said the agreement “provides a base on which to build.”

Some see deal as relief

There were somewhat satisfied parties, with European Union’s Wopke Hoekstra calling it a new era of climate funding, working hard to help the most vulnerable. But activists in the plenary hall could be heard coughing over Hoekstra’s speech in an attempt to disrupt it.

Eamon Ryan, Ireland’s environment minister, called the agreement “a huge relief.”

“It was not certain. This was tough,” he said. “Because it’s a time of division, of war, of (a) multilateral system having real difficulties, the fact that we could get it through in these difficult circumstances is really important.”

U.N. Climate Change’s Executive Secretary Simon Stiell called the deal an “insurance policy for humanity,” adding that like insurance, “it only works if the premiums are paid in full, and on time.”

The deal is seen as a step toward helping countries on the receiving end create more ambitious targets to limit or cut emissions of heat-trapping gases that are due early next year. It’s part of the plan to keep cutting pollution with new targets every five years, which the world agreed to at the U.N. talks in Paris in 2015.

The Paris agreement set the system of regular ratcheting up climate fighting ambition as away to keep warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. The world is already at 1.3 degrees Celsius and carbon emissions keep rising.

Hope more cash will follow

Countries also anticipate that this deal will send signals that help drive funding from other sources, like multilateral development banks and private sources. That was always part of the discussion at these talks — rich countries didn’t think it was realistic to only rely on public funding sources — but poor countries worried that if the money came in loans instead of grants, it would send them sliding further backward into debt that they already struggle with.

“The $300 billion goal is not enough, but is an important down payment toward a safer, more equitable future,” said World Resources Institute President Ani Dasgupta. “This deal gets us off the starting block. Now the race is on to raise much more climate finance from a range of public and private sources, putting the whole financial system to work behind developing countries’ transitions.”

And even though it’s far from the needed $1.3 trillion, it’s more than the $250 billion that was on the table in an earlier draft of the text, which outraged many countries and led to a period of frustration and stalling over the final hours of the summit.

Other deals agreed at COP29

The several different texts adopted early Sunday morning included a vague but not specific reference to last year’s Global Stocktake approved in Dubai. Last year there was a battle about first-of-its-kind language on getting rid of the oil, coal and natural gas, but instead it called for a transition away from fossil fuels. The latest talks only referred to the Dubai deal, but did not explicitly repeat the call for a transition away from fossil fuels.

Countries also agreed on the adoption of Article 6, creating markets to trade carbon pollution rights, an idea that was set up as part of the Paris Agreement to help nations work together to reduce climate-causing pollution. Part of that was a system of carbon credits, allowing nations to put planet-warming gasses in the air if they offset emissions elsewhere. Backers said a U.N.-backed market could generate up to an additional $250 billion a year in climate financial aid.

Despite its approval, carbon markets remain a contentious plan because many experts say the new rules adopted don’t prevent misuse, don’t work and give big polluters an excuse to continue spewing emissions.

“What they’ve done essentially is undermine the mandate to try to reach 1.5,” said Tamara Gilbertson, climate justice program coordinator with the Indigenous Environmental Network. Greenpeace’s An Lambrechts, called it a “climate scam” with many loopholes.

With this deal wrapped up as crews dismantle the temporary venue, many have eyes on next year’s climate talks in Belem, Brazil.
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BAKU, AZERBAIJAN — Wealthy countries raised their offer of climate finance to $300 billion a year at COP29 on Saturday, raising hopes of a deal with developing nations that had dismissed an earlier proposal as insufficient to address the impacts of global warming. 

The United Nations climate summit had been scheduled to finish on Friday but ran into an extra day as negotiators from nearly 200 countries — who must adopt the deal by consensus — tried to reach agreement on the contentious funding plan for the next decade. 

The two-week conference cut to the heart of the global debate over the financial responsibility of rich industrialized countries, whose historical use of fossil fuels caused the bulk of greenhouse gas emissions, to compensate for the damage wrought by climate change. 

Negotiators from several developing countries and island nations aired frustration over a U.N. process they said was not rising to the challenge of global warming and temporarily walked out of talks on Saturday afternoon. 

It was unclear if they would ultimately accept the proposed figure of $300 billion a year by 2035. 

Fiji’s Deputy Prime Minister Biman Prasad said he was optimistic. “When it comes to money it’s always controversial, but we are expecting a deal tonight,” he told Reuters. 

COP29 President Mukhtar Babayev asked country delegations to overcome their differences: “I ask you to now step up your engagement with one another to bridge the remaining divide,” he said in a plenary speech. 

Developing countries had dismissed as insufficient a previous proposal, drafted by the Azerbaijan host on Friday, that would have seen the United States, Europe and other developed countries lead $250 billion in annual funding. 

Past failures to meet climate finance obligations have also made developing countries mistrustful of new promises. 

Five sources with knowledge of the closed-door discussions said the EU had agreed it could accept the higher number of $300 billion a year. Two of the sources said the United States, Australia and Britain also were on board. 

A European Commission spokesperson and an Australian government spokesperson both declined to comment on the negotiations. The U.S. delegation and the UK energy ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment. 

The new goal is intended to replace developed countries’ previous commitment to provide $100 billion in climate finance for poorer nations per year by 2020. That goal was met two years late, in 2022, and expires in 2025. 

Representatives from the least developed countries and small island nations blocs walked out of a negotiating room in frustration at one point on Saturday afternoon, but said they remained committed to finding a deal. 

“We want nothing more than to continue to engage, but the process must be inclusive,” the Alliance of Small Island States said in a statement. 

In a sign of some progress, countries agreed Saturday evening on rules for a global market to buy and sell carbon credits that proponents say will mobilize billions of dollars into new projects to help fight global warming.  

Push for $390 billion

Marina Silva, Brazil’s minister of the environment and climate change, has said that the Amazon rainforest nation — which is set to host next year’s summit — was pushing for $390 billion annually from developed countries by 2035. 

“After the difficult experience that we’re having here in Baku, we need to reach some result, some outcome which is minimally acceptable in line with the emergency we are facing,” she said on Saturday in a speech to the summit. 

Negotiators have worked throughout the two-week summit to address other critical questions on the finance target, including who is asked to contribute and how much of the funding is on a grant basis, rather than provided as loans. 

The roster of countries required to contribute — about two dozen industrialized countries, including the U.S., European nations and Canada — dates back to a list decided during U.N. climate talks in 1992. 

European governments have demanded others join them in paying in, including China, the world’s second-biggest economy, and oil-rich Gulf states. 

Donald Trump’s U.S. presidential election victory this month cast a cloud over the Baku talks. Trump, who takes office in January, has promised to again remove the U.S. from international climate cooperation, so negotiators from other wealthy nations expect that under his administration the world’s largest economy will not pay into the climate finance goal. 

A broader goal of raising $1.3 trillion in climate finance annually by 2035 — which would include funding from all public and private sources and which economists say matches the sum needed — was included in the draft deal published on Friday. 
…

BAKU, AZERBAIJAN — As nerves frayed and the clock ticked, negotiators from rich and poor nations were huddled in one room Saturday during overtime United Nations climate talks to try to hash out an elusive deal on money for developing countries to curb and adapt to climate change.

But the rough draft of a proposal circulating in that room was getting soundly rejected, especially by African nations and small island states, according to messages relayed from inside. Then a group of negotiators from the Least Developed Countries bloc and the Alliance of Small Island States walked out because they didn’t want to engage with the rough draft.

The “current deal is unacceptable for us. We need to speak to other developing countries and decide what to do,” said Evans Njewa, chair of the LDC group. When asked if the walkout was a protest, Colombia Environment Minister Susana Mohamed told The Associated Press: “I would call this dissatisfaction, [we are] highly dissatisfied.”

With tensions high, climate activists heckled United States climate envoy John Podesta as he left the meeting room. They accused the U.S. of not paying its fair share and having “a legacy of burning up the planet.”

The last official draft on Friday pledged $250 billion annually by 2035, more than double the previous goal of $100 billion set 15 years ago but far short of the annual $1 trillion-plus that experts say is needed. The rough draft discussed on Saturday was for $300 billion in climate finance, sources told AP.

Accusations of a war of attrition

Developing countries accused the rich of trying to get their way — and a small financial aid package — via a war of attrition. And small island nations, particularly vulnerable to climate change’s worsening impacts, accused the host country presidency of ignoring them for the entire two weeks.

After bidding one of his suitcase-lugging delegation colleagues goodbye and watching the contingent of about 20 enter the meeting room for the European Union, Panama chief negotiator Juan Carlos Monterrey Gomez had enough.

“Every minute that passes we are going to just keep getting weaker and weaker and weaker. They don’t have that issue. They have massive delegations,” Gomez said. “This is what they always do. They break us at the last minute. You know, they push it and push it and push it until our negotiators leave. Until we’re tired, until we’re delusional from not eating, from not sleeping.”

With developing nations’ ministers and delegation chiefs having to catch flights home, desperation sets in, according to Power Shift Africa’s Mohamed Adow. “The risk is if developing countries don’t hold the line, they will likely be forced to compromise and accept a goal that doesn’t add up to get the job done,” he said.

Teresa Anderson, the global lead on climate justice at Action Aid, said that to get a deal, “the presidency has to put something far better on the table.”

“The U.S. in particular, and rich countries, need to do far more to show that they’re willing for real money to come forward,” she said. “And if they don’t, then LDCs [Least Developed Countries] are unlikely to find that there’s anything here for them.”

Climate cash deal is still elusive

Developing nations are seeking $1.3 trillion to help adapt to droughts, floods, rising seas and extreme heat, pay for losses and damages caused by extreme weather, and transition their energy systems away from planet-warming fossil fuels and toward clean energy. Wealthy nations are obligated to pay vulnerable countries under an agreement reached at these talks in Paris in 2015.

Panama’s Monterrey Gomez said even the higher $300 billion figure that was discussed on Saturday is “still crumbs.”

“Is that even half of what we put forth?” he asked.

Monterrey Gomez said the developing world has since asked for a finance deal of $500 billion up to 2030 — a shortened timeframe than the 2035 date. “We’re still yet to hear reaction from the developed side,” he said.

On Saturday morning, Irish Environment Minister Eamon Ryan said it’s not just about the number in the final deal, but “how do you get to $1.3 trillion.”

Ryan said that any number reached at the COP will have to be supplemented with other sources of finance, for example through a market for carbon emissions where polluters would pay to offset the carbon they spew.

The amount in any deal reached at COP negotiations — often considered a “core” — will then be mobilized or leveraged for greater climate spending. But much of that means loans for countries already drowning in debt.

Anger and frustration over state of negotiations

Alden Meyer of the climate think tank E3G said it’s still up in the air whether a deal on finance will come out of Baku at all.

“It is still not out of the question that there could be an inability to close the gap on the finance issue,” he said.

Ali Mohamed, chair of the African Group of Negotiators, said the bloc is “prepared to reach agreement here in Baku … but we are not prepared to accept things that cross our red lines.”

Despite the fractures between nations, several still held out hopes for the talks. “We remain optimistic,” said Nabeel Munir of Pakistan, who chairs one of the talks’ standing negotiating committees.

The Alliance of Small Island States said in a statement that it wants to continue to engage in the talks, as long as the process is inclusive. “If this cannot be the case, it becomes very difficult for us to continue our involvement,” the statement said.
…

BAKU, AZERBAIJAN — In the sprawling pavilion section of the United Nations climate talks, where countries, nonprofits and tech companies use big, flashy signs to get the attention of the thousands of people walking through, small aqua and purple beverage cans sit conspicuously on a counter at the Singapore display.

Those who approach learn that the cans are beer — a brand call NEWBrew — and free for anybody who asks. But there is something not everybody who cracks one open finds out right away, if at all: the beer is made with treated wastewater.

“I didn’t know. I was really surprised,” said Ignace Urchil Lokouako Mbouamboua, an international relations student from Congo, who recently sipped one while taking a break from the conference.

“I can even suggest that they make more and more of this kind of beer,” added Mbouamboua with a smile, sharing it was his third day in a row he stopped for a can.

NEWBrew is made in Singapore with NEWater, the name of treated wastewater that’s part of a national campaign to conserve every drop in one of the world’s most water-starved places.

The drink, which some attendees jokingly call “sewage beer,” is one of many examples of climate- and environment-related innovations on display during this year’s climate talks, COP29, taking place in Azerbaijan. Highlighting the use of treated wastewater underscores one of the world’s most pressing problems as climate change accelerates: providing drinking water to a growing population.

For years, Singapore has been a leader in water management and innovations. The city-state island of 6 million people in Southeast Asia, one of the most densely populated countries, has no natural water sources. In addition to water imports from Malaysia, the other pillars of its national strategy are catchment, desalination and recycling. Authorities have said they need to ramp up all water sources, as demand is expected to double by 2065.

While drinking treated wastewater is a novelty for many at the climate conference, for Singaporeans it’s nothing new. National campaigns — from water conservation pleas to showing the wastewater recycling process — go back decades. In 2002, then-Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong was famously photographed drinking a bottle of NEWater after a tennis match, done to normalize its use.

Ong Tze-Ch’in, chief executive of the Public Utilities Board, Singapore’s national water agency, said NEWBrew was developed by a local brewery in 2018. The idea was to showcase treated wastewater at the country’s biennial International Water Week. The beer was next produced in 2022, 2023, then again this year.

“It’s part of the acceptance of the use of recycled water, which in general is a difficult topic,” said Ong. “We did many things to drive it.”

And is he happy with how it turned out? 

“I chose this flavor,” said Ong, adding that he was part of the group that worked with the brewery for this year’s version, a “modern pilsner.”

“You know, beer is always very subjective,” he added with a laugh.

After attending a panel on water management at the Singapore pavilion, Peter Rummel, director of infrastructure policy advancement at Bentley Systems, which creates infrastructure engineering software, stepped up to the counter and got a beer. Rummel told onlookers he was in a good position to judge beer, as he hailed from Munich, Germany, home to the Oktoberfest beer festival.

“It’s fresh, light, cool. It has a nice flavor,” said Rummel, while looking at the can.

Wee-Tuck Tan, managing director of the local brewery, The Brewerkz Group, said they have made about 5,000 liters, or roughly 15,000 cans, for each edition of NewBrew. He said they use the same process as with other beers, and the cost is also similar, about 7 Singaporean dollars (around $5 U.S.) per can when bought in a supermarket.

Wee-Tuck said he believes the beer has shifted how some in Singapore view NEWater.

“They think it tastes funny,” he said. “When put into a beer, it changes the mindset. Most people can’t tell the difference.”

As problems with water scarcity grow, there is increasing embrace of the use of treated wastewater, said Saroj Kumar Jha, the World Bank Group’s global water department director, who participated in the water management panel in the Singapore pavilion. Traveling to over 50 countries in the last two years, he said leaders have frequently told him it’s important not to use the term “wastewater,” and instead call it “used water.”

After the panel concluded, Jha and the other panelists opened NEWBrews and toasted.

“It’s really good,” said Jha. “It’s the fourth time I’ve had it.”

“This year,” he added with a laugh. “Not today.”
…

london — The mpox outbreak continues to represent a public health emergency, the World Health Organization said on Friday.

The WHO first declared the emergency in August, when an outbreak of a new form of mpox spread from the badly hit Democratic Republic of Congo to neighboring countries.

The WHO convened a meeting of its Emergency Committee and, agreeing with its advice, the WHO director-general has determined that the upsurge of mpox continues to constitute a public health emergency of international concern.

The decision is based on the rising number and continuing geographic spread of cases, operational challenges in the field and the need to mount and sustain a cohesive response across countries and partners, the WHO said.

Mpox is a viral infection that spreads through close contact and typically causes flu-like symptoms and pus-filled lesions. It is usually mild, but it can be lethal.

This year, there have been more than 46,000 suspected cases across Africa, mainly in Congo, and more than 1,000 suspected deaths.

The label of “public health emergency of international concern” is the WHO’s highest form of alert and was also applied to a global outbreak of a different form of mpox in 2022-2023.

The alert issued this year followed the spread of a new variant of the virus, called clade Ib.

Cases of this variant have been confirmed in the U.K., Germany, Sweden and India, among other countries.

In September, after facing criticism on moving too slowly on vaccines, the WHO cleared Bavarian Nordic’s vaccine for mpox and, earlier this month, listed Japan’s KM Biologics’ shot for emergency use.
…

BAKU, AZERBAIJAN — The COP29 climate summit ran into overtime on Friday after a draft deal that proposed developed nations take the lead in providing $250 billion per year by 2035 to help poorer nations drew criticism from all sides.

World governments represented at the summit in the Azerbaijan capital, Baku, are tasked with agreeing on a sweeping funding plan to tackle climate change, but the talks have been marked by division between wealthy governments resisting a costly outcome and developing nations pushing for more.

The two-week conference in the Caspian Sea city, which was to end Friday evening, spilled past its scheduled close as the wrangling continued, with expectations the $250 billion target could yet rise.

“I’m so mad. It’s ridiculous. Just ridiculous,” said Juan Carlos Monterrey Gomez, the special representative for climate change for Panama. He called the proposed amount too low. “It feels that the developed world wants the planet to burn.”

A European negotiator, meanwhile, told Reuters the figure in the draft deal released by the summit presidency was uncomfortably high and did not do enough to expand the number of countries contributing to the funding.

“No one is comfortable with the number, because it’s high and [there is] next to nothing on increasing contributor base,” the negotiator said.

Governments that would be expected to lead the financing include the European Union, Australia, the United States, Britain, Japan, Norway, Canada, New Zealand and Switzerland.

The draft invited developing countries to contribute voluntarily but emphasized that paying in climate finance would not affect their status as “developing” nations at the United Nations, a red line for countries such as China and Brazil.

“This is not at a landing ground yet, but at least we’re not up in the air without a map,” said Germany’s special climate envoy, Jennifer Morgan.

‘First reflection’

Negotiations have been clouded by uncertainty over the role of the United States in the deal after climate-change skeptic Donald Trump won the presidential election on November 5, promising to withdraw the world’s top historic greenhouse gas emitter from international climate efforts when he retakes office in January.

The Azerbaijani COP29 presidency described Friday’s text as a “first reflection” of what countries had said in consultations and expressed hope negotiators would find agreement soon.

Azerbaijan’s lead negotiator, Yalchin Rafiyev, told reporters the draft deal had room for improvement.

“It doesn’t correspond to our fair and ambitious goal, but we will continue to engage with the parties,” he said.

The draft also set a broader goal to raise $1.3 trillion in climate finance annually by 2035, which would include funding from all public and private sources.

That is in line with a recommendation from economists that developing countries have access to at least $1 trillion annually by the end of the decade. Those same economists criticized the current $250 billion core target as too low.

But filling the gap between government pledges and private ones could be tricky, negotiators have warned.

“This goal will need to be supported by ambitious bilateral action, MDB contributions and efforts to better mobilize private finance, among other critical factors,” a senior U.S. official said, referring to multilateral development banks.

The current climate finance commitment, $100 billion per year, ends in 2025. Without a new collective target agreed through the U.N. process, some of the poorer countries most vulnerable to the impact of climate change would have little assurance of the money they need.

That means such countries have an incentive to negotiate hard, but even those most unhappy have a reason not to walk away or block a deal.

“We are far away from the $1.3 trillion,” said M. Riaz Hamidullah, a Bangladeshi foreign office official. “It’s a bit like haggling in the fish market, which we do often in our part of the world.”

Hottest on record

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres returned to Baku from a G20 meeting in Brazil on Thursday, calling for a major push to get a deal and warning that “failure is not an option.”

The showdown over financing for developing countries comes in a year that scientists say is destined to be the hottest on record. Climate woes are stacking up in the wake of such extreme heat, raising cries for more funding to cope.

Widespread flooding has killed thousands across Africa this year, while deadly landslides have buried villages in Asia. Drought in South America has shrunk rivers — vital transport corridors — and livelihoods.

Developed countries, too, have not been spared. Torrential rain triggered floods in Valencia, Spain, last month that killed more than 200, and the United States has so far registered 24 billion-dollar disasters, just four fewer than last year.
…

Kabul residents are struggling with severe water shortages, often waiting hours at the Afghan capital’s dwindling wells for drinking water. The United Nations cautions that urbanization and climate change could deplete the city’s groundwater within the next five to six years. VOA’s Afghan service has this report, narrated by Bezhan Hamdard.
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LAS VEGAS — Federal water officials made public on Wednesday what they called “necessary steps” for seven states and multiple tribes that use Colorado River water and hydropower to meet an August 2026 deadline for deciding how to manage the waterway in the future.

“Today, we show our collective work,” Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton said as she outlined four proposals for action and one “no action” alternative that she and Biden’s government will leave for the incoming Trump Administration — with formal environmental assessments still to come and just 20 months to act.

The announcement offered no recommendation or decision about how to divvy up water from the river, which provides electricity to millions of homes and businesses, irrigates vast stretches of desert farmland and reaches kitchen faucets in cities including Denver, Salt Lake City, Albuquerque, Las Vegas, Phoenix and Los Angeles.

Instead it provided a bullet-point sample of elements from competing proposals submitted last March by three key river stakeholders: Upper Basin states Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming, where most of the water originates; Lower Basin states California, Arizona and Nevada, which rely most on water captured by dams at lakes Powell and Mead; and more than two dozen Native American tribes with rights to river water.

“They’re not going to take the any of the proposals,” said Sarah Porter, director of the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University. “The federal government put the components together in a different way … and modeled them to provide near-maximum flexibility for negotiations to continue.”

One alternative would have the government act to “protect critical infrastructure” including dams and oversee how much river water is delivered, relying on existing agreements during periods when demand outstrips supply. “But there would be no new delivery and storage mechanisms,” the announcement said.

A second option would add delivery and storage for Lake Powell and Lake Mead, along with “federal and non-federal storage” to boost system sustainability and flexibility “through a new approach to distributing” water during shortages.

The third, dubbed “cooperative conservation,” cited a proposal from advocates aimed at managing and gauging water releases from Lake Powell amid “shared contributions to sustain system integrity.”

And a fourth, hybrid proposal includes parts of Upper and Lower Basin and Tribal Nations plans, the announcement said. It would add delivery and storage for Powell and Mead, encourage conservation and agreements for water use among customers and “afford the Tribal and non-Tribal entities the same ability to use these mechanisms.”

The “no action” option does not meet the purpose of study but was included because it is required under the National Environmental Policy Act, the announcement said.

In 2026, legal agreements that apportion the river will expire. That means that amid the effects of climate change and more than 20 years of drought, river stakeholders and the federal government have just months to agree what to do.

“We still have a pretty wide gap between us,” Tom Buschatzke, Arizona’s main negotiator on the Colorado River, said in a conference call with reporters. He referred to positions of Upper Basin and Lower Basin states. Tribes including the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona have also been flexing their long-held water rights.

Buschatzke said he saw “some really positive elements” in the alternatives but needed time to review them in detail. “I think anything that could be done to move things forward on a faster track is a good thing,” he said.

Democratic U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper of Colorado said in a statement the alternatives “underscore how serious a situation we’re facing on the Colorado River.”

“The only path forward is a collaborative, seven-state plan to solve the Colorado River crisis without taking this to court,” he said. “Otherwise, we’ll watch the river run dry while we sue each other.”

Wednesday’s announcement came two weeks after Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris lost the election to Republican former President Donald Trump, and two weeks ahead of a key meeting of the involved parties at Colorado River Water Users Association meetings in Las Vegas.

Kyle Roerink, executive director of the Great Basin Water Network advocacy group, said “snapshots” offered in the announcement “underscore the uncertainty that is swirling around future river management as a new administration prepares to take office.”

“The river needs basin-wide curtailments, agreements to make tribes whole, a moratorium on new dams and diversions, commitments for endangered species and new thinking about outdated infrastructure,” he said.

Buschatzke declined to speculate about whether Trump administration officials will pick up where Biden’s leaves off. But Porter, at the Kyl Center, said the announcement “shows an expectation of continuity.”

“The leadership is going to change, but there are a lot of people who have been working on this for a long time who will still be involved in the negotiations and modeling,” she said. 
…

BAKU, Azerbaijan — Human-caused climate change made Atlantic hurricanes about 29 kilometers per hour (18 miles per hour) stronger in the last six years, a new scientific study found Wednesday. 

For most of the storms — 40 of them — the extra oomph from warmer oceans made the storms jump an entire hurricane category, according to the study published in the journal, Environmental Research: Climate. A Category 5 storm causes more than 400 times the damage of a minimal Category 1 hurricane, more than 140 times the damage of a minimal Category 3 hurricane and more than five times the damage of a minimal Category 4 storm, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. 

For three storms, including this month’s Rafael, the climate change factor goosed wind speed so much that the winds increased by two storm categories. 

This isn’t about more storms but increasing power from the worst ones, authors said. 

“We know that the intensity of these storms is causing a lot more catastrophic damage in general,” said lead study author Daniel Gifford, a climate scientist at Climate Central, which does research on global warming. “Damages do scale [up] with the intensity.” 

The effect was especially noticeable in stronger storms, including those that made it to the top of the Saffir-Simpson scale of storm intensity: Category 5, study authors said. The study looked at 2019 to 2023, but the authors then did a quick addition for the named storms this year, all of which had a bump up due to climate change. 

“We had two Category 5 storms here in 2024,” Gifford said. “Our analysis shows that we would have had zero Category 5 storms without human-caused climate change.” 

This year’s three most devastating storms — Beryl, Helene and Milton — increased by 29 kph (18 mph), 26 kph (16 mph) and 39 kph (24 mph) respectively because of climate change, the authors said. A different study by World Weather Attribution had deadly Helene’s wind speed increase by about 20 kph (13 mph), which is close, said Imperial College London climate scientist Friederike Otto, who coordinates the WWA team and praised the Climate Central work. 

“It absolutely makes sense from a fundamental standpoint that what’s going on is we’ve added more energy to the system,” National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration chief Rick Spinrad said at United Nations climate talks in Baku, Azerbaijan. 

“The change is going to manifest in terms of what we’re already seeing. You look at Hurricane Helene, which was massive, 804 km [500 miles] across. We’re going to see changes in terms of the velocity of these storms. We’re going to see changes in terms of Hurricane Milton spawning so many tornadoes.” 

Since 2019, eight storms — 2019’s Humberto, 2020’s Zeta, 2021’s Sam and Larry, 2022’s Earl, 2023’s Franklin and 2024’s Isaac and Rafael — increased by at least 40 kph (25 mph) in wind speed. Humberto and Zeta gained the most: 50 kph (31 mph). 

In 85% of the storms studied in the last six years, the authors saw a fingerprint of climate change in storm strength, Gifford said. 

Warm water is the main fuel of hurricanes. The warmer the Atlantic, Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico get, the more potential energy goes into storms. Other factors — such as high-level crosswinds and dry air — can act to weaken hurricanes. 

The waters in the hurricane area have increased by 1.1 to 1.6 degrees Celsius (2 to 3 degrees Fahrenheit) in general and as much as 2.2 degrees C (4 degrees F) due to climate change, Gifford said. They know this because Climate Central has used scientifically accepted techniques to regularly track how much warmer oceans are because of the burning of coal, oil and natural gas. 

That technique basically uses computer simulations to create a fictional world with no human-caused warming and then compares it to current reality, with the difference being caused by greenhouse gases. They account for other factors, such as the lessening amount of sulfate pollution from marine shipping which had been counteracting a bit of the warming before the skies cleared up more. 

To go from warmer waters to stronger storms, the authors looked at a calculation called potential intensity, which is essentially the speed limit for any given storm based on the environmental conditions around it, Gifford said. 

MIT hurricane expert and meteorology professor Kerry Emanuel, who pioneered potential intensity measurements, wasn’t part of the study but said it makes sense. It shows the increase in storm strength that he predicted would happen 37 years ago, he said. 

Past studies have shown that climate change has made hurricanes intensify quicker, and move slower, which causes even more rain to be dumped.
…

NEW YORK — Distant, ancient galaxies are giving scientists more hints that a mysterious force called dark energy may not be what they thought.

Astronomers know that the universe is being pushed apart at an accelerating rate and they have puzzled for decades over what could possibly be speeding everything up. They theorize that a powerful, constant force is at play, one that fits nicely with the main mathematical model that describes how the universe behaves. But they can’t see it and they don’t know where it comes from, so they call it dark energy.

It is so vast it is thought to make up nearly 70% of the universe — while ordinary matter like all the stars and planets and people make up just 5%.

But findings published earlier this year by an international research collaboration of more than 900 scientists from around the globe yielded a major surprise. As the scientists analyzed how galaxies move they found that the force pushing or pulling them around did not seem to be constant. And the same group published a new, broader set of analyses Tuesday that yielded a similar answer.

“I did not think that such a result would happen in my lifetime,” said Mustapha Ishak-Boushaki, a cosmologist at the University of Texas at Dallas who is part of the collaboration.

Called the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument, it uses a telescope based in Tucson, Arizona to create a three-dimensional map of the universe’s 11-billion-year history to see how galaxies have clustered throughout time and across space. That gives scientists information about how the universe evolved, and where it might be heading.

The map they are building would not make sense if dark energy were a constant force, as it is theorized. Instead, the energy appears to be changing or weakening over time. If that is indeed the case, it would upend astronomers’ standard cosmological model. It could mean that dark energy is very different than what scientists thought — or that there may be something else altogether going on.

“It’s a time of great excitement, and also some head-scratching and confusion,” said Bhuvnesh Jain, a cosmologist at the University of Pennsylvania who is not involved with the research.

The collaboration’s latest finding points to a possible explanation from an older theory: that across billions of years of cosmic history, the universe expanded and galaxies clustered as Einstein’s general relativity predicted.

The new findings aren’t definitive. Astronomers say they need more data to overturn a theory that seemed to fit together so well. They hope observations from other telescopes and new analyses of the new data over the next few years will determine whether the current view of dark energy stands or falls.

“The significance of this result right now is tantalizing,” said Robert Caldwell, a physicist at Dartmouth College who is not involved with the research, “but it’s not like a gold-plated measurement.”

There’s a lot riding on the answer. Because dark energy is the biggest component of the universe, its behavior determines the universe’s fate, explained David Spergel, an astrophysicist and president of the Simons Foundation. If dark energy is constant, the universe will continue to expand, forever getting colder and emptier. If it’s growing in strength, the universe will expand so speedily that it’ll destroy itself in what astronomers call the Big Rip.

“Not to panic. If this is what’s going on, it won’t happen for billions of years,” he said. “But we’d like to know about it.”
…

CHEYENNE, Wyoming — A state judge on Monday struck down Wyoming’s overall ban on abortion and its first-in-the-nation explicit prohibition on the use of medication to end pregnancy. 

Since 2022, Teton County District Judge Melissa Owens has ruled consistently three times to block the laws while they were disputed in court. 

The decision marks another victory for abortion rights advocates after voters in seven states passed measures in support of access. 

One Wyoming law that Owens said violated women’s rights under the state constitution bans abortion except to protect a pregnant woman’s life or in cases involving rape and incest. The other made Wyoming the only state to explicitly ban abortion pills, though other states have instituted de facto bans on the medication by broadly prohibiting abortion. 

The laws were challenged by four women, including two obstetricians, and two nonprofit organizations. One of the groups, Wellspring Health Access, opened as the state’s first full-service abortion clinic in years in April 2023 following an arson attack in 2022. 

“This is a wonderful day for the citizens of Wyoming — and women everywhere who should have control over their own bodies,” Wellspring Health Access President Julie Burkhart said in a statement. 

The recent elections saw voters in Missouri clear the way to undo one of the nation’s most restrictive abortion bans in a series of victories for abortion rights advocates. Florida, Nebraska and South Dakota, meanwhile, defeated similar constitutional amendments, leaving bans in place. 

Abortion rights amendments also passed in Arizona, Colorado, Maryland and Montana. Nevada voters also approved an amendment in support of abortion rights, but they’ll need to pass it again in 2026 for it to take effect. Another that bans discrimination on the basis of “pregnancy outcomes” prevailed in New York. 

The abortion landscape underwent a seismic shift in 2022 when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, a ruling that ended a nationwide right to abortion and cleared the way for bans to take effect in most Republican-controlled states. 

Currently, 13 states are enforcing bans on abortion at all stages of pregnancy, with limited exceptions, and four have bans that kick in at or about six weeks into pregnancy — often before women realize they’re pregnant. 

Nearly every ban has been challenged with a lawsuit. Courts have blocked enforcement of some restrictions, including bans throughout pregnancy in Utah and Wyoming. Judges struck down bans in Georgia and North Dakota in September 2024. Georgia’s Supreme Court ruled the next month that the ban there can be enforced while it considers the case. 

In the Wyoming case, the women and nonprofits who challenged the laws argued that the bans stood to harm their health, well-being and livelihoods, claims disputed by attorneys for the state. They also argued the bans violated a 2012 state constitutional amendment saying competent Wyoming residents have a right to make their own health care decisions. 

As she had done with previous rulings, Owens found merit in both arguments. The abortion bans “will undermine the integrity of the medical profession by hamstringing the ability of physicians to provide evidence-based medicine to their patients,” Owens ruled. 

The abortion laws impede the fundamental right of women to make health care decisions for an entire class of people — those who are pregnant — in violation of the constitutional amendment, Owens ruled.
…

California’s public health department reported a possible case of bird flu in a child with mild respiratory symptoms on Tuesday, but said there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission of the virus and that the child’s family members tested negative.

California officials said they have sent test specimens from the child to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for confirmation.

A CDC spokesperson said the agency is aware of the presumptive positive case of H5 avian influenza, is collaborating with the state’s investigation, and will provide further updates promptly. The agency has said the risk to the general public remains low.

Although human infections in the United States have been rare, bird flu has infected 53 people since April, according to the CDC, most recently a person in Oregon last week tied to a bird flu outbreak in a commercial poultry operation in the state.

In Canada, officials earlier this month reported that a teen infected with bird flu in British Columbia was in critical condition.

The child in California was in daycare with mild symptoms before the illness was reported, the state said.

Local health officials have contacted potentially exposed caregivers and families to check for symptoms and offer preventive treatment and testing if they become symptomatic.

The child and all close family members have been treated with preventive medication, the state said. The child had no known contact with an infected animal, but public health experts are investigating possible exposure to wild birds.

“It’s natural for people to be concerned, and we want to reinforce for parents, caregivers and families that based on the information and data we have, we don’t think the child was infectious,” said California health department director Dr. Tomas Aragon, adding, “and no human-to-human spread of bird flu has been documented in any country for more than 15 years.”

Most U.S. bird flu cases, including 26 in California, have occurred among farm workers working with poultry or dairy cows that were infected with the virus.

Because bird flu viruses can mutate and gain the ability to spread more easily between people, California public health officials said they are monitoring animal and human infections carefully.

The state urged residents to avoid contact with sick or dead wild birds and renewed the warning against consuming raw milk or raw milk products, which have not undergone pasteurization to inactivate the bird flu virus and other harmful pathogens.
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London — As the COP29 climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan enters its final days, there are growing frustrations over the apparent lack of progress toward securing a deal on climate finance, which is seen as a crucial step in reducing emissions and limiting global warming.

Mukhtar Babayev, Azerbaijan’s COP29 president, called on delegates to show more urgency.

“People have told me that they are concerned about the state of the negotiations,” Babayev told delegates Monday. “It’s time for them to move faster. This week we will welcome ministers from around the world as the negotiations reach their final stage.

“Politicians have the power to reach a fair and ambitious deal. They must deliver on this responsibility. They must engage immediately and constructively,” he said.

Climate finance

Money is at the center of the COP29 negotiations — or, in COP terms, climate finance. Who will pay for poorer countries to adapt to climate change and transition away from fossil fuels — and how much will it cost?

It’s hoped that the COP29 meeting will set an ambitious new funding target. Most estimates put the cost of climate finance in excess of $1 trillion every year. It’s reported that many richer nations are reluctant to agree to such an amount.

The current target of $100 billion annually, agreed in 2009, was met only in 2022.

‘Failed promises’

Bolivia’s representative at COP29, Diego Balanza — who chairs a negotiating bloc of developing nations — accused richer nations of a decade of failed promises.

“Our countries are suffering the impacts of climate change due largely to the historical emissions of developed countries. For us as developing countries, our people’s lives, their very survival and their livelihoods, are at stake,” Balanza told delegates in Baku.

He added that most of the climate finance so far has been provided through loans, not grants, which “has adverse implications for the macroeconomic stability of developing countries.”

Slow pace

Many observers have criticized the slow pace of negotiations in Baku. Mohamed Adow, director of the campaign group Power Shift Africa, accused the Azerbaijani hosts of a lack of direction.

“This has been one of the worst COPs — at least, one of the worst first weeks of COPs — that I have attended in the last 15 years,” Adow told VOA. “There has been very limited progress on climate finance and even on the rules around carbon markets and how the world is going to cut emissions.”

‘Theatrics’

Simon Stiell, the United Nations Climate Change executive secretary, on Monday called on parties to “cut the theatrics.”

“There is still a ton of work to do to ensure COP29 delivers. Parties need to be moving much faster towards landing zones. … I’ve been very blunt: climate finance is not charity. It is 100% in every nation’s interest to protect their economies and people from rampant climate impacts. Parties must wrap up less contentious issues early in the week, so there is enough time for the major political decisions,” Stiell said.

Emissions cuts

An ambitious COP29 deal on climate finance is meant to unlock the crucial next stage of negotiations. Ahead of next year’s COP30 in Brazil, all countries are due to deliver action plans on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, so-called ‘nationally determined contributions,’ with the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, a key target of the 2016 Paris Agreement on climate change.

On the current trajectory, scientists estimate the world is heading for a likely catastrophic 2.7°C of warming by the end of the century, which is predicted to cause widespread extreme weather and sea level rise.

Trump shadow

Adow, the director of Power Shift Africa, fears the COP29 negotiations are being overshadowed by the recent U.S. presidential election win for Donald Trump.

Trump pulled the United States out of the Paris Agreement on climate change during his first term. His successor, Joe Biden, re-entered the deal on his first day in office.

“I think the cloud hovering over these talks is the known unknown, around the election of Donald Trump and what the Trump administration is going to do. So, you have the rich world, that is actually hiding behind Trump — and not wanting to respond to the calls that we’ve had from the developing countries on the US$1.3 trillion that they require for climate finance,” Adow told VOA.

The COP29 talks are due to close on Friday. The deadline could be extended if a deal is in sight.
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NAIROBI, KENYA — The spread of a mosquito in East Africa that thrives in urban areas and is immune to insecticide is fueling a surge in malaria that could reverse decades of progress against the disease, experts say.

Africa accounted for about 95% of the 249 million malaria cases and 608,000 deaths worldwide in 2022, according to the most recent data from the World Health Organization (WHO), which said children under 5 accounted for 80% of deaths in the region.

But the emergence of an invasive species of mosquito on the continent could massively increase those numbers. 

Anopheles stephensi is native to parts of South Asia and the Middle East but was spotted for the first time in the tiny Horn of Africa state of Djibouti in 2012.

Djibouti had all but eradicated malaria only to see it make a slow but steady return over the following years, hitting more than 70,000 cases in 2020. 

Then stephensi arrived in neighboring Ethiopia and WHO says it is key to an “unprecedented surge,” from 4.1 million malaria cases and 527 deaths last year to 7.3 million cases and 1,157 deaths between January 1 and October 20, 2024.

Unlike other species which are seasonal and prefer rural areas, stephensi thrives year-round in urban settings, breeding in man-made water storage tanks, roof gutters or even air conditioning units.

It appears to be highly resistant to insecticides, and bites earlier in the evening than other carriers. That means bed nets — up to now the prime weapon against malaria — may be much less effective.

“The invasion and spread of Anopheles stephensi has the potential to change the malaria landscape in Africa and reverse decades of progress we’ve made towards malaria control,” Meera Venkatesan, malaria division chief for USAID, told AFP.

More research is needed

The fear is that stephensi will infest dense cities like Mombasa on Kenya’s Indian Ocean coast and Sudan’s capital Khartoum, with one 2020 study warning it could eventually reach 126 million city-dwellers across Africa.

Only last month, Egypt was declared malaria-free by WHO after a century-long battle against the disease — a status that could be threatened by stephensi’s arrival.

Much remains unknown, however.

Stephensi was confirmed as present in Kenya in late 2022, but has so far stayed in hotter, dryer areas without reaching the high-altitude capital, Nairobi. 

“We don’t yet fully understand the biology and behavior of this mosquito,” Charles Mbogo, president of the Pan-African Mosquito Control Association, told AFP.

“Possibly it is climate-driven and requires high temperatures, but much more research is needed.”

He called for increased funding for capturing and testing mosquitos, and for educating the public on prevention measures such as covering water receptacles.

Multiplying threats

The spread of stephensi could dovetail with other worrying trends, including increased evidence of drug resistant malaria recorded in Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania and Eritrea.

“The arrival of resistance is imminent,” said Dorothy Achu, WHO’s head of tropical and vector-borne diseases in Africa. 

WHO is working with countries to diversify treatment programmes to delay resistance, she said. 

A new malaria variant is also evading tests used to diagnose the disease. 

“The increased transmission that stephensi is driving could potentially help accelerate the spread of other threats, such as drug resistance or another mutation in the parasite that leads it to be less detectable by our most widely-used diagnostics,” said Venkatesan at USAID.

Another added challenge is the lack of coordination between African governments. 

Achu said WHO is working on “a more continental approach”. 

But Mbogo in Kenya said “more political will” was needed. 

“We share information as scientists with colleagues in neighbouring countries,” he said. “But we need to reach the higher level. We need cross-border collaborations, data-sharing.”
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Cancer patients and advocates are urging authorities in Zimbabwe to ensure cancer centers have lifesaving equipment needed to properly treat patients. Some patients say public hospitals do not have working machines to provide radiotherapy. Columbus Mavhunga has more from Harare. (Camera: Columbus Mavhunga)
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warsaw, poland — Poland’s health authorities on Monday urged polio vaccinations for children after the virus was detected in Warsaw’s sewage during regular tests this month.

The state Main Sanitary Inspectorate in a statement said the presence of the virus does not necessarily mean people have been sick, but those who have not been vaccinated against polio could be at risk. The vaccinations are free in Poland for people under 19.

New measures also include more intensive testing of Warsaw’s sewage, renewing the vaccination stocks and updating the list of children still unvaccinated. Polio is most often spread by contact with waste from an infected person or, less frequently, through contaminated water or food.

The polio virus mostly affects children under 5. Most people infected don’t have symptoms, but in severe cases, polio can invade the nervous system and cause paralysis within hours, according to the World Health Organization. It estimates that 1 in 200 polio cases results in permanent paralysis, usually of the legs.

Poland’s inspectorate said about 86% of the country’s 3-year-olds have been vaccinated against polio and that vaccinating at least 95% of children can prevent the spread of the virus. Poland has seen the rise of anti-vaccination movements among some parents, which has worried health officials.

The statement said Poland’s last case of polio was in 1984.
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