Boris Johnson ‘not attracted’ to taxes on food to cut sugar and salt

EMILY BEAMENT, PA ENVIRONMENT CORRESPONDENT

15 July 2021

Boris Johnson has said he is not attracted to proposals for taxes on food intended to cut sugar and salt which could hit “hardworking people”.

The independent National Food Strategy called for a sugar and salt reformulation tax as a key part of efforts to transform the nation’s diet to include less sugar, salt and meat to protect health and the environment.

The report said some money raised by the tax should be spent on addressing the inequalities around food, by expanding free school meals, funding holiday activity and food clubs, and providing healthy food to low-income families.

It said what we eat, and how it is produced, is doing “terrible damage”, contributing to 64,000 deaths a year in England, costing the economy £74 billion, and driving wildlife loss and climate change – which in turn put food security at risk.

To view this content, you'll need to update your privacy settings.Please click here to do so.

Food entrepreneur Henry Dimbleby, who led the National Food Strategy review, said action is needed to break the “junk food cycle” between consumers and food companies.

He told BBC Breakfast that taxes on sugar recommended by his report are unlikely to have an impact on ordinary consumers, with the aim being to drive down the amount of sugar in sweet foods, rather than simply charge more for them.

He said there needs to be a change from thinking that people need to exercise and exert willpower to tackle food-related disease – which he said is not true, as it is an interaction between companies’ commercial incentives and people’s appetites.

“We find these foods that they’re marketing delicious, they don’t make us as full as quickly – we eat more, they invest more.

“You’re not going to break this junk food cycle … unless you tackle it directly, and that is what we are recommending with the sugar and salt reformulation tax,” he said.

However, the Prime Minister indicated he was not in favour of the move in a question-and-answer session following a speech in Coventry.

Mr Johnson said: “I will study the report. I think it is an independent report. I think there are doubtless some good ideas in it.

“I am not, I must say, attracted to the idea of extra taxes on hard working people.”

The report calls for more fruit and veg consumption (Kirsty O’Connor/PA)

The report also urges the Government to run trials giving GPs the option to prescribe fruit and vegetables for patients suffering from poor diets or food insecurity while food education should be central to the national curriculum, to reverse declines in cooking skills and knowledge.

While the report says meat consumption should be cut by 30% in a decade to cut emissions and free up land for storing carbon and preserving nature, it rules out a meat tax as politically impossible and unpopular.

Instead, the review urges the Government to “nudge” consumers into changing their meat-eating habits, for example by investing in alternative proteins.

It also calls on ministers to make sure the budget for payments for farmers to deliver environmental benefits, such as restoring nature, preventing floods and improving soils, is guaranteed until at least 2029.

And the payments need to be generous enough for land managers to make the switch from conventional farming to more sustainable options.

Food standards must be protected in any new trade deals to safeguard British farmers from unfair competition or even being bankrupted, and to prevent environmental damage from food production exported abroad, it urged.

To view this content, you'll need to update your privacy settings.Please click here to do so.

National Farmers’ Union president Minette Batters said the report should be a wake-up call that people need to value the food they eat, but warned that distinctions need to be made between sustainable, nutritious, grass-fed British meat and cheap imports.

“This strategy says major reform is needed of the food system. I would suggest we first look at the actions our Government is taking by agreeing to trade deals that welcomes in imported meat in limitless amounts,” she said.

The report warned of the huge toll of disease caused by poor diets while the food we eat accounts for around a quarter of greenhouse gases and is the leading driver of habitat and wildlife loss.

In the UK, agriculture alone accounts for 10% of emissions, while contributing less than 1% of economic output, and livestock accounts for 85% of the farmland that feeds the UK both here and abroad, some of which domestically must be freed up for climate and nature initiatives such as creating woodlands.

To meet existing Government targets on health, climate and nature, by 2032 fruit and vegetable consumption will need to increase by 30% and fibre by 50%.

At the same time, consumption of food high in saturated fat, salt and sugar will have to go down by 25%, and meat consumption should reduce by 30%.

The National Food Strategy estimates its recommendations will cost around £1.4 billion a year and bring in £2.9 billion to £3.4 billion a year in direct revenue to the Treasury, with a long-term economic benefit of up to £126 billion.

Some farmland will need to be freed up for carbon storage and nature, the report says (Emily Beament/PA)

The report has been backed by campaigners, including TV chef Jamie Oliver who said: “If both Government and businesses are willing to take bold action and prioritise the public’s health, then we have an incredible opportunity to create a much fairer and more sustainable food system for all families.”

Shadow environment secretary Luke Pollard said the report is a massive wake-up call to fix Britain’s broken food system, but accused the Government of being incapable of ending the food bank scandal and obesity crisis, and making trade deals that betray British farmers.

COVID-19 takes toll on Catholic clergy in hard-hit countries

By LUIS ANDRES HENAO and JESSIE WARDARSKI

1 of 5
In this April 18, 2021, photo provided by the Rev. Cedric Prakash, priests pray over the body of the late Rev. Jerry Sequeira before his cremation in Ahmedabad, India. Sequeira is one of more than 500 Catholic priests and nuns who have died from COVID-19 in India according to the Rev. Suresh Mathew, a priest at Holy Redeemer's Church in New Delhi and the editor of the church-run Indian Currents magazine. (Cedric Prakash via AP)

The coronavirus has taken a heavy toll among Roman Catholic priests and nuns around the world, killing hundreds of them in a handful of the hardest-hit countries alone.

The dead include an Italian parish priest who brought the cinema to his small town in the 1950s; a beloved New York pastor who ministered to teens and the homeless; a nun in India who traveled home to bury her father after he died from COVID-19 only to contract the virus herself.

In some countries, most of those lost were older and lived in nursing or retirement homes where they didn’t regularly engage in person-to-person pastoral work. Other places, though, saw a bigger hit to active clergy, accelerating a decades-old decline in the ranks that Pope Francis in 2017 called a “ hemorrhage.”

Coronavirus deaths among clergy are not just a Catholic problem, said Andrew Chesnut, chair of Catholic studies at Virginia Commonwealth University, with faith leaders across denominations having elevated exposure rates as “spiritual front-line workers” ministering to the sick and dying in hospitals and nursing homes.

But the impact is particularly acute for a church that is experiencing a “perennial priest shortage” in most countries amid difficulties in recruiting seminarians, he added. And with Catholicism placing a greater emphasis on the role of the priest compared with some other denominations, the losses are keenly felt.

“If you already have so few priests and they’re being decimated by COVID-19,” Chesnut said, “of course that affects the church’s ability to minister to its parishioners.”

INDIA

Catholics are a small minority in India, comprising about 20 million of the 1.38 billion people in the mostly Hindu nation, according to the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India.

But soaring reports of deaths among the clergy so alarmed the Rev. Suresh Mathew during a devastating second wave of the coronavirus this spring that he began emailing bishops nationwide, asking for daily updates. Many mornings, he woke up to multiple alerts.

“It was a shock,” said Mathew, a priest at Holy Redeemer’s Church in New Delhi.

Roughly two priests and nuns were dying every day in April. The rate doubled in May, when Mathew recorded the deaths of 129 nuns and 116 priests.

The worst of the pandemic has abated in India, but not before he compiled a list of more than 500 priests and nuns lost since mid-April.

One of those losses hit close to home: Sister Josephine Ekka of the Surya Nagar convent at his parish. She had traveled to bury her father in the village of Jharsuguda in eastern India, only to fall ill herself.

Ekka joined the community in September 2020 amid the pandemic and became responsible for the liturgy and organizing the choir at a time when church attendance was limited. She was remembered for her kindness and devotion to the poor.

In the western state of Gujarat, where vaccinations were stalled by a powerful cyclone that hit as the pandemic surged, the Rev. Cedric Prakash of St. Ignatius Loyola Church has been mourning five priests.

They include the Rev. Jerry Sequeira, a close friend who on Easter Sunday baptized a newborn whose father died of COVID-19. A day later Sequeira found out that he, too, had contracted the virus.

“His attitude was that ‘nothing is going to happen to me, God is good,’” Prakash said. “He was always available to people.”

THE UNITED STATES

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops says there is no comprehensive count of how many priests and nuns are among the more than 600,000 people who have died from COVID-19 in the United States.

It’s well-established, however, that the toll includes dozens upon dozens of nuns who lived in congregate settings across the country, from upstate New York to Milwaukee and Detroit suburbs and beyond. Many were older retirees who dedicated their lives to teaching or nursing.

One order alone, the Felician Sisters, lost 21 nuns at four convent s.

“Faith and hope both have played a role in my life as I watch the devastating news of loss,” said Sister Mary Jeanine Morozowich of Greensburg, Pennsylvania. “I couldn’t go on without believing that there is some purpose, some reason for all of this.”

The Rev. Jorge Ortiz-Garay of St. Brigid Church in Brooklyn, New York, died March 27, 2020, and is believed to be the first priest in the U.S. to fall to COVID-19. The 49-year-old, who oversaw the diocese’s annual Our Lady of Guadalupe Feast Day and pilgrimage for thousands of attendees, was remembered by congregants for his devotion to the community and leading youth groups.

Also among the lives lost was Reginald Foster, 81, a Wisconsin-born priest who served for four decades as one of the Vatican’s top experts on Latin. He died at a Milwaukee nursing home on Christmas Day.

ITALY

Italy was one of the hottest of hot spots early on in the pandemic.

Through March of this year, 292 mostly older diocesan priests died of the virus, according to news outlets of the Italian bishops conference.

SIR, the conference’s news agency, noted that the toll nearly equaled the 299 new ordinations in Italy for all of 2021.

Among the dead was the Rev. Raffaele Falco, a priest in Ercolano, near Naples. The 77-year-old was known for using his work to combat the Naples-area crime syndicate, the Camorra.

Also dying was the Rev. Franco Minard i, 94, who arrived in Ozzano Taro in 1950 and served as its priest for 70 years. So committed to rekindling the faith in young people, he arranged for the construction of a theater where he projected the farming town’s first movies. His legacy of outreach also includes a tennis court and a game room.

Sister Maria Ortensia Turati, 88, was one of several nuns who died at a convent in the northern town of Tortona. Trained as a social worker, she served as mother general of the Little Missionary Sisters of Charity from 1993 to 2005 and founded missions in the Philippines and Ivory Coast.

BRAZIL

Through March of this year, at least 1,400 priests in Brazil contracted COVID-19 and at least 65 of them plus three bishops died, according to a commission linked to the National Conference of Bishops.

Among them was Cardinal Eusebio Scheid, 88. He became Rio de Janeiro’s archbishop in 2001 and was named cardinal two years later by then-Pope John Paul II. In his 60 years in the church, he was known for his deep interest in the quality of the education for priests.

Scheid was also known for a comment some understood as political, others as a gaffe; he referred to then-President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva as “chaotic” instead of Catholic. After a minor uproar, Scheid softened his tone, saying Silva sounded “confusing” on matters of faith.

___

Associated Press writers Frances D’Emilio in Rome, Peter Orsi in Truckee, California, Mauricio Savarese in Rio de Janeiro, and Giovanna Dell’Orto in Minneapolis contributed to this report.

__

Associated Press religion coverage receives support from the Lilly Endowment through The Conversation U.S. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

DEJA VU
WHO chief says it was ‘premature’ to rule out COVID lab leak
By FRANK JORDANS and MARIA CHENG

FILE - In this Monday, May 24, 2021 file photo, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO), speaks at the WHO headquarters, in Geneva, Switzerland. The head of the World Health Organization said Thursday, July 15 that he is asking China to be more transparent as scientists search for the origins of the coronavirus and acknowledged it was premature to rule out that the pandemic may have been linked to a laboratory leak. (Laurent Gillieron/Keystone via AP, File)


BERLIN (AP) — The head of the World Health Organization acknowledged it was premature to rule out a potential link between the COVID-19 pandemic and a laboratory leak, and he said Thursday he is asking China to be more transparent as scientists search for the origins of the coronavirus.

In a rare departure from his usual deference to powerful member countries, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said getting access to raw data had been a challenge for the international team that traveled to China earlier this year to investigate the source of COVID-19. The first human cases were identified in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

Tedros told reporters that the U.N. health agency based in Geneva is “asking actually China to be transparent, open and cooperate, especially on the information, raw data that we asked for at the early days of the pandemic.”

He said there had been a “premature push” to rule out the theory that the virus might have escaped from a Chinese government lab in Wuhan - undermining WHO’s own March report, which concluded that a laboratory leak was “extremely unlikely.”

“I was a lab technician myself, I’m an immunologist, and I have worked in the lab, and lab accidents happen,” Tedros said. “It’s common.”

In recent months, the idea that the pandemic started somehow in a laboratory — and perhaps involved an engineered virus — has gained traction, especially with President Joe Biden ordering a review of U.S. intelligence to assess the possibility in May.

China has struck back aggressively, arguing that attempts to link the origins of COVID-19 to a lab are politically motivated and has suggested that the outbreak might have started abroad. At WHO’s annual meeting of health ministers in the spring, China said that the future search for COVID-19′s origins should continue — in other countries.

Most scientists suspect that the coronavirus originated in bats, but the exact route by which it first jumped into people - via an intermediary animal or in some other way - has not yet been determined. It typically takes decades to narrow down the natural source of an animal virus like Ebola or SARS.

Tedros said that “checking what happened, especially in our labs, is important” to nailing down if the pandemic had any laboratory links.

“We need information, direct information on what the situation of this lab was before and at the start of the pandemic,” the WHO chief said, adding that China’s cooperation was critical. “If we get full information, we can exclude (the lab connection).”

Throughout the pandemic, Tedros has repeatedly praised China for its speed and transparency despite senior WHO officials internally griping about obfuscation from their Chinese counterparts.

Once rivals, Biden and Sanders are now partners in power
By LISA MASCARO

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., finishes talking to reporters outside the West Wing of the White House in Washington, Monday, July 12, 2021, following his meeting with President Joe Biden. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Talkers both, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders stayed for an hour in the Oval Office, just two former rivals for the White House now acting as potential partners, negotiating a compromise both could live with.

The centrist president listened as the liberal senator spoke. Sanders passionately made his case that Biden’s big infrastructure investment should go even bigger — and include his own longtime goal of dental, hearing and vision benefits for older Americans on Medicare. The president gave his full backing, according to a senior White House aide and another person familiar with the private session, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe a private meeting.

The deal was the product of mutual trust and common interest — notably to help the working class, but also to show that government can work and perhaps to restore some faith in democracy after the turbulent Trump era.

“We are making progress in moving forward with the most consequential piece of legislation passed for working people since the 1930s,” Sanders told The Associated Press a few days later, as Biden made his way to Capitol Hill to rally senators on the plan.

Theirs is an unlikely yet understandable partnership, a president who won over American voters with a calmly reassuring nod to traditional governing, and a democratic socialist senator who twice came close to winning the presidential nomination with what was once viewed as a wildly idealistic agenda. Sanders is now chair of the Senate Budget Committee.

Together, they are trying to unite the political factions of progressives and centrists in the sprawling Democratic Party, which controls Congress by only the narrowest of margins in the House and a 50-50 Senate, with no votes to spare around the president’s $3.5 trillion national rebuilding proposal.

In their sights is a legislative feat on par with Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal or Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. For two political leaders in the twilight of decadeslong careers, it is the chance of a lifetime and the stuff of legacies.

“We’re going to get this done,” Biden said Wednesday as he entered the private lunch room at the Capitol.

Biden encouraged the senators to think of the good they could do for people across America, investing in places like Scranton, Pennsylvania, where he was born, who feel that the party is not in touch with working people’s pain.

The president gave a nod to Sanders, who noted their past rivalry and yet spoke with similar urgency about the moment before them — how the future of democracy rests with how well they can connect with people who feel the government has forgotten them.

When it came time for Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to call on senators who had raised their hands to speak, there were no pointed questions or objections, only enthusiasm, according to a person in the room who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private meeting.

Senators emerged enthralled by the possibility of doing something big for the country.

“Truly transformative,” Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., said, using a word both Biden and Sanders now share.

The relationship between Biden and Sanders goes back years, the president having already spent decades in the Senate by the time the Vermont lawmaker was elected in 2006.

While Biden was the ultimate senator’s senator, Sanders has always been an outsider on Capitol Hill, a declared independent, rather than member of the Democratic Party, with his rumpled suits, gruff demeanor and unrelenting focus on liberal causes.

Ask Sanders any question, on almost any topic, and his answers are almost always the same — it’s time for the government to stop catering to the rich and powerful and instead focus on the working people of this country.

Once seen as outlandish, Sanders’ views have captivated millions of Americans who filled arenas to hear him speak, particularly after the Great Recession and amid a growing awareness of the nation’s gaping inequality. He almost won the party’s presidential nomination in 2016, but was defeated by Hillary Clinton, and again in 2020, before he lost to Biden.

In returning to the Senate, Sanders quickly became a focal point of Republicans opposed to Biden’s agenda. The president intends to finance his plan with tax hikes on corporations and Americans making more than $400,000 a year. Republicans see Sanders as an influencer, alongside Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and other prominent progressives, pushing the president to liberal extremes.

“The president may have won the nomination, but Bernie Sanders won the argument,” Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said recently back home in Kentucky, on the same day he said he was ”100% focused” on stopping Biden’s agenda.

But in developing the investment package with the president, Sanders showed another side of his skill set: that of a pragmatic legislator.

Word circulated Monday that the two were huddled in the Oval Office, a key moment as Democrats were struggling to build consensus. Biden’s jobs and families plans total more than $4 trillion in traditional public works and human infrastructure investments. Sanders had presented a bolder $6 trillion proposal.

Sanders had been imploring his colleagues not to focus on price tags but rather on priorities — helping the middle class, fighting climate change, aiding older adults. He had also been insisting that the wealthy and large corporations pay their fair share in taxes. It is the same argument inside the rooms as it is in the arenas, senators say.

“The meeting was substantive, warm, and friendly — which also describes the nature of their relationship going back years,” said White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates. The president values his skilled leadership, he said.

A bipartisan group of senators is compiling a slimmer $1 trillion package of roads and other public works spending.

But with Republicans opposed in lockstep to Biden’s broader proposal, Democrats are pressing ahead on the more robust package they could pass on their own, under special budget rules of 51 votes for passage rather than the 60 typically needed to overcome objections from a filibuster.

If Biden, Sanders and Schumer can keep all 50 Democratic senators united, Vice President Kamala Harris can cast a tiebreaking vote. Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi has a similarly slim margin in the House.

Democratic Sen. Jon Tester, a centrist Montana farmer, is not yet supporting the president’s broader plan, but said Sanders often advocates for things that are “common sense.”

While acknowledging that Sanders sometimes pushes the envelope further than he’s comfortable with, Tester said, “He’s trying to make it so the little guy’s got a shot, which is, you know, what Democrats are for — at least that’s what I’m for. I want to make sure the little guy has a shot.”

Hungary: Writers, bookstores brace for ban on LGBT content

By JUSTIN SPIKE

1 of 7

Costumers read in a bookstore in Budapest, Tuesday, July 13, 2021. A recent Hungarian law that prohibits “depicting or promoting” homosexuality or sex reassignment to minors has some bookstores in Hungary placing notices at their entrances, warning customers over books containing “non-traditional content.” Some writers and publishers say the controversial law narrows free thought and expression in literature - and are uncertain over whether works that depict homosexual themes will require labeling to keep them from reaching minors under 18. (AP Photo/Bela Szandelszky)

BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — Some bookstores in Hungary placed notices at their entrances this week telling customers that they sell “non-traditional content.” The signs went up in response to a new law that prohibits “depicting or promoting” homosexuality and gender transitions in material accessible to children.

While some writers, publishers and booksellers say the law curtails free thought and expression in Hungary, the country’s second-largest bookstore chain, Lira Konyv, posted the advisory notices to be safe. The new prohibition took effect last week, but the government has not issued official guidance on how or to whom it will be applied and enforced.

“The word ‘depicts’ is so general that it could include anything. It could apply to Shakespeare’s sonnets or Sappho’s poems, because those depict homosexuality,” Krisztian Nyary, the creative director for Lira Konyv, said of the legislation passed by Hungary’s parliament last month.

The law, which also prohibits LGBT content in school education programs, has many in Hungary’s literary community puzzled, if not on edge, unsure if they would face prosecution if minors end up with books that contain plots, characters or information discussing sexual orientation or gender identity.

Hungary’s populist government insists that the law, part of a broader statute that also increases criminal penalties for pedophilia and creates a searchable database of sex offenders, is necessary to protect children.

But critics, including high-ranking European Union officials, say the measure conflates LGBT people with pedophiles and is another example of Hungarian government policies and rhetoric that marginalize individuals who identity as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer.

Last week, a government office in the capital of Budapest announced it had fined Lira Konyv $830 for failing to clearly label a children’s book that depicts families headed by same-sex parents.

The office said the bookstore broke consumer protection rules by failing to indicate that the book contained “content which deviates from the norm.”

The fine, Nyary said, set a precedent for further potential sanctions against publishers and booksellers. With the threat of further penalties looming, all of Lira Konyv’s roughly 90 bookstores will now carry customer warnings that read, “This store sells books with non-traditional content.”

Noemi Kiss, the author of several novellas that address contemporary social problems and feature some characters that are not straight or whose gender identity does not match the one they were assigned at birth, said she supports parts of the law that are intended to stop pedophilia and to protect children from pornographic content.

But she called making literature off-limits based on whether it contains LGBT themes “absurd” and “a limitation of freedom of opinion and expression.”

“Based on what will writers be categorized? If (an author) writes a gay story, will they be completely discredited, or shall we completely rewrite all of world literature?” Kiss said.

The EU’s executive commission launched two legal actions against Hungary on Thursday over the new law and in response to earlier labeling requirements for children’s books that “display patterns of behavior that differ from traditional gender roles” — though authorities did not make clear what non-traditional gender roles entail.

“Hungary restricts the freedom of expression of authors and book publishers, and discriminates on grounds of sexual orientation in an unjustified way,” the European Commission said in a statement, adding that the government had not provided “any justification as to why exposure of children to LGBTIQ content would be detrimental to their well-being.”

Along with outlawing LGBT content for children, the law also prohibits depicting “sexuality for its own sake” to young audiences - a proscription that Nyary said could arguably apply to the majority of titles Lira Konyv sells.

“If someone wanted to, they could report three-quarters of world literature based on this definition,” he said.

Hungary’s government did not respond to a request for comment.

Nyary says he is compiling an anthology of classic literature that contain LGBT themes. The collection of stories, poetry and plays will include writings by Homer, Shakespeare and Sappho, among others — and will come marked with an 18+ sticker to indicate only adults should read it.

“We want to show what this law prohibits young people from accessing,” Nyary said.

Mark Mezei, a novelist in Budapest who has published a book featuring a lesbian relationship, says that while he believes established authors will not practice self-censorship, the new law could “knock the pen out of the hands” of young wordsmiths and stunt a new generation of Hungarian writers.

“If they find that they are facing huge resistance to their early work, it can certainly set them back in the creative process or even push them away from their calling,” he said.

Mezei said he is likely to simply ignore the law, insisting that authors must “create and live autonomously.”

“I think interfering in people’s private lives is one of the attributes of a governing power. But the really good works are born one way or another,” he said. “They’ll be on the shelves of libraries when the current powers are just a footnote in the pages of history books.”

LIKE CALIFORNIA AND QUEBEC 

China, moving cautiously, starts carbon trading market

1 of 3
The sun sets near a coal-fired power plant on the Yangtze River in Nantong in eastern China's Jiangsu province on Dec. 12, 2018. Chinese power companies bid for credits to emit carbon dioxide and other climate-changing gases as trading on the first national carbon exchange began Friday, July 16, 2021 in a step meant to help curb worsening pollution. (Chinatopix via AP)

BEIJING (AP) — Chinese power companies bid for credits to emit carbon dioxide and other climate-changing gases as trading on the first national carbon exchange began Friday in a step meant to help curb worsening pollution.

The official Xinhua News Agency said the experimental first phase of carbon trading at the Shanghai Environment and Energy Exchange includes some 2,000 companies in the power industry that produce about 40% of China’s emissions.

Over time, other major emitters will be added, such as airlines, the building materials industry and iron and steel makers.

China is the biggest carbon emitter, but President Xi Jinping said last September that output should peak in 2030 and then decline. He said China should achieve “carbon neutrality,” or zero total output after measures to remove carbon or offset emissions are counted, by 2060.

The ruling Communist Party has resisted adopting any binding limits on carbon emissions, saying China has to focus first on economic development.

At the Shanghai exchange, companies will be assigned emissions quotas and can sell the surplus if their output comes in under that level, Xinhua said. The goal is to create financial incentives for companies to reduce emissions.

China has had regional carbon trading markets as pilot projects for several years.

Earlier, European power utilities and other companies paid for Chinese polluters to add wind, hydro and solar generating capacity in exchange for being allowed to increase their own emissions. The European Union ended that after it failed to slow the rise of Chinese emissions.

The carbon market is unlikely to deliver immediate reductions, said Cory Combs, an analyst with consultancy Trivium China.

“This first year is about getting the process working,” he said on a webinar this week. “The goal is to get this thing right, because if they get it right, then for the next 40, 50 . . . years to come, this can be a huge player.”

The European Union unveiled a proposed revamp of its emissions trading program this week as part of sweeping legislation to cut emissions of gases that cause global warming.

Women’s groups call for UN peacekeeping force in Afghanistan
By EDITH M. LEDERER

Women wait inside a factory to get their oxygen cylinders refilled from a privately owned oxygen factory, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Saturday, June 19, 2021. Health officials say Afghanistan is fast running out of oxygen as a deadly third surge of COVID worsen. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul)

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Women’s rights supporters and faith leaders are calling for a United Nations peacekeeping force for Afghanistan to protect hard-won gains for women over the last two decades as American and NATO forces complete their pullout from the war-torn country and a Taliban offensive gains control over more territory.

Under the Taliban, women were not allowed to go to school, work outside the home or leave their house without a male escort. And though they still face many challenges in the country’s male-dominated society, Afghan women have increasingly stepped into powerful positions in numerous fields — and many fear the departure of international troops and a Taliban takeover could take away their gains.

In a May 14 letter obtained by The Associated Press, 140 civil society and faith leaders from the U.S., Afghanistan and other countries “dedicated to the education and rights of women in Afghanistan” asked U.S. President Joe Biden to call for a U.N. peacekeeping force “to ensure that the cost of U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan is not paid for in the lives of schoolgirls.”

The letter also asked the U.S. to increase humanitarian and development aid to Afghanistan “as an important security strategy” to strengthen women and girls and religious minorities like the Hazaras. Three bombings at a high school in a Hazara neighborhood in Kabul on May 8 killed nearly 100 people, all of them Hazara and most of them young girls just leaving class.

The signatories blamed the Trump administration for failing to honor a U.N. Security Council resolution adopted in 2000 demanding equal participation for women in activities promoting global peace “by refusing to insist that women were part of the peace talks” with the Taliban.

Sakena Yacoobi, founder of the Afghan Institute of Learning which runs schools across 16 provinces, is quoted in the letter as saying: “For 20 years the West told the women of Afghanistan they are free. Free to learn, to grow, to be a human being independent of men’s expectations of who they are.”

“What the Taliban did in the 1990s was bad enough,” she said. “What will they do now, with a generation of women taught to expect freedom? It will be one of the greatest crimes against humanity in history. Help us save them. Please. Help us save who we can.”

Among the signatories of the letter were Yacoobi; feminist activist and writer Gloria Steinem; former U.N. deputy secretary-general Mark Malloch Brown who now heads the Open Society Institute; Filmmaker and philanthropist Abigail Disney; former UNICEF executive director Carol Bellamy; Betty Reardon, the International Institute on Peace Education’s founding director emeritus; The Rev. Dr. Chloe Breyer, executive director of The Interfaith Center of New York; Masuda Sultan, co-founder of Women for Afghan Women; and Nasir Ahmad Kayhan, UNESCO program manager in Afghanistan.

In April the Taliban promised that women “can serve their society in the education, business, health and social fields while maintaining correct Islamic hijab.” It promised girls would have the right to choose their own husbands, but offered few other details and didn’t guarantee women could participate in politics or have freedom to move unaccompanied by a male relative.

Deborah Lyons, the U.N. special envoy for Afghanistan, told the Security Council on June 22 that “preserving the rights of women remains a paramount concern and must not be used as a bargaining chip at the negotiating table.”

In a follow-up letter on July 12 to U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, a wider international group expressed deep concern “for the lives and well-being of the people of Afghanistan, especially women and girls now under great threat” and called for a U.N. peacekeeping mission to deploy to Afghanistan “as soon as practically possible.”

The signatories said they are convinced the 2000 Security Council resolution obliges U.N. member states “to protect women in such circumstances.”

The United Nations has a political mission in Afghanistan. A U.N. peacekeeping mission would have to be approved by the Security Council, where the five permanent members -- the U.S., Russia, China, Britain and France -- have veto power.

The letter to the U.S. ambassador said similar messages were being sent to other U.N. ambassadors from citizens in their countries asking for a peacekeeping operation. It asked Thomas-Greenfield to “take action toward the initiation of a peacekeeping operation in Afghanistan.”

A U.S. mission spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment on the call for a U.N. peacekeeping force, instead stressing Thursday that the Biden administration will continue to support Afghan forces and U.S. “diplomatic, humanitarian and economic engagement in the region.”

“We are putting our full weight behind diplomatic efforts to reach a peace agreement between the Taliban and the Afghan government,” said the spokesperson, who could not be named, adding the U.S. remains the largest aid donor to Afghanistan and continues to support the U.N. political mission known as UNAMA.

Videos: Protests, gunfire in oil-rich, restive Iran province

By JON GAMBREL
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Protesters angry over water shortages marched through streets late Thursday in an oil-rich, restive province in southwestern Iran and police apparently fire weapons to disperse the crowds, online videos showed.

It wasn’t immediately clear if anyone had been wounded or arrested in the protests across multiple cities in Khuzestan province, including its capital, Ahvaz. Iranian state media had not reported on the unrest as of early Friday morning.

Videos showed people setting fire to tires, blocking roadways in anger. Anti-riot police in helmets and camouflage fatigues scuffled with demonstrators. Police also fired shotguns in one video, though it wasn’t clear if it was live ammunition or so-called “beanbag rounds” designed to be less lethal.

Those in the videos chanted in Arabic, demanding others to join them. The province is home to ethnic Arabs who complain of discrimination by Iran’s Shiite theocracy.

Arab separatists long have operated in Khuzestan, which Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein tried to seize in his 1980s war with Iran. They’ve blown up oil pipelines in the past and have been blamed for attacks including a 2018 assault on a military parade that killed at least 25 people in Ahvaz.

Water worries in the past have sent angry demonstrators into the streets in Iran. The country has faced rolling blackouts for weeks now, in part over what authorities describe as a drought striking the nation. Precipitation had decreased by almost 50% in the last year, leaving dams with dwindling water supplies to fuel the country

The protests in Khuzestan province come as Iran struggles through repeated waves of infections in the coronavirus pandemic and as thousands of workers in its oil industry have launched strikes for better wages and conditions.

Iran’s economy also has struggled under U.S. sanctions since then-President Donald Trump’s 2018 decision to unilaterally withdraw America from Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers, crashing the value of the Islamic Republic’s rial currency.

CLIMATE EMERGENCY PHOTO ESSAY
Europe floods: search for missing goes on as toll tops 90

By FRANK JORDANS

1 of 16
A regional train sits in the flood waters at the local station in Kordel, Germany, Thursday July 15, 2021 after it was flooded by the high waters of the Kyll river. (Sebastian Schmitt/dpa via AP)


BERLIN (AP) — The death toll from devastating floods across parts of western Germany and Belgium rose above 90 on Friday, as the search continued for hundreds of people still unaccounted for.

Authorities in the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate said 50 people had died there, including at least nine residents of an assisted living facility for people with disabilities.

In neighboring North Rhine-Westphalia state officials put the death toll at 30, but warned that the figure could rise further. Some 1,300 people were still reported missing, though authorities said efforts to contact them could be hampered by disrupted roads and phone connections.

In a provisional tally, the Belgian death toll has risen to 12, with 5 people still missing, local authorities and media report early Friday.

The flash floods this week followed days of heavy rainfall which turned streams and streets into raging torrents that swept away cars and caused houses to collapse across the region.

Chancellor Angela Merkel and U.S. President Joe Biden expressed their sorrow over the loss of life during a news conference at the White House late Thursday.

The long-time German leader, who was on a farewell trip to Washington, said she feared that “the full extent of this tragedy will only be seen in the coming days.”

Rescuers were rushing Friday to help people trapped in their homes in the town of Erftstadt, southwest of Cologne, where several houses were at risk of collapse after floodwaters laid bare the foundations.

Three people were rescued from the Wurm River in Heinsberg county late Thursday.

The governor of North Rhine-Westphalia state, Armin Laschet, has called an emergency Cabinet meeting Friday. The 60-year-old’s handling of the flood disaster is widely seen as a test for his ambitions to succeed Merkel as chancellor in Germany’s national election on Sept. 26.

The German army has deployed 900 soldiers to help with the rescue and clear-up efforts.

Thousands of people remain homeless after their houses were destroyed or deemed at-risk by authorities, including several villages around the Steinbach reservoir that experts say could collapse under the weight of the floods.

Across the border in Belgium, most of the drowned were found around Liege, where the rains hit hardest. Skies were largely overcast in eastern Belgium, with hopes rising that the worst of the calamity was over.

‘I numb myself’: Hospital fire deepens Iraq’s COVID crisis

By ABDULRAHMAN ZEYAD and SAMYA KULLAB

1 of 20

A coronavirus patient receives treatment at a hospital in Najaf, Iraq, Wednesday, July 14, 2021. Infections in Iraq have surged to record highs amid a third wave spurred by the more aggressive delta variant, and long-neglected hospitals suffering the effects of decades of war are overwhelmed with severely ill patients, many of them young people. (AP Photo/Anmar Khalil)

BAGHDAD (AP) — No beds, medicines running low and hospital wards prone to fire — Iraq’s doctors say they are losing the battle against the coronavirus. And they say that was true even before a devastating blaze killed scores of people in a COVID-19 isolation unit this week.

Infections in Iraq have surged to record highs in a third wave spurred by the more aggressive delta variant, and long-neglected hospitals suffering the effects of decades of war are overwhelmed with severely ill patients, many of them this time young people.

Doctors are going online to plea for donations of medicine and bottled oxygen, and relatives are taking to social media to find hospital beds for their stricken loved ones.

“Every morning, it’s the same chaos repeated, wards overwhelmed with patients,” said Sarmed Ahmed, a doctor at Baghdad’s Al-Kindi Hospital.

Widespread distrust of Iraq’s crumbling health care system only intensified after Monday’s blaze at the Al-Hussein Teaching Hospital in the southern city of Nasiriyah, the country’s second catastrophic fire at a coronavirus ward in less than three months.

Days after the latest fire, the death toll was in dispute, with the Health Ministry putting it at 60, local health officials saying 88, and Iraq’s state news agency reporting 92 dead.

Many blame corruption and mismanagement in the medical system for the disaster, and Iraq’s premier ordered the arrest of key health officials.

Doctors said they fear working in the country’s poorly constructed isolation wards and decried what they called lax safety measures.

“After both infernos, when I’m on call I numb myself because every hospital in Iraq is at high risk of burning down every single moment. So what can I do? I can’t quit my job. I can’t avoid the call,” said Hadeel al-Ashabl, a doctor in Baghdad who works in a new isolation ward similar to the one in Nasiriyah. “Patients are also not willing to be treated inside these hospitals, but it’s also out of their hands.”

Iraq recorded over 9,600 new COVID-19 cases Wednesday in the highest 24-hour total since the pandemic began. Daily case numbers have slowly been rising since May. More than 17,600 people have died of the virus, according to the Health Ministry.

In April, at least 82 people — most of them severely ill virus patients in need of ventilators to breathe — died in a fire at Baghdad’s Ibn al-Khateeb Hospital that broke out when an oxygen tank exploded. Iraq’s health minister resigned over the disaster.

Faulty construction and inadequate safety practices, involving in particular the handling of oxygen cylinders, have been blamed for the two hospital fires. The 70-bed ward at Al-Hussein Hospital was built three months ago using highly flammable interior wall panels, according to hospital workers and civil defense officials.

Inside one major Baghdad emergency room this week, relatives of COVID-19 patients sat on the floor because there were no chairs available.

With hospital space limited, Ahmed calls on Baghdad’s health directorate to advise him where to send patients. “They say, ‘Send five patients to this hospital, another five to this other,’ and so on,” he said.

Hadeel Almainy, a dentist in Baghdad, resorted to Facebook to find a place for her COVID-19-stricken father, pleading: “He can’t breathe, his skin is turning blue. The hospital couldn’t take us.”

In the southern city of Karbala, doctors have begged on social media for donations of remdesivir, an antiviral medication used to treat coronavirus patients.

Al-Shabl said medications and ventilators are running low at her hospital, and 60% of the COVID-19 patients there need the breathing machines.

For the first time since the start of the pandemic, children have come to the hospital with severe virus symptoms, said Alya Yass, a pediatrician at Al-Numan Teaching Hospital in Baghdad.

Doctors blame widespread vaccine hesitancy for the current surge and fear the actual number of infections may be higher than ministry figures. Many Iraqis forgo testing because they don’t trust public hospitals.

Less than 3% of Iraq’s population has been vaccinated, according to a Health Ministry official who was not authorized to talk to the media and spoke on condition of anonymity. The ministry has openly blamed the public for flouting pandemic restrictions.

Health workers said they have expressed their concerns to superiors with little results.

Mohammed Jamal, a former doctor at Al-Sader Teaching Hospital in Basra, said he confronted a ministry inspection committee and asked: Why haven’t the medications been restocked or fire extinguishers replaced? Where is the fire system?

“They didn’t listen. They didn’t see,” he said.

___

Associated Press writer Qassim Abdul-Zahra in Baghdad contributed to this report.