World

Environment ministers from about 50 countries will gather in the Democratic Republic of Congo on Monday for a “pre-COP27” climate summit, with rich nations likely to come under pressure to raise spending to combat climate change.

The talks in the DRC’s capital, Kinshasa, are informal but meant to allow various countries and green groups to take stock of political positions ahead of COP27 — the United Nations climate gathering of world leaders in Egypt next month.

An opening ceremony will take place in the Congolese parliament building in Kinshasa, followed by discussions on mitigating climate change, and providing funding for countries already damaged by global heating and severe weather events. 

Delegates from about 50 countries are expected to attend the talks, including United States climate envoy John Kerry. 

“The emphasis will certainly be on support from industrialised countries to countries in the south,” a Western diplomat recently told AFP. 

The last UN climate summit, COP26 in Glasgow in November 2021, reaffirmed the goal — agreed in Paris in 2015 — of limiting the rise in the Earth’s average temperature to well below 2.0 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit it to 1.5C.

That goal may already be beyond reach as the Earth’s temperature is already 1.2C higher than before the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century. 

Poorer countries had pushed at Glasgow for a financial mechanism to address losses and damage caused by climate change. 

But wealthier nations — the largest polluters — rejected the call and the participants agreed instead to start a “dialogue” on financial compensation for damages.  

– Climate justice –

Egypt, which is hosting COP27, has made implementing the pledge to curb global heating the priority of the November summit. 

Poorer countries are again likely to remind their richer counterparts of the need to increase financial support. 

The latter have so far failed to deliver on their promise to provide $100 billion a year to help developing countries limit climate change. 

Demands for climate justice were front and centre of a protest in Kinshasa last month, where young Congolese activists chanted slogans and demanded that world leaders take swift action rather than repeat old promises.

The Congolese government is also expected drive home the message that it requires funding to protect its vast rainforests, which act as a carbon sink. 

Around 30 billion tonnes of carbon are stored across the Congo Basin, researchers estimated in a study for Nature in 2016. The figure is roughly equivalent to three years of global emissions.

However, the central African nation in July launched an auction for 30 oil and gas blocs, ignoring warnings from environmentalists that exploiting them could harm ecosystems and release vast amounts of heat-trapping gases. 

One of the poorest countries in the world, the DRC argues that drilling for oil and gas could help diversify its economy and benefit the Congolese people. 

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said Sunday that Lyman, a key town located in one of four Ukrainian regions annexed by Russia, had been “cleared” of Moscow’s troops.

The latest development in Ukraine’s weeks-long counter-offensive against Moscow’s invasion comes as Russia pushed forward with finalising the annexation of captured Ukrainian territories despite condemnation from Kyiv and the West. 

The recapture of Lyman — which Moscow’s forces pummelled for weeks to control earlier this year — marks the first Ukrainian military victory in a territory the Kremlin has claimed as its own and vowed to defend by all possible means.

Ukraine’s army said it had entered Lyman, a strategic railway hub in the eastern Donetsk region, on Saturday, prompting Moscow to announce the “withdrawal” of its troops from the town towards “more favourable lines”.

The recapture of Lyman had become the most popular story in the media, Zelensky noted in his Sunday evening address. “But the successes of our soldiers are not limited to Lyman,” he added.

The previous day he had pledged to retake more areas in the country’s eastern Donbas region within the week.

“Now I am optimistic and very motivated,” a 33-year-old Ukrainian soldier using the nom de guerre “Smoke”, told AFP after returning from near Lyman.

“I see the activity on the front line, and how foreign weapons… help us take our lands back.”

Kyiv got a further boost Sunday when Berlin said Germany, Denmark and Norway would deliver 16 armoured howitzer artillery systems from 2023.

The three NATO members had agreed to jointly finance the procurement of the Slovakian Zuzana-2 guns, the German defence ministry said, although the announcement falls short of Kyiv’s demands for Germany’s Leopard battle tanks.

– Russian court approves annexation –

With Russian losses mounting, some experts have warned that President Vladimir Putin could turn to nuclear weapons — an option floated by one Putin ally.

Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov said Saturday that Russia should consider using “low-yield nuclear weapons” after Moscow’s troops were forced out of Lyman.

Putin staged a grand Kremlin ceremony on Friday to celebrate the annexation of the four Ukrainian territories — Donetsk, Kherson, Lugansk and Zaporizhzhia — following referendums denounced as void by Kyiv and its allies.

Despite condemnation from the West, Russia’s Constitutional Court on Sunday recognised as lawful the annexation accords Putin signed with the Moscow-backed leaders of the four Ukrainian territories.

The annexation treaties will be considered by Russia’s lower house of parliament, the State Duma, on Monday, according to Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin.

The European Union’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said Russia’s annexation move made ending the conflict “much more difficult, almost impossible”.

Pope Francis on Sunday “implored” Putin to stop the “spiral of violence and death”, condemning the annexations as breaches of international law.

The four territories create a crucial land corridor between Russia and the Crimean Peninsula, which was annexed by Moscow in 2014.

Together the five regions make up around 20 percent of Ukraine.

Kyiv has also called for the immediate release of Ihor Murashov, the chief of the Moscow-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, condemning his “illegal detention” by the Russians on Friday.

“This is another manifestation of completely frank Russian terror,” Zelensky said Sunday.

Following the annexations, Washington announced “severe” new sanctions against Russian officials and the defence industry, and said G7 allies support imposing “costs” on any nation backing annexation.

French President Emmanuel Macron promised to work on introducing new EU sanctions against Moscow following a telephone conversation Sunday with Zelensky, his office said.

US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan also discussed the developments with Ukraine’s presidential chief of staff Andriy Yermak in Istanbul.

Washington and its allies would “impose severe costs” on any individual or entity that backed Russia’s “purported” annexations, said Sullivan, according to a statement from his office.

– ‘Grave concern’ –

In a statement from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), its chief Rafael Grossi said Murashov’s detention was cause for “grave concern”.

Grossi is expected to travel to Kyiv and Moscow “next week”, the UN agency added.

Zaporizhzhia — Europe’s largest nuclear energy facility — has been at the centre of tensions, with Moscow and Kyiv accusing each other of strikes on and near the plant, raising fears of an atomic disaster.

Zelensky urged the US-led military alliance NATO to grant his country fast-track membership.

He also vowed never to hold talks with Russia as long as Putin remains in power.

NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg slammed the annexations as “illegal and illegitimate” but remained non-committal after Ukraine said it was applying to join the Western alliance.

At least 92 people have been killed as Iran has cracked down on women-led protests sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini after her arrest by the notorious morality police, the group Iran Human Rights said Sunday.

As protests stretch into a third week, President Ebrahim Raisi on Sunday said that the “enemies” of Iran had “failed in their conspiracy”.

Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian, was pronounced dead on September 16 after she was detained for allegedly breaching rules requiring women to wear hijab headscarves and modest clothes, sparking Iran’s biggest wave of popular unrest in almost three years.

An additional 41 people died in clashes Friday in Iran’s far southeast, an area bordering Afghanistan and Pakistan, Oslo-based IHR also said, citing local sources. Those protests were sparked by accusations a police chief in the region had raped a teenage girl of the Baluch Sunni minority, it said.

Solidarity rallies with Iranian women — who have defiantly burnt the hijabs they have been obliged to wear since the 1979 Islamic revolution — have been held worldwide, with demonstrations in more than 150 cities on Saturday.

In Iran itself, clashes between protesters and security forces have rocked cities nationwide for 16 nights in a row after they first flared in western regions home to Amini and Iran’s Kurdish minority.

“Rioters” and “thugs”, some hurling Molotov cocktails, attacked the Tehran headquarters of Iran’s leading ultraconservative daily Kayhan on Saturday, said the newspaper, whose director is appointed by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

IHR director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam urged the international community to take urgent steps against the Islamic republic to stop the killing of Iranian protesters, saying they amount to “crimes against humanity”.

– ‘Teenage girl raped’ –

At least 92 protesters in the Mahsa Amini rallies have been killed so far, said IHR, which has been working to assess the death toll despite internet outages and blocks on WhatsApp, Instagram and other online services. 

London-based Amnesty International said earlier it had confirmed 53 deaths, after Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency said last week that “around 60” people had died.

On Sunday, the official IRNA news agency said a paramilitary man “stabbed” during “recent riots” in the Shiite holy city of Qom south of Tehran died in hospital.

Tehran has also battled unrest in the country’s southeast, and it said five Revolutionary Guards members were killed in clashes Friday in Zahedan, the capital of Sistan-Baluchestan province.

The poverty-stricken region has often seen clashes with Baluchi minority rebels, Sunni Muslim extremist groups and drug smuggling gangs.

IHR accused the security forces of the mainly Shiite country of “bloodily repressing” the Zahedan protest that erupted after Friday prayers over accusations a police chief in the province’s port city of Chabahar had raped a 15-year-old girl.

A Sunni preacher, Molavi Abdol Hamid, had on Wednesday warned the community was “inflamed” over the alleged rape.

– US-Iranian released –

Iran has accused outside forces of stoking the nationwide protests, especially the United States and Washington’s allies, and on Friday the intelligence ministry said nine foreign nationals — including from France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Poland — had been arrested.

The unrest comes as Iran seeks to revive its 2015 nuclear deal with the United States and other major powers to end sanctions that have throttled its oil-rich economy and seen South Korea, China and Japan freeze billions of dollars in Iranian funds.

The landmark Vienna deal — which had promised sanctions relief in return for strict nuclear controls — has been in tatters since then US president Donald Trump withdrew from it in 2018 and Iran later backed away from its own commitments.

“At a time when the Islamic republic was overcoming economic problems… the enemies came into play with the intention of isolating the country, but they failed in this conspiracy,” Raisi said Sunday.

In a rare concession, Iran has allowed a detained Iranian-American, Baquer Namazi, 85, to leave the country and released his son Siamak Namazi, 50, from detention, the United Nations confirmed Saturday.

Baquer Namazi is a former UNICEF official who was detained in February 2016 when he went to Iran to press for the release of Siamak, who had been arrested in October of the previous year.

Both were convicted of espionage and sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Iranian state media said Sunday that, following the prisoner release, Iran was now awaiting the unfreezing of about $7 billion in funds held abroad.

burs/sjw/pjm/hc

Early results from Bulgaria’s general election on Sunday indicated that the party of conservative former premier Boyko Borisov came first, but analysts warned the result is unlikely to offer an end to the country’s worst period of political instability since the end of communism.

Borisov’s GERB party looks to have won around 23-25 percent of the vote in the fourth such election in 18 months after he led a campaign promising a return to stability against a backdrop of soaring inflation and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

However, 63-year-old veteran former premier Borisov, who has three previous spells at the helm, will face an uphill battle finding coalition partners.

GERB was followed, according to the projections based on early results, by the party of centrist rival Kiril Petkov which is estimated to have won around 19-20 percent of the vote.

While endemic corruption was the focus of the previous vote last November, the country’s economic woes are now top of voters’ concerns. The European Union’s poorest member state is battling annual inflation of close to 20 percent.

Sunday’s vote was marked by a lack of political enthusiasm, with turnout of just 25 percent by 4:00 p.m. local time (1300 GMT).

– ‘The lesser evil’ –

The Balkan country has been dogged by political instability since early last year, when GERB lost power following massive anti-corruption demonstrations. 

Borisov’s rival, outgoing reformist premier Kiril Petkov, 42, had urged voters to let him “continue the change” his government had initiated on an anti-corruption platform.

The Harvard-educated former entrepreneur stormed onto the political scene in 2021 but lasted just seven months in office as his precarious four-party coalition fell apart over the summer, eventually being toppled in a no-confidence motion.

“The situation is the same as after the last election but even more complicated,” Daniel Smilov from the Centre for Liberal Strategies think tank told the BTV television station.

“Coalitions that were possible then are no longer possible now,” he said, alluding to the rancour that broke out between Petkov and his erstwhile allies.

Petkov’s government had offered substantial rises in pensions and he said he wanted a rise in the average salary in Bulgaria, which now stands at 870 euros ($853), the lowest in the 27-nation EU.

He conceded electoral defeat on Sunday night, acknowledging that “the people have given (GERB) a mandate to form a government”.

Petkov repeated his promise not to go into coalition with GERB, instead promising to be an “opposition scrutinising the spending of every lev”, the name of the local currency.

Borisov has cast himself as Bulgaria’s “most experienced” politician, stressing the country’s European Union and NATO allegiances.

“We need people with experience in these troubled times,” 62-year-old garage owner Bogomil Gruev said after casting his ballot in a Sofia suburb. “We can reproach Boyko for some things but he is the lesser evil.”

Another voter, 47-year-old nurse Rada Mincheva, praised Borisov’s ability to manoeuvre between western and Russian interests.

“The war is very close to us,” she said. “We’d better not provoke anyone.”

– Borisov isolated –

Borisov has said he would be open to talks with anyone on forming a cabinet — for the sake of stability amid the war in Ukraine and people’s fears about rising inflation.

“What’s important for us is for reason to prevail…,” he said earlier on Sunday. “Believe me, right now I am the most well-meaning and open person to all parties.”

However, New Bulgarian University analyst Antony Todorov was sceptical about the chances of Borisov’s GERB party being in a position to form a stable coalition.

“I don’t believe that GERB, which is very isolated, could return to power,” Todorov said.

The protracted political instability has left Bulgaria struggling to pass reforms and has hampered economic growth.

Borisov’s options for coalition partners appear to be limited to the Turkish minority MRF party, projected to have won around 15 percent of the vote, and two pro-Russian parties which have gained prominence since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Those two parties, Vazrazhdane and Bulgarian Progress, are projected to have won around 15 percent of the vote between them.

While a member of the EU and NATO, Bulgaria also has strong historical, cultural and economic ties with Russia.

Thousands of people marched in Paris on Sunday to condemn Iran’s Islamic leadership in a giant show of solidarity with the protests that erupted there after the death in custody of young Mahsa Amini.

Following major rallies in key diaspora cities including Los Angeles and Toronto over the weekend, a vast stream of people walked from the French capital’s traditional protest hub of Place de la Republique to Place de la Nation.

“Join the first feminist revolution!” and “Mahsa Amini — your name has made the tyranny of the ayatollahs shake!” were among the slogans carried by the protesters as they braved sometimes pouring rain.

They chanted “death to the Islamic republic!”, “death to the dictator”, as well as “Woman. Life. Freedom”, the three words that have become the main slogan of the protests in Iran.

They also sang along to “Baraye” (“For”) which Iranian songwriter Shervin Hajipour put together using Twitter postings about the protests.

The song became a huge viral hit on Instagram, moving many to tears, but Hajipour has now been arrested in a symbol of the vehemence of the crackdown against the protests in Iran.

Despite that crackdown, which according to the Iran Human Rights (IHR) group has left 92 dead and severe cuts to the internet, protests are continuing daily in Iran.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi on Sunday again accused Iran’s “enemies” of “conspiring” against the state and said their attempts had “failed”, as the country’s largest anti-government protests since 2019 showed no signs of abating.

The groundswell of popular unrest began after Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd arrested by the morality police for infringing Iran’s strict dress code for women, was declared dead in custody on September 16.

– ‘Iran has become one big prison’ –

“For once, it is the women who have risen up and are being joined by the men. This is really the time to try to change things,” said Guilda Torabi, a student of Iranian origin in Paris.

“They go out to protest, but they get killed. We are lucky to be able to demonstrate and fight for them. So we will keep on coming,” she said.

Toura Dana, a French-Iranian engineer, added: “Now we have become the voice of the Iranian people who are cut off. Now Iran has become one big prison.”

Prominent figures of the French left — including Socialist leader Olivier Faure, prominent Greens figure Sandrine Rousseau and far-left MEP Manon Aubry — addressed the crowd. 

But their speeches, especially Rousseau’s, were marked by loud boos from many present, with the Iranian diaspora known globally for its diversity of political opinion.

Also present was French graphic book author Marjane Satrapi whose classic “Persepolis” tells the story of a girl growing up in post-revolutionary Iran and dealing with the obligatory hijab.

Protesters voiced anger that French President Emmanuel Macron had met Iranian counterpart Raisi in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly shortly after the death of Amini.

“The French government flirts with the mullahs while the mullahs kill women,” read one slogan above an image of Macron shaking hands with Raisi.

Powerful Hurricane Orlene headed Sunday toward Mexico’s Pacific coast, where it is expected to make landfall on Monday night, the US National Hurricane Center said.

The storm lost some strength as it moved across the water, falling from Category 4 to 3, the agency said.

But it is expected to be a strong hurricane when it passes near or over the Islas Marias archipelago, and remain a hurricane when it reaches southwestern Mexico, the NHC said.

The NHC forecast that the storm would pass over the Islas Marias Sunday night or Monday morning, and reach the mainland by Monday night.

Mexico’s National Water Commission (Conagua) predicted that the storm would be a Category 1 or 2 hurricane by the time it moves onto land.

The storm will generate wind gusts of up to 70 miles (110 kilometers) per hour and waves of up to 16 feet (five meters) on the coasts of Nayarit and Jalisco states, Conagua added, urging the inhabitants of at-risk areas to take refuge in temporary shelters. 

The Ministry of the Navy has closed the ports of Nayarit and Jalisco.

Authorities are keeping a close eye on the storm’s track as they mull whether to evacuate tourists from Mexican beach resorts to temporary shelters, Víctor Hugo Roldan, director of Civil Protection in Jalisco, told the press.

Tropical cyclones hit Mexico every year on both its Pacific and Atlantic coasts, usually between May and November. 

In October 1997, Hurricane Paulina hit Mexico’s Pacific coast as a Category 4 storm, leaving more than 200 dead.