CLIMATE CRISIS

Heatstroke kills 30 in Thailand this year as kingdom bakes

Bangkok (AFP) – Thailand issued fresh warnings about scorching hot weather on Thursday as the government said heatstroke has already killed at least 30 people this year.

: 25/04/2024 - 

A vendor sweats as he pulls a vegetable cart at Khlong Toei Market in Bangkok on Thursday 

© MANAN VATSYAYANA / AFP

City authorities in Bangkok gave an extreme heat warning as the heat index was expected to rise above 52 degrees Celsius (125 degrees Fahrenheit).

Temperatures in the concrete sprawl of the Thai capital hit 40.1 C on Wednesday and similar levels were forecast for Thursday.

A wave of exceptionally hot weather has blasted parts of South and Southeast Asia this week, prompting schools across the Philippines to suspend classes and worshippers in Bangladesh to pray for rain.

The heat index -- a measure of what the temperature feels like taking into account humidity, wind speed and other factors -- was at an "extremely dangerous" level in Bangkok, the city's environment department warned.

Authorities in Udon Thani province, in the kingdom's rural northeast, also warned of blazing temperatures on Thursday.

The health ministry said late Wednesday that 30 people had died from heatstroke between January 1 and April 17, compared with 37 in the whole of 2023.

Direk Khampaen, deputy director-general of Thailand's Department of Disease Control, told AFP that officials were urging elderly people and those with underlying medical conditions including obesity to stay indoors and drink water regularly.

April is typically the hottest time of the year in Thailand and other countries in Southeast Asia, but conditions this year have been exacerbated by the El Nino weather pattern.

Last year saw record levels of heat stress across the globe, with the United Nations weather and climate agency saying Asia was warming at a particularly rapid pace.

The kingdom has sweltered through a heatwave this week, with a temperature of 44.2 C recorded in the northern province of Lampang on Monday -- just shy of the all-time national record of 44.6 C hit last year.

Across the border in Myanmar, the temperature reached a blazing 45.9 C on Wednesday, with more of the same expected Thursday.

The chaos and conflict unleashed by the military's 2021 coup has led to rolling power blackouts in much of the country, hampering people's ability to keep cool with fans and air-conditioning.

burs-pdw/cwl

© 2024 AFP

Burkina Faso’s army summarily executed 223 civilians, says Human Rights Watch

Military forces in Burkina Faso killed 223 civilians, including babies and many children, in attacks on two villages accused of cooperating with militants, Human Rights Watch said in a report published Thursday.


25/04/2024 - 

In this file photo taken on October 8, 2022, Burkina Faso soldiers are seen in Ouagadougou during a burial of soldiers killed in an ambush in Gaskinde. 

© Olympia de Maismont, AFP

The mass killings took place on Feb. 25 in the country's northern villages of Nondin and Soro, and some 56 children were among the dead, according to the report. The human rights organization called on the United Nations and the African Union to provide investigators and to support local efforts to bring those responsible to justice.

“The massacres in Nondin and Soro villages are just the latest mass killings of civilians by the Burkina Faso military in their counterinsurgency operations,” Human Rights Watch Executive Director Tirana Hassan said in a statement. “International assistance is critical to support a credible investigation into possible crimes against humanity.”

The once-peaceful nation has been ravaged by violence that has pitted jihadis linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group against state-backed forces. Both sides have targeted civilians caught in the middle, displacing more than 2 million people, of which over half are children. Most attacks go unpunished and unreported in a nation run by a repressive leadership that silences perceived dissidents.

The HRW report provided a rare firsthand account of the killings by survivors amid a stark increase in civilian casualties by Burkina Faso’s security forces as the junta struggles to beat back a growing jihadi insurgency and attacks residents under the guise of counterterrorism.

Earlier in April, The Associated Press verified accounts of a Nov. 5 army attack on another village that killed at least 70 people. The details were similar — the army blamed the villagers for cooperating with militants and massacred them, even babies.

Witnesses and survivors told HRW that the Feb. 25 killings were believed to have been carried out in retaliation for an attack by Islamist fighters on a military camp near the provincial capital Ouahigouya, about 25 kilometers (15 miles) away.

The toll of civilian deaths was higher than first described by local officials. A public prosecutor previously said that his office was investigating the reported deaths of 170 people in attacks carried out on those villages.

A Burkina Faso government spokesperson didn’t respond to requests for comment about the Feb. 25 attack. Officials previously denied killing civilians and said jihadi fighters often disguise themselves as soldiers.

More than 20,000 people have been killed in Burkina Faso since jihadi violence linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group first hit the West African nation nine years ago, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, a United States-based nonprofit.

Burkina Faso experienced two coups in 2022. Since seizing power in September 2022, the junta led by Capt. Ibrahim Traoré has promised to beat back militants but violence has only worsened, analysts say. Around half of Burkina Faso’s territory remains outside of government control.

Frustrated with a lack of progress over years of Western military assistance, the junta has severed military ties with former colonial ruler France and turned to Russia instead for security support.

(AP)

UN launches fund to shield displaced people from climate shocks

The UNHCR works to protect more than 114 million people forced to flee their homes globally.

By AFP
April 24, 2024

The fund will support support refugees, their host communities and countries of origin hardest hit by climate emergencies - Copyright POOL/AFP Mark Schiefelbein

The United Nations said Wednesday it was launching a new Climate Resilience Fund aimed at boosting protections for “refugees and displaced communities” threatened by climate change.

The UN refugee agency said it aimed to raise $100 million for the new fund by the end of next year to support refugees, their host communities and countries of origin hardest hit by climate emergencies.

The agency highlighted in a statement that climate risks were “strongly correlated with conflict and poverty”, experienced by many refugees.

In 2022, more than 70 percent of refugees and asylum seekers fled from highly climate-vulnerable countries, it pointed out.

“The impacts of climate change are only becoming more devastating, increasingly exacerbating conflict, destroying livelihoods and, ultimately, triggering displacement,” UN refugee chief Filippo Grandi said in the statement.

“Many of the countries that have been the most generous in accepting refugees are also the most impacted by the climate crisis,” he added.

But, he warned, “funding available to address the impacts of climate change is not reaching those forcibly displaced, nor the communities hosting them”.

UNHCR said its new fund would work to ensure that refugees were included in climate-related measures taken nationally and locally.

It would also aim to increase the availability of environmentally sustainable resources in refugee camps and other displacement settings. This would include providing more clean energy to for instance power water, schools and health infrastructure.

It will also support environmental restoration, building climate-resilient shelters and supporting climate-smart livelihoods, it said.

The UN refugee agency said the climate fund would prioritise projects which involve affected communities in their design and implementation, and which promise effects felt locally.

“By reducing exposure to climate-related hazards, securing access to sustainable resources, and promoting inclusion, these projects will deliver tangible improvements in the living conditions, safety, and well-being of refugees and their hosts,” Grandi said.

The UNHCR works to protect more than 114 million people forced to flee their homes globally.

Post-WWII order on ‘brink of collapse’: Amnesty head

By AFP
April 23, 2024

Amnesty International has been critical of Israel and its allies over the war against Hamas in Gaza - Copyright AFP -
James PHEBY

Amnesty International said Wednesday that the post-World War II order was on the “brink of collapse”, threatened by bitter conflict on multiple fronts to the rapid and unregulated rise of artificial intelligence.

“Everything we’re witnessing over the last 12 months is indicating that the international global system is on the brink of collapse,” Amnesty’s secretary general Agnes Callamard told AFP as the group released its annual “State of the World’s Human Rights” report.

“In particular, over the last six months, the United States has shielded and protected the Israeli authorities against scrutiny for the multiple violations committed in Gaza,” she said.

“By using its veto against a much-needed ceasefire, the United States has emptied out the (United Nations) Security Council of what it should be doing.”

Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel that triggered the Gaza war resulted in the deaths of 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 34,183 people in the Gaza Strip, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.

The global rights monitor said that Hamas had carried out “horrific crimes” on Israeli communities bordering Gaza but that Israel had responded with “a campaign of collective punishment”.

“It is a campaign of deliberate, indiscriminate bombings of civilians and civilian infrastructure, of denial of humanitarian assistance and an engineered famine,” Callamard wrote in her foreword to the report.

“For millions the world over, Gaza now symbolises utter moral failure by many of the architects of the post-World War Two system,” she said.

Israel’s allies, including those arming them, were complicit, she said, lamenting a lack of action by international institutions and questioning whether postwar ideals of “never again” were now at an end.

– AI threat –

Other “powerful actors”, including Russia and China, are also “demonstrating a willingness to put at risk the entirety of the 1948 rule-based order”, Callamard warned.

The report documented “flagrant rule-breaking by Russian forces during their continued full-scale invasion of Ukraine… and the use of torture or other ill-treatment against prisoners of war”.

China too had acted against international law, the rights group said, “by protecting the Myanmar military” despite its attacks against civilians.

“Urgent measures” were required “to revitalise and renew the international institutions intended to safeguard humanity”, Callamard said.

“What we are calling for is an urgent reform of the UN Security Council, in particular reform on the right of veto so that it cannot be used in situations of massive human rights violations,” she told AFP.

The rise of AI is also a cause for concern, “enabling pervasive erosions of rights… perpetuating racist policies” and “enabling spreading misinformation”, the report found.

Amnesty accused large tech firms of ignoring or minimising those threats “even in armed conflicts”.

“Tech-outlaws and their rogue technologies” are being left to “freely roam the digital Wild West”, which the report said would likely accelerate human rights violations in 2024 — a year of several key elections, including for the US presidency.

“In an increasingly precarious world, unregulated proliferation and deployment of technologies such as generative AI, facial recognition and spyware are poised to be a pernicious foe –- scaling up and supercharging violations of international law and human rights to exceptional levels,” Callamard said.

“During a landmark year of elections and in the face of the increasingly powerful anti-regulation lobby driven and financed by big tech actors, these rogue and unregulated technological advances pose an enormous threat to us all.”

She called on governments to “take robust legislative and regulatory steps to address the risks and harms caused by AI technologies and rein in big tech”.

The UK-based rights group also warned that political actors in many parts of the world were “ramping up their attacks on women, LGBTI people and marginalised communities”.

Colombian rebels holding Amazon hostage in peace talks


By AFP
April 23, 2024

Experts say FARC dissidents earn millions by allowing loggers, miners and farmers to deforest the Amazon - Copyright AFP/File Raul ARBOLEDA

David SALAZAR

Colombian guerrilla fighters, who long used kidnapping to raise cash and gain negotiating clout, have turned to a new type of hostage: the Amazon rainforest.

By allowing or preventing logging in areas under their control, fighters of the now-defunct FARC who rejected a peace deal and remain in arms set the pace of deforestation as a means of pressuring the government in peace talks.

In a vast swath of Colombia’s part of the Amazon, each tree felled is approved by the so-called Central General Staff (EMC), as the renegade group calls itself.

Some of its members rejected the 2016 peace agreement that disarmed the bulk of the FARC, once the most powerful guerrilla group on the continent. Others are new recruits.

Environment Minister Susana Muhamad has raised the alarm about an “historic peak” of deforestation just as peace talks that started late 2023 between the EMC and President Gustavo Petro’s government reached a low point.

Forest loss accelerated by about 40 percent year-on-year in the last quarter of 2023 and in the first quarter of 2024, she said, blaming the El Nino weather phenomenon and the EMC.

“Nature is being put in the middle of the conflict and this is a violation of international humanitarian law,” said Muhamad.

Last week, the government said the EMC had split into two factions and negotiations were continuing with just one of them

– Changing the rules –

The Amazon setback is a blow for Colombia’s first leftist president, who took office in August 2022 — the same year deforestation reached a 10-year-low.

Petro had campaigned on an ambitious conservation and climate change program in one of the world’s most biodiverse countries.

Forest conservation is a key goal of peace talks with a variety of armed groups as part of Petro’s quest for “total peace” after decades of conflict in the South American country.

When it was still active, the FARC had punished loggers and kept ranchers out of the forest.

It claimed an environmental motive, but was more likely driven to set up camps and “move fighters without being detected,” Bram Ebus, a researcher at the Crisis Group think tank, told AFP.

The Chiribiquete National Park, Colombia’s largest protected area declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2018, owes part of its conservation to decades of FARC domination.

After the FARC disarmed, the EMC began a reconquest of the Amazon, initially also placing a ban on logging.

As the peace talks became bogged down, however, the EMC started to “change the rules” to allow tree fellings, said Juanita Velez, a researcher at the Conflict Responses Foundation in Colombia.

“They understand the environmental issue as a way to create a political discourse” to be used in negotiations, she said.

Ebus said the EMC makes millions by allowing third parties to destroy parts of the forest.

Deforestation “generates money… we know that they are taxing” loggers and farmers, he said.

The guerrillas also charge a percentage on production of coca — the leaf used to make cocaine — and on illegal miners advancing ever deeper into the rainforest, said Ebus.

It is unclear what the split within the EMC will mean for the Amazon.

If the upward trend in deforestation continues, as Muhamad predicts, Colombia will host a global biodiversity conference later this year with a major “lung of the planet” — as rainforests are called — in distress.

For Petro, the conference is meant to act as a showcase of Colombia’s natural wealth, but two of his main goals — achieving a lasting peace and protecting the environment — appear to be in trouble, said Ebus.

Instead, it could be argued the Amazon “is under the control of the guerrilla group,” said Ebus.

Read more: https://www.digitaljournal.com/world/colombian-rebels-holding-amazon-hostage-in-peace-talks/article#ixzz8YOAC1vFs

Iran cuts Syria presence after strikes blamed on Israel: monitor


By AFP
April 24, 2024

Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei leads prayers by the coffins of seven Revolutionary Guards killed in an April 1 air strike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus - Copyright POOL/AFP Mark Schiefelbein

Iran has reduced its military footprint in Syria after a succession of strikes blamed on Israel, a source close to Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah and a war monitor said Wednesday.

Iran has provided military support to Syrian government forces through more than a decade of civil war but a series of strikes targeting its commanders in recent months has prompted a reshaping of its presence, the sources said.

“Iran withdrew its forces from southern Syria,” including both Quneitra and Daraa provinces, which abut the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights, the source close to Hezbollah said.

But it still maintains a presence in other parts of the country, the source added.

Recent months have seen a series of strikes on Iranian targets in Syria, widely blamed on Israel, culminating in an April 1 strike that levelled the Iranian consulate in Damascus and killed seven Revolutionary Guards, two of them generals.

That strike prompted Iran to launch a first-ever direct missile and drone attack against Israel on April 13-14 that sent regional tensions spiralling.

But Iran had already begun drawing down its forces after a January 20 strike that killed five Revolutionary Guards in Damascus, including their Syria intelligence chief and his deputy, the source close to Hezbollah said.

Britain-based war monitor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said Iranian forces had withdrawn from Damascus and southern Syria.

Iran-backed Lebanese and Iraqi fighters had taken their place, Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said.

Iran has said repeatedly that it has no combat troops in Syria, only officers to provide military advice and training.

But the Observatory says as many as 3,000 Iranian military personnel are present in Syria, supported by tens of thousands of Iran-trained fighters from countries including Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Abdel Rahman said that many of Iran’s advisers had left Syria over the past six months, although some remained in Aleppo province in the north and in Deir Ezzor province in the east.

Mass cancellations loom despite French air union cancelling strike


By AFP
April 24, 2024

The main air traffic controllers union cancelled the strike call - Copyright AFP Antonin UTZ

Hundreds of flights were cancelled at French airports Thursday despite the country’s main air traffic controllers’ union dropping a call for a one-day strike after making a deal for higher pay.

In Paris around 75 percent of flights at Orly and 55 percent at Charles de Gaulle airport will be dropped Thursday, the DGAC civil aviation authority told airlines in a notification seen by AFP on Wednesday.

Around 65 percent of services at Marseille airport and 45 percent elsewhere in France will also be cancelled, it added. The impact is expected to be similar to the cancellations expected when the strike was still going ahead.

Earlier Wednesday, the SNCTA union walked back a strike call, saying it had struck a deal for higher pay and other measures with the DGAC.

The union’s demands had come in response to a planned overhaul of French air-traffic control systems.

The DGAC said that despite the strike’s cancellation, the last-minute deal with the SNCTA and the need to finalise details with smaller unions meant there would still be disruptions.

It was unclear whether the two smaller unions which had also backed strike action would follow suit and call off the stoppage.

– ‘Totally unacceptable’ –

With details unclear, European carriers complained of extensive disturbances to air travel — even for flights that had planned to simply fly over France.

“While the withdrawing of strike notice may offer some relief for some passengers, its last-minute nature means that there will still be significant disruption to flights in France and across parts of Europe tomorrow,” said Ourania Georgoutsakou, the managing director of Airlines for Europe (A4E), an industry association.

Ahead of the strike, airlines had been forced to cancel more than 2,000 flights, most of which would have landed or departed from France. Another 1,000 flights would have had to divert away from French air space, A4E said.

German carrier Lufthansa and low-cost airline easyJet warned that their passengers flights over French air space could be affected on Thursday.

“The scale of disturbances caused by this strike movement and the impact it is having on our clients are totally unacceptable, in particular for the hundreds of thousands of clients whose flights will not take off from or land in France,” said easyJet CEO Johan Lundgren.

Unions had called the strike after an initial breakdown of talks, raising new concerns over the risk of action during the Olympic Games in Paris from late July, when millions of visitors are expected.

France’s Casino supermarket chain to axe up to 3,200 jobs


By AFP
April 24, 2024

The job losses come on the back of a huge debt restructuring deal led by Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky - Copyright AFP Antonin UTZ

French supermarket group Casino said Wednesday it would axe between 1,300 and 3,200 jobs as part of a reorganisation following its recent takeover led by Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky.

The revamp comes as the Saint Etienne-based group moves on from the three-decade reign of Jean-Charles Naouri. That ended with the arrival in March of Kretinsky at the head of a group of main creditors who oversaw a debt restructuring deal.

Casino, which lost 5.7 billion euros in 2023, is to sell off hundreds of super- and hypermarket stores across France.

The group said it would consult with unions and other social partners on May 6 to unveil plans to safeguard most of the nearly 30,000 people it employs in France.

Saint Etienne mayor Gael Perdriau said he expected to meet the new management team soon “to consolidate the group’s presence” in the eastern-central city.

Restructuring its operations to emerge from its debt mountain has forced Casino to sell off most of its larger-format shops to rivals Intermarche, Auchan and Carrefour. The group will keep operating its Monoprix and Franprix chains.

Until the end of 2022, Casino employed some 200,000 people worldwide and 50,000 in France. Today that is down to 28,212, the vast majority of those jobs in France.

CEO Philippe Palazzi said in a statement that “this transformation project” would play a key role in putting Casino back on an even keel.

Casino also announced an unusually long, 10-year purchasing alliance with rivals Intermarche and Auchan to “maintain and develop long-term partnerships with the agricultural world and French industrial players”.

Shares in the group were down 0.3 percent mid-afternoon at 0.030 euros.

Deforestation and the risk-based link to cocoa


By Dr. Tim Sandle
April 24, 2024

A new black gold? Biochar from cocoa bean shells - Copyright AFP Axel Heimken

A new investigation has revealed that cocoa beans exported from Côte d’Ivoire to the European Union originate from deforested land in neighbouring Liberia. The matter has been raised at the fifth World Cocoa Conference (which took place between 21-24 April 2024 in Belgium).

This suggests that a European Union law on deforestation needs to be strengthened so that supply chain traceability mechanisms improve significantly. Côte d’Ivoire is the world’s largest producer of cocoa, with 75 percent of its production absorbed within Europe.

With the European Union legal requirement, as of December 2024, it will be illegal to import and market cocoa beans that, after 2020, were harvested on plots of land deforested to create plantations.

The suggestion is based on a field investigation presented by the campaign organisation Initiatives for Community Development and Forest Conservation (IDEF) and it infers that the traceability mechanisms used by some companies involved with cocoa beans are flawed and do not comply with the anti-deforestation regulation in place.

Demand for cocoa beans is increasing globally and they are part of a complex market made up of a variety of parties acting as intermediaries between small, poorly paid cocoa farmers and retailers.

A consequence of the expansion is that thousands of hectares of forest have been destroyed to make way for cocoa plantations.

The findings lead to the investigators to argue that these mechanisms should be replaced by the robust and transparent national traceability system now in place in Côte d’Ivoire.

According to Bakary Traoré, Executive Director of the Ivorian IDEF: “Work is currently underway in Côte d’Ivoire to set up a national traceability system. Under this system, all plots of land in Côte d’Ivoire will be geolocated, and producers will be registered.”

Traoré adds: “A map of producers, including a barcode system, will also indicate what individual farms are able to produce and track their sales. Our investigation shows the importance of speeding up the work begun by the Ivorian authorities.”

Furthermore, Traoré explains: “Current traceability systems were set up by the chocolate companies and are controlled by them. They are not transparent, and our investigation found them to be flawed. To resolve the problem and comply with new European regulations, traders in raw materials will have to change their approach.”

The situation is driving Ivorian growers to migrate to the fertile lands of neighbouring Liberia, home to more than half of West Africa’s remaining tropical forests. This means that new deforestation taking place.

Furthermore, there is also a lack of infrastructure in Liberia for growers to export their beans. As a result, once harvested, the cocoa beans are carried back to Côte d’Ivoire on people’s backs.

The investigators also call on the EU to put in place robust controls as part of the due diligence required by the legislation to help curb this.

Review: The music of Alicia Keys is alive and well in ‘Hell’s Kitchen’ on Broadway

By Markos Papadatos
April 24, 2024

Kecia Lewis and Maleah Joi Moon in 'Hell's Kitchen' on Broadway. 

Photo Credit: Marc J. Franklin

“Hell’s Kitchen” is a new original Broadway musical that features music and lyrics of Alicia Keys. It is being performed at the Shubert Theatre in Manhattan.

It is based on the book by Kristoffer Diaz with music and lyrics by multi-Grammy award-winning artist Alicia Keys.

In “Hell’s Kitchen,” there is a place where the rhythm of the city is music, where every corner has a story, and every window is a kaleidoscope.

Where a girl can step out of her apartment and find the world. In the mid ’90s, in an apartment high above the energy and grit of Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood, 17-year-old Ali squints toward the horizon until she can just see the Hudson River.

Despite the warnings of her protective mother, the symphony of the street calls to her, where they promise freedom, excitement, and the possibility of love. Finding herself. When a wise piano teacher helps her find her voice, Ali learns she can make the city her own.

Shoshana Bean showcased her ability to hit the high notes as Jersey, Ali’s mother, while Brandon Victor Dixon was also memorable as Ali’s absentee father Davis, who had the music bug in her family.

Kecia Lewis was the heart and soul of this production (and a revelation) as “Miss Liza Jane,” the catalyst who helped Ali find her voice in piano-playing and expressing herself through music.

For this show, in particular, the role of Ali was played by understudy Gianna Harris, and Lamont Walker filled in for the role of Knuck. Both understudies did an exceptional job filling in for the lead actors, and they did the storyline and the songs justice: Lamont Walker was charming as Knuck, while Giana Harris delivered a bubbly and radiant performance as Ali.
The Verdict

Overall, “Hell’s Kitchen” is an entertaining and fun new original Broadway musical that is a fitting homage to the music of Alicia Keys. There is something in it for everyone.

Its subject matter is timely and relevant, and it is also feel-good escapism. It deserves recognition at the upcoming Tony Awards, and it garners four out of five stars.

To learn more about “Hell’s Kitchen” on Broadway, check out its official website.

Read more: https://www.digitaljournal.com/entertainment/review-the-music-of-alicia-keys-is-alive-and-well-in-hells-kitchen-on-broadway/article#ixzz8YO69sJKR