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Tag: government organizations – intl

  • Scotland blocked from holding independence vote by UK’s Supreme Court | CNN

    Scotland blocked from holding independence vote by UK’s Supreme Court | CNN

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    London
    CNN
     — 

    Britain’s Supreme Court has ruled that Scotland’s government cannot unilaterally hold a second referendum on whether to secede from the United Kingdom, in a blow to independence campaigners that will be welcomed by Westminster’s pro-union establishment.

    The court unanimously rejected an attempt by the Scottish National Party (SNP) to force a vote next October, as it did not have the approval of Britain’s parliament.

    But the decision is unlikely to stem the heated debate over independence that has loomed over British politics for a decade.

    Scotland last held a vote on the issue, with Westminster’s approval, in 2014, when voters rejected the prospect of independence by 55% to 45%.

    The pro-independence SNP has nonetheless dominated politics north of the border in the intervening years, at the expense of the traditional, pro-union groups. Successive SNP leaders have pledged to give Scottish voters another chance to vote, particularly since the UK voted to leave the European Union in 2016.

    The latest push by SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon involved holding an advisory referendum late next year, similar to the 2016 poll that resulted in Brexit. But the country’s top court agreed that even a non-legally binding vote would require oversight from Westminster, given its practical implications.

    “A lawfully held referendum would have important political consequences relation to the Union and the United Kingdom Parliament,” Lord Reed said as he read the court’s judgment.

    “It would either strengthen or weaken the democratic legitimacy of the Union and of the United Kingdom Parliament’s sovereignty over Scotland, depending on which view prevailed, and would either support or undermine the democratic credentials of the independence movement,” he said.

    Sturgeon said she accepted the ruling on Wednesday, but tried to frame the decision as another pillar in the argument for secession. “A law that doesn’t allow Scotland to choose our own future without Westminster consent exposes as myth any notion of the UK as a voluntary partnership & makes (a) case” for independence,” she wrote on Twitter.

    She accused the British government of “outright democracy denial” in a speech to reporters later on Wednesday.

    Sturgeon said her next step in her effort to achieve a vote will be to brand the next British general election – scheduled for January 2025 at the latest – as a proxy referendum in Scotland on which course to take.

    But UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak heralded the court’s “clear and definitive ruling” as an opportunity to move on from the independence debate. “The people of Scotland want us to be working on fixing the major challenges that we collectively face, whether that’s the economy, supporting the NHS or indeed supporting Ukraine,” he said in Parliament.

    Opinion polls suggest that Scots remain narrowly divided on whether to break from the UK, and that a clear consensus in either direction has yet to emerge.

    England and Scotland have been joined in a political union since 1707, but many Scots have long bristled at what they consider a one-sided relationship dominated by England. Scottish voters have historically rejected the ruling Conservative Party at the ballot box and voted heavily – but in vain – against Brexit, intensifying arguments over the issue in the past decade.

    Since 1999, Scotland has had a devolved government, meaning many, but not all, decisions are made at the SNP-led Scottish Parliament in Holyrood, Edinburgh.

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  • IAEA warns whoever was behind ‘powerful explosions’ at Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant is ‘playing with fire’ | CNN

    IAEA warns whoever was behind ‘powerful explosions’ at Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant is ‘playing with fire’ | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Powerful explosions rocked the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine this weekend, renewing concerns that fighting so close to the facility could cause a nuclear accident.

    The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, said that whoever was responsible for the attacks was “playing with fire,” reiterating a warning he made in September.

    IAEA experts at the plant said that more than a dozen blasts were heard within a short period of time Sunday morning local time, the nuclear watchdog said in a statement. Shelling was observed both near and at the site of the facility. IAEA officials could even see some explosions from their windows, the nuclear watchdog said.

    “Whoever is behind this, it must stop immediately,” Grossi added.

    Based on information provided by the plant management, the IAEA team said there had been damage to some buildings, systems and equipment at the plant’s site, “but none of them so far critical for nuclear safety and security,” the agency said. There were no reports of casualties.

    Kyiv and Moscow blamed each other for the attacks.

    Ukraine’s national nuclear power company Energoatom said it appeared that Russian forces were trying to hinder the country’s ability to provide electricity to its citizens. The Kremlin has, in recent weeks, carried out a campaign of bombings and airstrikes on Ukrainian infrastructure designed to cripple Kyiv’s ability to provide heat to its residents as winter approaches.

    The Russian Defense Ministry alleged that the blasts at Zaporizhzhia were the result of artillery fired by the Ukrainian military.

    Ukraine has repeatedly accused Russian forces of storing heavy weaponry inside the complex and using it as cover to launch attacks, knowing that Ukraine can’t return fire without risking hitting one of the plant’s reactors.

    CNN is unable to verify the claims by Energoatom or the Russian government.

    Grossi and the IAEA have repeatedly called for both sides to implement a nuclear safety and security zone around Zaporizhzhia, Europe’s largest nuclear power plant. Grossi has taken part in “intense consultations with Ukraine and Russia about establishing such a zone, but so far without an agreement,” the IAEA said.

    Skirmishes near Zaporizhzhia have taken place intermittently since Russia invaded Ukraine in late February and seized the plant days later. Intense shelling near the complex this summer sparked concerns of a nuclear accident, prompting the IAEA to send a team there.

    Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree in October federalizing the plant which is located about 120 kilometers (75 miles) from the city and sits in Russian occupied territory along the Dnipro River. The move sparked concerns over the fate of the Ukrainian technicians who have operated the plant since its occupation by Russian forces.

    The blasts on Saturday and Sunday ended what the IAEA said was “a relative period of calm.”

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  • Negotiators at COP27 reach tentative deal on loss and damage, signaling potential for major breakthrough at climate summit | CNN

    Negotiators at COP27 reach tentative deal on loss and damage, signaling potential for major breakthrough at climate summit | CNN

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    Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt
    CNN
     — 

    Negotiators at the UN’s COP27 climate summit have reached a tentative agreement to establish a loss and damage fund for nations vulnerable to climate disasters, according to negotiators with the European Union and Africa, as well as non-governmental organizations who are observing the talks.

    The United States is also working to sign on to a deal on a loss and damage fund, Whitney Smith, a spokesperson for US Climate Envoy John Kerry, confirmed to CNN.

    The fund will focus on what can be done to support loss and damage resources, but it does not include liability or compensation provisions, a senior Biden administration official told CNN. The US and other developed nations have long sought to avoid such provisions that could open them up to legal liability and lawsuits from other countries.

    If finalized, this could represent a major breakthrough in negotiations on a contentious subject – and it’s seen as a reversal, as the US has in the past opposed efforts to create such a fund. It could pave the way for an agreement at a final Sharm el-Sheikh COP27 plenary expected come on Saturday night Egypt time.

    But it’s not yet settled – an EU source directly involved with the negotiations cautioned earlier Saturday that the deal is part of the larger COP27 agreement that has to be approved by nearly 200 countries. Negotiators have been working throughout the day and into the night.

    But progress has been made, the source said. In a discussion Saturday afternoon Egypt time, the EU managed to get the G77 bloc of countries to agree to target the fund to vulnerable nations, which could pave the way to a deal on loss and damage.

    If finalized, the deal would represent a major breakthrough on the international stage and far exceed the expectations of this year’s climate summit, and the mood among some of the delegates was jubilant.

    Countries who are the most vulnerable to climate disasters – yet who have contributed little to the climate crisis – have struggled for years to secure a loss and damage fund.

    Developed nations that have historically produced the most planet-warming emissions have been hesitant to sign off on a fund they felt could open them up to legal liability for climate disasters.

    Details on how the fund would operate remain murky. The tentative text says a fund will be established this year, but it leaves a lot of questions on when it will be finalized and become operational, climate experts told reporters Saturday. The text talks about a transitional committee that will help nail down those details, but doesn’t set future deadlines.

    “There are no guarantees to the timeline,” Nisha Krishnan resilience director for World Resources Institute Africa told reporters.

    Advocates for a loss and damage fund were happy with the progress, but noted that the draft is not ideal.

    “We are happy with this outcome because it’s what developed countries wanted – though not everything they came here for,” Erin Roberts, founder of the Loss and Damage Collaboration, told CNN in a statement. “Like many, I’ve also been conditioned to expect very little from this process. While establishing the fund is certainly a win for developing countries and those on the frontlines of climate change, it’s an empty shell without finance. It’s far too little, far too late for those on the frontlines of climate change. But we will work on it.”

    At COP27 the demand for a loss and damage fund – from developing countries, the G77 bloc and activists – had reached a fever pitch, driven by a number of major climate disasters this year including Pakistan’s devastating floods.

    The conference went way into overtime on Saturday, with negotiators still working out the details as the workers were dismantling the venue around them. At points, there was a real sense of fatigue and frustration.

    Earlier in the day, EU officials threatened to walk out of the meeting if the final agreement fails to endorse the goal to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

    Global scientists have for decades warned that warming must be limited to 1.5 degrees – a threshold that is fast-approaching as the planet’s average temperature has already climbed to around 1.1 degrees. Beyond 1.5 degrees, the risk of extreme drought, wildfires, floods and food shortages will increase dramatically, scientists said in the latest UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report.

    In a carefully choreographed news conference Saturday morning, the EU’s Green Deal tsar Frans Timmermans, flanked by a full line-up of ministers and other top officials from EU member states, said that “no deal is better than a bad deal.”

    “We do not want 1.5 Celsius to die here and today. That to us is completely unacceptable,” he said.

    The EU made it clear that it was willing to agree to a loss and damage fund – a major shift in its position compared to just a week ago – but only in exchange for a strong commitment on the 1.5 degree goal.

    The US, meanwhile, remained largely invisible on Saturday, with its main player, US climate envoy John Kerry, self-isolating with Covid-19.

    As the sun went down on Sharm el-Sheikh, the mood shifted to cautious jubilation, with groups of negotiators starting to hint that a deal was in sight.

    But, as is always the case with top-level diplomacy, officials were quick to stress that nothing is truly agreed until the final gavel drops.

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  • Children’s deaths ‘must stop’ in Iran, says UNICEF, as protests continue | CNN

    Children’s deaths ‘must stop’ in Iran, says UNICEF, as protests continue | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    The United Nations children’s agency, UNICEF, said it remains deeply concerned by reports of children being killed, injured, and detained in Iran, it said in a statement on Friday, adding that the reported deaths of children at anti-government protests “must stop.”

    An “estimated 50 children have reportedly lost their lives in the public unrest in Iran,” UNICEF said in the statement.

    This comes as the unrest in Iran has continued for more than two months, and amid increasing calls from protesters and activists online to UNICEF, Amnesty International and other human rights organizations to take action on human rights violations and crimes against children taking plane in Iran.

    Many tell CNN that they feel their voices have not been heard. “They just say, hey, Islamic Republic, what are you doing is bad,” one protester in Iran told CNN. “Yes, everybody knows it’s bad. Three-year-old children know it’s bad, but we need actual action. Do something. I don’t know. I believe they know better than us what they can do.”

    “In Iran, UNICEF remains deeply concerned by reports of children being killed, injured, and detained,” the statement read, citing the death of a young boy named Kian Pirfalak, one of seven people killed during Wednesday’s protests in the southwestern city of Izeh. “This is terrifying and must stop,” the organization added.

    UNICEF reported Pirfalak’s age as 10-years-old. Iranian state media has reported his age as nine.

    The child was traveling in a car on Wednesday with his family when he was shot dead and his father injured by gunfire, his mother told state media in an interview with Tasnim Friday.

    According to Iran’s state-aligned news agency ISNA, protesters set a seminary on fire around the same time as people were shot and killed in Izeh in what state media outlets are calling a “terror attack.”

    Activists are accusing the Iranian regime of killing Kian and others in Izeh.

    The Islamic Republic is facing one of the biggest and unprecedented shows of dissent in recent history following the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman detained by the morality police allegedly for not wearing her hijab properly.

    At least 378 people have been killed since demonstrations began, according to an Iranian human rights group, as the country’s Supreme Leader issued a warning that the protest movement is “doomed to failure.”

    The organization Iran Human Rights published the estimated death toll Saturday, adding that it includes 47 children killed by security forces.

    CNN cannot independently verify arrest figures, death tolls, and many of the accounts of those killed due to the Iranian government’s suppression of independent media, and internet shutdowns which decrease transparency in reporting on the ground. Nor can media directly access the government for their account on such cases, unless there is reporting on state media, the mouthpiece of the government.

    Video shared by activist group 1500 Tasvir and others showed a large crowd gathered for Pirfalak funeral in his hometown in Izeh Friday.

    Surrounded by mourners, his mother Zeynab Molaeirad is heard singing a children’s song, replacing the lyrics with words against Ayatollah Khamenei and the regime. She then reveals new details about the fatal incident, according to a video shared on social media.

    “Hear it from my mouth what really happened to Kian,” she told the crowd, “So the regime doesn’t lie and say it was a terrorist.”

    Molaeirad, who was traveling with her family in their car, said people on the street yelled at the vehicle to turn back and that her son told his father not to worry.

    “Kian said: ‘Baba trust the police for once and turn around, they are looking out for us,’” she said.

    His father made a U-turn and drove towards the police, his mother said. But “because the car windows were rolled up, the police thought we may have wanted to shoot at them,” she said.

    “They opened a barrage of fire on the car.”

    Kian’s mother also posted a photo with her son in her Instagram post. “My broken flower. Curse on the Islamic Republic,” she wrote.

    Human rights groups have accused Iranian authorities of scaring victims’ families to silence. Iranian authorities are “systematically harassing and intimidating victims’ families to hide the truth” of their deaths, as Amnesty International’s Heba Morayef said in a recent report.

    The United Nations on Friday said it was “deeply worried about growing violence related to the ongoing popular protests in Iran,” said deputy spokesman for the UN Secretary-General Farhan Haq.

    “We condemn all incidents that have resulted in death or serious injury, including the shooting in the city of Izeh on 16 November 2022. We are also concerned about the reported issuance of death sentences against five unnamed individuals in the context of the latest protests,” Haq said.

    Haq urged Iranian authorities to respect international human rights law and avoid the use of excessive force against peaceful protesters.

    Despite the UN’s condemnation, Iranians have been highly critical of the global organization and its agencies, saying the its words are not enough and that there is a lack of action against human rights violations taking place in Iran.

    Stories like Parfalik’s “have led Iranians inside and outside the country to really be demanding justice asking what UNICEF is doing on the ground to stop this,” said Iranian American human rights lawyer Gissou Nia said in an interview with CNN’s Isa Soares Friday.

    Nia, who is also director of the Strategic Litigation Project at the Atlantic Council went on to say that the UN Human Rights Council is meeting in Geneva on Thursday in a special session to address “the deteriorating human rights situation in the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

    “The outcome of that special session will likely be an investigative mechanism or some kind of independent body that can collect, preserve and analyze evidence of what’s happening here for accountability purposes,” Nia said.

    “What would be absolutely shameful is if that 47-member body votes no” to creating such a mechanism, she added.

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  • Asia must not become arena for ‘big power contest,’ says China’s Xi as APEC summit gets underway | CNN

    Asia must not become arena for ‘big power contest,’ says China’s Xi as APEC summit gets underway | CNN

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    Bangkok, Thailand
    CNN
     — 

    Chinese leader Xi Jinping has stressed the need to reject confrontation in Asia, warning against the risk of cold war tensions, as leaders gather for the last of three world summits hosted in the region this month.

    Xi began the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leaders’ summit in Bangkok by staking out his wish for China to be viewed as a driver of regional unity in a written speech released ahead of Friday’s opening day – which also appeared to make veiled jabs at the United States.

    The Asia-Pacific region is “no one’s backyard” and should not become “an arena for big power contest,” Xi said in the statement, in which he also decried “any attempt to politicize and weaponize economic and trade relations.”

    “No attempt to wage a new cold war will ever be allowed by the people or by our times,” he added in the remarks, which were addressed to business leaders meeting alongside the summit and did not name the US.

    Xi struck a milder tone in a separate address to APEC leaders on Friday morning as the main event got underway, calling for stability, peace and the development of a “more just world order.”

    Leaders and representatives from 21 economies on both sides of the Pacific meeting in the Thai capital for the two-day summit will grapple with that question of how best to promote stability, in a region sitting on the fault lines of growing US-China competition and grappling with regional tensions and the economic fallout of Russia’s war in Ukraine.

    Those challenges were palpable Friday morning, as North Korea launched an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), the second weapons test by Kim Jong Un’s regime in two days amid increased provocation from Pyongyang.

    US Vice President Kamala Harris gathered on the sidelines of the summit with leaders from Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and Canada to condemn the launch in an unscheduled media briefing.

    In a speech Friday to business leaders, Harris said the US had a “profound stake” in the region, and described America as a “strong partner” to its economies and a “major engine of global growth.”

    Without mentioning China in her address, she also promoted American initiatives to counter Beijing’s regional influence, including the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, launched by Washington earlier this year, and the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment.

    “The US is here to stay,” said the vice president, who is representing the US at the summit after US President Joe Biden returned home for a family event after attending meetings around the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in Phnom Penh, Cambodia and the G20 summit in Bali in recent days.

    Despite the US-China rivalry, the three summits have also brought opportunities to defuse rising tensions and strained communication between the world’s top two powers.

    US-China relations have deteriorated sharply in recent years, with the two sides clashing over Taiwan, the war in Ukraine, North Korea, and the transfer of technology among other issues.

    In August, following a visit by US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan, China fired multiple missiles into waters around the self-governing island and ramped up naval and warplane exercises in the surrounding area. Beijing claims the democratic island as its territory, despite never having controlled it, and suspended a number of dialogues with the US over the visit.

    A landmark meeting between Xi and Biden on the sidelines of the G20 in Bali on Monday – the leaders’ first since Biden took office – ended with the two sides agreeing to bolster communication and collaborate on issues like climate and food security.

    After landing in Bangkok Thursday, Chinese leader Xi sat down with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, in the first meeting between leaders of the two Asian countries in nearly three years. Both sides called for more cooperation following a breakdown in communication over points of contention from Taiwan to disputed islands.

    At stake in the broader meeting, however, is whether leaders can find consensus on how to treat Russia’s aggression in a concluding document, or whether differences in views between the broad grouping of nations will stymie such a result, despite months of discussion between APEC nations’ lower-level officials.

    In an address to business leaders alongside the summit Friday morning, French President Emmanuel Macron, who was invited by host country Thailand, called for consensus and unity against Moscow’s aggression.

    “Help us to convey the same message to Russia: stop the war, respect the international order and come back to the table,” he said.

    Macron also called out the US-China rivalry, warning of the risk to peace if countries are forced to choose between the two great powers.

    “We need a single global order,” Macron said to applause from business leaders.

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  • Poland, NATO say missile that killed two likely fired by Ukraine defending against Russian attack | CNN

    Poland, NATO say missile that killed two likely fired by Ukraine defending against Russian attack | CNN

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    Bali, Indonesia
    CNN
     — 

    The leaders of Poland and NATO said the missile that killed two people in Polish territory on Tuesday was likely fired by Ukrainian forces defending their country against a barrage of Russian strikes, and that the incident appeared to be an accident.

    The blast occurred outside the village outside the rural eastern Polish village of Przewodow, about four miles (6.4 kilometers) west from the Ukrainian border on Tuesday afternoon, roughly the same time as Russia launched its biggest wave of missile attacks on Ukrainian cities in more than a month.

    On Wednesday, Polish President Andrzej Duda told a press conference that there was a “high chance” it was an air defense missile from the Ukrainian side and likely had fallen in Poland in “an accident” while intercepting incoming Russian missiles.

    “There is no indication that this was an intentional attack on Poland. Most likely, it was a Russian-made S-300 rocket,” Duda said in a tweet earlier Wednesday.

    Both Russian and Ukrainian forces have used Russian-made munitions during the conflict, including the S-300 surface-to-air missile system, which Kyiv has deployed as part of its air defenses.

    The incident in Poland, a NATO country, prompted ambassadors from the US-led military alliance to hold an emergency meeting in Brussels Wednesday.

    NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg too said there was no indication the incident was the result of a deliberate attack by either side, and that Ukrainian forces were not to blame for defending their country from Russia’s assault.

    “Our preliminary analysis suggests that the incident was likely caused by the Ukrainian air defense missile fired to defend Ukrainian territory against Russian cruise missile attacks,” Stoltenberg said. “But let me be clear, this is not Ukraine’s fault. Russia bears ultimate responsibility, as it continues its illegal war against Ukraine.”

    Stoltenberg also said there were no signs that Russia was planning to attack NATO countries, in comments that appeared to be intended to defuse escalating tensions.

    News of the incident overnight led to a flurry of activity thousands of miles away in Indonesia, where US President Joe Biden convened an emergency meeting with some world leaders to discuss the matter on the sidelines of the G20 summit.

    A joint statement following the emergency meeting at the G20 was deliberately ambiguous when it came to the incident, putting far more focus on the dozens of strikes that happened in the hours before the missile crossed into Poland.

    Duda and Stoltenberg’s comments tally with those of two officials briefed on initial US assessments, who told CNN it appeared the missile was Russian-made and originated in Ukraine.

    The Ukrainian military told the US and allies that it attempted to intercept a Russian missile in that timeframe and near the location of the Poland missile strike, a US official told CNN. It’s not clear that this air defense missile is the same missile that struck Poland, but this information has informed the ongoing US assessment of the strike.

    The National Security Council said that the US has “full confidence” in the Polish investigation into the blast and that the “party ultimately responsible” for the incident is Russia for its ongoing invasion.

    Investigations at the site where the missile landed will continue to be a joint operation with the US, Polish President Duda said Wednesday. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has called for Ukrainian experts to be allowed to the site.

    Zelensky said Wednesday he did not believe that the missile was launched by his forces, and called for Ukrainian experts to play a part in the investigation. “I have no doubt that it was not our missile,” he told reporters in Kyiv.

    Earlier Wednesday, a Zelensky adviser said the incident was a result of Russia’s aggression but did not explicitly deny reports that the missile could have been launched by the Ukrainian side.

    “Russia has turned the eastern part of the European continent into an unpredictable battlefield. Intent, means of execution, risks, escalation – it is all coming from Russia alone,” Mykhailo Podolyak said in a statement to CNN.

    A spokesperson for the Ukrainian Air Force said on national television Wednesday that the military would “do everything” to facilitate the Polish investigation.

    Earlier, Biden said that preliminary information suggested it was unlikely the missile that landed in Poland was fired from Russia, after consulting with allies at the G20 Summit in Bali.

    “I don’t want to say that [it was fired from Russia] until we completely investigate,” Biden went on. “It’s unlikely in the minds of the trajectory that it was fired from Russia. But we’ll see.”

    Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday that Russia doesn’t have “any relation” with the missile incident in Poland, and that some leaders have made statements without understanding “what actually happened.”

    “The Poles had every opportunity to immediately report that they were talking about the wreckage of the S-300 air defense system missile. And, accordingly, all experts would have understood that this could not be a missile that had any relation with the Russian Armed Forces,” Peskov said during a regular call with journalists.

    “We have witnessed another hysterical frenzied Russophobic reaction, which was not based on any real evidence. High-ranking leaders of different countries made statements without any idea about what actually happened.”

    Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas told CNN that NATO allies must “keep a cool head” in light of the incident.

    “I think we really have to keep a cool head, knowing there might be a spillover effect, especially to those countries that are very close [to Ukraine],” Kallas told CNN’s Chief International Anchor Christiane Amanpour in an interview Wednesday.

    The incident comes after Russia unleashed a barrage of 85 missiles on Ukraine Tuesday, predominantly targeting energy infrastructure. The bombardment caused city blackouts and knocked out power to 10 million people nationwide. Power has since been restored to eight million consumers, Zelensky later confirmed.

    Ukrainians across the country were expected to face further scheduled and unscheduled power cuts Wednesday.

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  • Britain is bringing back austerity. Here’s why | CNN Business

    Britain is bringing back austerity. Here’s why | CNN Business

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    London
    CNN Business
     — 

    The last time a British finance minister revealed tax and spending plans, markets went haywire and the country’s prime minister ultimately lost her job. The new government is not looking for a repeat performance.

    On Thursday, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt is due to unveil a budget that will aim to restore confidence in the United Kingdom’s ability to manage its public finances. But that may be easier said than done.

    The country is staring down the barrel of a grueling recession, and investors remain on edge as interest rates rise. That requires Hunt, who has acknowledged that Britain faces “extremely difficult” decisions, to pull off a delicate balancing act.

    Media reports indicate that the government is looking to come up with between £50 billion ($59 billion) and £60 billion ($70 billion) through a mix of tax increases and spending cuts, many of which may not take effect until after the next election in 2024.

    “If you do too much, too soon, you risk worsening the recession,” said Ben Zaranko, a senior research economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies. “If you delay everything until after the next election, you risk not being seen as credible.”

    A new wave of austerity could help restore the government’s reputation with financial markets after the budget from former Prime Minister Liz Truss — which featured an unorthodox combination of major tax cuts and ramped-up borrowing — unleashed panic.

    But it will do little to ease fears about the country’s grim economic prospects. The United Kingdom is one of two G7 economies to have contracted in the third quarter. It’s now smaller than it was before the coronavirus pandemic. The Bank of England is forecasting a lengthy recession, which could stretch into 2024.

    New cuts could make matters worse. When the government adopted an austerity program in 2010 on the heels of the Great Recession, it shaved 1% off the country’s GDP, according to the UK budget watchdog. Just four years ago, former Prime Minister Theresa May pledged to bring nearly a decade of austerity to a close.

    Now, tax rises could further depress consumer confidence — already near a record low — and spending cuts risk placing further strain on public services that are already buckling under enormous pressure.

    Still, Hunt intends to show he has a plan to reduce government debt as a proportion of GDP in the medium-term. It currently stands at 98%. The Office for Budget Responsibility said in July that it could reach nearly 320% in 50 years.

    “We do have to do some tax rises, do some spending cuts, if we’re going to show we’re a country that pays our way,” Hunt told Sky News on Sunday.

    How did the United Kingdom get here? There’s no shortage of finger pointing.

    Part of the problem is global in nature. Interest rates have risen rapidly around the world as central banks attempt to rein in inflation. That’s pushed up borrowing costs for the government, dealing a shock after years in which money was cheap.

    At the same time, skyrocketing energy costs, exacerbated by Russia’s war in Ukraine, have compelled governments to step in to cushion the blow of crippling energy bills — shortly after they spent significant sums helping households and businesses through the pandemic.

    Hunt has scrapped plans to cap energy bills for typical households at £2,500 ($2,981) for the next two years. Instead, support will only be guaranteed until next spring. But the measures will still prove costly.

    The government can’t blame all its problems on the rest of the world, however.

    “You can just look at how the UK is performing relative to every other country in Europe, and it’s obvious there’s a UK-specific element to this,” Zaranko said.

    The United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union has weighed on trade and contributed to shortages of workers in key industries.

    “The UK economy as a whole has been permanently damaged by Brexit,” former Bank of England official Michael Saunders told Bloomberg TV this week. “If we hadn’t had Brexit, we probably wouldn’t be talking about an austerity budget this week. The need for tax rises, spending cuts wouldn’t be there.”

    And while inflation in the United States cooled more than expected in October, falling to 7.7%, it’s still rising sharply in the United Kingdom, reaching a 41-year high of 11.1% last month.

    That’s bolstering expectations that the Bank of England will need to keep raising interest rates and could hold them higher for longer, though recession may complicate those forecasts.

    The country’s labor market also remains extremely tight, with an employment rate lower than before the coronavirus hit and a record number of people who aren’t working due to long-term illness.

    “The UK does stand out in that labor supply has been very constrained, perhaps more so than in other countries,” said Ruth Gregory, senior UK economist at Capital Economics.

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  • Poland holds emergency security meeting after reports of fatal explosion, as Russian missiles bombard nearby Ukraine | CNN

    Poland holds emergency security meeting after reports of fatal explosion, as Russian missiles bombard nearby Ukraine | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Poland convened an emergency meeting of national security officials on Tuesday, after Polish media reported projectiles killed two people near the border with Ukraine on Tuesday.

    It is unclear where the projectiles came from, but they landed in the NATO member’s territory roughly the same time as Russia launched its biggest wave of missile attacks on Ukrainian cities in more than a month.

    Polish media showed an image of a deep impact and upturned farm vehicle at the site, near the town of Przewodow, around four miles west from the Ukrainian border.

    Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki has convened the Committee of the Council of Ministers for National Security and Defense Affairs, a government spokesman said.

    A Polish official told CNN that nothing was confirmed yet and the investigation into the incident was continuing.

    Russia’s Defense Ministry has denied targeting the border, and called the reports by Polish media “a deliberate provocation in order to escalate the situation,” according to a short statement late Tuesday.

    “The statements of the Polish media and officials about the alleged fall of ‘Russian’ missiles in the area of ​​the settlement of Przewodow is a deliberate provocation in order to escalate the situation,” it said, adding that “there were no strikes made on targets near the Ukrainian-Polish state border.”

    It added that the photos of wreckage published by the Polish media “from the scene in the village of Przewodow have nothing to do with Russian weapons.”

    Nevertheless, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky blamed Russia, describing the fatal explosion as a “significant escalation” in Moscow’s invasion.

    Little is publicly known about the origin of the projectiles.

    A NATO official told CNN that it was still waiting to learn more about what happened and are waiting on details from Warsaw.

    NATO allies responded with concern to the reports. Some were were circumspect in their statements, neither speculating or confirming the origin of the projectile.

    A senior White House official says they do not have confirmation of any rocket or missile strike in Poland, but that US officials are currently working to try and figure out exactly what has happened.

    State Department principal deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel echoed that the US cannot confirm the reports of missiles hitting Polish territory and killing two.

    “We have seen these reports out of Poland and are working with the Polish government and our NATO partners to gather more information,” Patel said at a press briefing. “We can’t confirm the reports or any of the details at this time”

    A UK Foreign Office spokesperson said they were “investigating these reports and liaising closely with Allies.”

    Baltic NATO states were more strident in their statements, stressing readiness to defend NATO territory.

    Estonia called the news “most concerning,” according to a Twitter post from the Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

    “Estonia is ready to defend every inch of NATO territory,” it added.

    Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda has said he was concerned by the news, and that “Lithuania stands in strong solidarity with Poland.”

    “Every inch of NATO territory must be defended!” he added on social media.

    Latvian Defense Minister Artis Pabriks afforded blame on Russia, even though there has been no confirmation from Polish authorities that Russian missiles landed on Polish territory.

    “Condolences to our Polish brothers in arms. Criminal Russian regime fired missiles which target not only Ukrainian civilians but also landed on NATO territory in Poland. Latvia fully stands with Polish friends and condemns this crime,” Pabriks wrote.

    The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is a group of 30 North American and European nations. According to NATO, its purpose “is to guarantee the freedom and security of its members through political and military means.”

    The alliance was created in 1949 in response to the start of the Cold War. Its original purpose was to protect the West from the threat posed by the Soviet Union. Since the end of the Cold War, many former Soviet nations have joined NATO, much to the annoyance of Putin.

    The best-known aspect of the alliance is Article 5 of the treaty, which, if invoked, means “an attack against one Ally is considered as an attack against all Allies.”

    Article 5 has only ever been invoked once, in response to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States.

    However, the alliance can take collective defense measures without invoking Article 5 – and has done this in the light of the Russian attack on Ukraine.

    The State Department’s Patel repeatedly said on Tuesday he would not discuss hypotheticals when asked about NATO Articles 4 and 5, but said that intent “is something that would be of importance” in determining a response.

    “As I said, we will determine what happened and we will determine appropriate next steps but like I said, this just happened within the past hour and so we are still taking the important time to figure out the exact facts,” he said.

    Russian President Vladimir Putin has long complained that NATO has, over time, expanded its borders by admitting Eastern European countries that were once part of the Soviet Union – meaning Russia now shares a land border with the world’s largest military alliance, thus reducing his geopolitical power in what was once Moscow’s sphere of influence.

    As recently as February, he was demanding that NATO scaled back to the borders of 1997, before the Baltic nations of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, the latter two of which border Russia, joined the alliance.

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  • Biden to meet with top US allies Japan and South Korea following midterm boost | CNN Politics

    Biden to meet with top US allies Japan and South Korea following midterm boost | CNN Politics

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    Phnom Penh, Cambodia
    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden landed in Cambodia on Saturday still reveling in midterm election results that have produced an unexpected boost at home for his second two years in office.

    The scale of the challenges abroad, and the effort to translate 21 months of intensive engagement into tangible results for US alliances, will put the value of that political capital on the international stage to the test even as votes are still being counted.

    Biden is set to confront a series of stark challenges in his sit-down with Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, critical allies in an Indo-Pacific region rattled by an increasingly belligerent North Korea. An assertive and confrontational China, long a central animating issue for the Biden administration, also looms large.

    Biden will also meet with Kishida and Yoon individually before their trilateral meeting.

    Biden’s stop at the Asian nations summit comes as advisers see a clear boost from bucking the historical and political trends in the midterm elections. While Biden’s message won’t shift dramatically, the weight behind it is unmistakably more robust after American voters delivered a message that surpassed the hopes of even the most optimistic White House officials.

    The trio of world leaders previously met on the sidelines of the NATO Summit in June, pledging to enhance cooperation – a complicated task for the major US allies that have a historically fraught relationship.

    But that cooperation is imperative as recent, stepped-up aggression from North Korea will be top of mind for the trio of leaders Sunday. North Korea has conducted missile launches 32 days this year, according to a CNN count of both ballistic and cruise missiles. By contrast, it conducted only four tests in 2020, and eight in 2021.

    National security adviser Jake Sullivan suggested Saturday the meeting will not lead to specific deliverables, telling reporters aboard Air Force One that the leaders will “be able to discuss broader security issues in the Indo-Pacific and also, specifically, the threats posed by North Korea’s missile and nuclear programs.”

    The trilateral comes one day ahead of a high-stakes, one-on-one meeting for Biden with China’s leader Xi Jinping, their first in-person encounter since Biden took office. That meeting will take place on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Bali.

    Speaking to reporters Sunday morning, Biden said he was entering the meeting with Xi in a position of relative strength.

    “I know I’m coming in stronger,” he said, noting he knew Xi well and there was “very little misunderstanding” between the two leaders.

    “We just got to figure out what the red lines are and what the most important things are to each of us going into the next few years,” Biden said.

    Biden, Yoon, and Fumio will also discuss Monday’s meeting during the trilateral meeting.

    “One thing that President Biden certainly wants to do with our closest allies is preview what he intends to do, and also ask the leaders of (South Korea) and Japan, ‘What would you like me to raise? What do you want me to go in with?’” Sullivan said, adding that it “will be a topic but it will not be the main event of the trilateral.”

    Earlier Sunday, Biden will attend the East Asia Summit, building on Saturday’s appearance at the ASEAN Summit aimed at boosting US-Indo-Pacific relations. He then meets with Fumio and Yoon before departing for Bali.

    This leg of the trip, a senior administration official told reporters on a call earlier this week, reflects “stepped-up engagement with ASEAN and with Southeast Asia” during the Biden administration.

    Biden, the official added, will “lay out our vision for keeping up a pace of enhanced engagement and trying to also address concerns of importance to ASEAN in ways that they are looking for,” keeping with an ongoing theme during the Biden presidency of building alliances in strategic competition with China.

    Among the key topics of discussion this weekend in Cambodia, the official said, is the ongoing conflict in Myanmar, where the military seized power in a coup last year.

    World leaders will discuss “efforts to promote respect for human rights, rule of law and good governance, the rules-based international order, and also to address the ongoing crisis in Burma.”

    Biden arrived in Phnom Penh on Saturday, holding a bilateral meeting with ASEAN chair and Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, and attending the ASEAN-US summit.

    “This is my third trip, my third summit – second in-person, and it’s testament to the importance the United States places in our relationship with ASEAN and our commitment to ASEAN’s centrality. ASEAN is the heart of my administration’s Indo-Pacific strategy. And we continue to strengthen our commitment to work in lockstep with an empowered, unified ASEAN,” Biden said in brief opening remarks as the summit began.

    On Friday, Biden made a three-hour stop in Sharm El Shiekh, Egypt, where he attended the COP27 climate summit and met with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi.

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  • Biden arrives in Cambodia looking to counter China’s growing influence in Southeast Asia | CNN Politics

    Biden arrives in Cambodia looking to counter China’s growing influence in Southeast Asia | CNN Politics

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    Phnom Penh, Cambodia
    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden underscored the US partnership with Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries on Saturday as “the heart of my administration’s Indo-Pacific strategy” as he seeks to counter China’s growing influence ahead of a high-stakes meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping set for Monday.

    The weekend of meetings in Cambodia comes ahead of the highly anticipated Group of 20 summit next week in Indonesia where Biden will meet with Xi for the first time in person since he took office. The ASEAN meetings – along with Sunday’s East Asia Summit, which is also being held in Phnom Penh – will be a chance for the president to speak with US allies before sitting down with Xi.

    In remarks to the summit, Biden announced “another critical step” toward building on the group’s progress as he detailed the launch of the US-ASEAN Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, which, he said, “will tackle the biggest issues of our time, from climate to health security, defend against the significant threats to rule based order and to threats to the rule of law, and to build an Indo-Pacific that’s free and open, stable and prosperous, resilient and secure.” He touted existing US financial commitments to ASEAN as he noted a budget request for $850 million in assistance for Southeast Asia.

    “This is my third trip, my third summit – second in person – and it’s testament to the importance the United States places in our relationship with ASEAN and our commitment to ASEAN’s centrality. ASEAN is the heart of my administration’s Indo-Pacific strategy. And we continue to strengthen our commitment to work in lockstep with an empowered, unified ASEAN,” Biden said in brief opening remarks as the summit began.

    The president’s first order of business in Cambodia was a bilateral meeting with Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen as he looks to build on a summit between Biden and ASEAN leaders in Washington earlier this year.

    Biden, national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters aboard Air Force One, “was intent on elevating our engagement in the Indo-Pacific” from the start of his presidency, and his attendance at the ASEAN and East Asia summits this weekend will highlight his work so far, including the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework announced earlier this year and security partnership efforts.

    “He’s coming into this set of summits with that record of accomplishment and purpose behind him, and he wants to be able to use the next 36 hours to build on that foundation to take American engagement forward, and also to deliver a series of concrete, practical initiatives,” Sullivan said.

    Among those practical initiatives, Sullivan noted, are new ones on maritime cooperation, digital connectivity and economic investment. Biden is set to launch a new maritime domain effort “that focuses on using radio frequencies from commercial satellites to be able to track dark shipping, illegal and unregulated fishing, and also to improve the capacity of the countries of the region to respond to disasters and humanitarian crises,” Sullivan said.

    Biden will also highlight a “forward-deployed posture” toward regional defense, Sullivan added, to show that the US is on the front foot in terms of security cooperation.

    During his remarks, Biden also pointed to a new US-ASEAN electric vehicle infrastructure initiative.

    “We’re gonna work together to develop an integrated electric vehicle ecosystem in Southeast Asia, enabling the region to pursue clean energy, economic development, and ambitious emissions reductions targets,” he said of the initiative.

    There will also be a focus on Myanmar and discussions on coordination “to continue to impose costs and raise pressure on the junta,” which seized power from the country’s democratically elected government in a February 2021 coup.

    While in Phnom Penh, Biden will be meeting with the leaders of Japan and South Korea on Sunday following multiple weapons tests by North Korea, Sullivan said. The meeting is notable given the historic tensions between Japan and South Korea, and the relationship between the two staunch US allies has been one that Biden has attempted to bridge.

    The Japanese and the South Koreans find themselves united in concern about Kim Jong Un’s missile tests, as well as the prospect of a seventh nuclear weapons test. North Korea has ramped up its tests this year, having carried out missile tests on 32 days in 2022, according to a CNN count. That’s compared to just eight in 2021 and four in 2020, with the latest launch coming on Wednesday.

    Sullivan suggested the trilateral meeting will not lead to specific deliverables, but rather, enhanced security cooperation amid a range of threats.

    The trio of world leaders, Sullivan told reporters, will “be able to discuss broader security issues in the Indo-Pacific and also, specifically, the threats posed by North Korea’s missile and nuclear programs.”

    Sullivan said Thursday that the administration is concerned about the North Koreans conducting a seventh nuclear test but can’t say if it will come during the weekend of meetings.

    “Our concern still remains real. Whether it happens in the next week or not, I can’t say,” Sullivan said earlier this week. “We are also concerned about further potential long-range missile tests in addition to the possibility of a nuclear test. And so, we’ll be watching carefully for both of those.”

    But the Monday meeting with Xi in Bali, Indonesia, will undoubtedly hang over the summits in Cambodia, and will be part of those trilateral conversations.

    “One thing that President Biden certainly wants to do with our closest allies is preview what he intends to do, and also ask the leaders of (South Korea) and Japan, ‘what would you like me to raise? What do you want me to go in with?’” Sullivan said, adding that it “will be a topic but it will not be the main event of the trilateral.”

    Biden and Xi have spoken by phone five times since the president entered the White House. They traveled extensively together, both in China and the United States, when both were serving as their country’s vice president.

    Both enter Monday’s meeting on the back of significant political events. Biden fared better than expected in US midterm elections and Xi was elevated to an unprecedented third term by the Chinese Communist Party.

    US officials declined to speculate on how the two leaders’ political situations might affect the dynamic of their meeting.

    The high-stakes bilateral meeting between Biden and Xi will center on “sharpening” each leader’s understanding of the other’s priorities, Sullivan told reporters.

    That includes the issue of Taiwan, which Beijing claims. Biden has vowed in the past to use US military force to defend the island from invasion. The issue is among the most contentious between Biden and Xi.

    Biden will also raise the issue of North Korea, with an emphasis on the critical role China can play in managing what is an acute threat to the region, Sullivan said.

    Biden has repeatedly raised the issue in his calls with Xi up to this point, but Sullivan underscored the US view that China plays a critical role – and one that should be viewed within its own self-interest.

    “If North Korea keeps going down this road, it will simply mean further enhanced American military and security presence in the region,” Sullivan said. “And so (China) has an interest in playing a constructive role in restraining North Korea’s worst tendencies. Whether they choose to do so or not is of course up to them.”

    Sullivan said Biden will detail his position on the issue, “which is that North Korea represents a threat not just to the United States, not just to (South Korea) and Japan, but to peace and stability across the entire region.”

    Sullivan suggested the meeting will focus on a better understanding of positions on a series of critical issues, but is not likely to result in any major breakthroughs or dramatic shifts in the relationship.

    Instead, “it’s about the leaders coming to a better understanding and then tasking their teams” to continue to work through those issues, Sullivan told reporters aboard Air Force One as Biden traveled to Cambodia.

    The meeting, set to take place on the sidelines of the G-20 summit, was the result of “several weeks of intensive” discussions between the two sides, Sullivan said, and is viewed by Biden as the start of a series of engagements between the leaders and their teams.

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  • EU opens deeper probe of Microsoft’s Activision deal | CNN Business

    EU opens deeper probe of Microsoft’s Activision deal | CNN Business

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    Washington
    CNN Business
     — 

    The European Union is taking a closer look at Microsoft’s proposed $68.7 billion purchase of video game giant Activision Blizzard, citing concerns the deal could hurt competition in the video game industry.

    A preliminary review of the deal found that Microsoft

    (MSFT)     could try to withhold the games it’s acquiring from other distributors, according to an EU press release. The proposed acquisition would see Microsoft

    (MSFT)     become the world’s third-largest video game publisher, controlling popular franchises such as “Call of Duty” and “World of Warcraft.”

    “Such foreclosure strategies could reduce competition in the markets for the distribution of console and PC video games, leading to higher prices, lower quality and less innovation for console game distributors, which may in turn be passed on to consumers,” the EU said.

    The deeper-level probe, which could run through March of next year, is also driven by fears the acquisition could consolidate power in Microsoft’s Windows operating system at the expense of competition, if Microsoft attempts to make its PC games exclusive to Windows.

    And, according to an EU press release, authorities are concerned the deal may allow Microsoft to concentrate power in its own cloud gaming service and prevent rival cloud services from gaining access to Activision

    (ATVI)     games.

    In September, the United Kingdom announced it had opened a second-stage investigation into the proposed deal.

    “We’re continuing to work with the European Commission on next steps and to address any valid marketplace concerns,” a Microsoft spokesperson told CNN in a statement. “Sony, as the industry leader, says it is worried about Call of Duty, but we’ve said we are committed to making the same game available on the same day on both Xbox and PlayStation. We want people to have more access to games, not less.”

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  • As countries convene at climate summit in Egypt, reports show the world is wildly off track. Here’s what to watch at COP27 | CNN

    As countries convene at climate summit in Egypt, reports show the world is wildly off track. Here’s what to watch at COP27 | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    As global leaders converge in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, for the UN’s annual climate summit, researchers, advocates and the United Nations itself are warning the world is still wildly off-track on its goal to halt global warming and prevent the worst consequences of the climate crisis.

    Over the next two weeks, negotiators from nearly 200 countries will prod each other at COP27 to raise their clean energy ambitions, as average global temperature has already climbed 1.2 degrees Celsius since the industrial revolution.

    They will haggle over ending the use of coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel, which has seen a resurgence in some countries amid the war in Ukraine, and try to come up with a system to funnel money to help the world’s poorest nations recover from devastating climate disasters.

    But a flood of recent reports have made clear leaders are running out of time to implement the vast energy overhaul needed to keep the temperature from exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius, the threshold scientists have warned the planet must stay under.

    Reports from the United Nations and the World Meteorological Association show carbon and methane emissions hit record levels in 2021, and the plans countries have submitted to slash those emissions are beyond insufficient. Given countries’ current promises, Earth’s temperature will climb to between 2.1 and 2.9 degrees Celsius by 2100.

    Ultimately, the world needs to cut its fossil fuel emissions nearly in half by 2030 to avoid 1.5 degrees, a daunting prospect for economies still very much beholden to oil, natural gas and coal.

    “No country has a right to be delinquent,” US Climate Envoy John Kerry told reporters in October. “The scientists tell us that what is happening now – the increased extreme heat, extreme weather, the fires, the floods, the warming of the ocean, the melting of the ice, the extraordinary way in which life is being affected badly by the climate crisis – is going to get worse unless we address this crisis in a unified, forward-leaning way.”

    Here are the top issues to follow at COP27 in Egypt.

    Developing and developed countries have for years tussled over the concept of a “loss and damage” fund; the idea which suggests countries causing the most harm with their outrageous planet-warming emissions should pay poorer countries, which have suffered from the resulting climate disasters.

    It has been a thorny issue because the richest countries, including the US, don’t want to appear culpable or legally liable to other nations for harm. Kerry, for instance, has tiptoed around the issue, saying the US supports formal talks, but he has not given any indication of what solution the country would sign on to.

    Meanwhile, small island nations and others in the Global South are shouldering the impact of the climate crisis, as devastating floods, intensifying storms and record-breaking heat waves wreak havoc.

    The deadly flooding in Pakistan this summer, which killed more than 1,500 people, will surely be an example the countries’ negotiators point to. And since September, more than two million people in Nigeria have been affected by the worst flooding there in a decade. At this very moment, Nigerians are drinking, cooking with and bathing in dirty flood water amid serious concerns over waterborne diseases.

    It is likely loss and damage will have space on the official COP27 agenda this year. But beyond countries committing to meet and talk about what a potential loss and damage fund would look like, or whether one should even exist, it is unclear what action will come out of this year’s summit.

    “Do we expect that we’ll have a fund by the end of the two weeks? I hope, I would love to – but we’ll see how parties deliver on that,” Egypt’s chief climate negotiator Ambassador Mohamed Nasr recently told reporters.

    Former White House National Climate Adviser Gina McCarthy told CNN she thinks loss and damage will be the top issue at the UN climate summit this year, and said nations including the US will face some tough questions about their plans to help developing nations already being hit hard by climate disasters.

    “It just keeps getting pushed out,” McCarthy said. “There’s need for some real accountability and some specific commitments in the short-term.”

    Xi Jinping, President of the People's Republic of China, left, and John Kerry, US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate.

    People will be watching to see if the US and China can repair a broken relationship at the summit, a year after the two countries surprised the world by announcing they would work together on climate change.

    The newfound cooperation came crashing down this summer when China announced it was suspending climate talks with the US as part of broader retaliation for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan.

    Kerry recently said the climate talks between the two countries are still suspended and will likely remain so until China’s president Xi Jinping gives the green light. Kerry and others are watching to see whether China fulfills the promise it made last year to submit a plan to bring down its methane emissions or updates its emissions pledge.

    The US and China are the world’s two largest emitters and their cooperation matters, particularly because it can spur other countries to act, too.

    Separate from a potential loss and damage fund, there is the overarching issue of so-called global climate finance; a fund rich countries promised to push money into to help the developing world transition to clean energy rather than grow their economies with fossil fuels.

    The promise made in 2009 was $100 billion per year, but the world has yet to meet the pledge. Some of the richest countries, including the US, UK, Canada and others, have consistently fallen short of their allocation.

    President Joe Biden promised the US would contribute $11 billion by 2024 toward the effort. But Biden’s request is ultimately up to Congress to approve, and will likely go nowhere if Republicans win control of Congress in the midterm elections.

    The US is working on separate deals with countries including Vietnam, South Africa and Indonesia to get them to move away from coal and toward renewables. And US officials often stress they want to also unlock private investments to help countries transition to renewables and deal with climate effects.

    Ships carry coal outside a coal-fired power plant in November 2021 in Hanchuan, Hubei province, China.

    COP27 is intended to hold countries’ feet to the fire on fossil fuel emissions and gin up new ambition on the climate crisis. Yet reports show we are still off-track to keep global warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius.

    A UN report which surveyed countries’ latest pledges found the planet will warm between 2.1 and 2.9 degrees Celsius. Average global temperature has already risen around 1.2 degrees since the industrial revolution.

    Records were set last year for all three major greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, according to the World Meteorological Organization.

    There is a spot of encouraging news: the adoption of renewable energy and electric vehicles is surging and helping to offset the rise in fossil fuel emissions, according to a recent International Energy Agency report.

    But the overall picture from the reports shows there is a need for much more clean energy, deployed swiftly. Every fraction of a degree in global temperature rise will have stark consequences, said Inger Andersen, executive director of the United Nations Environment Program.

    “The energy transition is entirely doable, but we’re not on that pathway, and we have procrastinated and wasted time,” Andersen told CNN. “Every digit will matter. Let’s not say ‘we missed 1.5 so let’s settle for 2.’ No. We must understand that every digit that goes up will make our life and the life of our children and grandchildren much more impacted.”

    The clock is ticking in another way: Next year’s COP28 in Dubai will be the year nations must do an official stocktake to determine if the world is on track to meet the goals set out in the landmark Paris Agreement.

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  • Germany’s leader and top CEOs have arrived in Beijing. They need China more than ever | CNN Business

    Germany’s leader and top CEOs have arrived in Beijing. They need China more than ever | CNN Business

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    Hong Kong/London
    CNN Business
     — 

    German Chancellor Olaf Scholz arrived in China on Friday with a team of top executives and a clear message: business with the world’s second largest economy must continue.

    Scholz met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People after landing in the capital Friday morning, according to a Chinese state media account. The German chancellor is also expected to meet with Premier Li Keqiang.

    Joining Scholz for the whirl-wind one day visit is a delegation of 12 German industry titans, including the CEOs of Volkswagen

    (VLKAF)    , Deutsche Bank

    (DB)    , Siemens

    (SIEGY)     and chemicals giant BASF

    (BASFY)    , according to a person familiar with the matter. They are set to meet with Chinese companies behind closed doors.

    The group entered China without participating in the usual seven-day hotel quarantine. Images showed hazmat-clad medical workers greeting their jet at Beijing’s Capital International Airport to test the official delegation for Covid-19.

    During the Friday morning meeting between the two leaders, Xi called for Germany and China to work together amid a “complex and volatile” international situation, and said the visit would “enhance mutual understanding and trust, deepen pragmatic cooperation in various fields and plan for the next phase of Sino-German relations,” according to a readout from state broadcaster CCTV.

    Scholz’s visit — the first by a G7 leader to China in roughly three years — comes as Germany slides towards recession. But it has fired up concerns that the economic interests of Europe’s biggest economy are still too closely tied to those of Beijing.

    Since the invasion of Ukraine this year, Germany has been forced to ditch its long dependence on Russian energy. Now, some in Scholz’s coalition government are growing nervous about the country’s deepening ties with China. Beijing has declared its friendship with Russia has “no limits,” while China’s relations with the United States are deteriorating.

    The tension was highlighted recently by a fierce debate over a bid by Chinese state shipping giant Cosco to buy a 35% stake in the operator of one of the four terminals at the port of Hamburg. Under pressure from some members of the government, the size of the investment was limited to 24.9%.

    The potential deal has raised concerns in Germany that closer ties with China will leave critical infrastructure exposed to political pressure from Beijing, and disproportionately benefit Chinese companies.

    But Germany is hardly in a position to rock the boat with Beijing as it grapples with the challenge of reviving its struggling economy. Its consumers and companies have borne the brunt of Europe’s energy crisis, and a deep recession is looming.

    If the European Union and Germany were to decouple from China, it would lead to “large GDP losses” for the German economy, Lisandra Flach, director of the ifo Center for International Economics, told CNN Business.

    The Kiel Institute for the World Economy estimates that a major reduction in trade between the European Union and China would shave 1% off of Germany’s GDP.

    Germany needs to shore up its export markets as ties with Russia, once its main supplier of natural gas, continue to unravel.

    When it comes to China, Germany won’t want to “lose also this market, this economic partner,” said Rafal Ulatowski, an assistant professor of political science and international studies at the University of Warsaw.

    “They [will] try to keep these relations as long as it’s possible.”

    As Western countries have imposed swingeing economic sanctions on Russia, China has publicly maintained its “neutrality” in the war while ramping up its trade with Moscow.

    That has triggered a backlash in Europe, where some companies are already becoming wary of doing business in China because of its stringent “zero Covid” restrictions.

    Pressure on Berlin is also mounting over China’s human rights record. In an open letter Wednesday, a coalition of 70 civil rights groups urged Scholz to “rethink” his trip to Beijing.

    “The invitation of a German trade delegation to join your visit will be viewed as an indication that Germany is ready to deepen trade and economic links, at the cost of human rights and international law,” they wrote in the memo, published by the World Uyghur Congress. Based in Germany, the organization is run by Uyghurs raising awareness of allegations of genocide in China’s Xinjiang region.

    It suggested Berlin was “loosening economic dependence on one authoritarian power, only to deepen economic dependence on another.”

    In an op-ed published in a German newspaper on Wednesday, Scholz said he would use his visit to “address difficult issues,” including “respect for civil and political liberties and the rights of ethnic minorities in Xinjiang province.”

    A spokesperson for the German government addressed wider criticism last week, saying at a press conference that it had no intention of “decoupling” from its most important trading partner.

    “[The chancellor] has basically said again and again that he is not a friend of decoupling, or turning away, from China. But he also says: diversify and minimize risk,” the spokesperson said.

    Last year, China was Germany’s biggest trading partner for the sixth year in a row, with the value of trade up over 15% from 2020, according to official statistics. Together, Chinese imports from, and exports to, Germany were worth €245 billion ($242 billion) in 2021.

    Still, the furore surrounding the Hamburg port deal is a reminder of the tradeoffs Germany has to confront if it wants to maintain close ties with such a vital export market and supplier.

    A spokesperson for Hamburger Hafen und Logistik (HHLA), the company operating the port terminal, told CNN Business on Thursday that it was still negotiating the deal with Cosco.

    Flach, of the ifo Center for International Economics, said the deal warranted scrutiny because “there is no reciprocity: Germany cannot invest in Chinese ports, for instance.”

    A container ship from Cosco Shipping moored at the Tollerort Container Terminal owned by HHLA, in the harbor of Hamburg, Germany on Oct. 26.

    However, it is easy to overstate the impact of the potential agreement, said Alexander-Nikolai Sandkamp, assistant professor of economics at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy.

    “We’re not talking about a 25% stake in the Hamburg harbor, or even the operator of the harbor, but a 25% stake in the operator of a terminal,” he told CNN Business.

    Jürgen Matthes, head of global and regional markets at the German Economic Institute, told CNN Business that critics were no longer simply weighing the business benefits of Chinese investment in the country.

    “Politics and economics have to be looked at together and cannot be taken separately any longer,” he said. “When geopolitics comes into play, the view of China has very much declined and become much more negative.”

    China’s recent treatment of Lithuania has also deepened concerns that Beijing “does not hesitate to simply break trade rules,” Matthes added. The small, Eastern European nation claimed last year that Beijing had erected trade barriers in retaliation for its support for Taiwan.

    China has defended its downgrading of relations with Lithuania, saying it is acting in response to the European nation undermining its “sovereignty and territorial integrity.” This year, after a Lithuanian official visited Taiwan, Beijing also announced sanctions against her and vowed to “suspend all forms of exchange” with her ministry.

    As the German delegation touches down on Friday, they will be faced with another issue, which has become the single biggest headache for companies across China.

    “The biggest challenge for German businesses remains China’s zero-Covid policy,” said Maximilian Butek of the German Chamber of Commerce in China.

    “The restrictions are suffocating economic growth and heavily impact China’s attractiveness as a destination for foreign direct investment,” he told CNN Business.

    An aerial view of the urban landscape in Shanghai on Sept. 25. The city underwent a months-long Covid lockdown earlier this year.

    He said the broader restrictions were so stifling that some companies had moved their regional headquarters to other locations, such as Singapore. “Managing the whole region without being able to travel freely is almost impossible,” he added.

    In a brief statement, Volkswagen told CNN Business that its CEO was attending the trip since “there have been no direct meetings for almost three years” due to the coronavirus pandemic.

    “In view of the completely changed geopolitical and global economic situation, the trip to Beijing offers the opportunity for a personal exchange of views,” the automaker said.

    Despite Beijing’s Covid curbs and geopolitical tensions, Germany has every economic incentive to stay close to China.

    Its dependency on China can be seen across industries. While about 12% of total imports came from China last year, the country was responsible for 80% of imported laptops and 70% of mobile phones, Sandkamp said.

    The automobile, chemical and electrical industries are also reliant on Chinese trade.

    “If we were to stop trading with China, we would run into trouble,” Sandkamp added.

    China made up 40% of Volkswagen’s worldwide deliveries in the first three quarters of this year, and it’s also the top market for other automakers such as Mercedes.

    Wariness among some German officials over the country’s closeness with China could filter into a more restrictive trade policy, though economic cooperation is still in both parties’ interests.

    Last week, Germany’s economy minister Robert Habeck told Reuters that the government was efforting a new trade policy with China to reduce dependence on Chinese raw materials, batteries and semiconductors.

    Unidentified sources also told the news agency that the ministry was weighing new rules that would make business with China less attractive. The ministry did not respond to a request for comment from CNN Business.

    But “despite all odds and challenges, China remains unrivaled in terms of market size and market growth opportunities for many German companies,” said Butek, of the German Chamber.

    He predicted that “the large majority will stay committed to the Chinese market and is expecting to expand their business.”

    Companies appear to be toeing that line. Last week, BASF CEO Martin Brudermüller was quoted in Chinese state media as saying that Germans should “step away from China-bashing and look at ourselves a bit self-critically.”

    “We benefit from China’s policies of widening market access,” he said at a company event, according to state-run news agency Xinhua, pointing to the construction of a BASF chemical engineering site in southern China.

    — CNN’s Simone McCarthy, Chris Stern, Lauren Kent, Claudia Otto and Arnaud Siad contributed to this report.

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  • Apple will support USB-C charging to comply with new EU requirement, exec says | CNN Business

    Apple will support USB-C charging to comply with new EU requirement, exec says | CNN Business

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    CNN Business
     — 

    The iPhone will support USB-C charging in the European Union to comply with a new ruling that mandates electronic devices have a common charging standard, an Apple executive said Tuesday night.

    “Obviously we will have to comply,” Greg Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing, said at the Wall Street Journal’s Tech Live conference, in the first remarks from a company official since the ruling came out Monday.

    “We have no choice, like we do around the world, to comply with local laws, but we think the approach would have been better environmentally and better for our customers to not have a government be that prescriptive,” he said.

    EU member states voted on Monday to approve legislation that would require smartphones, tablets, digital cameras, portable speakers and other small devices to support USB-C charging by 2024. The first-of-its-kind law aims to streamline the number of chargers and cables consumers must contend with when they purchase a new device, and to allow users to mix and match devices and chargers even if they were produced by different manufacturers.

    The law would effectively require Apple

    (AAPL)     to move away from the proprietary Lightning charger it uses for devices in the EU, and could potentially extend to devices Apple

    (AAPL)     sells in other markets as well if the company decides to streamline its products globally.

    Joswiak called the European government “well meaning” and said, “I get the fact that they want to accomplish a good thing.” But he stressed the value and ubiquity of the Lightning charger, which is designed for faster device charging.

    “It’s been a great connector and over a billion people have it already — [they] have the cables and have what they need, have the infrastructure in their homes, have the speakers, and have an ecosystem that works with it,” Joswiak said.

    “I don’t mind governments telling us what they want to accomplish,” he said, “but usually we have some pretty smart engineers that help us figure out how to accomplish them technically.”

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  • Opinion: Putin is trying to distract us from the blindingly obvious | CNN

    Opinion: Putin is trying to distract us from the blindingly obvious | CNN

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    Editor’s Note: David A. Andelman, a contributor to CNN, twice winner of the Deadline Club Award, is a chevalier of the French Legion of Honor, author of “A Red Line in the Sand: Diplomacy, Strategy, and the History of Wars That Might Still Happen” and blogs at Andelman Unleashed. He formerly was a correspondent for The New York Times and CBS News in Europe and Asia. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion at CNN.



    CNN
     — 

    Russian President Vladimir Putin is doing his best to achieve two immediate objectives. The goal of the West must be to stop him.

    First, he’s seeking to distract his nation from the blindingly obvious, namely that he is losing badly on the battlefield and utterly failing to achieve even the vastly scaled back objectives of his invasion.

    Second and simultaneously, Putin is playing desperately for time – hoping the political clock and the onset of winter in Europe will sap the will and energies of the Western powers that have all but eviscerated his military-industrial machine and destroyed the armed might of Russia.

    Both sides – Russia and Ukraine with its western backers – are doing their best to turn the screws ahead of a winter which could ultimately decide who will win the most titanic clashes of forces in Europe since the Second World War. It’s worth a deep look at what’s in play right now.

    Europe’s energy concerns

    First up, there’s the West and its ability to keep supplying the Ukrainian war machine that has proven so effective in this David v. Goliath battle.

    This ability to keep going depends on a host of variables – ranging from the availability of critical and affordable energy supplies for the coming winter, to the popular will across a broad range of nations with often conflicting priorities.

    In the early hours of Friday in Brussels, European Union powers agreed a roadmap to control energy prices that have been surging on the heels of embargoes on Russian imports and the Kremlin cutting natural gas supplies at a whim.

    These include an emergency cap on the benchmark European gas trading hub – the Dutch Title Transfer Facility – and permission for EU gas companies to create a cartel to buy gas on the international market.

    While French President Emmanuel Macron waxed euphoric leaving the summit, which he described as having “maintained European unity,” he conceded that there was only a “clear mandate” for the European Commission to start working on a gas cap mechanism.

    Still, divisions remain, with Europe’s biggest economy, Germany, skeptical of any price caps. Now energy ministers must work out details with a Germany concerned such caps would encourage higher consumption – a further burden on restricted supplies.

    Putin’s useful friends in Europe

    These divisions are all part of Putin’s fondest dream. Manifold forces in Europe could prove central to achieving success from the Kremlin’s viewpoint, which amounts to the continent failing to agree on essentials.

    Germany and France are already at loggerheads on many of these issues. Though in an effort to reach some accommodation, Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz have scheduled a conference call for Wednesday.

    And now a new government has taken power in Italy. Giorgia Meloni was sworn in Saturday as Italy’s first woman prime minister and has attempted to brush aside the post-fascist aura of her party. One of her far-right coalition partners meanwhile, has expressed deep appreciation for Putin.

    Silvio Berlusconi, himself a four-time prime minister of Italy, was recorded at a gathering of his party loyalists, describing with glee the 20 bottles of vodka Putin sent to him together with “a very sweet letter” on his 86th birthday.

    Berlusconi, in a secretly recorded audio tape, said he’d returned Putin’s gesture with bottles of Lambrusco wine, adding that “I knew him as a peaceful and sensible person,” in the LaPresse audio clip.

    The other leading member of the ruling Italian coalition, Matteo Salvini, named Saturday as deputy prime minister, said during the campaign, “I would not want the sanctions [on Russia] to harm those who impose them more than those who are hit by them.”

    At the same time, Poland and Hungary, longtime ultra-right-wing soulmates united against liberal policies of the EU that seemed calculated to reduce their influence, have now disagreed over Ukraine. Poland has taken deep offense at the pro-Putin sentiments of Hungary’s populist leader Viktor Orban.

    The limits of America’s ‘blank check’

    Similar forces seem to be at work in Washington where House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy, poised to become Speaker of the House if Republicans take control after next month’s elections, told an interviewer, “I think people are gonna be sitting in a recession and they’re not going to write a blank check to Ukraine. They just won’t do it.”

    Meanwhile on Monday, the influential 30-member Congressional progressive caucus called on Biden to open talks with Russia on ending the conflict while its troops are still occupying vast stretches of the country and its missiles and drones are striking deep into the interior.

    Hours later, caucus chair Mia Jacob, facing a firestorm of criticism, emailed reporters with a statement “clarifying” their remarks in support of Ukraine. Secretary of State Antony Blinken also called his Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba to renew America’s support.

    Indeed, while the US has proffered more than $60 billion in aid since Biden took office, when Congress authorized $40 billion for Ukraine last May, only Republicans voted against the latest aid package.

    In short, there is every incentive for Putin to prolong the conflict as long as possible to allow many of these forces in the West to kick in. A long, cold winter in Europe, persistent inflation and higher interest rates leading to a recession on both sides of the Atlantic could mean irresistible pressure on already skeptical leaders to dial back on financial and military support.

    This support in terms of arms, materiel and now training for Ukrainian forces have been the underpinnings of their remarkable battlefield successes against a weakening, undersupplied and ill-prepared Russian military.

    At the same time, the West is turning up the pressure on Russia. Last Thursday, the State Department released a detailed report on the impact of sanctions and export controls strangling the Russian military-industrial complex.

    Russian production of hypersonic missiles has all but ceased “due to the lack of necessary semi-conductors,” said the report. Aircraft are being cannibalized for spare parts, plants producing anti-aircraft systems have shut down, and “Russia has reverted to Soviet-era defense stocks” for replenishment. The Soviet era ended more than 30 years ago.

    A day before this report, the US announced seizure of all property of a top Russian procurement agent Yury Orekhov and his agencies “responsible for procuring US-origin technologies for Russian end-users…including advanced semiconductors and microprocessors.”

    The Justice Department also announced charges against individuals and companies seeking to smuggle high-tech equipment into Russia in violation of sanctions.

    All these actions point to an increasing desperation by Russia to access vitally-needed components for production of high-tech weaponry stalled by western sanctions and embargos that have begun to strangle the Kremlin’s military-industrial complex.

    Where that leaves Russia

    This pressure from the West may finally be producing real results. Putin’s announced martial law in Ukrainian territories Russia now only partly controls, attacks on civilian targets deep in Ukraine’s interior, and a new, hardline commander in Ukraine, General Sergei Shurokin, nicknamed “General Armageddon” by colleagues, all suggest a growing frustration bordering on fear that the Russian people may begin noticing what has long been blindingly obvious: Putin is losing.

    This is the very moment when it is so essential that Ukraine and their western supporters push on with tenacity.

    Shurokin appeared on Moscow television last week to suggest the Kremlin’s new objective – that actually dates back decades – is to force Ukraine into Russia’s orbit and keep it from joining the EU and especially NATO. Shurokin said: “We just want one thing, for Ukraine to be independent of the West and NATO and be friendly to the Russian state.”

    Still, there remain hardliners like Pavel Gubarev, Russia’s puppet leader in Donetsk, who voiced his real intention toward Ukrainians: “We aren’t coming to kill you, but to convince you. But if you don’t want to be convinced, we’ll kill you. We’ll kill as many as we have to: 1 million, 5 million, or exterminate all of you.”

    This should be the real fear of any in the West still prepared to waffle over 100% support of Ukraine and its people.

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  • EU formally adopts law requiring Apple to support USB-C chargers | CNN Business

    EU formally adopts law requiring Apple to support USB-C chargers | CNN Business

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    Washington
    CNN Business
     — 

    A landmark law requiring Apple and other electronics makers to adopt USB-C as a universal charging standard in the European Union has cleared its final procedural hurdle, after EU member states voted to approve the legislation on Monday.

    The new law, which is targeted at smartphones, tablets, digital cameras, portable speakers and a wide array of other small devices, is the first of its kind anywhere in the world. It aims to streamline the number of chargers and cables consumers must contend with when they purchase a new device, and to allow users to mix and match devices and chargers, even if they were produced by different manufacturers.

    Apple could be among the most affected by the legislation. The iPhone maker has historically required users to charge its mobile devices using a proprietary charging connector known as Lightning; under the new rules, Apple would be forced to migrate away from Lightning in its devices sold in the EU. That change, which Apple is reportedly testing for iPhones, could potentially extend to devices Apple sells in other markets as well.

    The EU law must still be signed by the presidents of the EU parliament and European Council, according to a release, but those are considered formalities. Earlier this month, the legislation received final approval from EU lawmakers.

    In addition to covering new, small electronics going on the market at the end of 2024, the rules will also extend to larger electronics such as laptops beginning in 2026. It will also commit European officials to streamlining standards for wireless charging, a technology that is only just becoming more widespread.

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  • UN torture prevention body suspends Australia tour due to lack of cooperation | CNN

    UN torture prevention body suspends Australia tour due to lack of cooperation | CNN

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    Brisbane, Australia
    CNN
     — 

    The United Nations Subcommittee on the Prevention of Torture (SPT) suspended its tour of Australian prisons on Sunday, citing a lack of cooperation from officials who denied them access to some detention facilities.

    In a statement, the SPT said its staff were prevented from entering some places where people were being held, and in some cases were not given “all the relevant information and documentation” they requested.

    “Given that OPCAT applies to all federal states without limitations or exceptions, it is concerning that four years after it ratified the Optional Protocol, Australia appears to have done little to ensure consistent implementation of OPCAT obligations across the country,” said the head of the four-person delegation, Aisha Shujune Muhammad.

    Australia is one of 91 signatories to the UN’s Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (OPCAT), which aims to protect the human rights of detained people.

    OPCAT had planned to visit the country’s facilities in 2020 to ensure compliance but the trip was postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Australia has also delayed key requirements of the agreement, including establishing an independent torture prevention monitoring body, officially known as the National Mechanism for Prevention of Torture (NPM), according to the UN subcommittee.

    Officials finally arrived in the country for the start of the planned 12-day tour on October 16, but encountered problems accessing some sites in Queensland and New South Wales (NSW).

    Police officers barred officials from entering a detention facility in Queanbeyan, NSW, said the state’s Corrective Services Minister Geoff Lee, who praised their work in an interview on local radio.

    “We don’t torture people,” he told radio station 2GB. “Why should I help taxpayers … foot the bill for the UN coming to Australia? Aren’t they better off to go to places like Iran?”

    The issue relates to a long-running dispute over who should pay for any improvements made to Australian facilities as a result of any recommendations made by the UN – states want the federal government to pick up the tab.

    On Monday, Australia’s Attorney General Mark Dreyfus said the UN decision was “disappointing” and the country remained committed to the agreement.

    “The suspension of the visit does not change the Australian government’s commitment to promoting and protecting human rights domestically and internationally,” he said.

    The Australian Human Rights Law Centre issued a statement Monday signed by 79 rights advocates and advocacy groups, calling on the New South Wales and Queensland state governments to fully adhere to the country’s international obligations on torture prevention.

    NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet said state prisons keep “the highest standards anywhere in the world” and independent processes are in place to monitor conditions.

    In a statement, Queensland Health said officials were denied access to some inpatient units due to provisions in the state’s Mental Health Act to “preserve the safety and privacy of people with severe mental illness.”

    Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaczszuk said the state looked forward to working with the UN on whatever access they need “under the conditions.”

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  • Yemen Fast Facts | CNN

    Yemen Fast Facts | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Here’s a look at Yemen, a country located on the southwestern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, sharing a border with Saudi Arabia and Oman.

    (from the CIA World Fact Book)
    Area: 527,968 sq km (twice the size of Wyoming)

    Population: 30,984,689 (2022 est.)

    Median age: 19.8 years

    Capital: Sanaa

    Ethnic groups: Predominantly Arab; but also Afro-Arab, South Asian, European

    Religions: Muslim (99.1%: an estimated 65% are Sunni and 35% are Shia) and small numbers of Jewish, Christian, Hindu and Baha’i (2020)

    Unemployment: 27% (2014 est.)

    Yemen is part of the Arab League.

    Yemen has been mired in political unrest and armed conflict, which intensified in early 2015. Houthi rebels – a minority Shia group from the north of the country – drove out the US-backed government and took over the capital, Sanaa. The crisis quickly escalated into a multi-sided war, with neighboring Saudi Arabia leading a coalition of Gulf states against the Houthi rebels. The coalition is advised and supported by the United States and the United Kingdom, among other nations.

    READ: Yemen: What you need to know about how we got here

    May 22, 1990 – The Republic of Yemen is created from the unification of North Yemen, the Yemen Arab Republic and South Yemen, the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen.

    May-July 1994 – A civil war between northerners and southerners begins due to disagreements between supporters of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, from North Yemen, and Vice President Ali Salim al-Baid, from South Yemen. Troops loyal to Saleh win the war.

    September 25, 1999 – Saleh wins the country’s first direct presidential election, with 96.3% of the vote. Opposition leaders allege tampering at the ballot box.

    September 23, 2006 – Saleh wins reelection to a seven-year term with 77% of the vote.

    September 17, 2008 – Ten people, Yemeni citizens and police officers, are killed in terrorist attack on the US embassy in Sanaa.

    December 28, 2009 – A Yemen-based arm of al Qaeda, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), claims responsibility for a failed bombing on a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on December 25.

    January 2, 2010 – US President Barack Obama announces a new counterterrorism partnership with Yemen, involving intelligence sharing, military training and joint attacks.

    January 3, 2010 – The United States and the United Kingdom temporarily close their embassies in Sanaa after they receive word that AQAP may be planning an attack on the facilities. The US embassy reopens two days later after Yemeni forces kill two AQAP militants in a counterterrorism operation.

    January 2010 – A group called Friends of Yemen is established in the UK to rally support for Yemen from the international community. They later hold meetings in London and Saudi Arabia.

    January 27, 2011 – Protests break out, inspired by demonstrations in neighboring countries. The unrest continues for months, while crackdowns on protesters lead to civilian deaths.

    June 3, 2011 – Opposition forces launch missiles at the presidential palace, injuring Saleh and killing several others.

    September 2, 2011 – More than two million people demonstrate across Yemen, demanding that the military remove Saleh from power.

    September 23, 2011 – Saleh returns to Yemen after more than three months of medical treatment in Saudi Arabia.

    September 30, 2011 – Anwar al-Awlaki, spokesman for AQAP, is killed by a CIA drone strike.

    November 23, 2011 – Saleh signs an agreement in Saudi Arabia transferring his executive powers to Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi, Yemen’s vice president, effectively ending his rule.

    January 21, 2012 – Parliament approves a law that grants Saleh immunity from prosecution.

    February 21, 2012 – Yemen holds presidential elections to replace Saleh. There is only one candidate on the ballot, Vice President Hadi, the acting president since November 2011. Hadi receives 99.8% of the 6.6 million votes cast, according to the government elections committee.

    February 25, 2012 – Hadi is sworn in as president.

    May 21, 2012 – During a rehearsal for a military parade in Sanaa, a suicide bomber kills more than 100 Yemeni troops and wounds more than 200.

    May 23, 2012 – Friends of Yemen pledges more than $4 billion in aid to help the country fight terrorism and boost its economy. The amount is later increased to $7.9 billion. There are delays, however, that hold up delivery of the funds, according to Reuters.

    December 5, 2013 – Militants attack a Defense Ministry hospital in Sanaa. They ram the building with an explosives-laden vehicle and gunmen battle security forces inside. At least 52 people are killed, including four foreign doctors, according to the government.

    December 15, 2013 – Parliament calls for an end to drone strikes on its territory three days after a US missile attack mistakenly hits a wedding convoy, killing 14 civilians.

    February 10, 2014 – State news reports that Hadi has approved making Yemen a federal state consisting of six regions: two in the south, and four in the north. Sanaa is designated as neutral territory.

    September 21, 2014 – Hadi, Houthi rebels and representatives of major political parties sign a ceasefire deal. The United Nations-brokered deal ends a month of protests by Houthis that essentially halted life in Sanaa and resulted in hundreds of people being killed or injured.

    January 17, 2015 – Houthi rebels kidnap Hadi’s Chief of Staff Ahmed bin Mubarak in a push for more political power. He is released 10 days later, according to Reuters.

    January 20, 2015 – Houthi rebels take over the presidential palace.

    January 22, 2015 – President Hadi resigns shortly after the prime minister and the cabinet step down. Houthis say they will withdraw their fighters from Sanaa if the government agrees to constitutional changes including fair representation for marginalized groups within the country. No agreement is reached.

    February 11, 2015 – The United States and the United Kingdom suspend embassy operations in Yemen.

    March 20, 2015 – Terrorists bomb two mosques in Sanaa, killing at least 137 and wounding 357. ISIS claims responsibility for the attack.

    March 22, 2015 – Houthi rebels seize the international airport in Taiz.

    March 26, 2015 – Warplanes from Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and other countries strike Houthi rebel targets.

    December 6, 2015 – The governor of the city of Aden and six bodyguards are killed in a car bombing. ISIS claims responsibility.

    December 18-19, 2015 – At least 100 people are killed as violence erupts in the Harath district of Hajjah, a strategic border near Saudi Arabia.

    April-August 2016 – Direct peace talks between the warring parties take place in Kuwait, but fail after Houthi rebels reject a UN proposal aimed at ending the war. Yemeni government officials leave the discussions shortly afterward.

    November 28, 2016 – The Iranian-backed Houthi movement forms a new government in the capital. Abdul Aziz Habtoor, who defected from Hadi’s government and joined the Houthi coalition in 2015, is its leader, according to the movement’s news agency Saba.

    December 18, 2016 – A suicide bomber strikes as soldiers line up to receive their salaries at the Al Solban military base in the southern city of Aden. The strike kills at least 52 soldiers and injures 34 others, two Yemeni senior security officials tell CNN. ISIS claims responsibility.

    January 29, 2017 – US Central Command announces that a Navy SEAL was killed during a raid on a suspected al Qaeda hideout in a Yemeni village. The Navy SEAL is later identified as William Owens. The Pentagon reports that 14 terrorists were killed during the raid. Yemeni officials say civilians got caught in the crossfire and 13 people died, including eight-year-old Nawar Anwar Al-Awalki, the daughter of Anwar Al-Awalki. The raid was authorized by US President Donald Trump, days after he was sworn in as commander in chief.

    February 8, 2017 – Two senior Yemeni officials tell CNN that the government has requested that the United States stop ground operations in the country unless it has full approval.

    May 15, 2017 – Save the Children reports that 242 people have died of cholera as an outbreak spreads through Sanaa and beyond.

    October 16, 2017 – US forces conduct airstrikes against two ISIS training camps in what a defense official tells CNN are the first US strikes specifically targeting ISIS in Yemen.

    November 4, 2017 – Houthi rebels fire a missile at the King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh. The Saudi government says that their military intercepted the missile before it reached its target. The Saudis carry out airstrikes on Sanaa in response.

    November 6, 2017 – Saudi Arabia blocks humanitarian aid planes from landing in Yemen. The move is in retaliation for the attempted missile strike on Riyadh.

    December 4, 2017 – Saleh is killed by Houthi rebels as he tries to flee Sanaa.

    December 6, 2017 – Trump issues a statement that he has directed his administration to call for an end to Saudi Arabia’s blockade.

    December 21, 2017 – The International Committee of the Red Cross announces that one million cases of cholera have been reported in Yemen since the outbreak began during the spring. More than 2,200 people have died, according to the World Health Organization. It is the largest outbreak of the disease in recent history.

    April 3, 2018 – Speaking at a UN Pledging Conference on Yemen, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres notes that, in its fourth year of conflict, more than three-quarters of the population, 22 million, require humanitarian aid. Regarding hunger alone, “some 18 million people are food insecure; one million more than when we convened last year.”

    August 3, 2018 – The World Health Organization warns that Yemen is teetering on the brink of a third cholera epidemic.

    August 9, 2018 – A Saudi-led coalition bombs a school bus, killing 40 boys returning from a day trip in the northern Saada governorate. Fifty-one people are killed in total. Later, munitions experts tell CNN that the bomb, a 500-pound laser-guided MK 82 bomb made by Lockheed Martin, was sold as part of a US State Department-sanctioned arms deal with Saudi Arabia. The Saudi coalition blames “incorrect information” for the strike, admits it was a mistake and takes responsibility.

    November 20, 2018 – Save the Children says that an estimated 85,000 children under the age of 5 may have died from extreme hunger or disease since the war in Yemen escalated in early 2015.

    December 6, 2018 – The opposing sides in Yemen’s conflict begin direct talks in Sweden, the first direct discussions between the parties since 2016.

    December 18, 2018 – A ceasefire reached in Sweden between Yemen’s warring parties goes into effect at midnight (4 p.m. ET December 17) in the strategic port city of Hodeidah.

    February 2019 – A CNN investigation reveals that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have transferred US-made weapons to al Qaeda-linked fighters, hardline Salafi militias, and other groups on the ground in Yemen. The weapons have also made their way into the hands of Iranian-backed rebels, exposing some of America’s sensitive military technology to Tehran and potentially endangering the lives of US troops in other war zones.

    May 2019 – A CNN investigation exposes the theft or “diversion” of food aid, some of which is being stolen by Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, on a scale far greater than has been reported before.

    June 2019 – The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) finds that the total number of reported fatalities in Yemen is more than 91,000 since 2015.

    June 12, 2019 – A missile fired by Houthi rebels strikes the arrivals hall of Abha International Airport in Saudi Arabia, injuring 26 people. On July 2, a second attack occurs when Houthi rebels execute a drone strike on the same airport, injuring nine civilians. according to the Houthi-run Al-Masirah news agency.

    August 11, 2019 – A spokesperson for Yemeni separatists tells CNN that they have taken control of Aden, which had been the seat of the Saudi-backed government since Houthis took over Sanaa in 2014.

    January 19, 2020 – At least 80 Yemeni soldiers attending prayers at a mosque are killed and 130 others injured in ballistic missile and drone attacks by Iran-backed Houthi rebels, according to the UN Special Envoy for Yemen.

    December 26, 2020 – Yemen’s new 24-member cabinet, the power-sharing government brokered by Saudi Arabia, is sworn in. The new cohesive government will have equal representatives from Yemen’s internationally recognized government and southern separatists, their coalition allies in the war against the Iran-aligned Houthi rebels.

    February 12, 2021 – US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announces the removal of Yemen’s Houthi rebels from the US list of foreign terrorist organizations, effective February 16, reversing the Trump administration’s January 2020 designation that faced bipartisan backlash from politicians and humanitarian organizations.

    April 2, 2022 – Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis and their rival Saudi-led coalition agree to a nationwide truce. It is the most significant step towards ending the hostilities since the war began seven years ago, and a win for UN and US mediators who for the past year have been trying to engineer a permanent peace deal. The renewable two-month truce is meant to halt all military operations in Yemen and across its borders.

    October 2, 2022 – After a rare six months of relative calm, the truce between Yemen’s warring sides expires. The two-month truce had been renewed twice but ends after the two sides fail to renew their deal.

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  • Liz Truss Fast Facts | CNN

    Liz Truss Fast Facts | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Here’s a look at the life of Liz Truss, prime minister of the United Kingdom.

    Birth date: July 26, 1975

    Birth place: Oxford, England

    Birth name: Mary Elizabeth Truss

    Father: John Kenneth Truss, math professor

    Mother: Priscilla (Grasby) Truss, nurse and teacher

    Marriage: Hugh O’Leary (2000-present)

    Children: Frances, Liberty

    Education: Merton College, University of Oxford, B.A., 1993-1996

    Youngest female cabinet minister in UK history.

    Appointed the most ethnically diverse Cabinet in UK history.

    Former president of the Oxford University Liberal Democrats.

    Met her husband at the 1997 Conservative Party conference.

    As a child, joined her parents at protests against nuclear weapons and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

    1994 – As a university student, Truss calls for abolishing the monarchy at a Liberal Democratic conference, “We do not believe people are born to rule.”

    1996 – Truss joins the Conservative Party.

    1996-2000 – Works for Shell, eventually becoming a commercial manager.

    2000-2005 – Economic director at Cable & Wireless.

    2006-2010 – Councillor in the London borough of Greenwich.

    May 2006 – A Daily Mail article exposes an extramarital affair between Truss and MP Mark Field, who had been assigned to her as a political mentor. The affair is thought to have ended in June 2005.

    2008-2010 – Deputy director of Reform, a think tank.

    2009 – Truss is selected to be the Conservative MP candidate for South West Norfolk. After a demand by some local party members that she end her candidacy, citing her past affair with Field, Truss survives a vote and remains the candidate.

    2010 – Elected MP for South West Norfolk.

    2012 – Co-authors “Britannia Unchained: Global Lessons for Growth and Prosperity,” a book that describes the British people as ‘among the worst idlers in the world,’ who ‘are more interested in football and pop music’ than working hard.

    September 2012-July 2014 – Parliamentary Undersecretary of State for Education and Childcare.

    July 2014-July 2016 – Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

    February 20, 2016 – In a Twitter post, Truss announces that she supports the “Remain” position on Brexit.

    July 2016-June 2017 – Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice

    June 2017 – Truss is demoted to chief secretary to the Treasury. She serves in the position until July 2019.

    October 11, 2017 – Truss tells BBC2 she would now vote to leave the European Union if the Brexit referendum were to be held again, “I have changed my mind….I believed that there would be major economic problems. Those haven’t come to pass and I have also seen the opportunities.”

    July 2019-September 2021 – Secretary of State for International Trade and President of the Board of Trade

    September 2019 – Is appointed minister for women and equalities.

    December 2019 – Is appointed chief post-Brexit negotiator with the EU, tasked with settling the Northern Ireland protocol.

    September 15, 2021 – Is appointed foreign secretary.

    May 17, 2022 – In a statement delivered to the House of Commons, Truss announces she will introduce legislation to make changes to the Northern Ireland Protocol, a portion of Britain’s withdrawal agreement from the EU.

    July 10, 2022 – In an op-ed published in The Telegraph, Truss announces that she is joining the race to replace Prime Minister Boris Johnson as leader of the Conservative Party.

    September 5, 2022 – Is elected leader of the Conservative Party. In her victory speech, Truss promises a “bold plan” to cut taxes and build economic growth.

    September 6, 2022 – Appointed prime minister by Queen Elizabeth II at Balmoral Castle.

    September 20-21, 2022 – In her first foreign trip as prime minister, Truss meets with foreign leaders at the United Nations General Assembly, including US President Joe Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron.

    September 23, 2022 – Truss’ government announces sweeping tax cuts which would wipe £45 billion ($50 billion) off government revenues over the next five years, representing the largest cuts in 50 years.

    October 3, 2022 – Truss cancels her plan to slash the top rate of income tax, after a rebellion among lawmakers and a week of financial and economic turmoil.

    October 14, 2022 – Truss says she is scrapping plans to reverse a rise in business taxes, a move that will save £18 billion ($20 billion), after a revolt by investors and members of her own Conservative Party worried about the impact of soaring government borrowing at a time of decades-high inflation. Truss also fires finance minister Kwasi Kwarteng.

    October 20, 2022 – Truss announces her intention to resign just six weeks into her term after a growing number of her own Conservative Party’s lawmakers say they cannot support her any longer. She will remain prime minister until her successor is chosen.

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  • UN chief urges nations to consider deploying forces to help Haiti | CNN

    UN chief urges nations to consider deploying forces to help Haiti | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has urged the international community to consider deploying forces to Haiti to address growing humanitarian and security crises in the country.

    Guterres’ comments come just days after the Haitian government itself asked for international military assistance as the country deals with rampant gang violence, a deadly cholera outbreak and anti-government protests that have paralyzed the country since late August. e country have mostly been shuttered as Haitians have been demonstrating against chronic gang violence, poverty, food insecurity, inflation and fuel shortages.

    “I am calling the international community to help us, to support us in every necessary way to avoid the situation worsening. We need to be able to distribute water, and medicine as cholera is making a comeback. We need to reopen businesses and clear the roads for doctors and nurses to be able to do work. We asking for their help to be able to distribute the fuel and for school to reopen,” Prime Minister Ariel Henry said Wednesday.

    Guterres on Sunday urged the international community “to consider as of matter of urgency the request by the Haitian Government for the immediate deployment of an international specialized armed force.”

    What exactly that force would consist of remains unclear.

    Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, was the sight of brutal gang battles this summer that saw whole neighborhoods set aflame, displacing thousands of families and trapping others in their homes, afraid to leave even in search of food and water.

    Hundreds were left dead, injured or missing. Criminals still control or influence parts of the country’s most populous city, and kidnappings for ransom threaten residents’ day-to-day movements. In recent weeks, demonstrators in several cities called for Henry’s resignation in the face of high fuel prices, soaring inflation, and unchecked crime.

    Their fury was further fueled last month when Henry announced that he would cut fuel subsidies in order to fund the government – a move that would double prices at the pump. Haiti’s powerful gangs have exacerbated the fuel crisis by blocking the country’s main port in Port-au-Prince.

    “We hope the international community sends rapidly the specialized armed forces in response to our demand before things get worse,” Jean Junior Joseph, an adviser to Henry, told CNN on Monday.

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