World

Britain’s Prince Harry told the UN Monday that the overturning of constitutional rights in the United States was part of “a global assault on democracy and freedom.”

The Duke of Sussex addressed the United Nations General Assembly in New York at an event marking Nelson Mandela International Day.

“This has been a painful year in a painful decade,” the royal told delegates.

He cited the continuing fallout from the pandemic, climate change, disinformation and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine before alluding to the Supreme Court’s recent overturning of America’s nationwide right to abortion.

“And from the horrific war in Ukraine to the rolling back of constitutional rights here in the United States, we are witnessing a global assault on democracy and freedom, the cause of Mandela’s life,” Harry said.

The royal paid tribute to Mandela, South Africa’s anti-apartheid hero who spent 27 years in prison before being elected the country’s first Black leader, as “not only a man of conscience” but “a man of action.”

Harry, 37, invoked that sentiment to urge leaders to tackle climate change, as his wife Meghan Markle looked on from the chamber.

“As we sit here today, our world is on fire again,” said the prince, adding that “historic weather events are no longer historic.”

“More and more, they are part of our daily lives. And this crisis will only grow worse unless our leaders lead.

“Unless the countries represented by the seats in this hallowed hall make the decisions, the daring, transformative decisions that our world needs to save humanity,” he added.

The General Assembly designated July 18, Mandela’s birthday, Nelson Mandela Day in 2009 to honor his life and legacy.

Assembly president Abdulla Shahid and New York City Mayor Eric Adams were among other delegates to make speeches.

In a personal moment, Harry said a photograph of his mother Princess Diana with Mandela is “on my wall and in my heart every day.”

It was taken in Cape Town in 1997, a few months before Diana’s death in a car crash in Paris.

“When I first looked at the photo, straightaway what jumped out was the joy on my mother’s face. The playfulness, cheekiness even, the pure delight to be in communion with another soul so committed to serving humanity,” said Harry.

A prosecutor arguing for the death penalty denounced the “unspeakable” murders of 17 people at a Florida high school as the sentencing trial began Monday for the troubled young man who admitted to carrying out the Valentine’s Day 2018 shooting.

Nikolas Cruz pleaded guilty in October to 17 counts of murder and 17 counts of attempted murder for the attack at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

A jury is to decide whether the 23-year-old should receive the death penalty or a life sentence for what lead prosecutor Mike Satz called a “cold, calculated, manipulative and deadly” massacre.

“I’m going to speak to you about the unspeakable, about this defendant’s goal-directed, planned, systematic murder, mass murder, of 14 children, an athletic director, a teacher and a coach,” Satz said in opening arguments.

He told the jury that three days before the shooting, Cruz made a cellphone video in which he said: “I’m going to be the next school shooter of 2018.

“My goal is at least 20 people with an AR-15 and some tracer rounds,” Cruz said in the video. “It’s going to be a big event and when you see me on the news, you’ll know who I am.”

The brown-haired Cruz, who was wearing large glasses and a gray-, purple- and black-striped sweater, listened impassively as the prosecutor recounted the day of the shooting in excruciating detail.

Parents of some of the victims were in the public gallery. They wept, clasped hands and shook their heads as the prosecutor spoke.

Satz said that Cruz, after fleeing the school, ordered a drink at a Subway sandwich shop and then went to a McDonald’s, where he asked the brother of a girl he had just shot for a ride.

The boy, who was not aware at the time that Cruz was the assailant, declined. Cruz was arrested shortly afterwards.

The trial in Fort Lauderdale is the rare instance of a mass shooter facing a jury, as they often either take their own lives or are killed by police.

The death penalty requires a unanimous decision by the jury. Cruz will otherwise be handed life without parole.

– Nine-minute massacre –

The Florida shooting stunned a country accustomed to gun violence and sparked new efforts, led by students from the school itself, to get lawmakers to pass tougher gun control laws.

Parkland survivors founded “March for Our Lives,” organizing a rally that drew hundreds of thousands of people to the nation’s capital, Washington, in 2018.

Thousands turned out for demonstrations organized by the group last month following two other mass shootings: one at a Texas elementary school that killed 19 children and two teachers, and another at a New York supermarket that left 10 Black people dead.

Those shootings helped galvanize support for the first significant federal bill on gun safety in decades.

President Joe Biden signed the bill into law in June. It included enhanced background checks for younger buyers and federal cash for states introducing “red flag” laws that allow courts to temporarily remove weapons from people who are considered a threat.

But the measure fell far short of steps Biden had called for, including an assault weapons ban.

Cruz bought the AR-15 semi-automatic rifle he used in the attack legally, despite having a documented history of mental health problems.

Expelled from school for disciplinary reasons, Cruz was known to be fixated on firearms — and had been identified as a potential threat to his classmates.

On the day of the attack, he arrived at the school in an Uber, began shooting indiscriminately at students and staff, and fled nine minutes later, leaving behind a scene of carnage.

Cruz told a detective after his arrest that he heard demons ordering him to “buy weapons, kill animals and destroy everything.”

The US Justice Department in March announced that it had reached a $127.5 million agreement with survivors and relatives of victims of the shooting, settling all 40 related civil cases.

In lawsuits, survivors and relatives accused the FBI of negligence for failing to act on tips received prior to the attack that Cruz was dangerous.

Russian shelling of a town in eastern Ukraine Monday killed six people, Kyiv said, as EU ministers meeting in Brussels insisted that the pressure of Western sanctions on Moscow was working.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky meanwhile appointed an acting security chief Monday, having announced the suspension of senior law enforcement officials late on Sunday.

Rescue workers in blue helmets were digging through debris and clearing rubble from a collapsed two-storey building in Toretsk in the industrial east that was struck by Russian artillery early Monday.

“I had my windows open. There was a huge explosion around 5:00 a.m — stones and dust,” local resident Nadia told AFP journalists, still shaking.

Emergency services said five people had been pulled dead from the rubble, while a sixth, seriously wounded, had died in hospital.

Toretsk, a town of around 30,000 residents, lies 50 kilometres (30 miles) south of Kramatorsk, a key target for Russian forces, who invaded Ukraine in late February.

Russia’s troops have made gains in the eastern region of Donbas recently, capturing the sister cities of Lysychansk and Severodonetsk.

On Monday, pro-Moscow rebels claimed that their next target in Donbas — the town of Siversk — was under their control, an announcement that could not be independently verified.

– Grain supply talks –

In Kyiv, Zelensky appointed 39-year-old Vasyl Malyuk — first deputy head of the SBU security services since March — as acting chief after pulling Ivan Bakanov from the post.

Andriy Smirnov, a deputy head of the presidential administration told Ukrainian television Monday that Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova and Bakanov had been suspended to prevent them “potentially influencing criminal proceedings against employees of the Security Service of Ukraine”.

The night before, Zelensky said security officials were investigating more than 650 cases of suspected treason and aiding and abetting Russia, including 60 cases of officials in Russian-occupied territories working against Ukraine.

In Brussels, the EU’s foreign policy chief warned that Russia’s blockade of Ukrainian ports was threatening grain supplies to tens of thousands of people vulnerable to starvation and said it must end.

“It’s an issue of life and death for many human beings. And the question is that Russia has to de-block and allow Ukrainian grain to be exported,” Josep Borrell told reporters. 

Zelensky tweeted Monday that he had had talks with Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro. “Discussed the importance of resuming Ukrainian grain exports to prevent a global food crisis provoked by Russia,” he wrote.

Russian and Ukrainian negotiators are due to meet UN and Turkish diplomats in Istanbul Wednesday to try to agree an end to the months-long blockade of Ukraine’s ports.

Kremlin advisor Yury Ushakov meanwhile said the impasse would feature in talks between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan Tuesday in Tehran. 

– Stay with sanctions: Borrell –

Borrell urged the EU not to falter on sanctions against Russia, insisting that they were working, days after Hungarian leader Viktor Orban said the penalties were harming Europe more than Russia.

“It is what we had to do, and we will continue doing,” Borrell said.

Ukraine Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba warned against “backing down and bowing to” Putin’s demands “will not work, it has never worked.”

“This is a trap,” he said.

Putin, meanwhile, vowed to overcome the high-tech problems caused by the sanctions.

“This is a huge challenge for our country,” he told a meeting. “Realising the colossal amount of difficulties we are facing, we will look for new solutions in an energetic and competent manner.”

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was visiting gas-rich Azerbaijan on Monday to secure alternatives to Russian energy for Europe.

“We will double the supply of gas from Azerbaijan to the EU,” within several years she said after meeting with President Ilham Aliyev, a leader routinely criticised by right groups. 

– Russia to target long-range weapons –

A Ukrainian counter-offensive in the direction of those encircled Black Sea ports has been gaining momentum.

With the delivery of long-range precision artillery to Ukraine by its Western allies, the battlefield dynamics in the south — and in the east — have shifted, say Kyiv and observers of the conflict.

Those weapons are a key concern for Russia, and Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu during a recent troop inspection said Moscow’s forces had to set about neutralising systems such as the US-supplied Himars.

“Shoigu gave orders to prioritise the destruction — with high-precision weapons — of enemy artillery and long-range missiles,” the Russian defence ministry said.

In a BBC television interview broadcast Sunday, the head of Britain’s armed forces, Admiral Tony Radakin, estimated that 50,000 Russian soldiers had been killed or wounded in the invasion, with nearly 1,700 Russian tanks and some 4,000 armoured fighting vehicles destroyed.

But more than 20 weeks since the invasion began, Moscow said over the weekend it would step up its military operations.

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Here are the latest developments in the war in Ukraine:

– Erdogan renews threat to block Nordic NATO bids –

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan renews his threat to block the NATO membership bids of Sweden and Finland, less than a month after dropping his opposition to them joining the US-led defence alliance of which Turkey is a member.

On the eve of a summit with Russia and Iran, Erdogan said Turkey was still prepared to “freeze the process” of the two Nordic countries joining NATO if they did not meet Ankara’s conditions to act against Kurdish militants living within their borders.

The Turkish leader warned Sweden particularly that it “does not have a good image”.

Erdogan, who has attempted to play peacemaker between Russia and the West, has blown hot and cold on the Nordic states NATO ambitions which Russia fiercely opposes.

On Tuesday, he will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Tehran to discuss ways of resuming grain exports from Ukrainian ports that have been blockaded by Russian forces.

– Russian shells kill six in Donbas –

Russian shelling destroys a two-storey building, killing six people in the town of Toretsk in the eastern region of Donetsk, Ukrainian emergency services say.

Toretsk lies some 50 kilometres (30 miles) south of Kramatorsk, one of the last Ukrainian-controlled towns in the industrial heartland of Donbas.

After failing to capture the capital Kyiv early in the invasion Russian forces turned their attention to the Donbas, recently capturing the cities of Lysychansk and Severodonetsk.

– Zelensky fires top prosecutor, security chief –

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky fires prosecutor general Iryna Venediktova and security chief Ivan Bakanov 

over what he calls the treasonous acts of scores of security officials.

He tells the nation that 60 officials who remained in territories now occupied by Russia are “working against our state”, for Moscow. 

He says the authorities are investigating over 650 cases of suspected treason and aiding and abetting the enemy in total.

– EU meets on new Russia sanctions –

EU foreign ministers meet to discuss imposing more sanctions on Russia, including the possibility of banning gold purchases from the country.

The EU has so far approved six packages of sanctions on Russia.

Putin admitted Monday that the country’s tech companies faced “colossal” problems in accessing financing due to Western sanctions.

– EU eyes double gas imports from Azerbaijan –

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen says the EU is looking to double gas imports from Azerbaijan as it seeks non-Russian suppliers after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

“Our goal: double the gas delivery from Azerbaijan to the EU in a few years. Azerbaijan will be a crucial partner for our security of supply and on our way to climate neutrality,” she says on Twitter.

In May, EU leaders agreed to stop most Russian oil imports by the end of the year, but put off an outright ban on Russian gas, which in 2021 amounted to 155 billion cubic metre — nearly 40 percent of EU’s needs.

– Russia fines Google over Ukraine –

A Moscow court fines Google 21 billion rubles ($360 million) for failing to remove content concerning Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine, the telecommunications regulator says.

It says the Google-owned video platform YouTube failed to block “false information” on the offensive in Ukraine, as well as “extremist and terrorist propaganda” and content “calling on minors to participate in unauthorised demonstrations”.

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Hotter, longer, more frequent. Heatwaves such as the one currently roasting much of Europe, or the record-shattering hot spell endured by India and Pakistan in March, are an unmistakable sign of climate change, experts said Monday. 

– Humans to blame –

“Every heatwave that we are experiencing today has been made hotter and more frequent because of human induced climate change,” said Friederike Otto, senior lecturer at Imperial College London’s Grantham Institute for Climate Change.

“It’s pure physics, we know how greenhouse gas molecules behave, we know there are more in the atmosphere, the atmosphere is getting warmer and that means we are expecting to see more frequent heatwaves and hotter heatwaves.”

In recent years, advances in the discipline known as attribution science have allowed climatologists to calculate how much global heating contributes to individual extreme weather events. 

The India-Pakistan heatwave, for example, was calculated to have been 30 times more likely with the more than 1.1 degrees Celsius of warming that human activity has caused since the mid-nineteenth century.

The heatwave that shattered records in North America in June 2021, leaving hundreds dead as temperatures soared to 50C in places, would have been virtually impossible without global heating. 

And the last major European heatwave, in 2019, was made 3C hotter by climate change.

“The increase in the frequency, duration, and intensity of these events over recent decades is clearly linked to the observed warming of the planet and can be attributed to human activity,” the World Meteorological Organisation said in a Monday statement. 

– Worse to come –

However unbearable temperatures get this week, scientists are unanimous: there is worse to come. 

At 1.5C of warming — the most ambitious Paris climate agreement goal — UN climate scientists calculate that heatwaves will be more than four times more likely than the pre-industrial baseline. 

At 2C or warming, that figure reaches 5.6 times more likely, and at 4C heatwaves will be nearly 10 times more likely to occur. 

Despite three decades of UN-led negotiations, countries’ climate plans currently put Earth on course to warm a “catastrophic” 2.7C, according to the UN.

Matthieu Sorel, a climatologist at Meteo-France, said that climate change was already influencing the frequency and severity of heatwaves. 

“We’re on the way to hotter and hotter summers, where 35C becomes the norm and 40C will be reached regularly,” he said.

– Danger of death –

The heatwaves of the future depend largely on how rapidly the global economy can decarbonise. 

The UN’s climate science panel has calculated that 14 percent of humanity will be hit with dangerous heat every five years on average with 1.5C of warming, compared with 37 percent at 2C.

“In all of places in the world where we have data there is an increase in mortality risk when we are exposed to high temperatures,” said Eunice Lo, a climate scientist at the University of Bristol’s Cabot Institute for the Environment.

It’s not only the most vulnerable people who are at risk of health impacts frim heat, it’s even the fit and healthy people who will be at risk.”

There is a real risk in future of so-called “wet bulb” temperatures — where heat combines with humidity to create conditions where the human body cannot cool itself via perspiration — breaching lethal levels in many parts of the world.

As well as the imminent threat to human health, heatwaves compound drought and make larger areas vulnerable to wild fires, such as those now raging across parts of France, Portugal, Spain, Greece and Morocco.

They also menace the food supply. 

India, the world’s second-largest wheat producer, chose to ban grain exports after the heatwave impacted harvests, worsening a shortage in some countries prompted by Russia’s invasion of key exporter Ukraine.

Jury selection begins Monday in the trial of former Donald Trump advisor Steve Bannon for defying a subpoena to testify before lawmakers investigating the attack on the US Capitol.

Bannon, who led Trump’s successful 2016 presidential election campaign, was among dozens of people called to testify about the storming of Congress by Trump supporters.

Bannon was indicted on two charges of contempt of Congress after refusing to testify to a House of Representatives committee probing the violence.

His lawyers sought to delay the start of the trial so that it would not take place at the same time as the committee’s public hearings, but the judge refused last week.

Thousands of Trump supporters, many associated with ultra-nationalist and white supremacist groups, stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021 in an effort to block the certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s election victory. 

They had been egged on by Trump in a fiery speech during which he repeated his false claims of election fraud.

According to the House committee probing the riot, Bannon spoke to Trump the previous day.

Investigators believe Bannon and other Trump advisors could have information on links between the White House and the rioters.

After refusing to testify for months, Bannon finally agreed to cooperate with the investigation, a move prosecutors said was a “last-ditch attempt to avoid accountability” by stalling his trial for contempt.

Judge Carl Nichols ruled it should go ahead anyway, saying “I see no reason for extending this case any longer.”

If convicted of contempt, Bannon, 68, faces a minimum sentence of 30 days and a maximum of one year in prison on each count.

He was Trump’s strategy chief at the White House before being sacked in 2017.

Bannon was charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering after allegedly defrauding thousands of donors to a campaign to fund Trump’s anti-migrant wall along the southern border.

In Trump’s final hours in office, he pardoned Bannon.

More than 850 people have been arrested in connection with the attack on Congress. The assault left at least five people dead and 140 police officers injured.

Trump was impeached for a historic second time by the House after the riot — he was charged with inciting an insurrection — but was acquitted by the Senate.