COP28 wrapped on Wednesday with officials touting a pledge to triple the world’s renewable energy capacity by 2030. It even came twinned with a vow to double global energy-saving efforts over the same period.
Predictably, the promise came with some high-flying rhetoric.
COP28 President Sultan al-Jaber, the oil CEO helming the talks, claimed the goal “aligns more countries and companies around the North Star of keeping 1.5 degrees Celsius within reach than ever before,” referring to the Paris Agreement target for limiting global warming.
But are the flashy pledges as ambitious as they sound? POLITICO crunched the numbers and here’s what we found: While the renewable energy target is well within reach, progress on energy efficiency has been a lot slower.
Countries would need to cut their energy intensity — the amount of energy used per unit of GDP — at least twice as fast between 2023 and 2030 as they did in previous years, which calls for major investments and substantial changes in individual behavior.
To achieve the renewable target, countries will need to bet big on solar and wind. These two technologies are set to account for around 90 percent of new capacity additions, due to their increasing availability and decreasing costs.
Improving energy efficiency is a more complex challenge. It will require action on multiple fronts, from housing and construction to mobility and consumer behavior.
Progress has been unequal and largely concentrated in richer countries, which also tend to attract most of the private investment in green technology. Good headway has been made in some areas like the electrification of transport, while building renovation is lagging.
If world leaders are serious about these pledges, they’ll have to put their money where their mouth is (or convince private investors to do so) and mobilize nearly $30 trillion in green investment between now and 2030, with buildings and the industrial sector taking the lion’s share of these funds.
Pricey, perhaps, but still probably cheaper than environmental catastrophe.
MÁLAGA, Spain — The leader of Israel’s center-left Labor Party says something has gone “very wrong” with the political left around the world, with supposed progressives now aligning themselves with Islamist militants who oppose the rights of women and LGBTQ+ people.
Over a month after Hamas militants attacked Israel, killing about 1,200 people and captured some 240, Israeli officials revised their death toll downwards as Israel wages a retaliatory war against Hamas in Gaza, which has now killed more than 11,000 Palestinians — according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
Mass protests have been held in cities across the EU and U.S. calling for an immediate cease-fire, with many using the slogan “from the river to the sea,” regarded by many Jews and Israelis as a call for the annihilation of the state of Israel but by Palestinians and their supporters as anon-violent rallying cry against the occupation.
At the protests and on university campuses, some protestors describing themselves as left-wing have expressed support for Hamas — proscribed as a terror organization by the U.S., EU and U.K. Tensions in the left-wing camp have already boiled over in France and Britain. The far-left France Unbowed party led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, for example, avoids describing Hamas as terrorists and was the only major political party not to attend a rally against rising antisemitism last weekend. Meanwhile, Keir Starmer, the U.K. Labour Party leader, has been pummelled by the left of his party for refusing to call for a cease-fire.
“I think something very bad is happening on the left,” Labor leader Merav Michaeli told POLITICO in an interview. “It became very, very clear in this attack that people who consider themselves to be democratic, progressive, are supporting a totalitarian terror regime that oppresses women [and] the LGBTQ+ community,” she said on the fringes of an international meeting of Socialist and social democrat parties in Spain.
Some politicians on the far left have primarily blamed Israel for the the latest cycle of violence.
“The more you go to the left, the more there’s a big mix-up. Something went very wrong on the way,” Michaeli told POLITICO, adding that Israel has some “very strong allies” on the center-left.
“I fail to see how shouting jihad and calling for a mass murder of Jews is pro-Palestinian,” she added. “It’s important for me to emphasize to them that when you do not very strongly go against Hamas, and what it does in Gaza including to its own people, you are complicit.”
Israel has imposed a total siege on Gaza, allowing only a trickle of humanitarian aid into the densely-inhabited territory and obliging hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to move south to escape daily bombardments.
Michaeli, a transport minister in the previous Israeli government, is a long-time critic of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, who is leading a far-right coalition and formed a war cabinet with centrist Benny Gantz after October 7. Michaeli called during the interview for Netanyahu to “go now.”
But she also sought to focus attention on the trauma suffered by Israeli society in the wake of the October 7 attacks.
“When I’m speaking to people outside of Israel, then they need to understand that even the biggest peace activists and even the biggest believers in the two state solutions are now under a horrible attack,” she said.
Protesters demand immediate ceasefire in Gaza at Place de la Republique in Brussels | John Thys/AFP via Getty Images
Labor and its antecedent political movements dominated Israeli politics for some 30 years after the birth of the nation in 1948, with members including such prominent politicians as Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres and EhudBarak. But as Israel shifted to the right, Labor was sidelined as a political force, with now only four members – including Michaeli herself — in the 120-seat Knesset.
“The way to rebuild Israel is to take it back,” she said, before correcting herself: “It’s not even back, it’s to put it on the Zionist democratic, liberal path.” Michaeli explained that this means pushing for a two-state solution as outlined under the Oslo accords that Rabin, her predecessor as Labor Party leader, negotiated in the 1990s.
Cease-fire divisions
At the meeting in Spain, calls by some national parties from countries such as France, Ireland and Belgium for a cease-fire in Gaza divided delegates and did not make it into the final agreed text. The left more broadly has been rocked by divisions over how to respond to the war in Gaza.
Michaeli, whose party is a mere observer to the Party of European Socialists, could not directly negotiate the final text that was agreed upon in Málaga.
But she said: “[Calling for a] cease-fire now is giving permission to Hamas to continue rearming itself, continue stealing food, water, medicine and fuel from its own people and yes, rebasing itself.” She suggested that calls for a cease-fire were being influenced by “PR” for Hamas.
She put the blame for thousands of civilian deaths in Gaza on Hamas, rather than on the Israeli army, whose actions she defended.
“They are dying because Hamas is using them as human shields, because they have based everything from equipment to missiles to their headquarters in the midst of the most civilian functions there are,” Michaeli said.
She criticized what she perceived as a lack of support among EU politicians to push for the release of some 240 hostages kidnapped by Hamas. “I would have loved to hear more about that than just a mention, at least as much as they’re talking about the humanitarian needs in Gaza,” she said.
The Israeli army bombed a convoy of ambulances near the largest hospital in Gaza on Friday, an attack that “horrified” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
The facility — Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City — is overcrowded with patients and serves as a refuge for some 20,000 displaced people, according to local health authorities.
The attack resulted in 15 deaths and at least 60 wounded civilians, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS). In a statement, the PRCS said the convoy of five ambulances tried to transport casualties toward the Rafah border crossing, but was returning to the hospital because the road was blocked with rubble when it was targeted by two missiles.
Israel acknowledged that it attacked an ambulance because it was used by the Hamas militia. The Israeli forces have been insisting on the evacuation of this hospital, claiming it houses the underground command center of the Islamist militants.
The Gaza Strip — which is controlled by Hamas and home to 2.3 million people — has been under siege by Israel for nearly four weeks, limiting all access to food, water and fuel in retaliation for the militant group’s surprise attack on Israel on October 7, which killed more than 1,400 people.
“I am horrified by the reported attack in Gaza on an ambulance convoy outside Al Shifa hospital,” U.N. chief Guterres said Friday evening. “The images of bodies strewn on the street outside the hospital are harrowing.”
“For nearly one month, civilians in Gaza, including children and women, have been besieged, denied aid, killed, and bombed out of their homes,” Guterres added. “This must stop.”
Another Israeli bombing struck a U.N. school in the Jabalia refugee camp, the largest in Gaza, leaving more than a dozen dead and at least 50 injured, according to Hamas.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in Tel Aviv on Friday asking Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to do “more to protect civilians” in Gaza and the West Bank and “everything possible” to allow the entry of humanitarian aid through Egypt, which is limited to dozens of trucks per day, with no fuel.
The Israel Defense Forces spokesperson for Arab media has announced that the Israeli army will allow traffic on the Salah al-Din road for three hours Saturday afternoon.
Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in Beijing this week — a rare international visit by the Russian leader.
During the October 17-18 visit to Beijing, Putin will attend a forum marking 10 years of the Belt and Road Initiative, China’s global infrastructure program that has helped boost its influence worldwide.
Washington and Brussels have been eyeing with alarm the relationship between China and Russia, with Beijing refusing to condemn Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, even as it has voiced support for the principle of territorial integrity.
Russia has increased its energy exports to China as it grapples with Western sanctions imposed as a response to the invasion of Ukraine.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell urged China during a three-day trip to the country that wrapped up this weekend to use its influence with Russia, particularly on the U.N. Security Council, to stop the war in the country. He also warned Beijing that “any direct military support to Russia … would be a serious concern for us.”
The European Union is expected to have a summit with China before the end of the year.
This week’s Belt and Road Initiative Forum takes place against the background of a darkening economic picture for China, which has seen an economic slowdown, propelled in part by a property downturn. Representatives from more than 100 countries are expected to attend the forum in Beijing, including Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
At the same time, Defense Minister Li Shangfu has not been seen in public for more than six weeks, raising questions about his whereabouts and safety.
The visit to Beijing would mark Putin’s second international trip since the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued a warrant for the Russian leader’s arrest in March over the forced transport of children to Russia from Ukraine. Putin last week attended a summit of ex-Soviet nations in Kyrgyzstan. Neither Kyrgyzstan nor China is a party to the ICC.
CORRECTION: This story has been updated to indicated that the China trip would be Putin’s second international trip since the ICC issued its arrest warrant in March.
Fierce firefights and heavy shelling echo once again around the mountains of Nagorno-Karabakh, an isolated region at the very edge of Europe that has seen several major wars since the fall of the Soviet Union.
On Tuesday, the South Caucasus nation of Azerbaijan announced its armed forces launched “local anti-terrorist activities” in Nagorno-Karabakh, which is inside Azerbaijan’s borders but is controlled as a breakaway state by its ethnic Armenian population.
Now, with fighting raging and allegations of an impending “genocide” reaching fever pitch, all eyes are on the decades-old conflict that threatens to draw in some of the world’s leading military powers.
What is happening?
For weeks, Armenia and international observers have warned that Azerbaijan was massing its armed forces along the heavily fortified line of contact in Nagorno-Karabakh, preparing to stage an offensive against local ethnic Armenian troops. Clips shared online showed Azerbaijani vehicles daubed with an upside-down ‘A’-symbol, reminiscent of the ‘Z’ sign painted onto Russian vehicles ahead of the invasion of Ukraine last year.
In the early hours of Tuesday, Karabakh Armenian officials reported a major offensive by Azerbaijan was underway, with air raid sirens sounding in Stepankert, the de facto capital. The region’s estimated 100,000 residents have been told by Azerbaijan to “evacuate” via “humanitarian corridors” leading to Armenia. However, Azerbaijani forces control all of the entry and exit points and many locals fear they will not be allowed to pass safely.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s top foreign policy advisor, Hikmet Hajiyev, insisted to POLITICO the “goal is to neutralize military infrastructure” and denied civilians were being targeted. However, unverified photographs posted online appear to show damaged apartment buildings, and the Karabakh Armenian human rights ombudsman, Gegham Stepanyan, reported several children have been injured in the attacks.
Concern is growing over the fate of the civilians effectively trapped in the crossfire, as well as the risk of yet another full-blown war in the former Soviet Union.
How did we get here?
During the Soviet era, Nagorno-Karabakh was an autonomous region inside the Azerbaijani Soviet Socialist Republic, home to both ethnic Armenians and Azerbaijanis, but the absence of internal borders made its status largely unimportant. That all changed when Moscow lost control of its peripheral republics, and Nagorno-Karabakh was formally left inside Azerbaijan’s internationally recognized territory.
Amid the collapse of the USSR from 1988 to 1994, Armenian and Azerbaijani forces fought a grueling series of battles over the region, with the Armenians taking control of swathes of land and forcing the mass exodus of hundreds of thousands of ethnic Azerbaijanis, razing several cities to the ground. Since then, citing a 1991 referendum — boycotted by Azerbaijanis — the Karabakh-Armenians have unilaterally declared independence and maintained a de facto independent state.
For nearly three decades that situation remained stable, with the two sides locked in a stalemate that was maintained by a line of bunkers, landmines and anti-tank defenses, frequently given as an example of one of the world’s few “frozen conflicts.”
However, that all changed in 2020, when Azerbaijan launched a 44-day war to regain territory, conquering hundreds of square kilometers around all sides of Nagorno-Karabakh. That left the ethnic Armenian exclave connected to Armenia proper by a single road, the Lachin Corridor — supposedly under the protection of Russian peacekeepers as part of a Moscow-brokered ceasefire agreement.
What is the blockade?
With Russia’s ability to maintain the status quo rapidly dwindling in the face of its increasingly catastrophic war in Ukraine, Azerbaijan has moved to take control of all access to the region. In December, as part of a dispute supposedly over illegal gold mining, self-declared “eco-activists” — operating with the support of the country’s authoritarian government — staged a sit-in on the road, stopping civilian traffic and forcing the local population to rely on Russian peacekeepers and the Red Cross for supplies.
That situation has worsened in the past two months, with an Azerbaijani checkpoint newly erected on the Lachin Corridor refusing to allow the passage of any humanitarian aid, save for the occasional one-off delivery. In August, amid warnings of empty shelves, malnourishment and a worsening humanitarian crisis, Luis Moreno Ocampo, the former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, published a report calling the situation “an ongoing genocide.”
Azerbaijan denies it is blockading Nagorno-Karabakh, with Hajiyev telling POLITICO the country was prepared to reopen the Lachin Corridor if the Karabakh-Armenians accepted transport routes from inside Azerbaijani-held territory. Aliyev has repeatedly called on Armenian forces in Nagorno-Karabakh to stand down, local politicians to resign and those living there to accept being ruled as part of Azerbaijan.
Why have things escalated now?
Over the past few months, the U.S., EU and Russia have urged Azerbaijan to keep faith during diplomatic talks designed to end the conflict once and for all, rather than seeking a military solution to assert control over the entire region.
As part of the talks in Washington, Brussels and Moscow, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan made a series of unprecedented concessions, going as far as recognizing Nagorno-Karabakh as Azerbaijani territory. However, his government maintains it cannot sign a peace deal that does not include internationally guaranteed rights and securities for the Karabakh-Armenians.
The situation has worsened in the past two months, with an Azerbaijani checkpoint newly erected on the Lachin Corridor refusing to allow the passage of any humanitarian aid | Tofik babayev/AFP via Getty Images
Aliyev has rejected any such arrangement outright, insisting there should be no foreign presence on Azerbaijan’s sovereign territory. He insists that as citizens of Azerbaijan, those living there will have the same rights as any other citizen — but has continued fierce anti-Armenian rhetoric including describing the separatists as “dogs,” while the government issued a postage stamp following the 2020 war featuring a worker in a hazmat suit “decontaminating” Nagorno-Karabakh.
Unwilling to accept the compromise, Azerbaijan has accused Armenia of stalling the peace process. According to former Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov, a military escalation is needed to force an agreement. “It can be a short-term clash, or it can be a war,” he added.
Facing growing domestic pressure amid dwindling supplies, former Karabakh-Armenian President Arayik Harutyunyan stood down and called elections, lambasted as a provocation by Azerbaijan and condemned by the EU, Ukraine and others.
Azerbaijan also alleged Armenian saboteurs were behind landmine blasts it says killed six military personnel in the region, while presenting no evidence to support the claim.
What’s Russia doing?
Armenia is formally an ally of Russia, and a member of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) military bloc. However, Russian peacekeepers deployed to Nagorno-Karabakh have proven entirely unwilling or unable to keep Azerbaijani advances in check, while Moscow declined to offer Pashinyan the support he demanded after strategic high ground inside Armenia’s borders were captured in an Azerbaijani offensive last September.
Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko previously said Azerbaijan has better relations with the CSTO than Armenia, despite not being a member, and described Aliyev as “our guy.”
Since then, Armenia — the most democratic country in the region — has sought to distance itself from the Kremlin, inviting in an EU civilian observer mission to the border. That strategy has picked up pace in recent days, with Pashinyan telling POLITICO in an interview that the country can no longer rely on Russia for its security. Instead, the South Caucasus nation has dispatched humanitarian aid to Ukraine and Pashinyan’s wife visited Kyiv to show her support, while hosting U.S. troops for exercises.
Moscow, which has a close economic and political relationship with Azerbaijan, reacted furiously, summoning the Armenian ambassador.
In a message posted on Telegram on Tuesday, Dmitry Medvedev, former president of Russia and secretary of its security council, said Pashinyan “decided to blame Russia for his botched defeat. He gave up part of his country’s territory. He decided to flirt with NATO, and his wife took biscuits to our enemies. Guess what fate awaits him…”
Who supports whom?
The South Caucasus is a tangled web of shifting alliances.
Russia aside, Armenia has built close relations with neighboring Iran, which has vowed to protect it, as well as India and France. French President Emmanuel Macron has previously joined negotiations in support of Pashinyan and the country is home to a large and historic Armenian diaspora.
Azerbaijan, meanwhile, operates on a “one nation, two states” basis with Turkey, with which it has deep cultural, linguistic and historical ties. It also receives large shipments of weaponry and military hardware from Israel, while providing the Middle Eastern nation with gas.
The EU has turned to Azerbaijan to help replace Russia as a provider of energy. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen made an official visit to the capital, Baku, last summer in a bid to secure increased exports of natural gas, describing the country as a “reliable, trustworthy partner.”
YEREVAN, Armenia — Azerbaijan has agreed to reopen the only highway linking Armenia to the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh provided local leaders accept aid from Azerbaijan as well, a senior Azerbaijani official told POLITICO on Saturday.
The news comes after authorities in the ethnic Armenian-controlled exclave — inside Azerbaijan’s internationally recognized borders — announced earlier in the day that it would accept humanitarian shipments from the Russian Red Cross via an alternative road from Aghdam, inside Azerbaijani government-held territory.
According to Hikmet Hajiyev, foreign policy adviser to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, “Azerbaijan expressed its consent as a goodwill gesture to ensure simultaneous opening” of the so-called Lachin Corridor for ICRC cargo. The road connects the mountainous territory to Armenia. The acceptance, he said, would pave the way for a separate deal to allow passage from Armenia. “In the Lachin checkpoint, Azerbaijan’s customs and border regime must be observed,” he said.
For close to two months, aid organizations including the Red Cross have said they have been unable to transport supplies of food and fuel into Nagorno-Karabakh, despite a 2020 ceasefire agreement between the two sides guaranteeing free use of the road under the supervision of Russian peacekeepers. With essential provisions running low, local Armenians say a humanitarian crisis is already unfolding and the former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Luis Moreno Ocampo, last month issued a report warning that a “genocide” was under way.
Both the U.S. and the EU have urged Azerbaijan to reopen the Lachin Corridor. The South Caucasus country denies it is orchestrating a blockade, and has insisted the Karabakh Armenians must accept humanitarian supplies from inside Azerbaijan.
Arayik Harutyunyan, the former de facto president of the unrecognized Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, told POLITICO in July that he would refuse to accept the supplies despite a deteriorating humanitarian situation because “Azerbaijan created this crisis and cannot be the solution to it.”
Harutyunyan, who resigned last month amid the ongoing crisis, was due to be replaced on Saturday in a presidential election. However, according to Hajiyev, the “sham elections” are a “serious setback and counterproductive” for the situation.
Instead, he reiterated a call from the Azerbaijani government for the Karabakh Armenians to lay down their arms and accept being governed as part of Azerbaijan. “It is the only way to a lasting peace where Armenian and Azerbaijani residents of Karabakh can live and coexist,” he said.
Hajiyev later clarified in a statement on social media that the Lachin Corridor would not be opened immediately, but under the terms of a deal allowing indefinite access for Azerbaijani aid from Aghdam.
Ukraine is threatening to take Brussels and EU member countries to the World Trade Organization if they fail to lift restrictions on its agricultural exports to the bloc this month.
The country’s grain exports — its main trade commodity — are currently banned from the markets of Poland, Hungary and three other EU countries under a deal struck with the European Commission earlier this year to protect farmers from an influx of cheaper produce from their war-torn neighbor.
The glut, triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its blockade of the country’s traditional Black Sea export routes, has driven a wedge between Ukraine and the EU’s eastern frontline states which have been among the strongest backers of Kyiv’s military fightback.
The restrictions, already extended once, are due to expire on September 15. Amid speculation that Commission President Ursula von der Leyen will let them lapse, Poland and Hungary have threatened to impose their own unilateral import bans, in violation of the bloc’s common trade rules.
“With full respect and gratitude to Poland, in case of introduction of any bans after [September 15], Ukraine will bring the case against Poland and the EU to the World Trade Organization,” Taras Kachka, Ukraine’s deputy economy minister, told POLITICO.
Kyiv has argued that the restrictions violate the EU-Ukraine free-trade agreement from 2014.
Kachka’s comments backed up a warning this week from Igor Zhovka, a senior aide to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. If Brussels fails to act against the countries that violate the trade agreement, Kyiv “reserves the choice of legal mechanisms on how to respond,” Zhovka told Interfax-Ukraine.
The Ukrainian foreign ministry said Kyiv reserved the right to initiate arbitration proceedings under its association agreement with the EU, or to apply to the WTO.
“We do not intend to retaliate immediately given the spirit of friendship and solidarity between Ukraine and the EU,” explained Kachka. But, he added, the systemic threat to Ukrainian interests “forces us to bring this case to the WTO.”
Crisis warning
Russia’s war of aggression and partial occupation has cut Ukraine’s grain production in half, compared to before the war, while Moscow’s withdrawal in July from a U.N.-brokered deal allowing safe passage for some seaborne exports has raised concerns that EU-backed export corridors won’t be able to cope.
The bloc’s agriculture commissioner, Janusz Wojciechowski, struggled to explain to European lawmakers at a hearing on Thursday how Brussels would handle the situation after September 15.
Wojciechowski, who is Polish, also appeared to sympathize with the right-wing government in Warsaw, which has latched on to the fight over Ukrainian grain as a campaign issue ahead of mid-October general elections in which it is seeking an unprecedented third term.
The bloc’s agriculture commissioner, Janusz Wojciechowski, struggled to explain to European lawmakers how Brussels would handle the situation after September 15 | Olivier Hoslet/EFE via EPA
The curbs should be extended at least until the end of the year; otherwise “we will have a huge crisis again in the five frontline member states,” Wojciechowski said, adding that this was his personal position and not that of the EU executive.
The Commission’s decision in April to restrict imports to the five countries, which came with a €100 million aid package, met widespread disapproval from other EU governments and European lawmakers for undermining the integrity of the bloc’s single market.
Kachka, in written comments sent in response to questions from POLITICO, said there was no evidence of price deviations or a significant increase in grain supplies that would justify extending the import restrictions. Kyiv had engaged in “constructive cooperation” with the Commission, the five member states, as well as Moldova, a key transit hub for Ukrainian exports to the EU.
“We got a lot of support for ensuring better transit of the goods through the territory of neighboring member states, including Poland and Hungary,” Kachka said. “During [the] last two months we significantly advanced cooperation with Romania on transportation of goods from Ukraine.”
Check out BT in his tiny aviator costume! That’s what this sweet guy wore to celebrate sitting shotgun next to the pilot, on his rescue flight from Texas to Massachusetts.
BT could easily have not made this journey. He is diabetic, and has a disease called feline leukemia (FeLV)—a virus that affects a cat’s immune system.,. In many shelters, cats with FeLV are euthanized as a matter of course. This is largely based on the unfounded belief that people won’t want to adopt cats with the illness because it affects the animal’s life span.
But APA! has proven this is not the case. wWe’ve shown that not only can cats with FeLV live long, healthy lives, but many adopters even seek these cats out. them out, but because so many FeLV cats are euthanized in shelters, it can be hard to find one who is available.
That’s what happened with BT, whose adopters were in Massachusetts. sThey loved him from the moment they saw his photo, and so we caught him a transport flight to his new home, on a plane that was otherwise full of dogs.
APA!’s Transport Program means thousands of adoptable pets facing euthanasia in crowded Texas shelters are able to reach in communities where they are welcomed into new homes. Transport can also mean aviator suits on kitties who don’t normally get to live, in the current sheltering system. But when they do, when they do, they are so special, so wanted, and so loved, that people will move mountains—and airplanes—to get them to home.
Loki spent months at an under-resourced shelter in Texas. a The brown-eyed, sweet pup had lots of energy and love to give but the crowded shelter did not provide the opportunity for him to find a home. As time passed, more dogs entered the facility, which increased the risk that Loki might be moved to a euthanasia list.
We knew there was a family out there that would be a perfect match for Loki and we were determined to create an opportunity for this heartfelt connection to occur.We sent word out about Loki to our Transport Program destination partners, and eventually a potential placement came through in Toronto. We worked with our destination rescue partners until a placement came through, with a shelter in Toronto—then we got Loki onto a ride to safety up north.
Loki’s adopters sent us an update soon after that. They said he was a perfect gentleman in their home, and “an absolute angel.”
“He’s made himself at home,” his family told us. “We are so blessed and thankful.”
Loki loves to cuddle, and his family shared photos of him doing just that—snuggling up on the couch, in his new home, with his very own people, looking for all the world like that’s exactly where he was always meant to be.
Debris from a large-scale Russian missile attack on Kyiv has killed two people and injured several more, in the largest air strike on the Ukrainian capital since spring.
In the early hours of Wednesday morning, Russia launched 28 missiles and 16 drones, according to the Ukrainian Air Force. Ukrainian air defense forces destroyed all missiles and 15 out of the 16 drones within the regions of Kyiv, Cherkasy, Odesa, Mykolaiv and Zhytomyr.
“Tonight, almost all enemy air targets destroyed,” Air Force Commander Mykola Oleshchuk said on Telegram. “Thanks to all the defenders who joined in repelling the air attack!”
Debris from the downed missiles and drones fell in the Darnytskyi and Shevchenkivskyi districts of Kyiv, killing two people and injuring three more. The two victims were security guards, aged 26 and 36 years old. Several fires broke out in the two districts, damaging nonresidential buildings.
This was the largest strike on Kyiv in months, said Kyiv’s City Military Administration.
“Kyiv has not experienced such a powerful attack since spring,” Sergey Popko, head of CMVA, said on Telegram. “The enemy carried out a massive, combined attack using drones and missiles.”
Mykhailo Podolyak, adviser to the head of Zelenskyy’s office, called the attack on Kyiv an “unquestionably deliberate attack on the civilian population.”
Some fires were reported outside of the city as well, in the wider Kyiv region, where several residential buildings were damaged.
Also in the early hours of Wednesday morning, Russia said it shot down multiple attempted air strikes by Ukrainian forces over several regions.
In the Pskov region, located on Russia’s western flank near the borders of Latvia and Estonia, several military transport aircraft caught fire as a result of the attack, reported Russian state-run news agency TASS.
In central Russia, the Russian defense ministry said it shot down all attempted air strikes and no casualties were reported. Alexander Bogomaz, governor of the Bryansk region where seven drones were reportedly shot down, said Ukrainian forces tried to attack a TV tower in the region, without success.
Three airports in Moscow were temporarily closed Wednesday, but the restrictions were later lifted, TASS reported.
Moscow also said it thwarted an attack east of Snake Island in the Black Sea on Wednesday, destroying a Ukrainian high-speed military boat.
Ukraine’s drone attacks have increasingly targeted Russian territory in recent months, including its capital, Moscow. Ukraine did not immediately comment on the attacks or claim responsibility.
The accident in the Thane region of Maharashtra state killed five engineers and 12 labourers.
At least 17 workers have been crushed to death in western India when a giant crane collapsed at a highway construction site, according to police.
The accident took place on the Samruddhi Expressway in the Thane region of Maharashtra state early on Tuesday.
A crane used to lift and place girders collapsed, killing people working at the site where an overbridge was being built, an official at the Thane police control room said. Five of the people killed were engineers, while the rest were labourers.
Teams of rescue workers from the National Disaster Response Force, the fire department and police rushed to the site, using cranes to remove debris and rescue trapped people.
Three injured people were being treated in hospital, the Indian Express newspaper reported.
Pained by the tragic mishap in Shahapur, Maharashtra. My deepest condolences to the families of those who lost their lives. Our thoughts and prayers are with those who are injured. NDRF and local administration are working at the site of the mishap and all possible measures are…
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed his condolences in a message on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.
“Pained by the tragic mishap in Shahapur, Maharashtra,” the prime minister’s office said in a post. “My deepest condolences to the families of those who lost their lives.”
The government said it would provide relief assistance of 200,000 rupees ($2,432) for the families of the dead and 50,000 rupees ($608) for the injured.
KYIV — An overnight naval drone attack against a Russian tanker in the Black Sea signals a potential new front in the Ukraine war, with Kyiv delivering its strongest message to date that it is willing to target Moscow’s all-important shipments of oil and fuel.
The battle for supremacy in the Black Sea is ramping up fast, with massive implications for global energy and food security. The attack on the tanker off Crimea came only a day after another Ukrainian marine drone — a flat, arrowhead-shaped vessel packed with explosives — targeted a Russian naval base near the port of Novorossiysk, badly damaging a warship.
“The tanker was damaged in the Kerch Strait during an attack by the Ukrainian Armed Forces,” Russia’s state-run TASS news agency reported on Saturday. “The crew is safe, the Maritime Rescue Center informed us. The engine room was damaged. Two tugboats arrived at the scene of an emergency with a tanker in the Kerch Strait, the question of the towing vessel is being resolved,” it said.
Russia’s Federal Marine and River Transport Agency reported it was a SIG oil and chemical tanker — a ship whose owner, St. Petersburg-based company Transpetrochart, was sanctioned by the U.S. in 2019 for supplying jet fuel for Russian forces in Syria.
Tensions are rising in the Black Sea after Russia last month announced it was withdrawing from the U.N.-brokered Black Sea Grain Initiative and started attacking Ukrainian ports on the Black Sea coast and on the Danube River with missiles, destroying tens of thousands of tons of Ukrainian grain.
After those attacks and the blockade, Ukrainian officials issued a statement in July that Russian vessels will be no longer safe in the Black Sea. Kyiv’s defense ministry said in a statement that such vessels “may be considered by Ukraine as carrying military cargo with all the corresponding risks” from midnight Friday.
On Saturday, Kyiv announced a “war risk area” around Russian ports on the Black Sea, specifically citing the ports of Novorossiysk, Anapa, Gelendzhik, Tuapse, Sochi and Taman. The declaration will be in effect from August 23 “until further notice,” it said.
‘Completely legal’
Marine Traffic, an online maritime tracking site, has the latest position of the SIG tanker fixed near the Kerch Strait “at anchor.”
Russia’s Marine and River Transport Agency reported all 11 crew members on board were safe and that the tanker was struck in the engine room near the waterline on the starboard side, presumably as a result of an attack by a marine drone. By morning, the water pouring to the engine room has been staunched, and the vessel was afloat, Russian official said.
Ukraine almost never directly takes responsibility for these kinds of attacks. However, Vasyl Malyuk, head of the Security Service of Ukraine, or SBU, has previously claimed responsibility for the attacks on the Crimean bridge and hinted that there will be more similar attacks soon.
“Anything that happens with the ships of the Russian Federation or the Crimean Bridge is an absolutely logical and effective step in relation to the enemy. Moreover, such special operations are conducted in the territorial waters of Ukraine and are completely legal,” Malyuk said in a statement on Saturday.
“So, if the Russians want that to stop, they should leave the territorial waters of Ukraine and our land. And the sooner they do it, the better it will be for them. Because we will one hundred percent defeat the enemy in this war.”
Waters near Russian-occupied Crimea and the Kerch Strait are Ukrainian territorial waters, according to international maritime law.
“Since 1991, Russia has systematically used the territorial waters of Ukraine to organize armed aggressions: against the Georgian people and against the people of Syria,” the Ukrainian Defense Ministry said in a social media post on Saturday.
“Today, they terrorize peaceful Ukrainian cities and destroy grain, condemning hundreds of millions to starvation. It’s time to say to the Russian killers, ‘It’s enough.’ There are no more safe waters or peaceful harbors for you in the Black and Azov Seas,” the ministry said.
African leaders have long been reluctant to criticize Russia and now that President Vladimir Putin has killed off a deal to allow Ukraine to export grain, they know they are more dependent than ever on Moscow’s largesse to feed millions of people at risk of going hungry.
Having canceled the pact on Monday, Moscow unleashed four nights of attacks on the Ukrainian ports of Odesa and Chornomorsk — two vital export facilities — damaging the infrastructure of global and Ukrainian traders and destroying 60,000 tons of grain. In the latest assault, on Thursday night, a barrage of Kalibr missiles hit the granaries of an agricultural enterprise in Odesa.
“The decision by Russia to exit the Black Sea Grain Initiative is a stab [in] the back,” tweeted Abraham Korir Sing’Oei, a senior foreign ministry official from Kenya, one of the African countries that has received donations of Russian fertilizer in recent months.
The resulting rise in global food prices “disproportionately impacts countries in the Horn of Africa already impacted by drought,” he added.
Sing’Oei’s was a solitary voice, however. Rather than reproaching Moscow, African leaders have remained largely silent as they prepare to attend a summit hosted by Putin in St Petersburg next week. This follows an African mission led by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa last month to Kyiv and St Petersburg in a bid to broker peace.
The diplomatic stakes could hardly be higher.
Putin had been due to make a return visit to Africa next month to attend a summit of the BRICS emerging economies in Johannesburg. That trip has been called off, however, “by mutual agreement” to avoid exposing the Kremlin chief to the risk of arrest under an indictment for war crimes issued by the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
Without the Black Sea Grain Initiative, a deal brokered a year ago by the United Nations and Turkey that enabled Ukraine to export 33 million metric tons of grains and oilseeds, many African governments now have nowhere else to turn to but Russia.
“It’s going to be based on political alignments,” said Samuel Ramani, an Oxford-based academic and author of a book on Russia’s resurgent influence in Africa.
Comparing Russia’s tactics to blackmail, Ramani added: “They’re going to be offering free grain to some, they’re going to be selling to others. It’s full-fledged grain diplomacy.”
No deal
Russia said on Monday it would no longer guarantee the safety of ships passing through a transit corridor as it announced its official withdrawal from the deal, declaring the northwestern Black Sea to be once again “temporarily dangerous.” It followed up by threatening to fire on all ships going across the Black Sea to Ukrainian ports, sparking a tit-for-tat warning from Kyiv that it would do the same to all vessels sailing to Russian-controlled Black Sea ports.
Over the 12 months it functioned, the grain deal helped bring down global food prices by as much as 20 percent from the peak set in the aftermath of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. It also provided aid agencies with vital supplies.
Russia repeatedly claimed it has not seen the benefits of the three-times extended agreement, however.
Although Western sanctions carve out exemptions for food and fertilizer the Kremlin argues that sanctions targeting Russian individuals and its state agriculture bank are hindering its own exports, thus contravening a second deal agreed last July under which the U.N. committed to facilitating these exports for a three-year period.
The Kremlin said Wednesday that it would resume talks on the Black Sea grain deal only if the U.N. implements this part of the deal within the next three months.
Propaganda war
Another of Moscow’s criticisms is that cargoes of Ukrainian grain have headed mostly to rich countries; not to those in Africa and Asia bearing the brunt of the global food crisis.
Over the last year, a quarter of all the grain and oilseeds shipped under the initiative have headed to China, the largest recipient, while some 18 percent went to Spain and 10 percent to Turkey, according to U.N. data.
This is not the whole story, however. Trade data from the World Bank shows that much of the wheat exported to Turkey is processed and re-exported, as flour, pasta and other products, to Africa and the Middle East.
Most importantly, all grain that flows onto global markets reduces prices, wherever it ends up, counter the U.N. and others.
Russia has canceled the Black Sea deal and unleashed attacks on the Ukrainian ports of Odesa and Chornomorsk | Chris McGrath/Getty Images
“It is not a question of where the Black Sea food actually goes; it is a question of it [bringing] international prices down, so whether you are a rich country or poor country, you can benefit,” said Arif Husain, the U.N. World Food Programme’s chief economist, speaking at an event on the Black Sea Grain Initiative in Rome recently.
These arguments have been at the center of a months-long propaganda battle between Moscow and Kyiv over who can rightly claim to be feeding the world and who is responsible for soaring food prices.
In the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, the Kremlin’s narrative — that western sanctions are to blame — was quick to take hold in many parts of Africa.
Ukraine sought to counter this with a humanitarian food program, Grain from Ukraine, launched in November 2022, but shiploads of fertilizer donated to countries, including Malawi and Kenya, served to sweeten the Kremlin’s message.
“A true friend knows no weather. A true friend comes to the rescue when you need them the most. And you just demonstrated that to us,” Malawi’s Agriculture Minister Sam Dalitso Kawale said upon receiving a fertilizer gift from Russian firm Uralchem in March.
Feeling the pinch
Now, countries like Malawi need friends in Moscow more than ever. Not only does the end of the grain deal cut them off from flows of Ukrainian grain, leaving them dependent on Russian supplies, but it also pushes up prices.
Moscow’s withdrawal from the agreement is unlikely to have the same impact on prices as its full-scale invasion in February 2022. Over the last year, Ukraine has opened up alternative export routes and a slowdown in shipments moving under the initiative also meant commodity markets had been expecting Moscow to quit the deal.
While Ukraine can continue to export grain through alternative routes, these come with extra logistical and transport costs, squeezing prices for Ukrainian farmers, at one end, and pushing up costs for buyers, at the other.
For food-insecure countries in the Horn of Africa even a small increase in prices could spell disaster, said Shashwat Saraf, emergency director in East Africa for the International Rescue Committee (IRC).
Domestic production has dropped amid conflict and severe drought, leaving the region increasingly reliant on food imports and food aid. As such, higher food prices will hit hard, he said, adding that traders already report “feeling the pinch.”
With the cost of food rising, the IRC and other humanitarian organizations will be forced to either reduce the number of people they provide cash transfers or reduce the value of these themselves — and this at a time when the number of food insecure people is rising, said Saraf. “When we should be expanding our coverage, we will be actually reducing [it].”
Slap in the face
African leaders attending Putin’s summit next week will be silent on such issues, predicted Christopher Fomunyoh, African regional director at the U.S. National Democratic Institute for International Affairs and one of the Grain from Ukraine ambassadors appointed by Kyiv.
But they must not return empty-handed again, he said. Russia’s discontinuation of the grain deal, following the South African-led visit to St Petersburg, is a “slap in the face,” Fomunyoh told POLITICO. “Their own credibility is now at stake. And my hope is that they will have to speak out in order to not further lose credibility with their own populations.”
In 2022, Russia’s narrative was dominant in Africa, but that has slowly changed through the course of this year, he explained, adding that Africans were starting to see through Moscow’s propaganda.
“There is always a time delay,” said Fomunyoh. “But my sense is that in the days and weeks to come, people are going to see very clearly [that] the destruction of infrastructure in Odessa, the destruction of stock, wheat, and grain in Chornomorsk is contributing to scarcity and the inflation in prices.”
A top-secret U.S. Navy listening system detected the implosion of the tourist submersible Titan shortly after its disappearance Sunday, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.
According to the report, the unnamed, highly sensitive acoustic-detection system — used to spot enemy submarines — heard a sound consistent with an underwater implosion around the time the submersible went missing, and in the area where a debris field was found Thursday.
All five passengers on the missing submersible that has captured the world’s attention over the past week are believed to “have sadly been lost,” the tour company revealed on Thursday.
OceanGate Expeditions released a statement Thursday afternoon that the Titan submersible’s pilot and the tour company’s chief executive, Stockton Rush, along with passengers including British-Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman, British billionaire businessman Hamish Harding, and Titanic specialist Paul-Henri Nargeolet have been killed.
“We now believe that our CEO Stockton Rush, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood, Hamish Harding, and Paul-Henri Nargeolet, have sadly been lost,” OceanGate said in a statement.
“These men were true explorers who shared a distinct spirit of adventure, and a deep passion for exploring and protecting the world’s oceans. Our hearts are with these five souls and every member of their families during this tragic time. We grieve the loss of life and joy they brought to everyone they knew.”
The company did not release specifics on what led to the “loss of life,” but Rear Adm. John Mauger of the U.S. Coast Guard revealed during a press conference Thursday afternoon that the debris found in the search area of the missing submersible was consistent with “catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber,” presumably killing all five people on board.
“Upon this determination, we immediately notified the families,” said Mauger, who has been leading the search. “On behalf of the United States Coast Guard, I offer my deepest condolences to the families.”
The submersible Titan was launched from a hired Canadian research icebreaker, Polar Prince, on Sunday morning to visit the Titanic wreckage site located in a remote area of the North Atlantic. The diving vessel went missing that same morning and was unable to communicate with the surface roughly an hour and 45 minutes after it began its descent, the Coast Guard said. This has spurred a search-and-rescue operation in the ensuing days that amounted to a race against the clock, as the Titan’s estimated 96-hour oxygen supply was expected to run out early Thursday.
Plenty of questions remain, including how, why and when this implosion may have happened. Mauger said that it’s still “too early to tell,” as this is “an incredibly complex operating environment on the seafloor over two miles beneath the surface.” But a top-secret U.S. Navy listening system may have detected the implosion of the Titan shortly after its disappearance on Sunday, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Ilorin, Nigeria — In Nigeria, wedding ceremonies spilling over from one day into another are as frequent as the parties are colourful; the one Ibrahim Mohammed attended on Sunday, June 11 in the Egboti community of Niger state was no different.
So after the party, he set forth before dawn on Monday for home: Egbu village in the Pategi local government area of nearby Kwara state – also in central Nigeria.
Since the road connecting both communities was in a bad state, he boarded a large boat, alongside more than 200 other wedding guests and one motorcycle for the 40-minute ride across the Niger, the river that gives Nigeria its name. The clouds were still dark as their boat sailed from the waterside.
Only a few minutes into the journey, the travellers heard the sides of the boat break. It had hit something. Water rushed into the boat. The engine stopped.
Afraid, they began jumping into the Niger to swim back to shore.
But as Kwara state police spokesman Okasanmi Ajayi told Al Jazeera on Wednesday, 106 of them never made it. They were pulled from the water, lifeless. Many were women and children. All were related to the groom.
Another 144 were rescued, including Mohammed.
“I feel very sad …. we have had boat accidents before but this kind of thing has never happened to us in our life before,” the 26-year-old undergraduate of Ahman Pategi University in Pategi, told Al Jazeera. “Most of the people in our community lost some family members.”
An unknown number of passengers are still missing and their families are still waiting for news.
Help was slow in coming, survivors say. And reports of the tragedy barely made it to the media.
“The nearest police station to that place was about four to five hours’ drive and by the time the police got there on a rescue mission … it was late,” Ajayi told Al Jazeera. “As I speak, the police are still on ground to see if any other survivor or dead body could be recovered.”
Boat accidents are a regular occurrence in Nigeria, due to multiple factors including flooding and lack of safety gear.
Last September, 33 people reportedly drowned after a similar incident in Niger state. In April, five people died in another boat accident in the southern state of Bayelsa.
‘She clung to the children’
After Mohammed swam to the shore, he saw other men from the boat, all jumping back into the water to help pull others to safety.
“I personally helped two adults and one child, but we soon got tired because the people in need of help were too many and that part of the water was shallow and dangerous so our effort failed,” he told Al Jazeera.
Some of those who did not survive were women with children with them who couldn’t swim, or those who did not want to leave their young behind.
Mohammed’s sister and four of his female cousins were among them.
“I saw one of them, who was a very good swimmer in the water but she didn’t leave because she clung to the children,” he said. “Another of them is survived by four children.”
In Kpada, Egbu and Gakpan villages in Kwara as well as Niger’s Egboti, the people mourned and counted their losses as news trickled in. “I lost 10 members of my family, including my five brothers, father, mother and stepmother … about 80 people died from my village alone,” Mohammed Modu, a farmer in Egbu told Al Jazeera.
The retrieved bodies were buried by the river in each village, according to traditional custom.
(Al Jazeera)
‘None of us is able to sleep alone’
Modu was asleep when a friend called at 4am with news of the boat capsizing. He shouted, “Oh my God” and hurriedly got up and started running to the Egbu waterside, he told Al Jazeera.
“I started running to the riverside … hoping I could find them or their dead bodies but I did not see anyone there. I broke down and I started to cry,” he said.
By daybreak, he had counted 10 dead relatives.
Survivors and other residents are now relocating to other villages and towns, wishing to seek new lives after the tragedy. Modu too, plans to leave.
“If it is possible, I am going to move to Ilorin to work as an okada [motorcycle taxi] rider,” he said, crying.
Migration away from the community is only part of a broader feeling of devastation for survivors and the families of victims, said Olasunkanmi Habeeb, of the Institute for Land and Community Resilience at the Federal University of Technology in the Niger state capital, Minna.
“The impact can be life changing and families may struggle to cope with the loss of loved ones or with caring for those who are injured,” he said. “It may also exacerbate existing social and economic inequalities.”
The accident exposed shortcomings in regulation safety standards and highlighted the need for better infrastructure and emergency response capability, he said.
Authorities in Abuja and Ilorin, the state capital, have released commiseration statements.
President Bola Tinubu who said he was “deeply saddened”, urged the Kwara government to investigate the incident; Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq, the Kwara state governor, led a government delegation to Pategi and promised to donate 1,000 life vests.
But as of Thursday afternoon, residents involved in organising a search and rescue mission told Al Jazeera that no officials had attended the scene yet.
Back in Egbu, Mohammed said he also considered leaving town but was unable to do so because his parents’ roots are there. Leaving would add to their sorrow, he said, and they were all now interdependent.
“None of us is able to sleep alone,” he said. “We now gather up to like five people in the room to be able to sleep.”
The incident happened on the river Niger in central Nigeria early on Monday.
More than 100 people have died in an accident on the river Niger after the boat capsized early on Monday morning.
Eyewitnesses told Al Jazeera the boat was carrying wedding guests who were returning to Kwara State from a ceremony in nearby Niger State, both in central Nigeria.
Al Jazeera correspondent Ahmed Idris reporting from Abuja said the boat hit something in the water and then capsized.
According to Idris, search and rescue operations have been ongoing since Monday.
Police are yet to confirm how many people have died or how many were on board the boat, which was reportedly overloaded.
There have been similar mishaps in the past in the area which is close to the confluence between the rivers Niger and Benue.
This is a developing story. More details to follow.
The Serious Crash Unit is attending the bus crash. Photo / Supplied
Two police staff have been left injured this afternoon following a crash in Auckland’s CBD involving a police car and an Auckland Transport bus.
The crash occurred at around 3.20pm on Friday at the intersection of Beach Rd and Tangihua St as police were “responding to an incident”.
Auckland City road policing manager Greg Brand said the police vehicle entered the intersection at “low speed”, under lights and sirens, when the collision with a bus occurred.
“One officer is being taken to Auckland City Hospital with serious injuries, however these are not currently thought to be life-threatening. A second officer has also been taken to hospital with moderate injuries,” he said.
UPDATE 4:45PM The closure is now in place just for southbound lanes on Tangihua Street through to where Beach Road meets Mahuhu Crescent. https://t.co/K05BqhqrOY
— Auckland Transport Travel Alerts (@AT_TravelAlerts) June 9, 2023
Commuters onboard the bus at the time of the crash were also being assessed at the scene and at least one was being transported to hospital with minor injuries.
A Fire and Emergency New Zealand (Fenz) spokesperson confirmed that crews from the Auckland City and Parnell stations were attending.
“I would like to acknowledge the members of the public who immediately came to our officers’ aid and assisted at the scene. Police will be ensuring welfare is put in place for…
WASHINGTON (AP) — A wayward and unresponsive business plane that flew over the nation’s capital Sunday afternoon caused the military to scramble a fighter jet before the plane crashed in Virginia, officials said. The fighter jet caused a sonic boom that was heard across the capital region.
Hours later, police said that rescuers had reached the site of the plane crash in a rural part of the Shenandoah Valley and that no survivors were found.
The Federal Aviation Administration says the Cessna Citation took off from Elizabethtown, Tenn., on Sunday and was headed for Long Island’s MacArthur Airport. Inexplicably, the plane turned around over New York’s Long Island and flew a straight path down over D.C. before it crashed over mountainous terrain near Montebello, Virginia, around 3:30 p.m.
The plane was technically flying above some of the most heavily restricted airspace in the nation.
A U.S. official confirmed to the Associated Press that the military jet had scrambled to respond to the small plane, which wasn’t responding to radio transmissions and later crashed. The official was not authorized to publicly discuss details of the military operation and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Flight-tracking sites showed the jet suffered a rapid spiraling descent, dropping at one point at a rate of more than 30,000 feet per minute before crashing in the St. Mary’s Wilderness.
The North American Aerospace Defense Command later said in a statement that the F-16 was authorized to travel at supersonic speeds, which caused a sonic boom that was heard in Washington and parts of Virginia and Maryland.
“During this event, the NORAD aircraft also used flares — which may have been visible to the public — in an attempt to draw attention from the pilot,” the statement said. “Flares are employed with highest regard for safety of the intercepted aircraft and people on the ground. Flares burn out quickly and completely and there is no danger to the people on the ground when dispensed.”
Virginia State Police said officers were notified of the potential crash shortly before 4 p.m. and rescuers reached the crash site by foot around four hours later. No survivors were found, police said.
The plane that crashed was registered to Encore Motors of Melbourne Inc, which is based in Florida. John Rumpel, who runs the company, reportedly told the New York Times that his daughter, 2-year-old granddaughter, her nanny and the pilot were aboard the plane. They were returning to their home in East Hampton, on Long Island, after visiting his house in North Carolina, he said.
Rumpel, a pilot, told the newspaper he didn’t have much information from authorities but hoped his family didn’t suffer and suggested the plane could’ve lost pressurization.
“I don’t think they’ve found the wreckage yet,” Rumpel told the newspaper. “It descended at 20,000 feet a minute, and nobody could survive a crash from that speed.”
A woman who identified herself as Barbara Rumpel, listed as the president of the company, said she had no comment Sunday when reached by the Associated Press.
The episode brought back memories of the 1999 crash of a Learjet that lost cabin pressure and flew aimlessly across the country with professional golfer Payne Stewart aboard. The jet crashed in a South Dakota pasture and six people died.
President Joe Biden was playing golf at Joint Base Andrews with his brother at around the time the fighter jet took off. Anthony Guglielmi, a spokesperson for the U.S. Secret Service, said the incident had no impact on the president’s movements Sunday.
A White House official said that the president had been briefed on the crash and that the sound of the scrambling aircraft was faint at Joint Base Andrews.
President Joe Biden rolled out a plan on Monday that targets how airlines handle flight cancellations and significant delays that are within a carrier’s control.
Biden said his administration will propose a new regulation later this year that would require airlines to provide cash compensation in addition to refunds and amenities for stranded passengers.
