HYATTSVILLE, Md. (AP) — When Jamieson Brill answers a crisis call from a Spanish speaker on the newly launched national 988 mental health helpline, he rarely mentions the word suicide, or “suicidio”

Brill, whose family hails from Puerto Rico, knows that just discussing the term in some Spanish-speaking cultures is so frowned upon that many callers are too scared to even admit that they’re calling for themselves.

“However strong stigma around mental health concerns is in English-speaking cultures, in Spanish-speaking cultures it is triple that,” said Brill, who helps people navigate mental health crises from a tiny brick building tucked away in Hyattsville, Maryland.

Brill works in one of more than 200 call centers fanned out around the country tasked with answering an uptick in calls day and night from people considering suicide or experiencing a mental health emergency.

With bipartisan congressional support and just under $1 billion in federal funds, the 988 mental health helpline has quickly expanded its reach in the six months since it launched — raking in over 2 million calls, texts and chat messages.

The number of centers answering calls in Spanish grew from three to seven last year. A pilot line dedicated to LGBTQ youth started taking calls in September. And plans are underway to keep the momentum going, with the federal government adding Spanish language chat and text options later this year and aiming to expand those services to a 24/7 operation for the LGBTQ line.

When the around-the-clock phone launched last summer, it built on the existing network that staffed the old national lifeline, 1-800-273-8255. The new 988 number is designed to be as easy to remember as 911.

It couldn’t have come at a more needed time: Depression rates in U.S. adults, overdose deaths and suicide rates have been on the rise.

“The call volume is, in some instances, well beyond what we anticipated,” said Miriam Delphin-Rittmon, assistant secretary for mental health and substance use in the Department of Health and Human Services. “It does let us know that people are struggling, people are having a hard time. Where I feel heartened that people are getting connected to services and supports, as oppose to struggling on their own.”

The 988 helpline registered 154,585 more calls, texts and chat messages during November 2022 compared to the old national lifeline in November 2021, according to the latest data available.

Texting has been particularly popular, with the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration noting a 1,227% increase in texts to the line during that same time.

The Veterans Crisis Line — callers can press “1” after texting or calling 988 to reach it — has fielded 450,000 calls, texts and chat messages, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs. By the end of the year, the line had handled a nearly 10% increase compared to 2021.

Calls show no signs of slowing into this year, with counselors answering 3,869 calls on New Year's Eve and the first day of 2023 — a 30 percent increase compared to the previous holiday. The Spanish language line saw an increase of 3,800 calls year over year from November 2021 to November 2022.

Meanwhile, some states are considering unveiling their own lines dedicated to certain communities.

In November, Washington became the first state to launch a mental health crisis line dedicated to American Indian and Alaska Native people. Callers in Washington can reach the line by calling 988 then pressing “4” to be greeted by one of the 13 counselors — all Indigenous people — who staff the phones.

Having fellow American Indians answer those calls is crucial, because those familiar with the culture can immediately decode some terms that others cannot, said Rochelle Williams, the tribal operations manager for Volunteers of America Western Washington, which oversees the call center. For example, she said, when a caller says that a relative is “bothering me,” that sends up an immediate red flag: The person is likely signaling that they’re the victim of a sexual assault.

“Who has a better understanding of native people than native people?” Williams said. “We don’t trust in a lot of government programs. Knowing you’re talking to another Indigenous person is really important.”

Williams wants to add chat and text options next. She hopes Washington’s 988 line for Native Americans becomes a model for others. She’s already given presentations in New Mexico, Oklahoma, Montana and in Canada, which is set to launch its own national 988 this year.

States are expected to receive more money to fund the line from t he $1.7 trillion end-of-the year spending package, which set aside another half-billion dollars for the project.

Still, long-term funding for the 988 helpline is in jeopardy in some states, which have yet to figure out a permanent funding plan for it. While the federal government has poured millions of dollars into the project, states are expected to take over the operation and funding of the 988 line — just as they do with 911 emergency call services.

So far, fewer than 20 states have passed legislation to permanently fund their 988 line, according to the National Alliance on Mental Health Illness.

In Ohio, for example, advocates are pushing for the state legislature to sign off on a 50-cent fee that would be tacked onto cellphone bills, raising roughly $50 million to $55 million every year to operate the line, said Tony Coder of the Ohio Suicide Prevention Foundation.

“Quite frankly, lives depend on it,” Coder said. “The need for 988 services is more crucial than ever, simply because of the aftermath and the mental health issues from COVID.”

(Bloomberg) -- Chinese leader Xi Jinping warned officials against colluding with the business world, underscoring that his government’s crackdown on the private sector will remain a concern for investors despite efforts to boost the economy.

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“Action should be taken to prevent leading officials from acting for any interest group or power group, and to forestall any collusion between officials and businesspeople,” Xi told a meeting of anti-corruption regulators on Monday, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.

He also warned against “any infiltration of capital into politics that undermines the political ecosystem or the environment for economic development.”

Xi’s government has recently eased up on a regulatory crackdown on tech giants like Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Tencent Holdings Ltd., helping their shares rebound. Yet questions remain over how far that approach will go given Xi has also pledged to ensure “common prosperity,” in part by reining in wealthy special interests.

See: Unpredictable Xi Spurs $100 Billion Rally With Abrupt Shifts

Xi has made reining in graft a central aspect of his leadership of the world’s second-biggest economy over the past decade. That approach has been popular with the public and also served to weed out potential threats to his rule.

Last year, the anti-corruption officials broke up what they called a “political clique” led by former police official Sun Lijun, who was sentenced to what amounts to life in prison for taking bribes and other crimes.

The message that graft cannot be allowed to thrive in the Chinese political system is one that Xi delivers regularly. In December, just after securing a third term in power, Xi said the country had achieved an “overwhelming victory” in its battle against corruption but added that the work was “far from over.”

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Xi’s latest call to continue with the campaign comes as his government abandons its Covid Zero approach toward the coronavirus. On Sunday, China opened borders that had been largely closed for nearly three years, after earlier doing away with quarantine camps, mass testing and snap lockdowns.

Those policies had led to public anger, with widespread protests erupting in late November, though the government has insisted its policy changes were underway before the demonstrations erupted.

With covid rules loosening, the government is stepping up efforts to bolster the economy. China is considering a record quota for local government bonds and widening the budget deficit. The economy is forecast to expand by 4.8% this year, compared with little growth in the US and a potential contraction in the Eurozone, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

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The depleted ozone layer that shields Earth from harmful UV radiation will be healed by midcentury, a new United Nations report stated on Monday.

Thanks to international cooperation starting in 1989, when ozone-depleting chemicals were banned from refrigerants and aerosols, 99% of such compounds have been phased out, the U.N. Environment Programme said.

The ozone layer lies in the upper stratosphere, blocking radiation that can cause skin cancer and cataracts as well as damage crops.

By 2040, most of the ozone will be back to normal, and by 2066 it will have recovered fully, the report found. The hole that initially raised an alarm will be closed above the Arctic by 2045, the scientists said. Their findings were presented at the American Meteorological Society’s 103rd annual meeting in Denver.

“Ozone action sets a precedent for climate action,” World Meteorological Organization Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said in a statement.

“Our success in phasing out ozone-eating chemicals shows us what can and must be done — as a matter of urgency — to transition away from fossil fuels, reduce greenhouse gases and so limit temperature increase.”

SALVADOR, Brazil (AP) — Thousands of Brazilians who support former president Jair Bolsonaro invaded the Supreme Court, presidential palace and Congress on Jan. 8 in an episode that closely resembled the U.S. Capitol insurrection in 2021. The groups were able to break through police barricades along the capital Brasilia’s main boulevard and storm the buildings, damage furniture, smash windows and destroy artworks. As they unleashed chaos in the capital, Bolsonaro was holed up in Florida, home to his ally, former U.S. President Donald Trump. The incident sparked accusations that Bolsonaro's actions stoked the flames of dissent and ultimately produced the uprising.

WHO ARE THESE PROTESTERS, AND WHAT DO THEY WANT?

The protesters are hardcore Bolsonaro supporters, some of whom have been camped outside a military headquarters in Brasilia since Bolsonaro lost the Oct. 30 presidential election and reject the race’s results. Others traveled to Brasilia for the weekend on buses. They have been demanding military intervention to oust newly inaugurated President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, alleging he is a thief who will lead the country into communism, and restore Bolsonaro to power.

HOW DID BRAZIL GET TO THIS POINT?

Throughout his administration, Bolsonaro trained fire at Supreme Court justices for opening investigations targeting him and his allies. He repeatedly singled out Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who presided over the electoral authority during the election, and at one point pushed Brazil to the brink of an institutional crisis by threatening to disobey any of de Moraes' future rulings.

Bolsonaro also sowed doubt about the reliability of Brazil's electronic voting machines, then declined to concede defeat. After his loss, he largely vanished from view, though he addressed his supporters once to tell them they had the power in their hands and that he controls the armed forces. His supporters maintained hope Bolsonaro or the armed forces would lead an intervention to overturn the results.

WHAT HAS BOLSONARO CLAIMED ABOUT THE VOTING SYSTEM AND ELECTIONS?

Bolsonaro insisted the electronic voting system should feature a printed receipt in order to enable audits, but Congress' Lower House in 2021 voted down his proposal for that change and electoral authorities say the results can already be verified. Security experts consider electronic voting less secure than hand-marked paper ballots because they leave no auditable paper trail. Brazil’s system is, however, closely scrutinized and domestic authorities and international observers have never found evidence of it being exploited to commit fraud since its adoption in 1996.

After the 2022 elections, Bolsonaro and his party petitioned the electoral authority to nullify millions of votes cast on the majority of voting machines that featured a software bug — the machines lacked individual identification numbers in their internal logs. The request didn’t say how the bug might affect results, and independent experts said that it would not undermine reliability in any way. The electoral authority's president swiftly dismissed the request and imposed a multi-million dollar fine on the party for what he called a bad-faith effort.

WHAT ARE BOLSONARO’S TIES TO TRUMP AND HIS ALLIES?

Former U.S. President Donald Trump was one of Bolsonaro’s few foreign allies and Bolsonaro often exalted his American counterpart’s leadership, even posting photos of himself watching Trump’s addresses.

Bolsonaro and his lawmaker son Eduardo visited Trump at Mar-a-Lago, and both attended dinners at the house of Steve Bannon. The longtime Trump ally amplified Bolsonaro's claims about the electronic voting system before the October vote and, after the Jan. 8 uprising in Brasilia, called the protesters “Brazilian freedom fighters” in a video on social media.

Eduardo Bolsonaro has repeatedly attended the Conservative Political Action Conference in the U.S., positioning himself as the international face of the right-wing movement led by his father and making inroads with his American counterparts. Jason Miller, the former Trump campaign strategist, also met with Eduardo in Brazil. On the eve of the Jan. 6 insurrection in the U.S. Capitol, Eduardo was in Washington, and met with Ivanka Trump and My Pillow chief executive Mike Lindell.

After Trump lost his reelection bid, then-President Bolsonaro waited five weeks before recognizing Joe Biden’s victory and was one of the final world leaders to do so.

WHY IS BOLSONARO IN THE U.S.?

Bolsonaro flew to Florida two days before Lula’s Jan. 1 inauguration, when the outgoing president traditionally bestows the presidential sash to his successor. Instead, Bolsonaro took up temporary residence in the home of a Brazilian former mixed martial arts fighter outside Orlando. He hasn’t specified the reasons for his departure, and analysts have speculated it marks an attempt to avoid potential prosecution in connection with several ongoing investigations targeting him, blame from backers for not mobilizing the armed forces or responsibility for his supporters’ actions.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department is reviewing a batch of potentially classified documents found in the Washington office space of President Joe Biden's former institute, the White House said Monday.

Special counsel to the president Richard Sauber said “a small number of documents with classified markings” were discovered as Biden's personal attorneys were clearing out the offices of the Penn Biden Center, where the president kept an office after he left the vice presidency in 2017 until shortly before he launched his 2020 presidential campaign in 2019. The documents were found on Nov. 2, 2022, in a “locked closet” in the office, Sauber said.

Sauber said the attorneys immediately alerted the White House Counsel's office, who notified the National Archives and Records Administration — which took custody of the documents the next day.

“Since that discovery, the President’s personal attorneys have cooperated with the Archives and the Department of Justice in a process to ensure that any Obama-Biden Administration records are appropriately in the possession of the Archives,” Sauber said.

A person who is familiar with the matter but not authorized to discuss it publicly said Attorney General Merrick Garland asked U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois John Lausch to review the matter after the Archives referred the issue to the department. Lausch is one of the few U.S. attorneys to be held over from former President Donald Trump's administration.

Irrespective of the Justice Department review, the revelation that Biden potentially mishandled classified or presidential records could prove to be a political headache for the president, who called Trump's decision to keep hundreds of such records at his private club in Florida “irresponsible."

Trump weighed in Monday on his social media site, asking, “When is the FBI going to raid the many homes of Joe Biden, perhaps even the White House?”

The revelation comes as Republicans have taken control of the House of Representatives and are promising to launch widespread investigations of Biden's administration.

It also may complicate the Justice Department's consideration on whether to bring charges against Trump, who has launched a repeat bid for the White House in 2024 and has repeatedly claimed that the department's inquiry of his own conduct amounted to “corruption."

The National Archives did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday. Spokespeople for Garland and Lausch declined to comment.

Rep. James Comer, the new GOP chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said Monday that the revelation raised questions about the Justice Department’s handling of the Trump probe.

“Is the White House going to be raided tonight? Are they going to raid the Bidens?” he asked reporters. “This is further concern that there’s a two-tier justice system within the DOJ with how they treat Republicans versus Democrats, certainly how they treat the former president versus the current president.”

His Democratic counterpart, Rep. Jamie Raskin, said Biden's attorneys “appear to have taken immediate and proper action.”

“I have confidence that the Attorney General took the appropriate steps to ensure the careful review of the circumstances surrounding the possession and discovery of these documents and make an impartial decision about any further action that may be needed,” he added.

Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, chair of the powerful House Judiciary Committee, said Monday that the American public deserved to know earlier about the revelation of classified documents.

“They knew about this a week before the election, maybe the American people should have known that,” Jordan told reporters. “They certainly knew about the the raid on Mar-a-Lago 91 days before this election, but nice if on November 2, the country would have known that there were classified documents at the Biden Center.”

Jordan is among House Republicans pushing for the creation of a “select subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal government” within the Judiciary Committee.

Votes on creating that committee are expected as soon as this week, setting up a showdown between Republicans and the prosecutors leading various federal investigations, including the ones into Trump.

It wasn't immediately clear why the White House didn't disclose the discovery of the documents or the DOJ review sooner. CBS was first to report Monday on the discovery of the potentially classified documents.

The Justice Department for months has been investigating the retention of roughly 300 documents that were marked as classified and were recovered from the Trump's Florida estate. In that instance, prosecutors say, representatives of Trump resisted requests to give back the full stash of classified documents and failed to fully comply with a subpoena that sought their return.

FBI agents in August served a search warrant at the Mar-a-Lago property, removing 15 boxes of records.

That investigation is being led by special counsel Jack Smith. Prosecutors have interviewed an array of Trump associates and have been using a grand jury to hear evidence.

It is not clear when a decision when will be made on whether Trump, or anyone else, should be charged.

The think tank, formally known as the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, is affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania and continues to operate independently of the Biden administration.

—

Associated Press writers Nomaan Merchant, Eric Tucker and Farnoush Amiri in Washington and Michael Tarm in Chicago contributed.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Electing the House speaker may have been the easy part. Now House Republicans will try to govern.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy passed his first tests late Monday as the Republicans approved their rules package for governing House operations, typically a routine step on Day One that stretched into the second week of the new majority. It was approved 220-213, a party-line vote with one Republican opposed.

Next, the House Republicans easily passed their first bill — legislation to cut funding that is supposed to bolster the Internal Revenue Service. The Republicans' IRS bill ran into a snag ahead of votes because the budget office announced that rather than save money, it would add $114 billion to the federal deficit. The measure flew through on another party-line vote, 218-210, though it has almost no chance of passage in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

It was an effective start to what could otherwise be a new era of potentially crisis governing. House Republicans are expected to be lurching from one standoff to the next after last week's raucous speaker's race that showcased the challenges ahead as McCarthy confronts a rebellious majority as well as the limits of President Joe Biden's remaining agenda on Capitol Hill.

With sky-high ambitions for a hard-right conservative agenda but only a narrow hold on the majority, which enables just a few holdouts to halt proceedings, the Republicans are rushing headlong into an uncertain, volatile start of the new session. They want to investigate Biden, slash federal spending and beef up competition with China.

But first McCarthy, backed by former President Donald Trump, needs to show the Republican majority can keep up with basics of governing.

“You know, it’s a little more difficult when you go into a majority and maybe the margins aren’t high,” McCarthy acknowledged after winning the speaker's vote. “Having the disruption now really built the trust with one another and learned how to work together.”

But McCarthy himself announced Monday evening's final vote tally on the IRS bill to applause from his side of the aisle. “Promises made. Promises kept,” he said in a statement.

As McCarthy gaveled open the House on Monday as the new speaker, the Republicans launched debate on the Rules package, a hard-fought 55-page document that McCarthy negotiated with conservative holdouts to win over their votes to make him House speaker.

Central to the package is the provision the conservative Freedom Caucus wanted that reinstates a longstanding rule that allows any one lawmaker make a motion to “vacate the chair” — a vote to oust the speaker. Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi had done away with the rule when Democrats took charge in 2019 because conservatives had held it over past Republican speakers as a threat.

Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Va., said the rules are about “getting back to the basics.”

But that's not the only change. There are other provisions the conservatives extracted from McCarthy that weaken the power of the speaker's office and turn over more control of the legislative business to rank-and-file lawmakers, particularly those far-right lawmakers who won concessions.

The Republicans are allowing more Freedom Caucus lawmakers on the Rules committee that shapes legislative debates. Those members promise more open and free-flowing debates and are insisting on 72 hours to read legislation ahead of votes.

But it's an open question whether the changes being approved will make the House more transparent in its operations or grind it to a halt, as happened last week when McCarthy battled through four days and 14 failed ballots before finally winning the speaker's gavel.

Many Republicans defended the standoff over the speaker's gavel, which was finally resolved in the post-midnight hours of Saturday morning on the narrowest of votes — one of the longest speaker's race showdowns in U.S. history.

“A little temporary conflict is necessary in this town in order to stop this town from rolling over the American people,” Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, said over the weekend on CNN.

On Monday, Roy praised the new rules he helped craft, saying he could file a motion “right now” to demand a vote on the speaker — as it has been through much of House history.

But heading into Monday evening's voting on the rules package, at least two other Republicans raised objections about the backroom deals McCarthy had cut, leaving it unclear if there would be enough GOP support for passage. In the end, only Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales of Texas voted against.

Democrats decried the new rules as caving to the demands of the far-right aligned with Trump's Make American Great Again agenda.

“These rules are not a serious attempt at governing,” said Rep. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, the top Democrat on the Rules Committee. Rather, he said, it's a “ransom note from far right.”

Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y., focused his criticism on the GOP's so-called Holman Rule, which would allow Congress to rescind the pay of individual federal employees: “This is no way to govern."

McCarthy commands a slim 222-seat Republican majority, which means on any given vote he can only lose four GOP detractors or the legislation will fail, if all Democrats are opposed.

The new rules are making McCarthy's job even tougher. For example, Republicans are doing away with the proxy voting that Democrats under former Speaker Nancy Pelosi put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic. That means McCarthy must demand greater attendance and participation on every vote with almost no absences allowed for family emergencies or other circumstances.

“Members of Congress have to show up and work again,” said Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La.

With the Senate still narrowly held by Democrats, the divided Congress could still be a time of bipartisan deal-making. Monday saw a group of Republican and Democratic senators head to the southern U.S. border with Mexico as they try to develop an immigration overhaul to curb the flow of migrants.

But more often a split Congress produces gridlock.

The Republicans have been here before, just over a decade ago, when the tea party class swept to the majority in 2011, booting Pelosi from the speaker's office and rushing into an era of hardball politics that shut down the government and threatened a federal debt default.

McCarthy was a key player in those battles, having recruited the tea party class when he was the House GOP's campaign chairman. He tried and failed to take over for Republican John Boehner in 2015 when the beleaguered House speaker abruptly retired rather than face a potential vote by conservatives on his ouster.

___

Associated Press writers Kevin Freking and Hope Yen contributed to this report.

NORTHAMPTON, MA / ACCESSWIRE / January 9, 2023 / Sappi Limited has partnered with EcoVadis, a global leader in third-party evaluations of business sustainability performance, to benchmark and assess the sustainability practices of Sappi's suppliers and encourage their commitment to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

"Sappi's purpose is to build a thriving world by unlocking the power of renewable resources to benefit people, communities, and the planet," says Tracy Wessels, General Manager, Group Head of Sustainability, Sappi Limited.

"By working together in partnership with EcoVadis and our valued suppliers, we can better identify risk, assess social and environmental performance, and encourage commitment to sustainable choices and the Sustainable Development Goals throughout our value chain," Tracy says. "This partnership reinforces the expectations we set out in our supplier code of conduct and provides a platform to build transparency and collaborate."

The EcoVadis methodology focuses on 21 sustainability criteria that are grouped into four categories: environment, labor and human rights, ethics, and sustainable procurement. These criteria align with international sustainability standards.

EcoVadis's actionable sustainability scorecards provide detailed insight into environmental, social, and ethical risks across 200 purchasing categories and 160 countries. More than 75,000 businesses are on the EcoVadis network, all working with a single methodology to evaluate, collaborate, and improve sustainability performance to protect their brands, foster transparency, innovate, and accelerate growth.

"We are extremely pleased to work with Sappi, a multinational company demonstrating their leadership and expanding their sustainability commitments by engaging their value chain in the sustainability performance improvement journey," says Emily Rakowski, CMO of EcoVadis. "Having undergone the rating process themselves in all three of their regional entities and achieving Platinum-level performance, Sappi is setting a great example for their suppliers to follow."

View additional multimedia and more ESG storytelling from Sappi North America on 3blmedia.com.

Contact Info:
Spokesperson: Sappi North America
Website: https://www.3blmedia.com/profiles/sappi-north-america
Email: info@3blmedia.com

SOURCE: Sappi North America

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https://www.accesswire.com/734595/Sappi-Partners-With-EcoVadis-to-Assess-Suppliers-Sustainability-Performance

Read also: US, Israel discussing ways to prevent Iran from supplying drones to Russia

“Their weapons are being used to kill civilians in Ukraine and to try to plunge cities into cold and darkness which, from our point of view, puts Iran in a place where it could potentially be contributing to widespread war crimes,” Sullivan told reporters.

On Dec. 19, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced that Russia had received a new batch of at least 250 Shahed combat drones from Iran.

On Jan. 6, the United States imposed sanctions against six senior managers of Iranian company Qods Aviation Industries, which is considered Iran's largest developer and manufacturer of drones.

Read the original article on The New Voice of Ukraine

The UK and EU hailed a breakthrough in Brexit talks over the Northern Ireland Protocol on Monday, unlocking intensive negotiations over the Irish Sea border.

The agreement has given new impetus to the race to reach a protocol deal before the unofficial April 10 deadline of the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement.

Joe Biden, the US president, has warned that he will not attend the celebrations of the peace agreement unless a protocol deal has been reached.

The Government and Brussels struck a mini-deal on the thorny issue of EU access to UK databases on trade flows of goods and animals from Britain to Northern Ireland during lunchtime talks in London.

“This means a new basis for EU UK discussions on the protocol,” said Maros Sefcovic, the EU’s chief negotiator.

James Cleverly, the Foreign Secretary, said: “We share the same focus – finding the best outcome for Northern Ireland. Today’s progress on data sharing marks a positive step in discussions on the Northern Ireland Protocol.

A joint statement agreed by the two negotiators said: “This work was a critical prerequisite to building trust and providing assurance. EU and UK technical teams will work rapidly to scope the potential for solutions in different areas on the basis of this renewed understanding.”

There remain deep divisions between the UK and EU over the protocol, including the continued role of the European Court of Justice in Northern Ireland.

Mr Cleverly, Mr Sefcovic and Chris Heaton Harris, the Northern Ireland Secretary, are now expected to talk again on January 16, which suggests a return to weekly talks after months of deadlock and occasional discussions.

Both sides said there would now be intensive negotiations to bridge other areas of disagreement over the treaty, which introduced border checks on British goods to prevent a hard Irish border after Brexit.

Agreement on database access is vital in order to lay the groundwork for an eventual Protocol deal based on removing border checks in exchange for bolstered market surveillance.

Brussels wants the access to better police whether British goods were crossing the invisible land border from Northern Ireland into Ireland. This would allow it to cut checks or react if British goods not being checked to ensure they meet EU standards are shown to be crossing the border.

The Government wants to cut the number of border checks faced by British goods crossing the Irish Sea because they have a chilling effect on trade. London argues that the checks are too burdensome because many goods and animals do not cross the border into Ireland, an EU member.

The European Commission had demanded real-time access to trade flow data from Britain to Northern Ireland. Sources said it was now satisfied with the quality of access after there was disagreement over whether the information was in real time or provided by companies or the Government.

Technical talks between officials over the database had continued since UK-EU relations improved after the resignation of Boris Johnson last year.

Micheál Martin, Ireland’s foreign secretary and former prime minister, welcomed the news of the breakthrough. He will travel to Brussels on Tuesday for talks with the commission.

Any eventual deal will also need to have the support of the DUP, which has boycotted the restoration of Stormont after May elections because of its opposition to the protocol, which they fear is driving a wedge between them and the rest of the UK.

A DUP spokesman said: “The Protocol caused the collapse of the NI executive, it must be replaced with arrangements that restore our place in the UK. This is not a time for sticking plasters. It’s time for a serious negotiation which deals with the fundamental problem.”

Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, the DUP leader, added: “I am committed to the restoration of Stormont, but such a restoration can only be durable if it is built on solid foundations which are supported by unionists and nationalists.”

Mr Heaton-Harris will meet with Northern Ireland’s major political parties on Wednesday. He has said he will call fresh Assembly elections on January 19 unless power-sharing is restored. Leo Varadkar, the Irish prime minister, is also expected in Belfast before next week’s deadline.

However, the database breakthrough will raise expectations that the deadline will be extended to April 13, three days after Mr Biden’s planned visit for the Good Friday Agreement anniversary.

Before the database breakthrough, RTE reported officials were making contingency plans in case the April deadline was missed.

A political agreement on the broad outlines of a deal could be announced to buy time for more negotiations, the Irish broadcaster reported.

David Lammy, Labour’s shadow foreign secretary, described progress on solving the Protocol row as “pathetic” and said the data deal was “long overdue”.

“Rishi Sunak is failing to make real headway on the wider negotiations because he is too weak to stand up to the ERG in his party,” he said.

“With hard work and compromise on all sides, a deal is achievable to end this damaging, self-inflicted stand-off.”

Astronauts on the International Space Station captured this photo of Earth’s atmospheric layers in 2011.

When it comes to the health of our environment, it can often feel like everything is falling apart. But a recent assessment from the United Nations environment program offers a rare bit of relief: The ozone layer is on track for a full recovery by 2066. The Montreal Protocol, an international treaty to protect our ozone signed in 1987, has been a success, declared the U.N.-backed scientific panel in a report first released in October 2022 and formally presented on Monday at the American Meteorological Society meeting.

Despite a major setback in the 2010's, the amount of ozone-depleting chemicals emitted worldwide has decreased since 2018. In sum, nearly 99% of those harmful compounds have been phased out since the 1980's, according to a Monday press release. If all continues according to plan, the ozone layer is expected to recover to pre-1980 levels worldwide, including over the Antarctic, by 2066, the assessment says.

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After a year of bleak U.N. reports on climate change, the ozone report is “fantastic news,” said U.N. ozone executive secretary, Meg Seki, in the news statement. “Over the last 35 years, the [Montreal] Protocol has become a true champion for the environment,” she added. Through global agreement, scientific assessment, and enforcement, humanity has managed to avert what could’ve become a major planetary crisis.

The ozone layer is a section of Earth’s upper atmosphere with a high concentration of molecules composed of three oxygen atoms. In the stratosphere, that O3 acts as a critical protective blanket that absorbs some of the sun’s radiation, including cancer-causing UVB light that damages the DNA of all lifeforms. Though the ozone layer goes through natural fluctuations in distribution and thickness, scientists noted the link between certain human-made chemicals and ozone depletion in the 1970s. In the early 1980's, researchers documented a worsening thin-spot, dubbed a “hole,” in the ozone layer over the Antarctic.

Swift and global action to phase out those chemicals followed, and things started to improve. But then, the world began to backslide between 2012 and 2018, and ozone recovery slowed.

The U.N. conducts its ozone assessments every four years, as part of the Montreal Protocol. The last assessment, published at the end of 2018, noted a disturbing resurgence of a particular ozone-harming emission, known as CFC-11—a banned chemical previously used in refrigerants and insulating foams.

The source of the CFC-11 was initially mysterious, but scientists eventually linked it largely to manufacturing in eastern China. And, as the U.N.’s newest assessment confirms, a national crackdown on CFC-11 production within China seems to have curbed the rise of the illegal chemical emissions. Global annual CFC-11 emissions plummeted from more than 70 gigagrams per year to less than 50 Gg/yr between 2018 and 2021, according to U.N. estimates. Some ongoing CFC emissions are unavoidable, because chemicals already produced and contained within equipment like old fridges, disposed of improperly, inevitably continue to leak out.

In addition to signaling good news for the safety of our skin and eyes, the U.N. report doubles as good news for climate change. Many of those same ozone-depleting compounds are also hyper-potent greenhouse gases. CFCs, for instance, can cause 10,000 times as much atmospheric warming per pound as carbon dioxide. By reducing CFC and other chemical emissions, the Montreal Protocol has become one of the most effective pieces of global climate policy that we have.

And U.N. leaders also hope it serves as a roadmap for how we could navigate the regulation of other greenhouse gases. “Ozone action sets a precedent for climate action,” said Petteri Taalas, secretary general of the World Meteorological Organization. “Our success in phasing out ozone-eating chemicals shows us what can and must be done – as a matter of urgency – to transition away from fossil fuels, reduce greenhouse gases and so limit temperature increase.”

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(Bloomberg) -- French President Emmanuel Macron and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida pledged to strengthen cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region amid shared concerns over China and North Korea.

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Speaking to reporters in Paris, Macron and Kishida highlighted challenges including security as areas where they can increase cooperation. The leaders looked to a new round of joint military exercises as well as Japan’s establishment of a consulate in France’s New Caledonia islands, which marks deeper cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region.

“Beyond the war in Ukraine, our two countries have never failed to coordinate closely on major international crises, as well as on non-proliferation issues,” Macron said ahead of a work dinner at the Elysee presidential palace on Monday.

“Japan can count on our unfailing support in the face of Pyongyang’s flagrant violations of international law,” Macron said, adding that Paris and Tokyo “will also continue our joint actions in the Indo-Pacific area.”

France is Kishida’s first stop on a tour that will also take him to Italy, the UK, Canada and the US. Japan seeks to deepen security cooperation with fellow Group of Seven members before hosting the G-7 summit in Hiroshima in May. Kishida is also poised to explain Japan’s new security policy, which sets the long-pacifist nation on course for its biggest increase in defense spending since the end of World War II.

“France is a leading partner for establishing a free and open Indo-Pacific space,” Kishida said. “From now on, the security of Europe and that of the Indo-Pacific are inseparable.” He referred to what he called the intensification of “unilateral attempts to change the status quo by force” in areas including the South China Sea, saying Japan wanted to pursue cooperation with France including through joint exercises.

The new strategy, which was approved by Kishida’s cabinet in December, laid out plans for Japan to develop its own hypersonic missiles as part of a radical upgrade of its defense capabilities, from the coast guard to cybersecurity. The shift was mostly triggered by security concerns over China, which is described in the new policy as an “unprecedented strategic challenge.”

‘Systemic Rival’

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and North Korea stepping up its missile launches, including one that flew over Japan for the first time in five years, also led to the shift.

While Macron has repeatedly called for engagement with China and resisted efforts to divide the world into competing blocs, he often describes the Asian giant as a “systemic rival” and criticizes Beijing’s “hegemonic stance” and human rights abuses.

A senior French official said France is open to discuss new defense industry contracts with Japan if the opportunity arises.

Renault SA’s talks with Nissan Motor Co. is one of the topics Macron was due to discuss with Kishida after discussions stalled late last year, people familiar with the situation said earlier Monday.

--With assistance from Isabel Reynolds, Albertina Torsoli and Ania Nussbaum.

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The ozone layer — the atmospheric shield that prevents harmful ultraviolet light from reaching the Earth’s surface — is on track to recover, United Nations (U.N.) scientists said on Monday.

In the report, which is issued once every four years, the U.N. said the ozone layer has shown recovery and will return to its 1980 levels over the next several decades.

The ozone layer prevents exposure to ultraviolet light, which can cause skin cancer and other health problems. It can also harm animals and plants.

Human use of ozone-depleting substances — like the chemicals used in refrigeration and fire suppression — were harming the protective barrier, prompting global concern for years.

In 1987, countries including the U.S. agreed to the Montreal Protocol, an international agreement to reduce the consumption and production of ozone-depleting substances.

The new report says that this agreement was particularly important to the current path toward restoration, which it said will occur for most of the world by 2040.

However, recovery around the Arctic and Antarctic will take longer — by 2045 and 2066 respectively, according to the report.

The report specifically noted that China had decreased its emissions of certain substances in recent years, contributing to the overall decline.

The authors also said that the recovery also helped evade some global warming.

World Meteorological Organization Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said in a statement that the work the world did to restore the ozone layer could be used as a model for tackling climate change.

“Ozone action sets a precedent for climate action,” Taalas said. “Our success in phasing out ozone-eating chemicals shows us what can and must be done — as a matter of urgency — to transition away from fossil fuels, reduce greenhouse gases and so limit temperature increase.”

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.

Security forces have rescued six of the 32 people who were abducted at a train station in Edo state, southern Nigeria, at the weekend, the authorities say.

Among those taken were station staff and passengers waiting for a train.

A suspect has also been arrested in connection with the abductions.

There have been increasing concerns about attacks in the country. The latest incident comes in the month before a presidential election where security is a major campaign issue.

Reports say that on Saturday a large number of gunmen, armed with AK-47s, shot in the air as they entered the station in Igueben before seizing the travellers and staff and taking them to a nearby forest.

Some of those who managed to flee sustained bullet wounds, eyewitnesses have been quoted as saying. One woman with a baby also reportedly escaped and found her way to a neighbouring community where she has been rescued.

The kidnappers also released two children as it was "believed that they felt the children will slow down their movements", a local resident is quoted by the Vanguard newspaper as saying.

Edo state government spokesperson Chris Osa Nehikhare said that many people had started using the train as the local road had become "a no-go area, with huge ransoms being collected from families of [kidnap] victims".

The federal government has condemned the abduction of the passengers, describing it as "despicable and utterly barbaric".

Incidents of kidnapping for ransom, as well as gunmen targeting communities for political reasons, have been on the rise in recent years in Nigeria.

In December, a major rail service linking the capital, Abuja, with the northern city of Kaduna, resumed nine months after at least nine passengers died during a gun attack on the train line. Many others were taken away as hostages and the last one was released in October.

Insecurity is one of the key issues for candidates ahead of Nigeria's general elections in February when a successor to President Muhammadu Buhari will be chosen.

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A "selfless" man who has provided thousands in Africa with clean water wells has been given an award.

Nigel Linacre, from Chippenham, has been given a British Empire Medal for his work in Uganda, Kenya, Gambia and Malawi with his charity WellBoring.

His organisation has built wells in 300 schools and aims to get clean water to a million people within three years.

Africa head of operations Benjamin Koyoo said the charity had made a "huge impact" on people's lives.

"We here in Kenya, we're celebrating the medal that Nigel received," he said.

"The guy is selfless and has gone out of his way to ensure that small children in the village can get the clean water.

"The impact is huge."

Mr Koyoo said water-related diseases were common in the places the charity worked in before the bore wells were made.

"The children are now healthy and they can attend school without missing class to fetch water for family," he added.

Mr Linacre founded the Gloucestershire-based charity in 2012.

He said WellBoring initially aimed to provide 100 schools with clean water but that figure continued to increase.

Mr Linacre said having access to clean water in these places "really is a game changer".

"Instead of having to walk to a river or a stream, where they'll get water that can and often does make them sick, they've got water in their school that is shared with the community as well," he said.

"Sickness goes down, attendance goes up, lives are changed.

"We've already got safe water to over a quarter of a million people. We'll get safe water to a million people in about three years."

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MEXICO CITY (AP) — The Biden administration said Monday that Iran's sale of lethal drones to Russia for use in its ongoing invasion of Ukraine means the country may be "contributing to widespread war crimes."

National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan leveled the charge against Iran on Monday as he spoke to reporters accompanying President Joe Biden on a trip to Mexico. While it did not signal a policy shift, the charge marked some of the sharpest U.S. rhetoric against Iran since it began providing weapons to Russia to support its nearly year-long war in Ukraine. It comes as the U.S. and European partners are looking to further ostracize both nations in the court of public opinion, as they face challenges with physically stopping the transfers of weapons on which Russia is increasingly reliant.

Sullivan said Iran had chosen “to go down a road where their weapons are being used to kill civilians in Ukraine and to try to plunge cities into cold and darkness, which from our point of view, puts Iran in a place where it could potentially be contributing to widespread war crimes.”

Sullivan pointed to European and U.S. sanctions on Iran put in place after the U.S. exposed Iran’s weapons sales to Russia last year as examples of how they are trying to “make these transactions more difficult." But he acknowledged that “the way that they are actually carrying them out physically makes physical interdiction a challenge.”

State Department spokesman Ned Price said Monday that the U.S. is already contributing money, expertise and other logistical support to Ukrainian and international investigators probing allegations of war crimes. He said those probes could well extend beyond Russia’s actions.

“If in the course of that work we are in a position to determine that the Iranian government as a whole or that senior Iranian officials are complicit or responsible for war crimes, we will work to hold them to account as well," he told reporters.

___

Miller reported from Washington. AP Diplomatic Writer Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this report.

Meta’s “Supreme Court” says posts calling for the death of Iran’s Supreme Leader do not violate the company’s policies against violent threats and should remain online. The “death to Khamenei” posts, the independent Oversight Board argues, should be viewed as a form of political expression rather than a direct call for violence. Meta’s decision to abide by the Oversight Board’s ruling could have far-reaching implications for politically contentious speech in other regions that are currently adrift in a policy morass.

The debate involves a July 2022 Facebook post of a cartoon version of Khamenei where his animated beard grasps hold of a chained and blindfolded woman wearing a hijab with the words “marg bar... Khamenei” appearing underneath. Though the flagged phrase literally translates to “death to Khamenei,” the Oversight Board says that narrow reading misses important context. Often, the group writes, protesters and political dissenters will evoke the slogan to mean, “down with Khamenei.” The Oversight Board, which operates independently of Meta but relies on the company to sign its checks, ultimately overturned Meta’s decision and called on the company to improve its respect for freedom of expression amid political protests.

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“The Board is concerned that Meta has not taken action to allow use of ‘marg bar Khamenei’ at scale during the current protests in Iran, despite its assessment in this case that the slogan did not pose a risk of harm,’ The Oversight Board wrote in its ruling.

Khamenei, who assumed power in 1979, has led a brutal crackdown against Iranian protesters following the September death of a 22-year-old Kurdish woman detained by the country’s morality police for not wearing a hijab while visiting Tehran. As enraged Iranians flooded the streets, government officials moved to block major internet services like WhatsApp and Instagram, limiting the outside world’s peek behind the curtain.

In that context, the Oversight Board says Meta should have done more to prepare moderators for politically sensitive speech and should have “anticipated” issues likely to occur around removal requests for content including the “marg bar Khamenei” phrase. Meta’s unpreparedness here, the Oversight Board argues, may have, “led to the silencing of political speech aimed at protecting women’s rights,” since the removed phrases were widely used during the ensuing protests. Meta did eventually bring the post back online with a “newsworthiness” label attached to it, but the Oversight Board says that label was unnecessary since the posts didn’t violate Meta’s rules regarding violence and incitement in the first place.

“In the Board’s view, in contexts of widespread protests, Meta should be less reluctant to scale allowances,” The Oversight Board wrote. “This would help to protect voice where there are minimal risks to safety. This is particularly important where systematic violations of human rights have been documented, and avenues for exercising the right to freedom of expression are limited, as in Iran.”

At the same time, the ruling’s authors find it unlikely any “universal” approach to other “death to_____”-style posts on the platform can be established. Death threats directed towards high-risk individuals like writer Salman Rushdie, for example, likely would violate the company’s policies. So too would posts calling for death during the January 6 attack on the U.S. capitol. It’s unclear, however, how Meta would respond to other phrases like “Death to America,” which gained prominence in recent decades, in some cases, as a political response to U.S. involvement in the Middle East.

In a statement following the board’s decision, Meta said it plans to conduct a review of “identical content with parallel context.”

“We welcome the Oversight Board’s decision today on this case,” Meta wrote. “The board overturned Meta’s original decision to remove the content from the platform for violating our Violence and Incitement Policy, deeming the newsworthiness allowance unnecessary. Meta previously reinstated this content so no further action will be taken on it.”

Meta’s decision to use certain politically evocative speech can have real effects on the company’s operations. In Russia, for example, Meta quickly found itself booted out of the country entirely and labeled an extremist organization after it tweaked its hate speech policies to temporarily allow calls for violence against president Vladamir Putin following his invasion of Ukraine. Those rule changes only applied to a handful of countries near Russia, Ukraine among them.

Update 1/9/2022 12:05 P.M.: Added statement a from Meta.

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UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly on Monday met EU Commission Vice-President Maros Sefcovic to discuss problems in Northern Ireland surrounding post-Brexit trading arrangements.

London and Brussels have been negotiating for months to try to ease the tensions over new Northern Irish trade arrangements which treat the province differently from the rest of the UK.

Together with UK Northern Ireland secretary Chris Heaton-Harris, they "took stock of work to find joint solutions to the concerns raised by the businesses and communities in Northern Ireland", a joint statement said.

"They underlined the EU and UK's shared commitment to protect the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement in all its parts, while protecting the integrity of both the EU Single Market and the UK internal market," it added.

EU-UK relations were strained during former British prime minister Boris Johnson's tenure, after he introduced legislation to unilaterally overhaul the so-called Northern Ireland Protocol he had agreed with the bloc in January 2020.

That draft law is still progressing through parliament but the tone of more recent diplomacy since Rishi Sunak became prime minister in October appears to have improved.

Monday's talks in London were described as "cordial and constructive".

"They agreed that while a range of critical issues needed to be resolved to find a way forward, an agreement was reached today on the way forward regarding the specific question of the EU's access to UK IT systems."

This, they said, was a "critical prerequisite" to building trust and "provided a new basis for EU-UK discussions".

EU and UK technical teams would begin work to rapidly identify solutions in a range of areas "on the basis of this renewed understanding" and the three men would meet again on January 16, the statement added.

The protocol was signed separately from the trade and cooperation deal that cemented the UK's formal departure from the European Union in January 2021.

But its implementation has proven a flashpoint for disagreement between the bloc, member state Ireland and the UK.

The deal kept Northern Ireland in the European single market and customs union, stipulating checks on goods moving from the rest of the UK to Northern Ireland.

That was designed to prevent a "hard" border between Ireland and Northern Ireland -- a key plank of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement that largely ended three decades of conflict.

However, it has enraged hardline pro-UK unionists, including the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), leading to their boycott of the devolved assembly in Belfast since February.

A deadline is approaching in the coming weeks for the resumption of power-sharing body. The government in London has warned it will call fresh elections if unions stay away.

har/phz/cw

Earth’s protective ozone layer is slowly but noticeably healing at a pace that would fully mend the hole over Antarctica in about 43 years, a new United Nations report says.

A once-every-four-years scientific assessment found recovery in progress, more than 35 years after every nation in the world agreed to stop producing chemicals that chomp on the layer of ozone in Earth’s atmosphere that shields the planet from harmful radiation linked to skin cancer, cataracts and crop damage.

“In the upper stratosphere and in the ozone hole we see things getting better," said Paul Newman, co-chair of the scientific assessment.

The progress is slow, according to the report presented Monday at the American Meteorological Society convention in Denver. The global average amount of ozone 18 miles (30 kilometers) high in the atmosphere won’t be back to 1980 pre-thinning levels until about 2040, the report said. And it won’t be back to normal in the Arctic until 2045.

Antarctica, where it’s so thin there’s an annual giant gaping hole in the layer, won't be fully fixed until 2066, the report said.

Scientists and environmental advocates across the world have long hailed the efforts to heal the ozone hole — springing out of a 1987 agreement called the Montreal Protocol that banned a class of chemicals often used in refrigerants and aerosols — as one of the biggest ecological victories for humanity.

“Ozone action sets a precedent for climate action. Our success in phasing out ozone-eating chemicals shows us what can and must be done – as a matter of urgency — to transition away from fossil fuels, reduce greenhouse gases and so limit temperature increase,” World Meteorological Organization Secretary-General Prof. Petteri Taalas said in a statement.

Signs of healing were reported four years ago but were slight and more preliminary. “Those numbers of recovery have solidified a lot,” Newman said.

The two chief chemicals that munch away at ozone are in lower levels in the atmosphere, said Newman, chief Earth scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. Chlorine levels are down 11.5% since they peaked in 1993 and bromine, which is more efficient at eating ozone but is at lower levels in the air, dropped 14.5% since its 1999 peak, the report said.

That bromine and chlorine levels “stopped growing and is coming down is a real testament to the effectiveness of the Montreal Protocol,” Newman said.

Natural weather patterns in the Antarctic also affect ozone hole levels, which peak in the fall. And the past couple years, the holes have been a bit bigger because of that but the overall trend is one of healing, Newman said.

This is “saving 2 million people every year from skin cancer,” United Nations Environment Programme Director Inger Andersen told The Associated Press earlier this year in an email.

A few years ago emissions of one of the banned chemicals, chlorofluorocarbon-11 (CFC-11), stopped shrinking and was rising. Rogue emissions were spotted in part of China but now have gone back down to where they are expected, Newman said.

A third generation of those chemicals, called HFC, was banned a few years ago not because it would eat at the ozone layer but because it is a heat-trapping greenhouse gas. The new report says that the ban would avoid 0.5 to 0.9 degrees (0.3 to 0.5 degrees Celsius) of additional warming.

The report also warned that efforts to artificially cool the planet by putting aerosols into the atmosphere to reflect the sunlight would thin the ozone layer by as much as 20% in Antarctica.

Ibrahim Thiaw, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, on climate change, biodiversity and productive land loss requiring immediate action, featured in exclusive interview with 'VISION by Protiviti'

MENLO PARK, Calif., Jan. 9, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- In an interview with VISION by Protiviti, the United Nations' (UN) Executive Secretary of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification calls on global business leaders to take an active role in helping to solve the planet's biggest problems. "Businesses need to shift from a linear economy — extracting resources, using them quickly and discarding them as waste — to a circular economy where used products are repurposed and re-injected in the economy," said Ibrahim Thiaw in an interview with global consulting firm Protiviti while he was at COP27, the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

"Business has a huge role to play in shaping the consumption patterns of the growing middle class, as it will demand more land, water and other resources. There is a dire need for investments that, at once, match this huge consumer demand for change, and ensure we adapt to the multiple disruptions exacerbated by climate change and land degradation," stated Thiaw.

The interview, conducted by Protiviti's Baris Karapinar, ESG and Sustainability lead for the firm's operation in Switzerland, wrapped up Protiviti's six-month exploration of the business impact of sustainability in a content series titled "Future of ESG," the latest theme explored on the VISION by Protiviti online thought leadership platform.

Thiaw calls on the private sector to help solve Earth's environmental challenges, including climate change, drought, water scarcity, land degradation and biodiversity loss. Doing so will give people a chance to generate 50 percent more wealth over the next three decades, Thiaw says. "The world has a choice: Either we continue with the current nature-destructive path and lose up to half of the global GDP by 2050, or we take a sustainable land management approach to combat the current environmental crises we're facing."

The UN has led the global effort to raise awareness and affect action with its Sustainable Development Goals, a call for action by all countries — poor, rich and middle-income — to promote prosperity while protecting the planet. "The global economy will lose an estimated US$23 trillion by 2050 through land and soil loss alone if we continue with business as usual," Thiaw said.

The economic returns of restoring land and reducing degradation, greenhouse gas emissions and biodiversity loss are estimated at US$140 trillion every year. That's about 1.5 times the global GDP of $93 trillion in 2021, according to the UN. "This is an investment opportunity, not a threat to business," Thiaw said. Perhaps business could shift to a more 'nature-positive' business model, where the ultimate objective goes beyond the traditional bottom line of a company to embracing 'doing good,' as well, he added. "The possibilities for business to drive change are unlimited. The choice is ours."

Cory Gunderson, executive vice president, Global Solutions, Protiviti, says the United Nations' message couldn't be clearer. "Business leaders will play a critical role in helping solve some of the planet's biggest challenges. There are many paths to explore. We believe having clear strategic goals and objectives to address ESG matters is a key to future success. And it can be good business. We're thrilled to highlight the key issues facing businesses, including ESG, in our landmark VISION by Protiviti program," said Gunderson.

The interview with Thiaw is one of more than 30 pieces of content, including videos, podcasts and articles, currently available as part of VISION by Protiviti's Future of ESG initiative available here. Other highlights include:

Morgan Stanley's Carla Harris on what lies ahead for ESG

Accelerating digital and net zero sustainability with Microsoft

AWS Energy Solutions Lead on Scope 3, 'data obesity' and a decarbonized future

Protiviti-Oxford survey finds ESG enthusiasm gap among North America executives

Boardroom Buzz: Cambridge dean on the business of sustainability

Inside The Economist's global ESG rankings

A global 'grand bargain' will be required for complicated climate transition in India

CEO of Nepad: Agenda 2063 could transform Africa into 'global powerhouse'

VISION by Protiviti is a provocative thought leadership series that puts megatrends under the microscope to provide strategic insights for C-suite executives and board members. Content is available in a variety of formats, including articles, podcasts, video interviews and special events. Subscribe to VISION by Protiviti for free here. In Q1 2023, the series will explore the metaverse.

About Protiviti

Protiviti (www.protiviti.com) is a global consulting firm that delivers deep expertise, objective insights, a tailored approach, and unparalleled collaboration to help leaders confidently face the future. Protiviti and its independent and locally owned Member Firms provide clients with consulting and managed solutions in finance, technology, operations, data, digital, legal, governance, risk and internal audit through its network of more than 85 offices in over 25 countries.

Named to the 2022 Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For^® list, Protiviti has served more than 80 percent of Fortune 100 and nearly 80 percent of Fortune 500 companies. The firm also works with smaller, growing companies, including those looking to go public, as well as with government agencies. Protiviti is a wholly owned subsidiary of Robert Half (NYSE: RHI). Founded in 1948, Robert Half is a member of the S&P 500 index.

Protiviti is not licensed or registered as a public accounting firm and does not issue opinions on financial statements or offer attestation services.

All referenced marks are the property of their respective owners.

Editor's note: Protiviti photo available upon request.

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/united-nations-executive-secretary-talks-with-protiviti-we-need-private-sector-engagement-investment-to-solve-environmental-crises-301716293.html

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DENVER (AP) — Javier Guillen just wanted to get to the United States as he endured a three-month trek from Venezuela, hiking through Central American jungles and spending four days clinging to the roof of a Mexican train known as “the beast” to avoid police and kidnappers.

But when he finally arrived in El Paso, Texas, last week, the 32-year-old settled on a new destination, only one relatively cheap bus ride away — Denver, an additional 680 miles (1,094 kilometers) north from the border.

“It’s the easiest place, closest to Texas, and there are people who’ll help immigrants here,” Guillen said before making his way to one of a network of shelters the city has scrambled to set up.

Over the past month, nearly 4,000 immigrants, almost all Venezuelans, have arrived unannounced in icy Denver, with nowhere to stay and sometimes dressed in nothing more than T-shirts and flip-flops. The influx took city officials by surprise as they grappled with a spate of winter storms that plunged temperatures to record lows and disrupted transit out of the area.

When they appealed to the state to open new shelters, Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat who had allocated $4 million to help care for the migrants, arranged for those who wanted to travel onward to go by bus to Chicago and New York. That led New York Mayor Eric Adams, also a Democrat, who had already warned his city was being overwhelmed by new migrants, to complain about the transfers from Denver.

The situation illustrates how record numbers crossing the southern border are reverberating northward to cities like Denver, New York and Washington that have long been destinations for immigrants — but not busloads of them showing up all at once, straight from the border and with no resources.

“They are getting a taste of what border cities have been facing,” said Julia Gelatt, a senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute in Washington. “The fact that people are showing up in groups with a need for basic services really is new for northern cities.”

In some instances, Republican governors — primarily Texas Gov. Greg Abbott — have tried to drive home that message by transporting immigrants straight from the border to New York or near Vice President Kamala Harris' Washington residence in the nation's capital. Last year Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis also sent some to the resort island of Martha's Vineyard.

It's not clear precisely how Denver became a new destination for Venezuelans fleeing their country's economic and political chaos. Advocates had detected small numbers arriving from the border earlier in 2022 and warned the route was becoming increasingly popular.

Then, last fall, many traveled to the U.S.-Mexico border in hopes the Biden administration would end a pandemic regulation that lets the country automatically return asylum seekers to Mexico. Instead, President Joe Biden added Venezuelans to the nationalities covered by the rule in October. Venezuelan crossings dropped at the border, but then something changed in Denver.

Whatever the trigger, the number of migrants arriving in the city spiked dramatically in December to sometimes 200 a day, just as a bitter winter freeze and record low temperatures swept through. The storms snarled roads out of the city and canceled several scheduled bus trips to points east, stranding many in a city already struggling to shelter its homeless population.

In response, Denver converted three recreation centers into emergency shelters for migrants and paid for families with children to stay at hotels, allocating $3 million to deal with the influx. It reassigned workers to process the new arrivals, assign them to shelters and help them get on buses. Residents donated piles of winter clothing.

“Cities and states are ill-equipped to deal with this,” Mayor Michael Hancock said in an interview. “Whether you're on the border or in Denver, Colorado, cities are not set up for this.”

Amelia Iraheta, a city public health employee reassigned to work with the migrants, said one man reported walking from the border and arrived with a broken foot. One woman, who reached Denver barefoot, still had her feet covered with cactus spines after walking through the borderland desert. Most wore just the clothes on their back — woefully insufficient for the subzero temperatures.

“Coming into Denver in the peak of winter, conditions were not exactly what I think they had been expecting,” Iraheta said.

Most weren't intending to stay long. The city and state say about 70% of the more than 3,800 migrants who've come to Denver since they began tracking on Dec. 9 planned to go elsewhere ultimately. More than 1,600, the city says, have already left town on their own accord.

Polis' office said he was not available for an interview. “The state's priority is ensuring people are receiving the resources they need and can reach their desired final destination, which is the opposite of actions other states have taken to send people to places they likely had no intention of going to,” spokesman Conor Cahill said in a statement.

Jennifer Piper of the American Friends Service Committee, which has worked with the city and several nonprofits to help the migrants, inspected one of the buses before it left Denver. She said all passengers agreed they were on it voluntarily and that almost all had friends or family in New York or Chicago to stay with.

“These are grown-ups in control of their own destiny,” Piper said. “The reality is they were going to be on Greyhound buses eventually.”

The city has set a 14-day limit on stays in the emergency shelters and is talking to other agencies and nonprofits about opening longer-term facilities. It's unclear how Biden's new immigration policy, which opens an additional 30,000 monthly slots for asylum applicants from Venezuela and three other Latin American nations, will affect the flow into Denver.

“I really think this is not a flash in the pan,” Piper said. “Denver is now on that route, and I don't think that will shift for at least the next 5-6 months.”

It may last longer. Alexander Perez, 23, took the same daunting, monthslong overland journey through Colombia, Central America and Mexico as many other Venezuelans. It includes a particularly brutal stretch of jungle isthmus into Panama known as the Darien Gap, devoid of any roads and plagued by armed marauders and deadly natural perils.

Along the way he kept thinking about joining a cousin in New York. Following a week in El Paso, he hopped a bus to Denver with the intent of continuing northeast. But after finding a warm welcome and, eventually, a hotel room, he began to reconsider his itinerary. He needed to make some money before heading on.

“Sometimes God leads you places,” Perez said, standing outside a supermarket, eyeing mounds of dirty snow.

Maybe, Perez mused, he could stay and earn some money shoveling.

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously Monday to keep a key border crossing from Turkey to Syria’s rebel-held northwest open for critical aid deliveries for another six months. Syria’s ally Russia — in a surprise move — supported the resolution.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said after the vote that cross-border aid remains “an indispensable lifeline for 4.1 million people in northwest Syria.”

The vote, the U.N. chief stressed, “comes as humanitarian needs have reached the highest levels since the start of the conflict in 2011, with people in Syria grappling with a harsh winter,” according to his spokesman Stephane Dujarric.

All eyes had been on Russia, which in the past abstained or vetoed resolutions on cross-border aid deliveries. It has sought to replace aid crossing the Turkish border to northwestern Idlib province with convoys from government-held areas in Syria. Since the early years of the war, Turkey has sided with and supported Syria’s rebels.

Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said supporting the resolution was “difficult,” describing the northwest as an enclave “inundated with terrorists.” The vote, he said, is not a change in Moscow’s “principled position” that cross-border aid deliveries — which began in 2014 — are temporary and should be replaced by Syrian government-controlled deliveries.

Syria’s U.N. Ambassador Bassam Sabbagh criticized Western countries for “politicizing humanitarian work,” and said Western sanctions “have aggravated the suffering of the Syrians.” He claimed the government has been “working relentlessly" to provide basic services to Syrians.

Last month, Guterres warned in a report to the council that Syria's already dire humanitarian situation is worsening. If the aid deliveries from Turkey to Idlib weren’t renewed, millions of Syrians might not survive the winter, he warned.

Deliveries across conflict lines within the country cannot substitute for “the size or scope of the massive cross-border United Nations operation,” Guterres said. On Sunday, a convoy of 18 trucks entered the area of Idlib through front lines held by Syrian government forces.

The resolution put the Security Council on record as “determining that the devastating humanitarian situation in Syria continues to constitute a threat to peace and security in the region.”

Guterres said humanitarian access across Syria — both through cross-border operations and deliveries across front lines — must be expanded. He urged Security Council members and others “to continue supporting humanitarian partners’ efforts to deliver assistance to those who need it throughout Syria,” Dujarric said.

The Security Council initially authorized aid deliveries in 2014 from Turkey, Iraq and Jordan through four crossing points into opposition-held areas in Syria. But over the years, Russia backed by its ally China, has reduced the authorized crossings to just one from Turkey — and the time frame from a year to six months.

Many of the people sheltering in the northwestern Idlib area have been internally displaced by the nearly 12-year conflict that has killed hundreds of thousands and displaced half the country’s pre-war population of 23 million.

The resolution, co-sponsored by Brazil and Switzerland, will allow for aid deliveries through the Bab al-Hawa crossing from Turkey for the next six months, until July 10.

Speaking on behalf of the Security Council’s 10 elected members, Ecuador’s U.N. Ambassador Hernan Perez Loose said the resolution will address “the dire and urgent needs of the Syrian people,” but he reiterated the need for “more certainty and predictability for humanitarian organizations.”

U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield stressed that an extension of only six months — while allowing the “Syrian people to breathe a sigh of relief" — makes it “harder and more costly for aid workers to procure, hire and plan” assistance. It also hinders so-called recovery projects, or restoration of critical functions that helps communities bounce back — a key Russian demand.

“A 12-month extension is needed for the U.N., and it is needed for our humanitarian partners and for recipients,” she said, a view echoed by Britain, France and other council members.

David Miliband, CEO of the International Rescue Committee, expressed relief at the cross-border aid renewal guaranteeing assistance over the winter, but stressed that the six-month extension “will once again be short-lived” and that deliveries from Turkey will still be needed in July.

Russia’s Nebenzia warned, however, that there will be “no discussion about a mechanical extension of the cross-border extension” unless Western members of the council “fundamentally change” their views on providing aid to Syria.

He accused the West of not being concerned about the needs of ordinary Syrians and inflating “the myth” that cross-border deliveries can’t be supplanted by convoys across front lines. He also sharply criticized the West, saying Idlib receives half the funds for early recovery projects while the majority of Syrians live elsewhere.

In addition to pushing for more deliveries across front lines, Russia has also pushed for early recovery projects in Syria. Guterres said in the December report that at least 374 early recovery projects have taken place throughout the country since January 2021, directly benefiting over 665,000 people, but he said more is needed.

The resolution also calls on all U.N. member states to respond to Syria’s “complex humanitarian emergency” and meet the urgent needs of the Syrian people “in light of the profound socioeconomics and humanitarian impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

In Syria, an Idlib-based doctor welcomed Monday's vote.

“The decision to extend aid through the border is the only real lifeline for Syria’s north, especially for the medical sector,” said Safwat Sheikhouni.

Had the resolution not been extended, it would have been a “catastrophe” for local residents because it would have led to the closure of the offices of most humanitarian organizations there, he said.

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Associated Press writer Bassem Mroue in Beirut contributed to this story.

Earth’s protective ozone layer is slowly but noticeably healing at a pace that would fully mend the hole over Antarctica in about 43 years, a new United Nations report says.

A once-every-four-years scientific assessment found recovery in progress, more than 35 years after every nation in the world agreed to stop producing chemicals that chomp on the layer of ozone in Earth’s atmosphere that shields the planet from harmful radiation linked to skin cancer, cataracts and crop damage.

“In the upper stratosphere and in the ozone hole we see things getting better," said Paul Newman, co-chair of the scientific assessment.

The progress is slow, according to the report presented Monday at the American Meteorological Society convention in Denver. The global average amount of ozone 18 miles (30 kilometers) high in the atmosphere won’t be back to 1980 pre-thinning levels until about 2040, the report said. And it won’t be back to normal in the Arctic until 2045.

Antarctica, where it’s so thin there’s an annual giant gaping hole in the layer, won't be fully fixed until 2066, the report said.

Scientists and environmental advocates across the world have long hailed the efforts to heal the ozone hole — springing out of a 1987 agreement called the Montreal Protocol that banned a class of chemicals often used in refrigerants and aerosols — as one of the biggest ecological victories for humanity.

“Ozone action sets a precedent for climate action. Our success in phasing out ozone-eating chemicals shows us what can and must be done – as a matter of urgency — to transition away from fossil fuels, reduce greenhouse gases and so limit temperature increase,” World Meteorological Organization Secretary-General Prof. Petteri Taalas said in a statement.

Signs of healing were reported four years ago but were slight and more preliminary. “Those numbers of recovery have solidified a lot,” Newman said.

The two chief chemicals that munch away at ozone are in lower levels in the atmosphere, said Newman, chief Earth scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. Chlorine levels are down 11.5% since they peaked in 1993 and bromine, which is more efficient at eating ozone but is at lower levels in the air, dropped 14.5% since its 1999 peak, the report said.

That bromine and chlorine levels “stopped growing and is coming down is a real testament to the effectiveness of the Montreal Protocol,” Newman said.

Natural weather patterns in the Antarctic also affect ozone hole levels, which peak in the fall. And the past couple years, the holes have been a bit bigger because of that but the overall trend is one of healing, Newman said.

This is “saving 2 million people every year from skin cancer,” United Nations Environment Programme Director Inger Andersen told The Associated Press earlier this year in an email.

A few years ago emissions of one of the banned chemicals, chlorofluorocarbon-11 (CFC-11), stopped shrinking and was rising. Rogue emissions were spotted in part of China but now have gone back down to where they are expected, Newman said.

A third generation of those chemicals, called HFC, was banned a few years ago not because it would eat at the ozone layer but because it is a heat-trapping greenhouse gas. The new report says that the ban would avoid 0.5 to 0.9 degrees (0.3 to 0.5 degrees Celsius) of additional warming.

The report also warned that efforts to artificially cool the planet by putting aerosols into the atmosphere to reflect the sunlight would thin the ozone layer by as much as 20% in Antarctica.

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Follow AP’s climate and environment coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment

___

Follow Seth Borenstein on Twitter at @borenbears

___

Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

International aid groups warn that millions of people in northern Syria could be completely cut from lifesaving assistance should a United Nations vote fail to extend cross-border aid operations from Turkey.

The concerns revive those of six months ago before the Security Council eventually extended the cross-border mechanism for another half-year, as demanded by Syria's ally Russia.

A new UN vote was scheduled later Monday.

The aid delivery mechanism across Turkey's border into rebel-held Syria at the Bab al-Hawa crossing is the only way UN assistance -- everything from nappies and blankets to chickpeas -- can reach civilians without navigating areas controlled by Syrian government forces.

The mechanism, in place since 2014, will expire on Tuesday without another UN extension.

"To many, humanitarian aid has become a lifeline, especially people who are displaced," Ammar Ammar of the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) told AFP.

"Without UN cross-border access, hunger will increase," he said, calling the aid critical for millions "trapped in the northwest", where jihadists and allied rebels are in control.

The Idlib area is Syria's last main rebel bastion.

Russia has, for years, pressured international organisations to pass exclusively through Damascus to distribute aid throughout the country -- going as far as vetoing cross-border extensions that exceeded six months.

But the organisations say such arrangements cannot replace a cross-border operation and that they do not trust the regime to distribute the aid fairly to areas under rival control.

Aid workers also say a shorter period makes it difficult to plan delivery.

"Ending cross-border aid now would be equivalent to a death sentence for many of those that depend on it," Hiba Zayadin of Human Rights Watch told AFP.

Such a move would derail the lifesaving supplies delivered from across the Turkish border into Syria to an average of 2.7 million people who benefitted from it every month in 2022, according to UN figures.

The last UN vote in July only extended the mechanism for six months, after Russia vetoed a one-year extension favoured by Western countries.

"Council members should be guided by humanitarian imperatives rather than politics," David Miliband, head of the International Rescue Committee, said in a statement last week.

"This resolution is the bare minimum: secure and predictable assistance should be non-negotiable."

In 2014, international aid could flow to Syria through four border crossings, but after years of pressure from China and Russia, only the Bab al-Hawa route has remained operational.

More aid must now go through Damascus to reach areas outside its control, raising concerns among rights groups. But even so, in the past two years only a handful of these convoys has crossed from government-held areas to the northwest, said Diana Semaan of Amnesty International.

The UN halted cross-border aid from Iraq to Kurdish-held parts of northeast Syria in 2020, after Russia and China vetoed UN Security Council resolutions authorising a crossing there to remain open.

The region has since faced "severe shortages in all essential aid... because the Syrian government has restricted the access of aid delivery," Semaan said.

"The same will happen in the northwest if the resolution is not renewed."

In the Idlib region medical professionals staged a small sit-in Sunday to demand the aid mechanism's renewal, an AFP correspondent reported.

Closing the border to aid would spell "a medical disaster" that would put 41 health care centres out of service, Hussam Korra Mohammed, an official at the Idlib Health Directorate, told AFP.

Basic medicine for chronic illnesses such as diabetes and high blood pressure would no longer be available, he told AFP.

In a statement the UN warned that many in northern Syria would "not have access to food and shelter... to safe water," should the operation cease.

The statement was signed last week by chiefs of several UN agencies, including the World Health Organization.

"Most of them are women and children who need assistance just to survive at the peak of winter and amidst a serious cholera outbreak," it said.

rh-aya/it

Iran has handed down three more death sentences for offences related to the civil unrest triggered by Mahsa Amini's death, the judiciary said Monday, fuelling international protests against the regime.

The latest sentences -- for three men who were convicted of the killings of three security forces members -- bring to 17 the official total of detainees condemned to death in connection with the nearly four months of protests.

Four executions have been carried out while six of those convicted have been granted retrials.

Oslo-based group Iran Human Rights (IHR) said Monday at least 109 protesters now in detention have been sentenced to death or face charges that can carry capital punishment.

The Islamic republic has been rocked by a wave of protests since the September 16 death in custody of Kurdish Iranian Amini, 22, following her arrest for allegedly violating Iran's strict dress code for women.

In the latest ruling, Saleh Mirhashemi, Majid Kazemi and Saeed Yaghoubi were sentenced to death for "moharebeh" -- or waging "war against God" -- under Iran's Islamic sharia law, the judiciary's Mizan Online website reported.

In addition to the sentences, which can still be appealed, they were found guilty of belonging to a "criminal group with the intention of disrupting the security of the country", a charge that carries a 10-year jail term.

Iran has blamed the unrest on hostile foreign forces, and supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Monday that authorities had been dealing "seriously and justly" with those implicated in the "riots".

"There is no doubt that there are economic and livelihood problem, but can this problem be solved by burning trash cans and rioting in the streets?" he said according to his official website.

"Undoubtedly, these actions are treason, and the responsible institutions deal with treason seriously and justly."

The crackdown and executions have sparked global outrage and new Western sanctions against Tehran.

In a report, IHR gave an updated death toll Monday of 481 killed protesters, including 64 minors.

Iranian authorities say hundreds, including members of the security forces, have been killed since the unrest began.

Human rights groups have also accused Iran of thousands of arrests and a failure to grant due legal process to defendants and extracting forced confessions.

Germany summoned Iran's ambassador to Berlin on Monday in protest against Tehran's bloody crackdown and the latest executions, carried out Saturday, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said.

Baerbock said the envoy had been called "to make unmistakably clear that the brutal repression, the oppression and the terrorising of its own population as well as the most recent two executions will not remain without consequence".

The French foreign ministry also summoned Iran's envoy to Paris "to convey our firmest condemnation of these executions and the current repression in Iran," it said.

Pope Francis on Monday appealed for an end to the death penalty around the world, including Iran.

"The death penalty cannot be employed for a purported state justice since it does not constitute a deterrent nor render justice to victims but only fuels the thirst for vengeance," he said.

According to London-based rights group Amnesty International, Iran is second only to China in its use of the death penalty, with at least 314 people executed in 2021.

In the latest Iranian ruling, two others were handed prison terms for the incident that led to the deaths of the three security force members in the central province of Isfahan on November 16, Mizan said.

One of them is professional footballer Amir Nasr-Azadani, 26, who received sentences totalling 26 years in prison on three different charges including assisting in "moharebeh".

Under Iranian law, he should serve them concurrently, meaning he would be behind bars for 16 years, it said.

Nasr-Azadani's case and the risk of him being sentenced to death had raised alarm abroad, mainly by FIFPRO, the world union of professional footballers.

More rallies against the Iranian regime have been held in London and Paris in recent days, while protest continued inside Iran.

Protesters gathered late Sunday outside a prison in the northern city of Karaj after reports that two inmates had been transferred to solitary confinement ahead of execution, according to several rights groups based abroad.

Protest monitor tasvir1500 said a crowd, including the mother of death row inmate Mohammad Ghobadlou demonstrated in front of Gohardasht prison, also known as Rajai Shahr, "to save the lives" of him and another prisoner, Mohammad Boroghani.

Both had been convicted of attacks on security forces and their appeals have been rejected.

Videos shared by tasvir1500 show the crowd chanting slogans against the death sentences and comforting Ghobadlou's mother, who tells the crowd her son had been "deliberately" framed. AFP was unable to immediately verify the footage.

burs/fz/ami

(Recasts with Guterres comments)

By Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber and Emma Farge

GENEVA, Jan 9 (Reuters) - U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres called on Monday for sweeping reform of the international financial system to allow for low-income countries vulnerable to climate calamities to receive adequate funding from richer nations.

Addressing a conference in Geneva on rebuilding efforts in the wake of devastating floods in Pakistan, Guterres said the international financial system was skewed to benefit wealthy countries and should be reformed to ensure a more equitable distribution of resources.

"It is very clear that the present system is biased," he told reporters in a strongly-worded critique of what he called a "morally corrupt global financial system".

"The system was conceived by a group of rich countries and naturally it basically benefits rich countries."

Guterres was speaking alongside Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who said Pakistan needed $8 billion from the international community over the next three years to support recovery efforts after floods that killed at least 1,700 people, displaced millions and damaged critical infrastructure.

"We need a new debt architecture and we need to make sure that debt relief is effectively provided by the system even to middle income countries that are on the verge of very difficult, very dramatic situations including suspending payments," Guterres added.

The International Monetary Fund, whose delegation was meeting Pakistan's finance minister on the sidelines of the conference, has yet to approve the release of $1.1 billion originally due to be disbursed in November last year. That has left Pakistan with only enough foreign exchange reserves to cover

one month's imports.

Voicing frustration at the inaction of global leaders and scant investment to combat climate emergencies, Guterres called for the vulnerability of countries to be taken into account when major financial institutions distribute below-market-rate financing.

"We need to redesign our financial system in order to be able to take into account vulnerability and not only GDP when decisions are made about concessional funding to countries around the world," he said. (Reporting by Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber and Emma Farge; editing by Mark Heinrich)

Read also: What is being decided behind Putin's back

It seems that the Turkish "arbitrator" is trying to play on two chessboards at the same time, and trying to win on both. It also seems to me that only world-class grandmasters can do this. With all due respect to Erdoğan, he is not yet at this level of play: the opportunities are not the same, and these moves are being read very unambiguously by other players.

This is a game, on the one hand, to fool Putin's brains, in particular by talking about setting up some sort of gas hub. Specialists who understand these matters say that it is an absurdity. Turkey can never build a gas hub, as there is no way, no how, and no one with whom to do so, because the volumes that go through Turkey cannot be called a hub in any way. But Erdogan is selling this fable to Putin, who, by virtue of his "wisdom", eats it up and thanks him profusely.

No one will sit at the same table with him.

That is, Erdogan is working to win some points for himself. We aren’t forgetting that there are elections in Turkey this year, which Erdogan is approaching with a shaky position and a lot of unknowns. For internal political consumption, he also needs some victories, successes, the illusion of something. So he chose the illusion of being a peacemaker, a mediator, fully understanding that there will be no negotiations with Putin, because he is a war criminal.

Oleksiy Danilov, the head of the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council, said that at this time, the deputy head of Putin's administration, Dmitry Kozak, is traveling, meeting with European politicians, encouraging them to participate in the signing of a Minsk 3-like peace agreement. But so what? Kozak or another representative of the Putin administration can go and talk to second- or third-rate representatives in certain countries. What of it? The leaders of these countries curtly and clearly say: no. Just look at French President Macron: he talks about negotiations, about security guarantees for the Russian Federation, and then gives Ukraine light tanks. This means that, again, for some of his goals, he can act as a peacemaker, but is actually helping Ukraine defeat the enemy.

So it's like death throes [for Russia], grasping at everything.

Read also: A look at the trio who convinced Putin to invade

On the one hand, they threaten with nuclear terror, while on the other, they run around capitals and try to [convince] people in these places that some kind of peace negotiations are needed, through these some articles written by whomever... All of this no longer works, because Putin has crossed all possible red lines, and the West understands this.

So let's not overestimate all these things. The Russians will. Undoubtedly, there will still be attempts to convince the West that Ukraine should stop at the borders that are currently controlled by the Russian army. You see, Putin also declares that they are in favor of negotiations, serious negotiations, but only with the recognition by Ukraine of new territorial realities and all their wishes. What does this say? This indicates idiocy.

Therefore, let's not take all this too seriously, but rather take it into account and oppose it with only one objective: to continue to convince our Western partners that the last obstacles to the supply of weapons must be removed and that Russia in its present form must no longer exist on the world map, because it is a threat to everyone, including Paris, Berlin, and Washington.

Read the original article on The New Voice of Ukraine

KRAMATORSK, Ukraine (AP) — Officials at a vocational school in an eastern Ukraine city dismissed claims by Russia that hundreds of Ukrainian troops were killed in a missile strike there, saying Monday that a rocket merely blew out windows and damaged classrooms.

Russia specifically named the vocational school in Kramatorsk as the target of an attack in the almost 11-month war. The Russian Defense Ministry said its missiles hit two temporary bases housing 1,300 Ukrainian troops in the city, killing 600 of them, late Saturday.

Associated Press reporters visiting the scene in sunny weather Monday saw a four-story concrete building with most of its windows blown out. Inside, locals were cleaning up debris, sweeping up broken glass and hurling broken furniture out into a missile crater below.

A separate, six-story school building was largely undamaged. There were neither signs of a Ukrainian military presence nor any casualties.

Yana Pristupa, the school’s deputy director, scoffed at Moscow’s claims of hitting a troop concentration.

“Nobody saw a single spot of blood anywhere,” she told the AP. “Everyone saw yesterday that no one carried out any bodies. It’s just people cleaning up.”

She said that before the war began last February the school had more than 300 students, most of them studying mechanical engineering, with most lessons moving online when Russia invaded.

The students “are now in shock,” she said, adding, “What a great facility it was.”

Ukrainian officials on Sunday quickly denied the Russian claims it had lost a large number of soldiers in the attack.

Despite the absence of any evidence, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said reports from the scene didn’t shake senior officials’ faith in defense authorities.

“The Defense Ministry is the main, legitimate and comprehensive source of information about the course of the special military operation,” Peskov said Monday in a conference call with reporters, using the Kremlin’s term for the war.

Both sides have regularly claimed killing hundreds of each other’s soldiers in attacks. The claims can seldom be independently verified because of the fighting.

Moscow’s allegations may have backfired domestically, however, as some Russian military bloggers criticized them.

The Institute for the Study of War think tank said the bloggers “responded negatively to the Russian (Ministry of Defense’s) claim, pointing out that the Russian MoD frequently presents fraudulent claims and criticizing Russian military leadership for fabricating a story ... instead of holding Russian leadership responsible for the losses accountable.”

A Russian Defense Ministry spokesman said the strikes on Kramatorsk were in retaliation for Ukraine’s attack in Makiivka on New Year’s Eve, in which at least 89 Russian soldiers gathered at a temporary barracks died, according to Moscow. Ukrainian authorities said hundreds were killed.

It was one of the deadliest attacks on the Kremlin’s forces since the war began more than 10 months ago and an embarrassing loss.

Such revenge strikes have occurred before. When Ukraine in early October struck a bridge linking the Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula with Russia, damaging an important supply artery for the Kremlin’s faltering war effort in southern Ukraine and hitting a key symbol of Russian power in the region, the Kremlin sent a first massive barrage against Ukraine’s energy facilities. It was billed as retaliation for the bridge attack and heralded a period of relentless bombardments against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.

Ukraine's deputy defense minister said Monday that Russian forces have launched a fresh assault on the town of Soledar in the eastern Donetsk region. Taking Soledar would allow Russia to intensify its attacks on the strategically key city of Bakhmut, where intense fighting has destroyed an estimated 60% of buildings.

In the Luhansk region, most of which is under Russian control, two residents of the village of Nevske were killed in Russian shelling on Monday, Luhansk governor Serhii Haidai said.

Ukraine’s presidential office reported Monday that at least three civilians were killed and 12 others wounded over the previous 24 hours as nine Ukrainian regions in the southeast of the country were shelled.

In one attack on Monday, two people were killed and five others, including a 13-year-old girl, were wounded by a Russian rocket strike that hit a village market in the northeastern Kharkiv region, Ukrainian officials said.

Kharkiv regional Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said the strike hit Shevchenkove village. Photos on his Telegram channel showed ruined pavilions, some of them still on fire, and rubble all around them.

According to Ukrainian officials, more people could be trapped under the rubble. A rescue operation to find them was underway.

Russia maintains it is fighting against the might of NATO, not just the Ukrainians.

Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of Russia’s Security Council, repeated that argument in an interview published Monday, saying that “the events in Ukraine aren’t a clash between Moscow and Kyiv, it’s a military confrontation between NATO, and particularly the U.S. and Britain, with Russia.”

“The sooner the citizens of Ukraine realize that the West is fighting Russia with their hands, the more lives will be saved,” Patrushev said in an interview with Argumenty i Fakty.

Meanwhile, two U.K. citizens working as volunteers in eastern Ukraine have disappeared, the Ukrainian national police said Monday.

Andrew Bagshaw and Christopher Perry left Kramatorsk on Friday bound for Soledar, where heavy fighting is reported, and contact with them was lost, police said.

Bagshaw, a resident of New Zealand, was in Ukraine to assist in delivering humanitarian aid, according to New Zealand media reports.

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Follow AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

MOSCOW (AP) — Russia on Monday opted out of a European convention on fighting corruption, a move that comes in the wake of its withdrawal from the Council of Europe following start of Moscow’s military action in Ukraine.

Russian President Vladimir Putin asked the lower house of parliament, the State Duma, to terminate adherence to the Council of Europe's convention on fighting corruption that Russia signed in 1999. The date for a vote on termination hasn't been set yet, but it's expected to come soon.

Putin argued in his letter to the Duma that the opt-out was the result of the Council's decision to restrict Moscow’s participation in a body charged with overseeing general compliance with the convention, something he called “unacceptable” and “discriminatory.”

The Council of Europe, the continent's top human rights organization, suspended Russia's participation shortly after it sent troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24. Russia withdrew from the Council in March and warned that it will also opt out of conventions that it signed as part of its membership in the organization. Moscow backed out of the European Convention on Human Rights in September.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday that Russia's withdrawal from the anti-corruption convention wouldn't hinder official efforts to combat graft.

“In no way will it undermine our domestic legal framework to combat corruption,” Peskov said in a conference call with reporters. He added that Russia will continue anti-corruption cooperation with “friendly” countries and noted that such cooperation with “unfriendly” nations have ground to a halt anyway.

Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said that Dmitry Kozak, Deputy Head of Putin's administration, is not in contact with European politicians to persuade them to sign any peace agreements on the war with Ukraine.

Source: Kremlin-aligned Russian news agency RBC

Quote from Peskov: "No, no one is talking about it, it's just another piece of gossip. If I understand things correctly, there were some reports, but they were about some other person with the surname Kozak. They have a person with that last name there, either in the Rada [Ukrainian Parliament] or somewhere else."

Background:

Earlier, Oleksii Danilov, Secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council, said that Russia was preparing to escalate the situation in February, and that Dmitry Kozak, Deputy Head of the Russian Presidential Administration, had held meetings with Europeans and encouraged them to sign supposed peace agreements akin to Minsk-3 [a series of international agreements which sought to end the conflict in Donbas].

Danilov stated that Ukraine would not agree to any such agreements.

Journalists fight on their own frontline. Support Ukrainska Pravda or become our patron!

A retired teacher has been charged with sexually assaulting a child after a BBC investigation revealed dozens of allegations about his time at a British school, where he taught future prime minister Boris Johnson.

David Price will face trial in South Africa, where he taught after leaving England in the 1980s.

A former pupil in South Africa contacted police in December after learning of the earlier allegations in Radio 4's In Dark Corners series.

Mr Price, 76, denies the charges.

Journalist Alex Renton, who was taught by Mr Price, has spoken to six men who allege they were sexually assaulted by the teacher at Ashdown House in East Sussex in the 1970s. There are 42 allegations against him in total.

The prestigious boarding school was known for preparing boys for Eton College. It was attended by King Charles's cousin, David Linley, now the Earl of Snowdon, along with Mr Johnson. There is no suggestion either were abused at the school.

After returning to his native South Africa, Mr Price continued to teach. He was arrested in the country by British police in 2019 and has since been fighting extradition to the UK.

The latest allegations relate to his time at a prestigious all-boys school in Cape Town in the 1980s.

The alleged victim contacted Mr Renton after seeing South African media coverage of the BBC's In Dark Corners series - which investigated sexual abuse at Britain's elite boarding schools.

He claims he was first groped by the teacher in 1985 at the age of about 10 while showering at Western Province Preparatory School in Cape Town.

"From that day on he would contrive situations to get me alone," he said.

He said he was made to touch the teacher's genitals.

"I didn't know what was happening. So I did this and he finished off. And I remember just retching. And he said 'listen, you obviously can't tell anyone, they're not going to believe you'."

Mr Price left the school in December 1987. A spokeswoman says the school never received any complaints he sexually assaulted children. His career as a teacher continued, including some years at a live-in school for deaf children.

Listen to In Dark Corners on BBC Sounds

Some former pupils at Ashdown House, who have been waiting to have their allegations heard in a British court, welcomed the action by South African prosecutors.

"Maybe our best hope is for South Africa to bring him to justice within South Africa because the extradition is not working," one said.

Information and support for those affected by abuse is available at BBC Action Line

Ashdown House closed in 2020. The Prep School Trust, which took over the school in 2009, said it had cooperated fully with all enquiries into the allegations and had "worked tirelessly to ensure no such incidents could ever happen in the school again".

The BBC series has also spoken to dozens of former pupils who allege they were abused by teachers at the prestigious Scottish schools Fettes College and Edinburgh Academy.

After listening to the series, BBC presenter Nicky Campbell revealed he had himself been abused at Edinburgh Academy by teacher Hamish Dawson, who has died.

He said he was haunted by the sight of his friend being abused in the school showers by a different teacher.

The teacher - who cannot be identified for legal reasons and is referred to as "Edgar" in the Radio 4 series - joined Edinburgh Academy in 1968. Five years later he moved to Fettes College. He left in 1979 after being asked to step down.

Like Mr Price, he is also from South Africa, and continued to teach when he returned to the country. He too was arrested in 2019 and has been fighting extradition to the UK.

A court statement from the teacher in 2019 admits to "inappropriately" touching boys in the UK, but he denied having done so in South Africa. A later statement in 2021 appears to retract this admission.

The BBC has spoken to a man who claims he was assaulted by the teacher as a pupil at Rondebosch Boys School in Cape Town, where "Edgar" taught from 1980 to 2006.

He said the teacher would use untidy uniforms as justification to "have physical contact with you or to have his hands wandering over you".

"That would then progress to grabbing me and pushing me up against the wall," he said. "He would push himself up against me."

A spokeswoman for the school said they had no record of any allegations of misconduct or impropriety involving the teacher. She said she could not confirm the recruitment processes of the time.

Mr Price and "Edgar" have the same legal team in South Africa. The BBC asked their lawyers to put the allegations to both men, but did not receive a response.

Both Western Province Preparatory School and Rondebosch Boys School have now written to alumni urging them to come forward if they were molested by either teacher.

More than 30 former pupils who allege physical and sexual abuse at Edinburgh Academy and Fettes College have formed a Whatsapp group to support each other.

"Along with that sense of solidarity comes a sense of total and utter frustration," said Mr Campbell, who is a member of the group.

The teacher's appeal against extradition is due to be heard in South Africa in March.

Fettes College said it had "co-operated fully with the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry, including providing the Inquiry with all documentation pertaining to this matter".

Edinburgh Academy said it was "working closely with the relevant authorities including Police Scotland and the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry".

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — The Palestinian prime minister on Monday accused Israel’s new ultra-nationalist government of trying to topple the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority, and warned that a series of new Israeli sanctions could further inflame what has been a particularly deadly period of fighting.

In recent days, Israel has withheld millions of dollars of Palestinian tax revenues, stripped Palestinian officials of VIP privileges and broken up a meeting of Palestinian parents discussing their children's education. Late Sunday, Israel’s security minister banned public displays of the Palestinian flag.

Palestinian premier Mohammad Shtayyeh said the Israeli measures, made in response to a Palestinian appeal for U.N. help, are “aimed at toppling the authority and pushing it to the brink financially and institutionally.”

“We consider these measures a new war against the Palestinian people, their capabilities and funds, and a war against the national authority, its survival and its achievements,” Shtayyeh said during his weekly Cabinet meeting.

The Israeli measures have come in response to the U.N. General Assembly's decision to ask the U.N.’s highest judicial body to give its opinion on the legality of Israeli policies in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem. Israel vehemently opposed the Palestinian-backed move. Decisions by the International Court of Justice are not binding, but can carry great influence.

Shtayyeh rejected Israeli claims that such moves are counter to peace.

“We have the right to complain and tell the world we are in pain,” he said in comments published in Haaretz earlier Monday. “Israel wants to prevent even the most non-violent way of fighting the occupation.”

A day earlier, Israel's national security minister ordered police to ban on the Palestinian flag in public.

“Today I directed the Israel police to enforce the prohibition of flying any PLO flag that shows identification with a terrorist organization from the public sphere and to stop any incitement against the state of Israel,” Itamar Ben-Gvir announced on Twitter.

A far-right firebrand known for his anti-Palestinian rhetoric, Ben-Gvir drew widespread international condemnation when he visited Jerusalem’s most sensitive holy site last week.

Under Israeli law, flying the Palestinian flag is not a crime. But Israel's attorney general in 2014 ruled that police have the authority to confiscate a flag if it disrupts public order or is done in support of terrorism.

Adalah, an Arab minority legal rights group, said that Ben-Gvir's order falsely implies that any public display of the Palestinian flag disrupts the peace.

“This gives the police unfettered discretion to ban the waving of the Palestinian flag under all circumstances,” the group said.

The Israeli crackdown comes at a fragile time. The Israeli military has been conducting near-daily raids into Palestinian cities and towns since a spate of Palestinian attacks against Israelis killed 19 last spring.

Nearly 150 Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire in the West Bank and east Jerusalem last year, according to the Israeli rights group B’Tselem, making 2022 the deadliest year since 2004, when 197 Palestinians were killed. A fresh wave of attacks killed at least another nine Israelis in the fall.

The Israeli army says most of the Palestinians killed have been militants. But stone-throwing youths protesting the incursions and others not involved in confrontations have also been killed.

Ben-Gvir’s latest order is not the first battle over the Palestinian flag.

The red, green and white Palestinian flag carries great symbolism in the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Last May, Israeli riot police beat pallbearers at the funeral for slain Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, causing them to nearly drop the casket. Police ripped Palestinian flags out of people’s hands and fired stun grenades to disperse the crowd.

Israel once considered the Palestinian flag to be an enemy symbol. But after Israel and the Palestinians signed a series of interim peace agreements in the 1990s known as the Oslo Accords, the flag was recognized as that of the Palestinian Authority, which was created to administer Gaza and parts of the occupied West Bank. Israel opposes any official business being carried out by the PA in east Jerusalem, and police have in the past broken up events they alleged were linked to the PA.

Netanyahu told his Cabinet on Sunday the measures against the Palestinians were aimed at what he called “an extreme anti-Israel” step at the U.N.

Israel’s Palestinian citizens make up 20% of the population and they’ve had a turbulent relationship with the state since its creation in 1948. During the war surrounding Israel's establishment, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were forced to leave.

Those who remained became citizens, but have long suffered discrimination and been viewed with suspicion by some Israelis because of their ties to Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, territories Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war.

The Palestinians seek all three areas for a future independent state. Netanyahu’s new government is dominated by hard-liners who oppose Palestinian statehood.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The United Arab Emirates will begin teaching about the Holocaust in history classes in primary and secondary schools across the country, the country's embassy in the United States said.

The embassy provided no details on the curriculum and education authorities in the Emirates, a federation of seven sheikhdoms, on Monday did not acknowledge the announcement.

However, the announcement comes after the UAE normalized relations with Israel in 2020 as part of a deal brokered by the administration of President Donald Trump.

“In the wake of the historic (hashtag)AbrahamAccords, (the UAE) will now include the Holocaust in the curriculum for primary and secondary schools,” the embassy said in a tweet, referring to the normalization deal that also saw Bahrain and ultimately Morocco also recognize Israel.

Ambassador Deborah E. Lipstadt, the U.S. special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, praised the announcement in her own tweet.

“Holocaust education is an imperative for humanity and too many countries, for too long, continue to downplay the Shoah for political reasons,” Lipstadt wrote, using a Hebrew word for the Holocaust. “I commend the UAE for this step and expect others to follow suit soon.”

The announcement comes as a meeting of the Negev Forum Working Groups, which grew out of the normalization, began in Abu Dhabi on Monday. Officials from Bahrain, Egypt, Israel, Morocco, the UAE and the U.S. are to attend. Egypt has diplomatically recognized Israel for decades.

In the Holocaust, Nazi Germany systematically killed 6 million European Jews during World War II. Israel, founded in 1948 as a haven for Jews in the wake of the Holocaust, grants automatic citizenship to anyone of Jewish descent.

Other Arab nations have refused to diplomatically recognize Israel over its decades-long occupation of land Palestinians want for their future state.

The announcement by the UAE also comes after the federation and other Arab nations condemned an ultranationalist Israeli Cabinet minister for visiting a flashpoint Jerusalem holy site last week, for the first time since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s new far-right government took office.

The site, known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary, is the holiest site in Judaism, home to the ancient biblical Temples. Today, it houses the Al Aqsa Mosque, the third-holiest site in Islam. Since Israel captured the site in 1967, Jews have been allowed to visit but not pray there.

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Follow Jon Gambrell on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP.

About a year ago, the Russian dictator made the final decision to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. But this was preceded by long conversations between Putin and a very limited circle of his closest associates, which pushed the Kremlin leader to say "yes" to the big war.

Read also: Russia may launch attack on Moldova in early 2023, says country's security chief

But unlike the current frontmen of the Russian aggression in Putin's entourage — Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu or Wagner PMC head Yevgeny Prigozhin — these characters, both before and now, prefer to stay in the shade, once again not emphasizing their true role in the conflict that has affected not only Europe but the whole world.

The New Voice of Ukraine interviewed a number of experts, analyzed Western and Russian data to name these "lurking hawks": Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev, FSB Director Alexander Bortnikov, and Putin's friend and peer, businessman Yuri Kovalchuk.

Konstantin Skorkin, a Russia expert at the Carnegie Center, told NV: "Patrushev and Bortnikov are a power party, people fully formed in the Cold War era. They believe that a bloc confrontation with the West is a reasonable and correct world order. And in order to return to a predictable and manageable confrontation, it is necessary to divide the zones of influence through war, even with the risk of a clash with NATO. According to Patrushev and Bortnikov, Ukraine should be in the Russian zone of influence, except for its western regions, which they are ready to "give" to the EU.

Read also: Not a defeat, but a foreign occupation. How to deprive Russia of its imperial ambitions

"And since Ukraine was actively and with the help of NATO strengthening its defenses, it was necessary to launch a preventive strike before it was too late," Skorkin says.

"That's the advice they gave Putin.”

UK newspaper the Times found out that the trio of Patrushev-Bortnikov-Kovalchuk was convinced of the need for a "preventive strike on Ukraine", and as an argument they cited the idea of saving Russia from the growing threat of the West.

Meanwhile, U.S. newspaer the Wall Street Journal wrote that after the start of the COVID pandemic, Putin settled in a remote residence near Lake Valdai, where he was visited by Kovalchuk. The two spent time talking at length about "restoring Great Russia."

CIA chief Bill Burns has also mentioned the narrowness of the circle of Putin's regular interlocutors. He believes that only a few people had access to the dictator, and none of them questioned his almost mystical belief in his destiny as the "resurrector" of Russia's influence.

These ideas were embodied in an article Putin published in July 2021, in which the dictator described Ukraine as a "non-existent state."

Hawks only

Russian opposition journalist Andrei Pertsev is sure that Bortnikov was the biggest "hawk" among the three aforementioned characters.

It was his FSB that provided Putin with information that the Russian army would be welcomed in Ukraine. Hence Bortnikov’s overly bellicose speech at a meeting of the Russian Security Council on the eve of the invasion — he sincerely believed in a quick victory. And, accordingly, he could count on awards and other incentives.

"Patrushev, on the contrary, said that it was better to try to negotiate first," Pertsev said.

Read also: Five Dimensions of the Cold War: What Putin is doing

"It was hardly an act (on his part), since the Russian elite has long sought to appear monolithic and Putin does not welcome contradictions in it. We can assume that Secretary Patrushev was in favor of war, but not immediate war."

Abbas Gallyamov, a former speechwriter for Putin who now lives in Israel, told NV that Patrushev and Bortnikov's motivation for war is understandable, as they are security officials who think only in terms of "we must press everyone."

Gallyamov believes that Kovalchuk is the most interesting one in this trio. He read the Russian fascist philosopher Ivan Ilyin and was imbued with his ideas.

"As far as I know, Kovalchuk is an absolutely cynical person, thinking only about money,” he said.

“He saw in Ukraine a potentially infinite amount of what can be plundered, that is, military booty. In Russia, everything has long been divided by Putin's inner circle, you can no longer squeeze out large new pieces. And Ukraine in this sense is like the Klondike."

Read also: Russia does not plan to end aggression against Ukraine, says intel

Kovalchuk allegedly realized that Bortnikov and Patrushev would persuade Putin to launch a full-scale invasion and decided to take part. At the same time, the oligarch decided that in comparison with other billionaires close to the dictator — the Rotenberg brothers and Gennady Timchenko — he, as the person who first took a patriotic position, would have the right to choose the sweetest pillage.

Sergei Smirnov, editor-in-chief of the Russian opposition newspaper Mediazona, is convinced that the entire Russian elite lives in a fictional world dating back to the 1970s. Therefore, both Putin and his associates are sure that there is a confrontation between the United States and Russia, and Ukraine is only a part of this global confrontation.

Smirnov notes that the Russian dictator has not dismissed any of the security forces who provided him with false information about Ukraine before the war.

"Putin makes decisions based on various sources," says the editor-in-chief of Mediazona.

“And the most authoritative for him are from the FSB. It turns out that he needs to punish the FSB and Patrushev and Bortnikov for this. Of course, this is impossible, because they think alike, in the style of global war with the whole world.”

Mood in hell

"It is clear from Putin's speeches that he does not consider the outbreak of war a mistake," Pertsev says.

"And he attributes the difficulties and failure of his plans to Western interference: we are not at war with Ukraine, but with NATO. Indirectly, these sentiments are confirmed by the recent reforms of the Russian army: the formation of new districts, increasing its number, etc."

Now Putin is clearly more involved in the war than in spring and summer, the journalist believes. And these sentiments of the dictator are read by other representatives of the Russian elites. Therefore, for example, even the relatively peaceful mayor of Moscow Sergei Sobyanin began to use militaristic rhetoric, recently dressed in khaki and went "to the trenches".

Read also: Supporting sham Donbas republics ‘to be long-lasting financial, political burden for Russia’

That is why Skorkin is sure that there is no "peace party" in the Russian Federation in the literal sense now. All those top officials or state managers who do not agree with the war, have quietly left or kept silent. A striking example of this is Anatoly Chubais.

Others are still too afraid of Putin and too bound by collective responsibility to openly oppose the leader, the Carnegie Center expert believes.

There is, in his opinion, only a "party of pragmatists", which sees that the war is unsuccessful, so it needs to be frozen, Russia needs to strengthen in the occupied territories, and prepare for the next round.

This conditional group includes, according to Skorkin, representatives of the economic bloc of the government, big Russian business and state capitalists such as Rosneft President Igor Sechin and Rostec Chairman Sergei Chemezov. They all advocate a realistic attitude to Russia's military capabilities.

But the ball is ruled by "hawks" like Patrushev and Shoigu, or even "ultra-hawks" like Prigozhin or Chechen quasi-dictator Kadyrov. The last two are interested not only in war, but also in internal "revolution." The founder of PMC Wagner, for example, is already clearly hinting at the need to expropriate the assets of Russian oligarchs who do not help the front.

And Putin, according to Skorkin, as always tries to be above the fray. The closest to him now are the "hawks", because they talk about victory at any cost, and the Russian president cannot afford to lose. But as an experienced dictator, the master of the Kremlin listens to the arguments of "pragmatists."

The Carnegie Center expert is sure: against the background of Russia's defeats, Putin's style of government is increasingly perceived by his environment as a weakness. Therefore, the dictator will not be able to keep the elite from splitting for a long time. Plus, Putin is used to being perceived as lucky – a person who constantly gets themselves out of any sticky situation. But now it is obvious to everyone that the dictator’s luck has left him, and he is making one strategic mistake after another.

Therefore, the Kremlin elder, says Skorkin, begins to irritate many people: some by his mediocrity and caution as a leader, others — on the contrary, by his lack of judgment and reluctance to seek compromise.

"The struggle between pragmatists and hawks will dominate the agenda of the political new year in the Kremlin," the expert is sure.

"Russia itself now also has its own political front.”

Read the original article on The New Voice of Ukraine

GENEVA (AP) — Dozens of countries and international institutions on Monday pledged more than $9 billion to help Pakistan recover and rebuild from devastating summer floods that the United Nations chief called “a climate disaster of monumental scale.”

The flooding killed more than 1,700 people, destroyed more than 2 million homes, and covered as much as one-third of the country at one point, causing damage totaling more than $30 billion, U.N. and Pakistani officials say. Large swaths of the country remain under water, with millions living near contaminated or stagnant waters, the U.N. says.

Wrapping up a day-long conference at the U.N. offices in Geneva, Pakistani Deputy Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar said the final tally came in above a target for the international community to meet half of the estimated $16.3 billion needed to respond to the flooding. The rest is expected to come from the Pakistani government itself.

“Taken as a whole, these commitments total more than $9 billion and from what we know so far, these are all additional commitments from what was already given in terms of humanitarian assistance, etc., from both bilateral and multilateral partners," she said, adding that a number of delegations had also offered in-kind support.

U.N. pledging conferences often draw promises of big sums from governments, international organizations and other donors, but those don't always get fulfilled entirely. The Pakistani government has announced plans for independent, outside monitors to make sure that the funds go where they are needed.

The conference shaped up as a test case of how much wealthy nations would pitch in to help developing-world countries like Pakistan manage the impact of climatic swoons, and brace for other disasters.

Achim Steiner, the head of the U.N. Development Program, which helped organize the conference, said Pakistan’s government knows contributors will be looking for outcomes such as in the accountability, clarity, efficiency, transparency and effectiveness of the programs that will be funded.

“There is no free money. And everybody who pledged their contributions today will come with certain expectations,” Steiner said in an interview. While the needs are urgent now, Pakistan’s recovery and resilience projects should be built to last for this era increasingly marked and threatened by climate change, he said.

“I think the hardest part, in a sense, is yet to come because the urgency, the desperation are acute,” he said, adding that governments and international institutions will face a challenge: “How do we quickly deliver in an unbureaucratic fashion, but not by simply doling out money? These are investments that should last for a generation. They need to be well-planned.”

Earlier, Pakistani Information Minister Marriyum Aurangzeb tweeted that top donors included the Islamic Development Bank, at $4.2 billion; the World Bank, at $2 billion; the Asian Development Bank, at $1.5 billion. She said the European Union had pledged $93 million, Germany $88 million, China $100 million, and Japan $77 million.

The United States announced another $100 million on top of a similar amount already committed to Pakistan. Saudi Arabia's envoy laid out a pledge of $1 billion.

Steiner said the big pledges from international financial institutions testified to pressure and expectations “growing almost daily” for them to do more to respond to the challenges of climate change, decarbonization, and energy transitions.

The conference drew Pakistani Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif and U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres in-person, while other world leaders such as French President Emmanuel Macron and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan took part virtually.

“Today’s meeting is an attempt to give my people another chance at getting back on their feet,” Sharif said. “We are racing against time” to help the victims amid a harsh winter, and in the worst-affected areas where schools and health systems have collapsed, he added.

Guterres said people in South Asia are 15 times more likely to die from climate impacts than elsewhere, and his “heart broke” when he saw first-hand the devastation from Pakistan's floods — calling it a prime example of the impact of climate change.

In November’s U.N. climate talks, countries agreed to set up a fund for loss and damage caused by climate change. The details will be worked out by a committee this year. Vulnerable nations like Pakistan would be expected to receive compensation from the fund.

Many scientists, policymakers and others say emissions of heat-trapping gases, mostly by industrialized countries, over generations are largely to blame for a warming global climate.

Many countries already helped Pakistan in the immediate follow-up to the flooding. Monday’s conference, attended by 44 countries as well as a dozen international financial institutions, aimed to complement and build on previous outlays.

Thousands of Pakistanis are still living in open areas in makeshift homes and tents near the stagnant water in southern Sindh and in some areas in southwestern Baluchistan, the two worst-hit provinces.

Julien Harneis, the U.N. resident coordinator in Pakistan, said an estimated 5 million people were living near the stagnant waters, making it difficult for residents to have a normal life. He predicted little change in the situation until March.

The U.N. says funding raised so far for Pakistan’s flood victims will run out this month, and an emergency appeal launched in October has garnered only about a third of the $816 million sought. UNICEF, the children’s agency, says only 37% of a $173.5 million target for supporting flood-affected Pakistani women and children has been met.

Pakistan plays a negligible role in global warming and emits less than 1% of heat-trapping carbon dioxide, but like other developing countries, it has been vulnerable to climate-induced devastation, experts say. The country has seen extreme heat, glacial melt and rising sea levels in recent years.

Climate scientists found that the floods in Pakistan were worsened by global heating although economic, societal and construction-oriented factors also played a role.

___

Munir Ahmed reported from Islamabad.

___

This story has been corrected to show that Erdogan is Turkey’s president, not prime minister.

"Look at what Moon Jae-in has made," reads the Korean-language claim shared here on Facebook on December 17 with a photo showing a statue of a man bowing.

The image is labelled "Oknyeo peak at the Imjin River".

"Treasonous forces set up a statue kowtowing to the North near a [South Korean] military base – [these forces] need to be eliminated immediately," the post adds.

"This grovelling, 10-meter-high statue at Oknyeo peak bowing towards North Korea must be shattered. Destroy it."

Screenshot of the misleading claim shared on Facebook, captured January 5, 2023

Identical claims were shared on Facebook here and here, as well as here on Naver Band, a South Korean social media platform.

The statue, called "Greetingman", is located at Oknyeo Peak in Yeoncheon County in South Korea's Gyeonggi Province, around four kilometres (2.5 miles) from the border with North Korea.

However, it was commissioned by a local government tourism office in South Korea's Gyeonggi Province and built in 2016 nearly a year before Moon was elected president. At that time Moon was serving as a local politician in a different region.

Yeoncheon County's official website says the statue was built in 2016, and describes it as "a 10-metre tall sculpture of a giant bowing in the direction of the North" bending forward at "angle of 15 degrees, which symbolises a show of respect toward others while not losing respect for oneself".

A spokesperson for Yeoncheon County's tourism office confirmed to AFP that the statue was inaugurated on April 23, 2016, adding that it was "commissioned by the Gyeonggi Tourism Organization," a government tourism agency.

According to interviews with the statue's creator, the artist Yoo Young-ho, seen here and here, it is one of two sculptures he had intended to erect on South and North Korean territory, in directions facing each other to show reconciliation between the two countries.

Yoo also appeared in a documentary published by South Korean broadcaster MBC in October 2019, in which he explained that Greetingman symbolises "a desire to start over, beginning with greetings".

Yeoncheon County's then-mayor Kim Kwang-cheol, who was also featured in the film, said that it was "highly meaningful that we erected this statue in Yeoncheon County, as it is the closest area to the North and thus can demonstrate to North Korea that we mean peace."

During Kim's tenure as mayor, Yeoncheon County announced plans to erect a second Greetingman statue on North Korean territory, though it ultimately did not materialise.

According to reports here and here, Yoo has made other Greetingman statues, including in Uruguay and Mexico. There are two more in South Korea, one in Yanggu County and another on Jeju Island.

When the statue was inaugurated in April 2016, South Korea's government, as well as the local governments of Gyeonggi Province and Yeoncheon County were all headed by members of the Saenuri Party, the predecessor of the country's current, conservative-leaning ruling People Power Party.

Moon at the time was a Democratic Party lawmaker representing Sasang District in the city of Busan, gearing up for an eventual presidential run in May 2017.

Iran has sentenced to death three more people accused of killing members of the security forces during protests triggered by Mahsa Amini's death, the judiciary said Monday.

The Islamic republic has been rocked by civil unrest since the September 16 death in custody of Kurdish Iranian Amini, 22, following her arrest for allegedly violating Iran's strict dress code for women.

The latest sentences, which can still be appealed, bring to 17 the total number of people condemned to death in connection with nearly four months of protests.

Four executions have been carried out and six of those sentenced to capital punishment have been granted retrials.

Saleh Mirhashemi, Majid Kazemi and Saeed Yaghoubi were sentenced to death on charges of "moharebeh" -- or waging "war against God" -- under Iran's Islamic sharia law, the judiciary's Mizan Online news website reported.

In addition, they were all found guilty of belonging to a "criminal group with the intention of disrupting the security of the country", a charge that carries a 10-year jail term.

Two others were handed prison terms for the incident that led to the deaths of the three security force members in the central province of Isfahan on November 16, Mizan said.

One of them is professional footballer Amir Nasr-Azadani, 26, who received sentences totalling 26 years in prison on three different charges including assisting in "moharebeh".

According to Iranian law, however, he should serve them concurrently, meaning he would be behind bars for 16 years, it said.

Nasr-Azadani's case and the risk of him being sentenced to death had raised alarm abroad, mainly by FIFPRO, the world union of professional footballers.

All the sentences announced can be appealed before the country's supreme court, Mizan said.

Iranian authorities say hundreds of people, including members of the security forces, have been killed and thousands arrested during the protests which they mostly describe as "riots".

Tehran accuses hostile foreign countries and opposition groups of stoking the unrest.

"The goal of people present in the riots was not to overcome the country's weaknesses but to destroy its strengths", Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told an audience in Tehran on Monday, according to his official website.

Khamenei blamed "economic and liveihood problems" for the unrest but said "burning trash cans and rioting in the streets" were not acceptable responses.

"Undoubtedly, these actions are treason, and the responsible institutions deal with treason seriously and justly," he added.

On Saturday, Iran executed Mohammad Mehdi Karami and Seyed Mohammad Hosseini for killing a paramilitary force member in November, in Karaj west of Tehran.

Two other men, Mohsen Shekari and Majidreza Rahnavard, were put to death in December after being convicted of separate attacks on security forces.

The executions have sparked global outrage and new Western sanctions against Tehran.

On Monday, Pope Francis appealed for an end to the death penalty around the world, including Iran.

"The death penalty cannot be employed for a purported state justice, since it does not constitute a deterrent nor render justice to victims, but only fuels the thirst for vengeance," he said.

According to London-based rights group Amnesty International, Iran is second only to China in its use of the death penalty, with at least 314 people executed in 2021.

pdm/noc/it

CAIRO (AP) — A cargo ship carrying corn that went aground early on Monday in the Suez Canal was refloated and traffic through the crucial waterway was restored, Egyptian authorities said.

According to Adm. Ossama Rabei, head of the Suez Canal Authority, the Marshall Islands-flagged MV Glory suffered a sudden technical failure while transiting through the canal, and four tugboats were deployed to help refloat it.

The vessel, owned by Greek firm Primera Shipping Inc., was heading to China before it broke down at the 38 kilometer (24 mile) -mark of the canal, near the city of Qantara in the province of Ismailia, Rabei said.

After being refloated, the vessel was towed to a nearby maritime park to fix the problem, he said while the canal's media office shared images showing the vessel being pulled by tugboats.

Rabei did not elaborate on the nature of the technical failure. Parts of Egypt, including its northern provinces, experienced bad weather Sunday. Traffic in the canal resumed after the ship was refloated and 51 vessels were expected to pass through the waterway in both directions Monday, Rabei's statement added.

Marwa Maher, a media officer with the canal authority, told The Associated Press the vessel ran aground around 5 a.m. local time and was refloated five hours later.

Canal services firm Leth Agencies posted a map that suggested the ship was against the west bank of the canal, pointed south and not wedged across the channel. Satellite tracking data analyzed by the AP showed the Glory running aground in a single-lane stretch of the Suez Canal just south of Port Said on the Mediterranean Sea.

Traffic Marine, a vessel tracking firm, said the Glory, bound to China, was transiting the canal at 8.5 knots when an engine broke down.

The Glory wasn't the first vessel to run aground in the crucial waterway. The Panama-flagged Ever Given, a colossal container ship, crashed into a bank on a single-lane stretch of the canal in March 2021, blocking the waterway for six days.

The Ever Given was freed in a giant salvage operation by a flotilla of tugboats. The blockage created a massive traffic jam that held up $9 billion a day in global trade and strained supply chains already burdened by the coronavirus pandemic.

The Ever Given debacle prompted Egyptian authorities to begin widening and deepening the waterway’s southern part where the vessel hit ground.

In August, the Singaporean-flagged Affinity V oil tanker ran aground in a single-lane stretch of the canal, blocking the waterway for five hours before it was freed.

The Joint Coordination Center listed the Glory as carrying over 65,000 metric tons of corn from Ukraine bound for China. The vessel was inspected by the center — which includes Russian, Turkish, Ukrainian and United Nations staffers — off Istanbul on Jan. 3.

Opened in 1869, the Suez Canal provides a crucial link for oil, natural gas and cargo. It also remains one of Egypt’s top foreign currency earners. In 2015, President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi 's government completed a major expansion of the canal, allowing it to accommodate the world’s largest vessels.

Built in 2005, the Glory is 225 meters (738 feet) long and 32 meters (105 feet) wide.

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Associated Press writer Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report.

(Bloomberg) -- China said it started making major changes to Covid Zero even before nationwide protests widely credited with prompting the shift, as Beijing sought to counter the narrative that President Xi Jinping was forced to abandon a signature policy.

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On Nov. 10, “the party central made a major decision, and for the first time put forward a 20-point measure” that relaxed Covid controls, Xinhua News Agency said in a timeline published on Sunday.

“This sent a distinctive signal at home and abroad that China is responding to the time and situation and proactively optimizing its Covid control policies,” the official media outlet said.

The timeline appears to be an effort to minimize the influence that the most widespread demonstrations in China in decades had on Xi and other top decision-makers, instead casting top leaders as carefully planning the change.

The abrupt shift came on Dec. 7, when China dumped key aspects of the zero-tolerance approach, which required mass tests, snap lockdowns and other measures. On Sunday, the Asian nation reopened borders that were largely shut for nearly three years, setting off a homecoming rush.

See: Xi’s Covid Retreat Shows China Masses They Have Real Power

Beijing had consulted with public health experts from Hong Kong before Nov. 11 on how to lift Covid restrictions, according to a Financial Times report based on two people familiar with the matter. That indicates that prior to the protests at least some parts of the government were considering how to exit from the nationwide Covid restrictions which had seriously damaged the economy and pushed the budget deficit to a record.

The controls were also struggling to contain the more infectious omicron variant, with Covid cases in November high or rising in major regions such as Beijing, Chongqing and Guangzhou.

The Chinese leader faced another major test in late November, when protests erupted in dozens of cities. Some demonstrators called for the resignation of Xi, who had repeatedly defended Covid Zero, even as late as mid-October at a party congress that handed him an unprecedented third term in power.

The 69-year-old and his party of some 90 million people who govern a population of 1.4 billion without ever holding elections would be keen to downplay the role of protests in decision-making, likely out of concern it could fuel even more unrest from a public wanting other changes.

Videos have circulated in recent days of people defying police to set off fireworks to celebrate the New Year. In one clip, a young man dances on a damaged police car while a large crowd cheers and takes pictures. Bloomberg wasn’t able to independently verify the videos.

Xi and other top Chinese officials have said little about the protests, the abrupt change to Covid Zero and what comes next. In a New Year’s address, Xi acknowledged divisions in society, and said the Covid strategy had been “optimized” and that the Asian nation faced tough challenges.

He reportedly told European Council President Charles Michel during a visit to Beijing in early December that the protesters were “mainly students and teenagers” frustrated with the pandemic. Protesters seen by Bloomberg News reporters appeared to be from many walks of life.

More: China Cranks Up Propaganda Defending Xi as Covid Surges

The Xinhua timeline avoided the word “protest,” saying only that people in some cities had started to “reflect problems” with Covid controls, which “attracted high-level attention.”

It added that “different people have different views” in such a large country, and that the government worked at “building consensus and making scientific decisions” in response to the pandemic.

Xinhua also tried to defend the Chinese government against criticism it was unprepared for the end of its Covid strategy, leading to virus outbreaks in Beijing and other cities, which suffered from medicine shortages.

It said the government ordered that facilities to treat patients be expanded and resources stockpiled as early as May. The news agency added that officials demanded on Nov. 24 that “medical resources should be prepared and in place before the end of December.”

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A spate of gruesome killings, kidnappings and extortion rackets has left residents of south-eastern Nigeria living in fear. An armed group is fighting for the region's independence but the line between its campaign and criminality has become increasingly blurred.

The unrest has forced people to flee villages where they led a peaceful life until just a few years ago.

"My uncle ran away from the village because these people asked him to give them money to buy guns and bullets. Our villages are empty because they are the law now," said a man who we will call Chike Anyikwa to protect him from reprisals.

Encamped in nearby forests, the armed men have formed a parallel government in Mr Anyikwa's ancestral village, and many others, in Imo State, which, alongside Anambra State, is hardest-hit by the conflict.

Similar camps exist in the three other states, Abia, Ebonyi and Enugu, that make up the south-east - which the fighters would like to become the independent state of Biafra.

The armed men have usurped the powers of government officials and traditional rulers. If anyone wants to hold a marriage or burial ceremony, they need their permission - and have to pay a fee to get the go-ahead.

Gang leaders have even assumed responsibility for resolving disputes among villagers over issues such as land rights - a sign of the extent to which they have taken control.

Mr Anyikwa lives in Enugu city and - like thousands of others - could not spend the last two Christmases at his village, breaking with the tradition of going back to reconnect with his ancestral roots.

"A relative did a traditional marriage in our village. Nobody went. Fear didn't allow anyone to go. The security agents come from Owerri [the capital of Imo State] and then go back because many of the police stations have been destroyed.

"The law that people know is the one that has been imposed by the unknown gunmen, who say they are for Biafra, but we know they are not," he added.

The creation of Biafra has been a long-cherished dream of many Igbo people who want the south-east, and part of the Niger Delta, to be their independent homeland.

Known for their entrepreneurial skills, Igbos are Nigeria's third-largest ethnic group, making up about 15% of the country's estimated population of about 217 million, according to statista.com.

The secessionist campaign first gained impetus in the 1960s, when an Igbo army officer, Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, declared the birth of Biafra following killings of south-easterners in northern Nigeria, but the attempt at secession ended after a bloody three-year war that led to more than a million deaths from fighting, starvation and a lack of medical care.

Despite the failure of Lt-Col Ojukwu's campaign, the secessionist sentiment has lingered on ever since, with its latest torchbearer being the Indigenous People of Biafra (Ipob) group.

Formed in 2012 by two UK-based Igbos, Nnamdi Kanu and Uche Mefor, as a peaceful movement, it launched an armed wing, the Eastern Security Network (ESN), in south-eastern Nigeria in 2020, saying it was doing so to defend Igbos, though its critics say it has unleashed violence that has caused huge suffering.

Nigeria's government has proscribed Ipob and a court has designated it a "terrorist" organisation. Government critics say the attempt to destroy the group through military force has added to the suffering of civilians who have seen their villages raided by troops, and young men being detained or killed on the mere suspicion of being supporters of the movement.

The continued detention by Nigeria's security agents of Mr Kanu, despite a court ordering his release after ruling that he had been illegally arrested abroad, has meant that the group no longer operates as a coherent force, with a clear command structure or political programme.

Instead, it has split into feuding factions - some of which are more violent and less disciplined, causing Ipob to lose the support of many Igbos who had backed it when it was formed.

Attacks across the region by armed men, who the Nigerian security agencies link to the group, have led to the killing of hundreds of civilians and security force members since the violence started in 2020.

Women, children and the elderly have not been spared.

In a horrific case of violence during the Christmas holiday, the video of a naked and bound woman trended on social media.

She was later identified as a Nigerian army officer, who had gone to visit her grandmother in Abia State, when gunmen abducted her, and released the video in which they threatened to kill her.

A female soldier travelling for her traditional marriage was similarly abducted in May 2022 and her captors released a video showing them killing and decapitating her. Her fiancé, a retired soldier, and his nephew were also killed by the men who claimed to be separatists.

The abductors of the army officer referred to themselves as Unknown Gunmen fighting for Biafra, and deny being affiliated to Ipob.

This is how many of the gangs identify themselves in their videos, seemingly mocking the media that often attribute violence in the region to unknown gunmen.

Eyewitnesses told the BBC that soldiers were torching homes and businesses in villages as they searched for the army officer and her abductors. The spokesman for the 34 Artillery Brigade in Obinze in Imo State, Capt Joseph Akubo, told the BBC that soldiers weren't responsible for the arson attacks.

However, such arson attacks are not uncommon in the region. In one of the most shocking cases, in October 2021 soldiers were accused by locals of burning down more than 40 houses in Izombe village in Imo State after two soldiers and a civilian were killed in a clash between youths and soldiers.

Vigilante groups, formed with government backing to help curb insecurity, have also been accused of atrocities - a notable case being the killing of five young men who were said to be returning from a wedding in Awomama village, also in Imo State, in July 2022.

Chigozie Ekesinachi, whose two siblings were among the dead, said the state-sponsored vigilante group Ebubeagu was behind the killings.

He added that the vigilantes assaulted him and some of his relatives, and detained them when they identified themselves as the family of the dead, whose bodies were still at the scene. The Department of State Security (DSS) later admitted responsibility for the killings, stating that the men were separatist fighters.

People who identified themselves as separatists have also been accused of targeting civilians - in December 2021, two traditional leaders were abducted from their palaces.

One of them, Paul Ogbu, was killed and his body dumped in a pit with other decomposing corpses, while security forces rescued the other traditional leader, Acho Ndukwe, from the gunmen's camp.

A video released later showed the two elderly men being tortured by their captors, and accused of being saboteurs of the Biafran independence campaign.

Several other traditional chiefs have also been abducted, and had their palaces burnt or killed by suspected separatists.

Chidiebube Okeoma, a journalist who covers Imo State for Nigeria's Punch newspaper, said the insecurity extends to the state capital.

"Owerri was known for its nightlife activity, but all that is gone now because of pockets of killing. When people see strange faces, they will take cover. If a car tyre bursts, people will start running. Imo was not like this," he said.

The city, like all other cities and towns across the south-east, is deserted every Monday, as separatists enforce a "sit-at-home" order, shutting businesses, schools and government offices.

It has led to students missing crucial examinations and businesses suffering heavy financial losses.

"Even the governors are inside their government houses, obeying the sit-at-home order," Mr Anyikwa commented wryly.

He fears that many people in the south-east will not be able to vote in next month's general election, as some of the separatist factions have called for a boycott of the polls.

Furthermore, armed men, claiming to be acting for the Biafra cause, have attacked offices of the Independent National Electoral Commission (Inec) and people registering to vote. They also killed an Inec staff member in 2022.

"I am very ashamed about the state of insecurity in the south-east," Mr Anyikwa said.

At this point, the violence seems to have no end in sight. On 2 January 2023, five people, including the president general of Obosi town, close to the commercial city of Onitsha in Anambra State, were killed in what the state government described as "cult-related killings".

On the same day In Imo State, four police officers were killed when the convoy of the former state governor, Ikedi Ohakim, was attacked by armed men. The bullet-proof vehicle they were in saved Mr Ohakim and his children.

President Muhammadu Buhari, who fought on the Nigerian side during the Biafran civil war, had vowed to treat the separatists in "the language they understand" in June 2021, drawing widespread criticism and the deletion of the tweet by Twitter.

He is due to step down after the election, with Mr Okeoma hoping that his successor will take steps to resolve the conflict in the south-east and conflicts in other parts of Nigeria.

"It is a failure of government," he said.

"It is something that can be resolved if a holistic approach is followed," Mr Okeoma added.

(Bloomberg) -- Kim Jong Un rang in the new year the way he likes best — with a fresh threat to dramatically expand North Korea’s nuclear arsenal. This one is almost certain to fizzle.

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Kim used a speech published on Jan. 1 to call for an “exponential increase” in the country’s stockpiles of atomic weapons, implying output at an unprecedented pace. The North Korean leader also called for the mass production of so-called tactical nuclear weapons that could be used on the battlefield against US forces and their allies.

While Kim has repeatedly surprised his doubters with the expansion of his missile program, his heavily sanctioned state appears to lack the domestic capacity to quickly double, triple or quadruple his production of weapons-grade uranium and plutonium. At best, he could hope to ratchet up his output of fissile material, which non-proliferation experts estimate could be used to arm about a half dozen bombs each year.

“We do not know what Kim Jong Un actually means with the ‘exponential increase’ in the production of fissile material, but in the nuclear industry, such an increase normally takes place gradually,” said Olli Heinonen, a distinguished fellow with the Stimson Center think tank in Washington.

United Nations sanctions bar North Korea from importing a large array of components needed to quickly ramp up production. Without outside supplies, Kim’s regime must rely on a limited production network that includes an aging nuclear plant for making plutonium and a uranium-enrichment facility at its crown jewel Yongbyon nuclear site.

Proliferation experts believe there’s a second suspected uranium-enrichment facility near Pyongyang and UN agencies say there are two uranium mines and a pair of uranium-concentration plants supplying the system.

“We’re guessing about a lot. But the bits we know and have evidence for are signs they could be ramping up,” said George William Herbert, an adjunct professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies. “Underground centrifuge plants are particularly hard to detect or destroy,” he said, adding there is a possibility of doubling the production rate.

All told, experts believe that’s enough to produce about six to eight nuclear bombs annually, although much depends on the configuration of warheads and the level of production loss during the enrichment process. Estimates for North Korea’s total stockpile of warheads range from 20 by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, to 40-50 from the Arms Control Association to more than 100 in a Rand Corp. analysis.

Of course, even one atomic bomb in Kim’s possession is unacceptable to the US, which has a long-stated goal of the “complete denuclearization” of the Korean Peninsula. But a lack of warheads does undermine the practical value of Kim’s increasingly wide array of nuclear-capable missiles, which experts have said likely tally more than 1,000.

The US is concerned about Kim’s comments on escalating his nuclear arms production, Brigadier General Pat Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman, said at a news briefing in Washington last week. “It just demonstrates the destabilizing impact that these kinds of comments and the actions have,” he added.

One way for North Korea to boost its nuclear stockpile is to ramp up production of lower-yield tactical weapons that require less fissile material. It could also try to further develop its own centrifuges and other required machinery, said Heinonen, who has served as the deputy director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN’s nuclear watchdog.

“Technology they have used successfully in the missile program, if applied to centrifuge rotors, may increase your capacity by 50% without requiring any additional space,” Heinonen said. They could just replace old centrifuges gradually with more advanced ones, he added.

Satellite imagery from 2021 indicated the uranium-enrichment plant at the Yongbyon nuclear complex had been expanded. Weapons expert Jeffrey Lewis wrote on his Arms Control Wonk website last year that this probably indicated North Korea planned to increase production there by as much as 25%.

Lewis said in a recent email that he suspects, “after 20 years, North Korea can probably manufacture its own centrifuge components just as Iran does — but they’ve never shown us that infrastructure.”

North Korea’s nuclear program is shrouded in secrecy, with foreign experts forced to rely on satellite imagery and state media reports to assess its production capacity. The IAEA hasn’t been able to access Yongbyon or any other location in North Korea since April 2009 and the country hasn’t let in Western nuclear experts at all since Kim took power more than a decade ago.

“They don’t need to rely on imports as they have their own equipment to produce fissile materials independently,” said Sangmin Lee, director of the North Korean Military Research Division at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses based in Seoul.

The US and South Korea have warned that Kim is likely preparing for his first test of a nuclear bomb since 2017, as he seeks to demonstrate his ability to develop smaller tactical weapons. For now, Kim has rebuffed calls for talks by US President Joe Biden and South Korean leader Yoon Suk Yeol, declaring in a September speech that he would “never give up” his nuclear weapons.

“The door to negotiations, as the North Koreans put it last fall, is closed,” said Soo Kim, a specialist on North Korea who previously worked at the Central Intelligence Agency.

“Kim Jong Un’s justification, of course, lies in the hostile policies of the US and South Korea — a long-used pretext to substantiate the DPRK’s pursuit of its own hostile policy and path of nuclearization,” she said, referring to North Korea by its formal name.

(Updates with Pentagon spokesman.)

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(Bloomberg) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin’s plans to squeeze Europe by weaponizing energy look to be fizzling at least for now.

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Mild weather, a wider array of suppliers and efforts to reduce demand are helping, with gas reserves still nearly full and prices tumbling to pre-war levels. After the sharp turnaround over the past month, Europe is likely already through the worst of the crisis.

The combination of conditions — including China’s Covid woes blunting competition for LNG cargoes — would take the edge off inflation, stabilize Europe’s economic outlook and leave the Kremlin with less leverage over Ukraine’s allies, if they persist.

While a cold snap or delivery disruptions could still throw energy markets into disarray, optimism is growing that Europe can now make it through this winter and next.

“The danger of a complete economic meltdown, a core meltdown of European industry, has — as far as we can see — been averted,” German Economy Minister Robert Habeck, a key architect of the country’s response to the energy crisis, said during a trip to Norway, which has taken Russia’s place as the country’s biggest gas supplier.

The crisis, triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last February, has already cost Europe close to $1 trillion from surging energy prices. Governments have responded with more than $700 billion in aid to help companies and consumers absorb the blow. They also scrambled to unwind their reliance on Russian energy, especially natural gas.

The European Union is no longer importing coal and crude oil from Russia and gas deliveries have been significantly curtailed. The bloc has filled some of the gap by increasing supplies from Norway and shipments of liquefied natural gas from Qatar, the US and other producers.

In Germany, storage facilities are about 91% full, compared with 54% a year ago, when Russia had already been emptying facilities it controlled. Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government has since nationalized Gazprom PJSC’s local units and has spent billions of euros filling reserves.

Energy-saving measures from industry and households as well as the warmest January temperatures in decades have helped preserve that cushion.

“We are very optimistic, which we weren’t really back in the fall,” Klaus Mueller, head of Germany’s network regulator, said in an interview with public broadcaster ARD on Friday. “The more gas we have in storage facilities at the beginning of the year, the less stress and cost we will face in filling them again for next winter.”

Benchmark gas prices have fallen to a fifth of records set in August, and despite concerns that cheaper rates could stoke demand, usage is still declining — a silver lining of the weak economy. European consumption is expected to be some 16% below five-year average levels throughout 2023, Morgan Stanley said in a report.

Read more: Germany’s Scholz Tells Citizens They Need to Keep Saving Energy

Favorable conditions and the expansion of renewable capacity is also helping. Higher wind and solar generation will help slash gas-fired power generation in 10 of Europe’s largest power markets by 39% this year, according to S&P Global.

The dynamic has shifted to such an extent that there’s now too much LNG arriving, according to Morgan Stanley. Deliveries set a fresh record in December, and the trend is likely to continue.

Germany, once the biggest buyer of Russian gas, is opening three terminals this winter, and Europe’s largest economy expects its new LNG facilities to cover about a third of its previous requirements. Steady supplies from non-Russian sources are likely to keep market prices from surging to last year’s peaks.

Read more: Germany Opens LNG Terminal in Quest to Replace Russian Gas

“The fact that Europe managed to fill up its storage sites has really created a buffer for prices for the upcoming winter,” said Giacomo Masato, lead analyst and senior meteorologist at Italy-based energy company Illumia SpA. “The expectations shifted as the region started to have ample supplies.”

Refilling reserves could be less dramatic after this winter. Morgan Stanley and consultancy Wood Mackenzie Ltd. expect storage sites about half full this spring if the weather stays mild. That would be double last year’s levels.

Despite the positive developments, prices are still higher than historical averages and risks remain. Russian pipeline gas imports this year will be just a fifth of usual levels — about 27 billion cubic meters — and the Kremlin could cut them completely.

That’s “a massive reduction for a market that was consuming 400 bcm in 2021,” said Anne-Sophie Corbeau, a researcher at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy.

LNG therefore will be critical to securing enough supplies for next winter, and Europe will need to remain alert. A rebound in China’s economy could stoke competition, with supplies tight until more capacity becomes available in 2025. Russia also has the ability to cause disruption in the market as one of Europe’s top-three suppliers of the super-chilled fuel.

Still, the chances of a large rebound in Chinese LNG demand is evaporating, as the nation turns to more affordable fuel options, like coal, pipeline gas and domestic production. In fact, China may not even need any spot LNG shipments this year, according to CICC Research.

The climate crisis has contributed to a lack of demand for heating so far this winter and increasingly volatile weather patterns may still trigger blasts of cold, such as the recent arctic weather that swept across the US. Prolonged freezing temperatures can deplete storage sites to 20% capacity, according to Wood Mackenzie.

To ensure smooth stockpiling in the summer, a lot of factors have to align, including solid electricity supply from wind, nuclear and hydro generators, stable LNG flows and continued energy savings, Corbeau said.

“Europe might be in a better position compared to previously feared, but it is not out of the woods yet,” Wood Mackenzie said by email.

--With assistance from Iain Rogers and Stephen Stapczynski.

(Updates with details about China’s LNG demand outlook in the 20th paragraph.)

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WASHINGTON (AP) — After an epic 15-ballot election to become House speaker, Republican Kevin McCarthy faces his next big test in governing a fractious, slim majority: passing a rules package to govern the House.

The drafting and approval of a set of rules is normally a fairly routine legislative affair, but in these times, it's the next showdown for the embattled McCarthy.

To become speaker and win over skeptics, McCarthy had to make concessions to a small group of hard-liners who refused to support his ascension until he yielded to their demands.

Now those promises — or at least some of them — are being put into writing to be voted on when lawmakers return this week for their first votes as the majority party.

On Sunday, at least two moderate Republicans expressed their reservations about supporting the rules package, citing what they described as secret deals and the disproportionate power potentially being handed out to a group of 20 conservatives.

The concessions included limits on McCarthy's power, such as by allowing a single lawmaker to initiate a vote to remove him as speaker and curtailing government spending, which could include defense cuts. They also give the conservative Freedom Caucus more seats on the committee that decides which legislation reaches the House floor.

They also raise questions about whether McCarthy can garner enough support from Republicans, who hold a 222-212 edge, on a critical vote in the coming months to raise the debt limit, given conservatives' demand that there also be significant spending cuts, over opposition from the White House and a Democratic-controlled Senate.

Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., a strong McCarthy supporter, said she currently is “on the fence” about the proposed rules.

“I like the rules package,” Mace said, in reference to what has been released publicly. “What I don’t support is a small number of people trying to get a deal done or deals done for themselves in private, in secret.”

She said it will be hard to get anything done in the House if a small band is given a stronger hand compared with the larger number of moderates. “I am concerned that commonsense legislation will not get through to get a vote on the floor," she said.

Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-Texas, was an outright “no” against the rules package, decrying an “insurgency caucus” that he said would cut defense spending and push extremist legislation, such as on immigration.

Democrats are expected to be united against the package.

Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, a member of the Freedom Caucus who is expected to lead the House Judiciary Committee, defended the concessions McCarthy made and said he believes the rules package will get enough Republican support to pass. He insisted that the agreements will help ensure broader representation on committees and will curtail unfettered government spending.

“We'll see tomorrow,” he said Sunday, but “I think we’ll get the 218 votes needed to pass the rules package."

In the coming months, Congress will have to work to raise the debt limit before the government reaches its borrowing cap or face a devastating default on payments, including those for Social Security, military troops and federal benefits such as food assistance. Lawmakers will also have to fund federal agencies and programs for the next budget year, which begins Oct. 1.

“Our general concern is that the dysfunction — that was historic — that we saw this week is not at an end, it’s just the beginning,” said House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York.

The White House has rejected Republican calls to slash spending in return for an increase in the federal government’s borrowing authority. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre went so far on Sunday as to call House Republicans’ likely demands “hostage taking” that would risk default, an event that could trigger an economic crisis.

“Congress is going to need to raise the debt limit without — without — conditions and it’s just that simple,” Jean-Pierre told reporters aboard Air Force One as President Joe Biden flew to Texas. “Attempts to exploit the debt ceiling as leverage will not work. There will be no hostage taking.”

Yet the White House also said it had no plans to sidestep the needed congressional approval through possible budget gimmicks such as the minting of a coin to help cover a deficit that could be roughly $1 trillion this fiscal year.

“We’re not considering any measures that would go around Congress,” Jean-Pierre said. “That’s not what we’re doing. This is a fundamental congressional responsibility, and Congress must act.”

Jordan argued that “everything has to be on the table” when it comes to spending cuts, including in defense, in light of the government's $32 trillion debt. “Frankly we better look at the money we send to Ukraine as well and say, how can we best spend the money to protect America?” he said.

Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, one of the 20 who initially voted against McCarthy before throwing his support behind the Californian, said he and other conservatives will be holding their position that there should be spending cuts in a debt ceiling bill. Asked whether he would exercise members' new authority and unilaterally initiate a vote to remove the speaker if McCarthy doesn't ultimately agree, Roy offered a warning.

“I’m not going to play the ‘what if’ games on how we’re going to use the tools of the House to make sure that we enforce the terms of the agreement, but we will use the tools of the House to enforce the terms of the agreement,” Roy said.

Mace and Gonzales appeared on CBS' “Face the Nation,” Jordan spoke on “Fox News Sunday,” Jeffries was on NBC's “Meet the Press,” and Roy was on CNN's “State of the Union.”

___

Associated Press writer Josh Boak contributed to this report.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Iranian hardliners on Sunday burnt France’s flag outside of its embassy in Tehran where they were protesting cartoons published by the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo that lampoon Iran’s ruling clerics.

The Charlie Hebdo caricatures largely aligned the Paris-based magazine with the demands of anti-government protests that have swept Iran calling for the downfall of its Islamic Republic and challenged its hardline establishment.

The demonstrations outside of the French embassy follow previous attempts by Iran’s rulers to mobilize their supporters in counter-demonstrations.

Hundreds of protesters including students from seminary schools shouted “Death to France” and accused French President Emmanuel Macron of insulting Iran while urging Paris to stop “animosity” toward Tehran. Police, some of whom appeared holding images of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, kept the demonstrators at a distance from the embassy building.

Supporters of Iran’s hardline leaders usually aim their protests and flag burning against the U.S. and its Stars and Stripes, but targeting France’s Tricolor is rare.

State television said some clerics held similar protests in the shrine city of Qom, the center of religious learning in Iran.

Iranian parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf on Sunday linked the French magazine’s cartoons with what officials have repeatedly alleged is the West’s plot to spread “riots” in Iran.

Later in the day, President Ebrahim Raisi offered his first reaction to the French cartoons and echoed similar claims. “Resorting to insults on the pretext of freedom is a clear indication of their frustration in concluding plot for chaos and insecurity” in Iran, he said.

Anti-government protests erupted across Iran in September after the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who had been detained by the country’s morality police for allegedly violating its strict Islamic dress code.

The unrest has grown into one of the severest challenges to the Islamic Republic since the 1979 revolution that brought it to power. Human rights groups say that at least 517 protesters have been killed and over 19,200 people have been arrested amid a violent crackdown by security forces. Iranian authorities have not provided an official count of those killed or detained.

On Saturday, authorities executed two men convicted of allegedly killing a paramilitary volunteer in the demonstrations.

The Saturday hangings made it four people known to have been executed since the unrest began in September over the death of Amini. All of the sentences were handed out in rapid, closed-door trials that have been met with international criticism.

Sunday was also the third anniversary of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s downing of an Ukrainian passenger plane with two surface-to-air missiles, killing all 176 people on board — a tragedy that ignited an outburst of anger across Iran. Tehran initially denied responsibility for downing the airplane before admitting to having mistakenly done so amid high tensions with the U.S.

An Iranian court has yet to issue a verdict three years into the trial of 10 military personnel who have not been publicly identified but are allegedly implicated in the plane’s downing.

Families of the victims met on Sunday at the site of the crash to hold a memorial ceremony separately from an official commemoration organized at Tehran’s international airport, which had been the point of departure for the flight.

In a separate development on Sunday, a court sentenced Faezeh Hashemi, daughter of former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, to a five years prison term for “propaganda against the system,” Iranian media reported.

The outspoken and pro-reform Hashemi was in prison since late September after she was arrested by security forces for supporting protests that have been led by women opposing the mandatory headscarf or hijab under the Islamic Republic.

In 2011, Hashemi was convicted and served five years in prison over similar security charges.

Iranian officials have continued to claim the monthslong protests are being driven by foreign agents but have offered no proof.

Following Charlie Hebdo’s publishing of cartoons mocking Iranian clerical figures, authorities in Tehran shut down on Thursday a decades-old French research institute and called the closure a “first step” in their response.

A notorious police minister during white minority rule in South Africa, Adriaan Vlok, has died aged 85.

He played a key role in enforcing the racist system of apartheid, with police running hit squads that kidnapped, tortured and murdered activists.

Vlok confessed to some of his crimes after apartheid ended in 1994 and was granted amnesty.

He also washed prominent anti-apartheid cleric Rev Frank Chikane's feet in 2006 in a gesture of contrition.

His critics saw it as a stunt to gain sympathy, and to avoid making a full disclosure of all the crimes committed by the apartheid regime.

Rev Chikane had survived an attempt by police to poison him to death in 1989.

More than 45 years of rule by the apartheid regime came to an end in 1994 when Nelson Mandela became South Africa's first black president.

In 2007, Vlok was given a suspended prison sentence of 10 years for Rev Chikane's attempted murder.

"I feel ashamed of many things I have done," he said at his sentencing.

Vlok's family said he had died at a hospital in the capital, Pretoria, after a short illness.

He was minister of law and order from 1986 to 1991.

In its profile of him, South Africa History Online says his ministry was responsible for the detention of about 30,000 people as it tried to suppress the revolt against white minority rule.

Vlok testified at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission set up by Mr Mandela's government to uncover the atrocities of the apartheid regime.

Vlok admitted that his police force had carried out bombings, including that of the headquarters of the South African Churches. He was given amnesty for making the confession.

He also washed the feet of the mothers and widows of 10 activists who were murdered by the police after being lured into an ambush.

In 2015, Vlok told the BBC's Newshour radio programme that was not responsible for the "inception of apartheid".

"I helped to keep it in place and to send me to prison for all the apartheid crimes, I think that would have been wrong," he added.

South Africa is still grappling with racism almost 30 years after apartheid ended.

Two black teenagers, aged 13 and 18, were the victims of an alleged racial attack at a resort on Christmas Day.

President Cyril Ramaphosa introduced the teenagers at a rally on Sunday, saying they were his "guests".

"It was such a shameful act to see old, white men trying to throttle these young men and drown them in a pool underwater," he said.

"If you practice racism, we will make sure that you feel the might of the law, because the people of South Africa will never, ever allow racism to reign in our country again, as Nelson Mandela, the father of our democracy said," he added, to thunderous applause.

One white man has been charged with attempted murder over the incident, while another two have been charged with common assault and crimen injuria, which refers to intentionally impairing the dignity of a person.

They have not yet been asked to plead and are due to appear in court again later this month.

LYON, France (AP) — Hundreds of people marched Sunday in France to honor an Iranian Kurdish man who took his own life in a desperate act of anguish over the nationwide protests in Iran.

French police estimated the size of the crowd that gathered for Mohammad Moradi at about 1,000 people. They marched in the city of Lyon, where the 38-year-old Moradi took his own life in December, drowning in the Rhone river.

In videos in Farsi and French recorded before his death, Moradi criticized Iran’s leadership and called for solidarity from Western governments against it. The recordings featured him saying, “When you see this video, I will be dead.”

The protesters Sunday marched with placards that read “stop executions in Iran” and other slogans. Some traveled from other parts of France.

Hundreds of protesters also gathered in Rome and London in support of the Iranian protest movement.

Moradi arrived in France in 2019 with his wife and was pursuing a Ph.D. in history. His death resonated among the Iranian diaspora.

“Mohammad took his life with incredible courage,” said Lili Mohadjer, one of the Lyon march organizers, who addressed the crowd. “His hope was that the media and Western governments continue to support the Iranian people.”

The protests in Iran began in mid-September, over the death of Mahsa Amini. The 22-year-old woman died after being arrested by Iran’s morality police for allegedly violating the Islamic Republic’s strict dress code.

Women have played a leading role in the protests, with many publicly removing the compulsory Islamic headscarf, known as the hijab.

Sunday's marchers in Lyon shouted Moradi's name. They also observed a minute of silence for him and for two men that Iran said it executed on Saturday for allegedly killing a paramilitary volunteer during a demonstration.

Iran’s judiciary identified those executed as Mohammad Mehdi Karami and Mohammad Hosseini, making it four men known to have been executed since the demonstrations began in September. All have faced internationally criticized, rapid, closed-door trials.

The Lyon marchers also paid homage to victims of the shooting down of a Ukrainian passenger plane in 2020 that killed 176 people. Iran’s military mistakenly downed Ukraine International Airlines Flight PS752 with two surface-to-air missiles.

In London, protesters waved Iran’s pre-revolutionary flag as they marched to Trafalgar Square and carried banners with pictures of demonstrators killed by the Islamic Republic’s authorities. They chanted “woman, life, freedom,” a slogan of the Iranian movement.

Outside the Iranian Embassy in Rome, demonstrators chanted “killers!” and stacked up boxes outside its closed doors containing signed petitions.

The Turin daily La Stampa spearheaded the collection of 300,000 signatures against what it decried as “unjust incarcerations, torture, death sentences of those in Iran demonstrating peacefully to change their own country.”

Turin and other Italian cities and towns also saw protests against Iran’s crackdown.

Among the demonstrators in Rome was opposition lawmaker Mara Carfagna. In a tweet, Carfagna decried the death sentences and “the brutal repression against women and young people.” She asked Premier Giorgia Meloni to press for a European Union initiative when the Italian leader meets in Rome on Monday with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

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Frances D'Emilio in Rome, Jill Lawless in London, and John Leicester in Le Pecq, France, contributed to this report.

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This story includes discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, please call 988 in the U.S. or contact 988lifeline.org. Helplines in other countries can be found on befrienders.org.

Four people have now been arrested in Kenya over the brutal killing of LGBTQ activist and fashion designer Edwin Chiloba, police say.

Preliminary investigations showed that his eyes had been gouged out, before his body was dumped in a metal box by a roadside, local media report.

Rights groups have linked Chiloba's killing to his sexuality, but the motive is still unclear.

Police said on Friday they had detained his long-time friend over his death.

He was described by police as the main suspect.

Police said they had arrested three more suspects on Saturday, and they had also seized the vehicle thought to have been used to dump Chiloba's body.

It was found on Tuesday in a decomposed state by the roadside near the the western town of Eldoret.

Tributes on social media described Chiloba, who was in his mid-20s, as "an amazing human" and an "iconic fashion designer".

He had moved to Eldoret from the capital, Nairobi, in 2019 to study fashion and was beginning to make a name for himself in design, a friend said.

Last month Chiloba wrote on Instagram that he was "going to fight for all marginalised people", saying that he himself had been marginalised.

Human rights groups have called on police to swiftly resolve his killing.