Tag: United Nations

Over 60 People Have Drowned In Capsizing Of Migrant Vessel Off Libya, U.N. Says

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CAIRO (AP) — A boat carrying dozens of migrants trying to reach Europe capsized off the coast of Libya, leaving more than 60 people dead, including women and children, the U.N. migration agency said.

The shipwreck, which took place overnight between Thursday and Friday, was the latest tragedy in this part of the Mediterranean Sea, a key but dangerous route for migrants seeking a better life in Europe. Thousands have died, according to officials.

The U.N.’s International Organization for Migration said in a statement late Saturday that the boat was carrying 86 migrants when strong waves swamped it off the town of Zuwara on Libya’s western coast and that 61 migrants drowned, according to survivors.

“The central Mediterranean continues to be one of the world’s most dangerous migration routes,” the agency wrote on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.

The European Union’s border agency said in a statement Sunday that its plane located the partially deflated rubber boat Thursday evening in Libya’s search and rescue zone.

“The people were in severe danger because of adverse weather conditions, with waves reaching heights of 2.5 meters (8.2 feet),” the agency, known as Frontex, said.

Alarm Phone — a hotline for migrants in distress — said in a tweet that some migrants onboard reached out to the volunteer group who in turn alerted authorities including the Libyan coastguard, “who stated that they would not search for them.”

A spokesman for the Libyan coast guard was not immediately available for comment.

Libya has in recent years emerged as the dominant transit point for migrants fleeing war and poverty in Africa and the Middle East, even though the North African nation has plunged into chaos following a NATO-backed uprising that toppled and killed longtime autocrat Moammar Gadhafi in 2011.

More than 2,250 people died on the central European route this year, according to Flavio Di Giacomo, an IOM spokesperson.

It’s “a dramatic figure which demonstrates that unfortunately not enough is being done to save lives at sea,” Di Giacomo wrote on X.

According to the IOM’s missing migrants project, at least 940 migrants were reported dead and 1,248 missing off Libya between Jan. 1 and Nov. 18.

The project, which tracks migration movements, said about 14,900 migrants, including over 1,000 women and more than 530 children, were intercepted and returned to Libya this year.

In 2022, the project reported 529 dead and 848 missing off Libya. Over 24,600 were intercepted and returned to Libya.

Human traffickers in recent years have benefited from the chaos in Libya, smuggling in migrants across the country’s lengthy borders, which it shares with six nations. The migrants are crowded onto ill-equipped vessels, including rubber boats, and set off on risky sea voyages.

Those who are intercepted and returned to Libya are held in government-run detention centers rife with abuses, including forced labor, beatings, rapes and torture — practices that amount to crimes against humanity, according to U.N.-commissioned investigators.

The abuse often accompanies attempts to extort money from the families of the imprisoned migrants before allowing them to leave Libya on traffickers’ boats to Europe.

The story has been corrected to show that the shipwreck took place overnight between Dec. 14-15.

Associated Press journalist Renata Brito contributed from Barcelona, Spain.

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December 17, 2023
COP28: No 'phase out' of fossil fuels after all

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Dubai, United Arab Emirates—Earlier today at COP28, the United Nations’ climate summit, U.N. Secretary-General Antonion Guterres declared that “a central aspect, in my opinion, of the success of the COP will be for the COP to reach a consensus on the need to phase out fossil fuels in line with a time framework that is in line with the 1.5 degree limits.” In other words, Guterres wants COP28 to impose a global deadline for the elimination of fossil fuels from the world’s energy supplies.

The new proposed text for the Global Stocktake (GST)—the principal document being composed at the conference—may disappoint Guterres. Though the options in the negotiating text all proposed some goal for the “phase out” of fossil fuels as of last Friday, that term is nowhere in the new GST text.

While expressing a desire for deep, rapid, and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, the GST draft text as it stands now “calls upon Parties to take actions that could include,” among other things, “Reducing both consumption and production of fossil fuels, in a just, orderly and equitable manner so as to achieve net zero by, before, or around 2050 in keeping with the science.”

This clearly avoids the trigger words “phase out,” but doesn’t it really amount to the same thing? Perhaps not. Because that formulation “could include” suggests that reducing the consumption and production of fossil fuels is just one option among many that signatories may choose to pursue over the next two years.

It is worth noting that this draft text does include the phrase “fossil fuels.” If that remains in the final text, this will be the first time an official COP decision document actually deployed those words. Previously, such documents have coyly focused on cutting greenhouse gas emissions without mentioning from whence those pesky emissions might come.

This outcome is entirely unsatisfactory to the longtime climate activist (and former U.S. vice president) Al Gore. “COP28 is now on the verge of complete failure,” he posted on X (formerly Twitter). “The world desperately needs to phase out fossil fuels as quickly as possible, but this obsequious draft reads as if OPEC dictated it word for word. It is even worse than many had feared.”

Gore is not alone in his disappointment. Spain’s environment minister, a co-leader of the European Union’s delegation, said “there are elements in the text that are fully unacceptable.”

Other options in the draft GST text include such measures as “Tripling renewable energy capacity globally and doubling the global average annual rate of energy efficiency improvements by 2030.” This is in line with the global pledge signed by nearly 120 countries issued on December 2. Note that China, India, Saudi Arabia, and Russia did not commit to this goal.

Interestingly, the draft text mentions nuclear energy as one of the measures that countries could include in their efforts. So perhaps COP28 is the “nuclear COP” after all.

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December 11, 2023
Israel continues attacks across Gaza as hopes for cease-fire fade

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Battles raged across Gaza on Sunday as Israel indicated it was prepared to fight for months or longer to defeat the territory’s Hamas rulers, and a key mediator said willingness to discuss a cease-fire was fading.

Israel faces international outrage after its military offensive, with diplomatic support and arms from close ally the United States, has killed thousands of Palestinian civilians. About 90% of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been displaced within the besieged territory, where U.N. agencies say there is no safe place to flee.

The head of the U.N. in Gaza on Sunday described the situation as the worst he’s ever seen, warning of a total humanitarian collapse inside the territory.

The United States has lent vital support in recent days by vetoing a United Nations Security Council resolution to end the fighting and pushing through an emergency sale of over $100 million worth of tank ammunition to Israel.

U.S. Ambassador Alternate Representative of the U.S. for Special Political Affairs in the United Nations Robert A. Wood raises his hand during a United Nations Security Council meeting on Gaza at U.N. headquarters in New York City on December 8, 2023.

CHARLY TRIBALLEAU/AFP via Getty Images

Russia backed the resolution. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin and expressed dissatisfaction with “anti-Israel positions” taken by Moscow’s envoys at the U.N. and elsewhere, an Israeli statement said.

Netanyahu told Putin that any country assaulted the way Israel was “would have reacted with no less force than Israel is using,” the statement added.

The U.N. General Assembly scheduled an emergency meeting Tuesday to vote on a draft resolution demanding an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza. Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian ambassador to the U.N., told The Associated Press that it’s similar to the Security Council resolution the U.S. vetoed Friday.

There are no vetoes in the General Assembly but unlike the Security Council its resolutions are not legally binding. They are important nonetheless as a barometer of global opinion.

Israel’s air and ground war has killed thousands of Palestinians, mostly civilians, since the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas and other militants killed 1,200 people and captured around 240. Over 100 of them were released during a weeklong cease-fire last month.

With very little aid allowed in, Palestinians face severe shortages of food, water and other basic goods. Some observers openly worry that Palestinians will be forced out of Gaza altogether.

“Expect public order to completely break down soon, and an even worse situation could unfold including epidemic diseases and increased pressure for mass displacement into Egypt,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told a forum in Qatar, a key intermediary.

Eylon Levy, an Israeli government spokesman, called allegations of mass displacement from Gaza “outrageous and false.”

This aerial view taken on December 9, 2023 shows the makeshift tent camps housing Palestinians displaced by intense Israeli bombardment on the Gaza Strip seeking refuge in open areas around the Raed al-Attar Mosque in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip near the Egyptian border.

SAID KHATIB/AFP via Getty Images

Qatar’s prime minister, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, told the forum that mediation efforts seeking to stop the war and have all hostages released will continue, but “unfortunately, we are not seeing the same willingness that we had seen in the weeks before.”

Israel’s national security adviser, Tzachi Hanegbi, told Israel’s Channel 12 TV that the U.S. has set no deadline for Israel to achieve its goals. “The evaluation that this can’t be measured in weeks is correct, and I’m not sure it can be measured in months,” he said.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told CNN that as far as the duration and the conduct of the fighting, “these are decisions for Israel to make.”

This is a war that cannot be won, Jordan’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, asserted to the Qatar forum, warning that “Israel has created an amount of hatred that will haunt this region that will define generations to come.”

Fighting and arrests in the north

Israeli forces face heavy resistance, including in northern Gaza, where neighborhoods have been flattened by air strikes and where ground troops have operated for over six weeks.

Israel’s Channel 13 TV broadcast footage showing dozens of detainees stripped to their underwear, hands in the air. One man held an assault rifle above his head, walked forward and placed a gun on the ground.

Other videos have shown groups of unarmed men held in similar conditions, without clothes, bound and blindfolded. Detainees from a group released Saturday told The Associated Press they had been beaten and denied food and water.

Israeli military spokesperson Daniel Hagari said dozens of arrests took place in two Hamas strongholds and that people are undressed to make sure they are not hiding explosives.

Residents said there was still heavy fighting in the Gaza City neighborhood of Shijaiyah and the Jabaliya refugee camp, a dense urban area housing Palestinian families who fled or were driven out of what is now Israel during the 1948 war.

“They are attacking anything that moves,” said Hamza Abu Fatouh, a Shijaiyah resident. He said the dead and wounded were left in the streets as ambulances could not reach the area.

Israel ordered the evacuation of the northern third of the territory, including Gaza City, early in the war, but tens of thousands of people have remained.

People watch as firefighters battle flames in a building hit by an Israeli strike in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on December 9, 2023.

AFP via Getty Images

Heavy fighting also was underway in and around the southern city of Khan Younis, which Israel claims is Hamas’ command center. Many families have been forced to flee the city and head for the border town of Rafah.

Aya Moustafa Zourab told CBS News her whole street was on fire when they left. Her child is disabled and needs medical attention. She said he is sick but there is no treatment and she has no money to travel and she has to beg others for food and water.

Waiting days for food

The price of dwindling food in Gaza has soared. Abdulsalam al-Majdalawi said he had come every day for nearly two weeks to a U.N. distribution center, hoping to get supplies for his family of seven.

“Thank God, today they drew our name,” he said.

One hundred trucks with humanitarian aid entered Sunday, said Wael Abu Omar, a spokesman for the Palestinian Crossings Authority. That’s far short of what’s needed.

A spokesperson for the U.N. in Gaza, Juliette Toumi, told CBS News it’s becoming too dangerous for aid agencies to operate.

“We have come to a point where we’re not sure if we’re able to fulfill our mandate and provide assistance to people in Gaza,” she said. “This is unprecedented.”

The World Food Program warned that half the population in Gaza faces extreme hunger and severe water restrictions. The charity group Save the Children said deaths from starvation and disease might top those killed in bombings in Gaza.

Palestinians waiting to receive food supplies at an aid distribution center run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency in Deir El-Balah in the central Gaza Strip on December 10, 2023.

Majdi Fathi/NurPhoto via Getty Images

With the war in its third month, the Palestinian death toll in Gaza has surpassed 17,900, the majority women and children, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-controlled territory. The ministry does not differentiate between civilian and combatant deaths.

Israel holds Hamas responsible for civilian casualties, saying the militants put civilians in danger by fighting in residential neighborhoods. The military says 97 Israeli soldiers have died in the offensive. Palestinian militants have continued firing rockets into Israel.

Netanyahu’s office said Hamas still has 117 hostages and the remains of 20 people killed in captivity or during the Oct. 7 attack. The militants hope to exchange them for Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.

Israel says it has provided detailed instructions for civilians to evacuate to safer areas, even as it strikes what it says are militant targets. Thousands have fled to areas along the border with Egypt — one of the last places where aid agencies are able to deliver food and water.

A picture taken from southern Israel near the border with the Gaza Strip shows smoke rising during an Israeli strike on the Palestinian territory on December 10, 2023, amid ongoing battles with the Palestinian Hamas group.

GIL COHEN-MAGEN/AFP via Getty Images

Despite a series of airstrikes near the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, Israeli Col. Etad Goren told CBS News it’s safe to pass through.

“We are not attacking the humanitarian corridor,” he said. “Second, we know exactly where the shelters are We didn’t attack any truck, any U.N. truck that wanted to facilitate or to bring goods or shelter.”

Still aid agencies say tens of thousands of Palestinians will go to bed hungry and thirsty, many without shelter.

Demonstrations were again held in several cities in support of the Palestinians and calling for an end to the war, while thousands marched in Europe against antisemitism.

The war has raised tensions across the Middle East, with Lebanon’s Hezbollah trading fire with Israel along the border and other Iran-backed militant groups targeting the U.S. in Syria and Iraq. Israeli artillery, drone, and airstrikes over Lebanon border towns intensified.

Israel & Hamas At War

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December 10, 2023
WHO calls for immediate passage of humanitarian relief into Gaza

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Chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says he hopes resolution will be starting point for further UN action on crisis.

The World Health Organization has agreed on a resolution, the first by any United Nations agency, calling for immediate access to vital humanitarian aid and an end to the fighting in Gaza.

The resolution – calling for the “immediate, sustained and unimpeded passage of humanitarian relief, including the access of medical personnel” – was adopted by consensus at the end of a special session of the WHO’s Executive Board on Sunday.

It also called on “all parties to fulfill their obligations under international law” and reaffirmed “that all parties to armed conflict must comply fully with the obligations applicable to them under international humanitarian law related to the protection of civilians in armed conflict and medical personnel.”

The special meeting of the executive board was only the seventh in the WHO’s 75-year history.

The passage of the resolution “underscores the importance of health as a universal priority, in all circumstances, and the role of healthcare and humanitarianism in building bridges to peace, even in the most difficult of situations,” the WHO said in a statement after the meeting.

The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) has struggled to respond to the deepening crisis in Gaza that erupted after the Palestinian armed group Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on Israel killing 1,200 people and taking more than 200 captive.

In response, Israel declared war on Hamas and has subjected Gaza, which Hamas has controlled since 2006, to relentless attack, killing at least 18,000 people.

The UN says about 80 percent of the population has been displaced and faces shortages of food, water and medicine along with a growing threat of disease.

On Friday, a resolution for a humanitarian ceasefire put forward by the United Arab Emirates and co-sponsored by 100 other countries failed to pass in the UNSC after the United States vetoed the proposal. The US is one of five permanent members of the council with a veto.

The vote came after UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres invoked Article 99 on Wednesday to formally warn the 15-member council of a global threat from the two-month-long war.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the UN health agency resolution could be a starting point for further action.

“It does not resolve the crisis. But it is a platform on which to build,” he said in his closing remarks to the board.

“Without a ceasefire, there is no peace. And without peace, there is no health. I urge all Member States, especially those with the most influence, to work with urgency to bring an end to this conflict as soon as possible.”

Fighting resumed this month after a week-long pause in hostilities that allowed some Israeli and foreign captives to be released in exchange for a number of Palestinians held in Israeli jails, as well as for the supply of humanitarian aid into Gaza.

With Israel now stepping up its military actions in the south of the territory of more than 2 million people, calls for an end to the fighting have intensified.

The UN General Assembly (UNGA) is expected to vote as soon as Tuesday on a resolution for an immediate ceasefire, after Egypt and Mauritania invoked Resolution 377 “Uniting for Peace” in the wake of the US veto.

Adopted by the UNGA in 1950, Resolution 377 allows the 193-member body to act where the UNSC has failed to “exercise its primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security”.

Their letter also referred to Guterres’s invoking Article 99 of the UN Charter on December 6.

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December 10, 2023
Protests At UN Climate Talks See ‘Shocking Level Of Censorship’

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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Activists designated Saturday a day of protest at the COP28 summit in Dubai. But the rules of the game in the tightly controlled United Arab Emirates at the site supervised by the United Nations meant sharp restrictions on what demonstrators could say, where they could walk and what their signs could portray.

At times, the controls bordered on the absurd.

A small group of demonstrators protesting the detention of activists — one from Egypt and two from the UAE — was not allowed to hold up signs bearing their names. A late afternoon demonstration of around 500 people, the largest seen at the climate conference, couldn’t go beyond the U.N.-governed Blue Zone in this autocratic nation. And their calls for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip couldn’t name the parties involved.

“It is a shocking level of censorship in a space that had been guaranteed to have basic freedoms protected like freedom of expression, assembly and association,” Joey Shea, a researcher at Human Rights Watch focused on the Emirates, told The Associated Press after their restricted demonstration.

Pro-Palestinian protesters who were calling for a cease-fire and climate justice were told they could not say “from the river to the sea,” a slogan prohibited by the U.N. over the days of COP28.

In the aftermath of a brutal Hamas attack on Israel in October and the subsequent Israeli bombing and ground offensive in the Gaza Strip, that phrase has been used at pro-Palestinian rallies to call for single state on the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. Some Jews hear a clear demand for Israel’s destruction in the call.

Protesters got around rules banning national flags by instead wearing keffiyeh scarves and holding signs depicting watermelons to show their support for the Palestinians.

Protestor Dylan Hamilton of Scotland said it remained important for demonstrators to cry out their grievances, even if they sounded like a cacophony of concerns ranging from climate change, the war or Indigenous rights.

“It’s essential to remind negotiators what they are negotiating about,” Hamilton said. “It’s trying to remind people to care about people you’ll never meet.”

Despite the restrictions, activists protesting for a cease-fire in Gaza called the action historic due to its size.

“I don’t want to look back one day where a Palestinian can’t remember what their history and their culture used to look like, because that’s exactly what happened to us in Mexico,” climate activist Isavela Lopez said. “I’m here to say to end with the colonial powers and with the white supremacy.”

Many climate activists point to the same causes for today’s climate crisis.

Typically, COP summits see mass demonstrations of tens of thousands of people outside of the Blue Zone. But given the UAE’s rules, the only place where activists can protest is inside that U.N.-controlled space, which has its own tight restrictions on speech.

Just before the demonstration about the detained activists, organized by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, protesters had to fold over signs bearing the names of the detainees — even after they already had crossed out messages about them. The order came roughly 10 minutes before the protest was due to start from the U.N., which said it could not guarantee the security of the demonstration, Shea said.

While speaking during the protest, Shea also had to avoid naming the Emirates and Egypt as part of the U.N.’s rules.

“The absurdity of what happened at this action today speaks volumes,” she said.

The Emirati government, in response to questions from the AP about the detainees protest, said it “does not comment on individual cases following judicial sentences.”

“In the spirit of inclusivity, peaceful assemblies in designated areas have been and continue to be welcomed,” the statement said. “We remain dedicated to fostering dialogue and understanding as we work together at COP28 to deliver impactful solutions for accelerating climate action.”

Demonstrators carried signs bearing the image of Emirati activist Ahmed Mansoor and Egyptian pro-democracy activist Alaa Abdel-Fattah.

Mansoor, the recipient of the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders in 2015, repeatedly drew the ire of authorities in the United Arab Emirates by calling for a free press and democratic freedoms in the autocratic federation of seven sheikhdoms. He was targeted with Israeli spyware on his iPhone in 2016 likely deployed by the Emirati government ahead of his 2017 arrest and sentencing to 10 years in prison over his activism.

Abdel-Fattah, who rose to prominence during the 2011 pro-democracy Arab Spring uprisings, became a central focus of demonstrators during last year’s COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, as he had stopped eating and drinking water to protest his detention. He has spent most of the past decade in prison because of his criticism of Egypt’s rulers.

Since 2013, Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi’s government has cracked down on dissidents and critics, jailing thousands, virtually banning protests and monitoring social media. El-Sissi has not released Abdel-Fattah despite him receiving British citizenship while imprisoned and interventions on his behalf from world leaders, including U.S. President Joe Biden.

Demonstrators also held up the image of Mohamed al-Siddiq, another Emirati detained as part of the crackdown.

The detainees protest had been scheduled to take place days earlier, but negotiations with U.N. officials dragged on — likely due to the sensitivity of even mentioning the detainees’ names in the country.

Meanwhile, protesters briefly staged a sit-in at OPEC’s stand over a leaked letter reportedly calling on cartel member states to reject any attempt to include a phase-down of fossil fuels in any text at the summit.

“It’s like having, you know, a convention on fighting the tobacco industry and having the tobacco industry present in a negotiation. That is not okay,” campaigner Nicholas Haeringer said. “It’s like having a fox in the henhouse. And to be honest with you guys, I think at some point we will run out of analogies before these guys run out of oil.”

Associated Press journalists Peter Dejong, Lujain Jo and Malak Harb contributed to this report.

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December 10, 2023
Hamas condemns US veto of UN Gaza ceasefire resolution

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Hamas denounced the United States for its decision on Friday to veto a resolution in the United Nations Security Council that would have called for a permanent ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war.

“We strongly condemn Washington’s use of veto against a draft resolution in the Security Council demanding a ceasefire in Gaza. We consider it an immoral and inhumane position,” Izzat al-Risheq, Hamas political bureau member, said in a statement.

The resolution called for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire and “the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages.” The U.S. was the sole country to veto the resolution, while 13 countries voted in favor of it and the United Kingdom abstained.

With its veto, the U.S. effectively sided with Israel in its right to defend itself. Israel has also said that a ceasefire before Hamas is removed from power in the Gaza Strip would only lead to more conflict in the future. The current war began after Hamas and other factions attacked Israel on October 7, which resulted in an excursion into Gaza by Israel Defense Forces.

“America’s obstruction of the issuance of a ceasefire resolution is a direct participation of the occupation in killing our people and committing more massacres and ethnic cleansing,” al-Risheq added in his statement.

Deputy U.S. Ambassador to the UN Robert Wood on Friday speaks during a United Nations Security Council meeting on Gaza, at UN headquarters in New York City. The U.S. vetoed a UN resolution that would have called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.
Photo by YUKI IWAMURA/AFP via Getty Images

Deputy U.S. Ambassador to the UN Robert Wood explained his country’s stance before Friday’s vote.

“Hamas has no desire to see a durable peace, to see a two-state solution,” he said. “For that reason, while the United States strongly supports a durable peace, in which both Israelis and Palestinians can live in peace and security, we do not support calls for an immediate ceasefire.”

Newsweek contacted Israel’s Government Press Office on Friday night via email for comment.

The international non-governmental organization Human Rights Watch also condemned the U.S. veto.

“The U.S. used its veto again to prevent the Security Council from making some of the calls the U.S. itself has been demanding of Israel & Palestinian armed groups, including compliance w/ int’l humanitarian law, protection of civilians & releasing all civilians held hostage,” Louis Charbonneau, the United Nations director at Human Rights Watch, wrote in a statement posted on X, formerly Twitter.

Charbonneau added: “By continuing to provide Israel with weapons and diplomatic cover as it commits atrocities, including collectively punishing the Palestinian civilian population in Gaza, the U.S. risks complicity in war crimes.”

The American Jewish Committee (AJC), however, praised the United States’ decision to not back the resolution. The advocacy group’s CEO, Ted Deutch, said in a statement that the AJC “is grateful to the U.S. administration for using its veto power to prevent the UN Security Council from adopting a harmful draft resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire.”

“We regret the suffering of Palestinian civilians and the loss of civilian Palestinian lives,” Deutch’s statement read in part. “But the responsibility for such suffering and loss lies with Hamas and other terrorists in Gaza who deliberately and callously hide and launch attacks among civilians, using them as human shields.”

Update 12/08/23, 9:40 p.m. ET: This article has been updated to include statements from Human Rights Watch and the American Jewish Committee.

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December 8, 2023
2023 is officially the hottest year ever recorded, and scientists say

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After months of expectation, it’s official — 2023 will be the hottest year ever recorded. The European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service announced the milestone after analyzing data that showed the world saw its warmest-ever November.

Last month was roughly 1.75 degrees Celsius warmer than the pre-industrial average, Copernicus said, with an average surface air temperature of 14.22 degrees Celsius, or about 57.6 degrees Fahrenheit. And now, Copernicus says that for January to November 2023, global average temperatures were the highest on record — 1.46 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial average.

Daily global average surface air temperature anomalies (°C) relative to estimated values for 1850-1900, plotted as time series for each year from Jan. 1, 1940, to Dec. 2, 2023. The year 2023 is shown with a thick red line.

Data source: ERA5 / Credit: C3S/ECMWF

The boreal autumn, from September through November, was also the warmest as a whole “by a large margin,” Copernicus said, with temperatures 0.88 degrees Celsius above average. In September, it reported that the summer of 2023 was the hottest on record.

“2023 has now had six record breaking months and two record breaking seasons,” Copernicus deputy director Samantha Burgess said. “The extraordinary global November temperatures, including two days warmer than 2ºC above preindustrial, mean that 2023 is the warmest year in recorded history.”

That difference between pre-industrial times and today puts the world dangerously close to crossing the 1.5 degrees Celsius global warming threshold that scientists have warned about for years. The continued warming means extreme weather events — which have already worsened — will become even more frequent and intense, exacerbating the damage and loss of life from droughts, flooding, hurricanes and wildfires.

Globally averaged surface air temperature anomalies, relative to 1991–2020, for each November from 1940 to 2023.

Data source: ERA5 / Credit: C3S/ECMWF

And it wasn’t just the air that was warmer last month, but the water too.

Copernicus said that the average sea surface temperature for ocean waters between 60ºN and 60ºS — roughly between the southern tip of Greenland to just below South America — was the highest on record, about 0.25 degrees Celsius warmer than the last record-breaking November, in 2015.

Copernicus warned of this outcome last month, saying the warmest-year title was “virtually certain.”

The World Meteorological Organization, an agency of the United Nations, reiterated the warning at the U.N.’s COP28 climate summit just days ago, saying that the extreme conditions experienced this year have “left a trail of devastation and despair.”

The WMO also put out a report Tuesday saying that the rate of climate change has “surged alarmingly,” with 2011 to 2020 being the warmest decade on record.

At COP28, efforts to cut emissions — but how soon?

Global temperatures are a major point of discussion at the COP28 summit in Dubai, which runs through Dec. 12. Greenhouse gases, which include carbon dioxide and methane among others, are gases that trap heat within Earth’s atmosphere, warming air temperatures and melting sea ice, which then warms ocean temperatures and causes sea levels to rise. Most of the emissions of those gases come from the burning of fossil fuels, which include coal, natural gas and oil.

Carlo Buontempo, director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, said the extreme temperatures seen this year will only continue if drastic changes aren’t made quickly.

“As long as greenhouse gas concentrations keep rising we can’t expect different outcomes from those seen this year,” Buontempo said. “The temperature will keep rising and so will the impacts of heatwaves and droughts. Reaching net zero as soon as possible is an effective way to manage our climate risks.”

Moving from the burning of oil and coal to sources like wind and solar energy is an essential step to cutting emissions, scientists say. One study published in 2022 found that for every 1 percentage point increase in renewable energy consumption, CO2 emissions per capita would be reduced by 1.25%. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which is a part of the U.S. Department of Energy, has also found that adding 35% more wind and solar energy would reduce carbon emissions by 25% to 45%.

There have been strides in ramping up renewable energy worldwide. Just this year, the U.S. generated more electricity from solar and wind than from coal for a record 5 months, and the U.K. generated more power with wind than with gas for the first time ever. But many countries, including the U.S., are still far behind on their commitments for making substantial changes.

At COP28, representatives from nearly 200 countries are hashing out plans to move from fossil fuels to renewable energy. The big debate is whether they will agree to “phase out” or “phase down” fossil fuels — the latter of which would be a slower, weaker global stance on the transition.

“If you’re digging a hole and you get too deep and you’re not going where you want to go, first thing you do is stop digging,” U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said at COP28. “And the equivalency of stopping digging on this subject of climate is to stop emitting these poisonous gases athat are destroying the planet and the lives of future generations and our own ability to live. … We’re asking you to actually embrace a better quality of life.”

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Li Cohen

Li Cohen is a social media producer and trending content writer for CBS News.

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December 5, 2023
WFP suspends food distribution in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen

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UN agency pauses general food distribution in north Yemen due to limited funding and disagreements with the group.

The World Food Programme (WFP) says it is suspending food distribution in Houthi-controlled areas of northern Yemen due to a dip in funding and disagreements with the group over how to focus on the poorest there.

The WFP announced the decision on Tuesday, saying it came after consultations with donors and more than a year of negotiations which failed to come to an agreement on reducing the number of people in need of aid to 6.5 million from 9.5 million.

The poorest country in the Arabian Peninsula has faced one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises since the outbreak of the Yemen war between the Saudi-backed government and the Iran-aligned Houthi rebels, who seized the capital Sanaa and large swaths of territory in 2014.

Yemenis present documents to receive food rations by a local charity in Sanaa [File: Hani Mohammed/AP]

Food stocks in Houthi-controlled areas “are now almost completely depleted and resuming food assistance, even with an immediate agreement, could take up to as long as four months due to the disruption of the supply chain”, the United Nations agency said in a statement.

It said the WFP would nonetheless maintain “its resilience and livelihoods, nutrition, and school feeding programmes … for as long as the agency has sufficient funding and the cooperation of the authorities” in Sanaa.

Food distribution in government-controlled areas of Yemen will continue, targeting “the most vulnerable families, aligning with resource adjustments announced last August,” the statement said.

Houthi officials did not issue an immediate comment on the agency’s decision.

Since 2014, the war in the country of 30 million people has led directly or indirectly to hundreds of thousands of deaths and has displaced millions.

A fragile calm has prevailed since a UN-negotiated ceasefire in April 2022, but the population suffers from reduced humanitarian aid, upon which it depends heavily.

Last year, the WFP reduced rations in the country due to depleted funding caused by global inflation, which rose after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

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December 5, 2023
Record number of fossil fuel lobbyists at COP28, environmentalists say

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A group representing a coalition of environmental groups combed through the public list of people granted access to the United Nations COP28 climate talks and found at least 2,456 people the group considers fossil fuel lobbyists.

The Kick Big Polluters Out coalition said that means that COP28, underway in Dubai, has the greatest number of participants affiliated with fossil fuel interests known to attend one of the annual U.N. climate negotiations.

“The sheer number of fossil fuel lobbyists at climate talks that could determine our future is beyond justification,” Joseph Sikulu, a coalition member and Pacific managing director for the nonprofit group 350.org, said in a statement. “Their increasing presence at COP undermines the integrity of the process as a whole.”

COP28 President Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber speaks during a press conference at the United Nations climate summit in Dubai. The U.N. talks have come under fire from several environmental groups and climate change researchers for apparent conflicts of interests by this year’s leadership.
Karim Sahib/AFP via Getty Images

The coalition did similar analyses of the last two COPs and found a sharp increase in the number of people affiliated with fossil fuel interests.

At last year’s gathering in Egypt, the group identified 636 fossil fuel lobbyists, and 503 when the COP was held in Scotland in 2021. Over the past 20 COP gatherings, the group found, people representing fossil fuel interests attended COPs at least 7,200 times.

The U.N. talks have already come under fire from several environmental groups and climate change researchers for apparent conflicts of interest by this year’s leadership. Host nation United Arab Emirates, one of the world’s largest oil producers, appointed an executive at the UAE’s national oil company to be president of COP28.

COP28 President Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber has pushed back against his critics, including in his opening statements on the first day of talks.

“Let history reflect the fact that this is the presidency that made a bold choice to proactively engage with oil and gas companies,” Al Jaber said, and he has touted an agreement with oil and gas companies to reduce methane emissions as proof that the industry can be part of climate solutions.

U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for the Climate John Kerry has defended Al Jaber, who has also held an executive position with the UAE’s renewable energy company.

Climate activists have sought greater transparency in the COP process and requirements to disclose potential conflicts of interest. COP28 is the first to operate under new transparency rules, and people attending must disclose who they represent.

To conduct its analysis, the coalition defined a fossil fuel lobbyist as an attendee who “can be reasonably assumed” to work to influence outcomes to favor a fossil fuel company.

That included delegates who had self-declared ties to fossil fuel companies and members of groups with fossil fuel interests. Many of the delegates the group identified as fossil fuel lobbyists were attending COP28 as part of a trade association.

According to the group’s analysis, Geneva-based International Emissions Trading Association, IETA, has 116 people at COP28, including representatives from Shell, French petroleum conglomerate TotalEnergies, and Norwegian oil and gas company Equinor.

When contacted for a comment, a spokesperson for IETA instead offered the organization’s policy on COP participation, which calls for delegates to adhere to U.N. standards and requirements for attendance at a COP.

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December 4, 2023
Loyalists, Lapdogs, and Cronies

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When Donald Trump first took office, he put a premium on what he called “central casting” hires—people with impressive résumés who matched his image of an ideal administration official. Yes, he brought along his share of Steve Bannons and Michael Flynns. But there was also James Mattis, the decorated four-star general who took over the Defense Department, and Gary Cohn, the Goldman Sachs chief operating officer who was appointed head of the National Economic Council, and Rex Tillerson, who left one of the world’s most profitable international conglomerates to become secretary of state.

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Trump seemed positively giddy that all of these important people were suddenly willing to work for him. And although his populist supporters lamented the presence of so many swamp creatures in his administration, establishment Washington expressed pleasant surprise at the picks. A consensus had formed that what the incoming administration needed most was “adults in the room.” To save the country from ruin, the thinking went, reasonable Republicans had a patriotic duty to work for Trump if asked. Many of them did.

From the December 2019 issue: James Mattis on the enemy within

Don’t expect it to happen again. The available supply of serious, qualified people willing to serve in a Trump administration has dwindled since 2017. After all, the so-called adults didn’t fare so well in their respective rooms. Some quit in frustration or disgrace; others were publicly fired by the president. Several have spent their post–White House lives fielding congressional subpoenas and getting indicted. And after seeing one Trump term up close, vanishingly few of them are interested in a sequel: This past summer, NBC News reported that just four of Trump’s 44 Cabinet secretaries had endorsed his current bid.

Even if mainstream Republicans did want to work for him again, Trump is unlikely to want them. He’s made little secret of the fact that he felt burned by many in his first Cabinet. This time around, according to people in Trump’s orbit, he would prioritize obedience over credentials. “I think there’s going to be a very concerted, calculated effort to ensure that the people he puts in his next administration—they don’t have to share his worldview exactly, but they have to implement it,” Hogan Gidley, a former Trump White House spokesperson, told me.

What would this look like in practice? Predicting presidential appointments nearly a year before the election is a fool’s errand, especially with a candidate as mercurial as this one. And, whether for reasons of low public opinion or ongoing legal jeopardy, some of Trump’s likely picks might struggle to get confirmed (expect a series of contentious hearings). But the names currently circulating in MAGA world offer a glimpse at the kind of people Trump could gravitate toward.

One Trump-world figure with a record of deference to the boss is Stephen Miller. As a speechwriter and policy adviser, Miller managed to endure while so many of his colleagues flamed out in part because he was satisfied with being a staffer instead of a star. He was also fully aligned with the president on his signature issue: immigration. Inside the White House, Miller championed some of the administration’s most draconian measures, including the Muslim travel ban and the family-separation policy. In a second Trump term, some expect Miller to get a job that will give him significant influence over immigration policy—perhaps head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or even secretary of homeland security. Given Miller’s villainous reputation in Democratic circles, however, he might have a hard time getting confirmed by the Senate. If that happens, some think White House chief of staff might be a good consolation prize.

From the September 2022 issue: The secret history of the U.S. government’s family-separation policy

For secretary of state, one likely candidate is Richard Grenell. Before Trump appointed him ambassador to Germany in 2018, Grenell was best-known as a right-wing foreign-policy pundit and an inexhaustible Twitter troll. He brought his signature bellicosity to Berlin, hectoring journalists and government officials on Twitter, and telling a Breitbart London reporter early in his tenure that he planned to use his position to “empower other conservatives throughout Europe.” (He had to walk back the comment after some in Germany interpreted it as a call for far-right regime change.)

Grenell’s undiplomatic approach to diplomacy exasperated German officials and thrilled Trump, who reportedly described him as an ambassador who “gets it.” Grenell has spent recent years performing his loyalty as a Trump ally and, according to one source, privately building his case for the secretary-of-state role.

One job that Trump will be especially focused on getting right is attorney general. He believes that both of the men who held this position during his term—Jeff Sessions and Bill Barr—were guilty of grievous betrayal. Since then, Trump has been charged with 91 felony counts across four separate criminal cases—evidence, he claims, of a historic “political persecution.” (He has pleaded not guilty in all cases.) Trump has pledged to use the Justice Department to visit revenge on his persecutors if he returns to the White House.

“The notion of the so-called independence of the Department of Justice needs to be consigned to the ash heap of history,” says Paul Dans, who served in the Office of Personnel Management under Trump and now leads an effort by the Heritage Foundation to recruit conservative appointees for the next Republican administration. To that end, Trump allies have floated a range of loyalists for attorney general, including Senators Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, and Josh Hawley; former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi; and Jeffrey Clark, formerly one of Trump’s assistant attorneys general, who was indicted in Georgia on charges of conspiring to overturn the 2020 election (the charges are still pending).

Vivek Ramaswamy—the fast-talking entrepreneur running in the Republican presidential primary as of this writing—is also expected to get a top post in the administration. Ramaswamy has praised Trump on the campaign trail and positioned himself as the natural heir to the former president. Trump has responded to the flattery in kind, publicly praising his opponent as a “very, very, very intelligent person.” Some have even speculated that Ramaswamy could be Trump’s pick for vice president.

One source close to Ramaswamy told me that a Trump adviser had recently asked him what job the candidate might want in a future administration. After thinking about it, the source suggested ambassador to the United Nations, reasoning that he’s a “good talker.” The Trump adviser said he’d keep it in mind, though it’s worth noting that Ramaswamy’s lack of support for Ukraine and his suggestion that Russia be allowed to keep some of the territory it has seized could lead to confirmation trouble.

Beyond the high-profile posts, the Trump team may have more jobs to fill in 2025 than a typical administration does. Dans and his colleagues at Heritage are laying the groundwork for a radical politicization of the federal civilian workforce. If they get their way, the next Republican president will sign an executive order eliminating civil-service protections for up to 50,000 federal workers, effectively making the people in these roles political appointees. Rank-and-file budget wonks, lawyers, and administrators working in dozens of agencies would be reclassified as Schedule F employees, and the president would be able to fire them at will, with or without cause. These fired civil servants’ former posts could be left empty—or filled with Trump loyalists. To that end, Heritage has begun to put together a roster of thousands of pre-vetted potential recruits. “What we’re really talking about is a major renovation to government,” Dans told me.

Trump actually signed an executive order along these lines in the final months of his presidency, but it was reversed by his successor. On the campaign trail, Trump has vowed to reinstate it with the goal of creating a more compliant federal workforce for himself. “Either the deep state destroys America,” he has declared, “or we destroy the deep state.”

This article appears in the January/February 2024 print edition with the headline “Loyalists, Lapdogs, and Cronies.”

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December 4, 2023
COP28 climate conference president Sultan al-Jaber draws more fire over comments on fossil fuels

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Fossil fuel debate takes center stage at COP28

Fossil fuel debate takes center stage at COP28

02:11

Dr. Sultan al-Jaber is the president of COP28, this year’s United Nations climate conference currently being held in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates. Al-Jaber is also the CEO of Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC).

The potential conflict of interest in al-Jaber’s roles has been put back under the microscope following the revelation of remarks he reportedly made on the role of fossil fuels as nations seek to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius — a primary goal under the Paris Agreement adopted at the COP climate conference in 2015.

“There is no science out there, or no scenario out there, that says the phase-out of fossil fuel is what’s going to achieve 1.5,” al-Jaber said in an online event on Nov. 21, according to The Guardian, adding a pointed barb to the hosts that it would be impossible to stop burning fossil fuels and sustain economic development, “unless you want to take the world back into caves.”

Climate scientists and environmental advocates including former Vice President Al Gore were quick to condemn al-Jaber’s remarks.

“He should not be taken seriously. He’s protecting his profits and placing them in a higher priority than the survival of the human civilization,” Gore told the Reuters news agency.

His remarks also seemingly put him at odds with the United Nations and its secretary-general, Antonio Guterres, who told COP28 delegates on Friday: “The science is clear: The 1.5C limit is only possible if we ultimately stop burning all fossil fuels. Not reduce, not abate. Phase out, with a clear timeframe.”

Al-Jaber previously came under fire in November when the BBC obtained leaked documents showing he planned to use pre-conference meetings to discuss commercial oil and gas interests with representatives of other nations.

“Sultan Al Jaber claims his inside knowledge of the fossil fuel industry qualifies him to lead a crucial climate summit but it looks ever more like a fox is guarding the hen house,” Ann Harrison, Amnesty International’s climate advisor, said.

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Rishi Rajagopalan is a social media associate producer and content writer for CBS News.

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December 4, 2023
Renewed concerns about civilian deaths as Israel intensifies assault on southern Gaza after weeklong cease-fire ends

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Israel pounded targets in the southern Gaza Strip on Saturday, intensifying a renewed offensive that followed a weeklong truce with Hamas and giving rise to renewed concerns about civilian casualties.

At least 240 Palestinians have been killed since the fighting resumed Friday morning, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza, even as the United States urged ally Israel to do everything possible to protect civilians.

“This is going to be very important going forward,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Friday after meetings with Arab foreign ministers in Dubai, wrapping up his third Middle East tour since the war started. “It’s something we’re going to be looking at very closely.”

Many of Israel’s attacks Saturday were focused on the Khan Younis area in southern Gaza, where the military said it had struck more than 50 Hamas targets with airstrikes, tank fire and its navy. Israeli forces said that they have struck more than 400 targets overall since fighting resumed in Gaza on Friday.

Palestinians look at destruction after the Israeli bombing In Khan Younis refugee camp in Gaza Strip on Friday, Dec. 1, 2023.

Mohammed Dahman / AP

The military dropped leaflets the day before warning residents to leave but, as of late Friday, there had been no reports of large numbers of people leaving, according to the United Nations.

“There is no place to go,” lamented Emad Hajar, who fled with his wife and three children from the northern town of Beit Lahia a month ago to seek refuge in Khan Younis.

“They expelled us from the north, and now they are pushing us to leave the south.”

Some 2 million people — almost Gaza’s entire population — are crammed into the territory’s south, where Israel urged people to relocate at the war’s start and has since vowed to extend its ground assault. Unable to go into north Gaza or neighboring Egypt, their only escape is to move around within the 220-square-kilometer (85-square-mile) area.

In response to U.S. calls to protect civilians, the Israeli military released an online map, but it has done more to confuse than to help.

It divides the Gaza Strip into hundreds of numbered, haphazardly drawn parcels, sometimes across roads or blocks, and asks residents to learn the number of their location in case of an eventual evacuation.

The Israeli military on Friday published a map of what it called “evacuation zones” in the Gaza Strip, after international demands to create safe areas where civilians can shelter from devastating bombardments.

OpenStreetMap contributors

“The publication does not specify where people should evacuate to,” the U.N. office for coordinating humanitarian issues in the Palestinian territory noted in its daily report. “It is unclear how those residing in Gaza would access the map without electricity and amid recurrent telecommunications cuts.”

In the first use of the map to order evacuations, Avichay Adraee, the Israeli military’s Arabic spokesperson, specified areas in the north and the south to be cleared out Saturday in posts on X, formerly Twitter.

Adraee listed numbered zones under evacuation order – but the highlighted areas on maps attached to his post did not match the numbered zones.

Egypt has expressed concerns the renewed offensive could cause Palestinians to try and cross into its territory. In a statement late Friday, the Egyptian Foreign Ministry said the forced transfer of Palestinians “is a red line.”

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, who was in Dubai on Saturday for the COP28 climate conference, was expected to outline proposals with regional leaders to “put Palestinian voices at the center” of planning the next steps for the Gaza Strip after the conflict, according to the White House. U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration has been emphasizing the need for an eventual two-state solution, with Israel and a Palestinian state coexisting.

The renewed hostilities have also heightened concerns for 136 hostages who, according to the Israeli military, are still held captive by Hamas and other militants after 105 were freed during the truce. For families of remaining hostages, the truce’s collapse was a blow to hopes their loved ones could be the next out after days of seeing others freed. The Israeli army said Friday it had confirmed the deaths of four more hostages, bringing the total known dead to seven.

What does end of Israel-Hamas cease-fire mean for hostages still held in Gaza?

05:01

During the truce, Israel freed 240 Palestinians from its prisons. Most of those released from both sides were women and children.

The war began after the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas and other militants, who killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in southern Israel and took around 240 people captive.

After the end of the truce, militants in Gaza resumed firing rockets into Israel, and fighting broke out between Israel and Hezbollah militants operating along its northern border with Lebanon.

Hundreds of thousands of people fled northern Gaza to Khan Younis and other parts of the south earlier in the war, part of an extraordinary mass exodus that has left three-quarters of the population displaced and facing widespread shortages of food, water and other supplies.

Israeli Iron Dome air defense system fires to intercept a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip, in Ashkelon, Israel, Friday, Dec. 1, 2023.

Tsafrir Abayov / AP

Since the resumption of hostilities, no aid convoys or fuel deliveries have entered Gaza, and humanitarian operations within Gaza have largely halted, according to the U.N.

The International Rescue Committee, an aid group operating in Gaza, warned the return of fighting will “wipe out even the minimal relief” provided by the truce and “prove catastrophic for Palestinian civilians.”

Up until the truce began, more than 13,300 Palestinians were killed in Israel’s assault, roughly two-thirds of them women and minors, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-controlled Gaza, which does not differentiate between civilians and combatants.

The toll is likely much higher, as officials have only sporadically updated the count since Nov. 11. The ministry says thousands more people are feared dead under the rubble.

Israel says it is targeting Hamas operatives and blames civilian casualties on the militants, accusing them of operating in residential neighborhoods. Israel says 77 of its soldiers have been killed in the ground offensive in northern Gaza. It claims to have killed thousands of militants, without providing evidence.

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December 2, 2023
A showdown is brewing over money, oil and carbon. Here’s what’s at stake at the COP28 climate summit

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In this aerial view water vapour and exhaust rise from the steel mill of Salzgitter AG, one Europe’s largest steel producers, on November 22, 2023 in Salzgitter, Germany.

Sean Gallup | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Policymakers and business leaders from across the globe are set to arrive in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates for the world’s biggest and most important annual climate conference.

The COP28 summit, which starts on Thursday and is scheduled to run through to Dec. 12, will provide a critical forum for government officials, business leaders and campaign groups to accelerate action to tackle the climate crisis.

The pressure to deliver is immense. Global temperatures and greenhouse gas emissions continue to break records, with no continent left untouched by more frequent and intense extreme weather events.

Here’s a look at what’s at stake at COP28.

Money

Climate finance is always a hotly debated talking point at the U.N. summit and COP28 promises to be no different. It refers to the financing needed to support efforts to both significantly reduce emissions and adjust to the effects of climate change.

Talks in Bonn, Germany earlier in the year became gridlocked over this issue of finance and support, with some low-income countries refusing to talk about slashing emissions unless there was an equal focus on how wealthy nations would provide cash to them.

It laid the groundwork for what one environmental group expects to be a “huge fight” between high-income and low-income nations at COP28.

Climate activists hold a banner outside the InterContinental London Park Lane during the “Oily Money Out” demonstration organised by Fossil Free London on the sidelines of the opening day of the Energy Intelligence Forum 2023 in London on October 17, 2023. (Photo by HENRY NICHOLLS / AFP) (Photo by HENRY NICHOLLS/AFP via Getty Images)

Henry Nicholls | Afp | Getty Images

Data published by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in mid-November, however, showed that rich countries had finally fulfilled their promise to provide $100 billion a year to low-income countries — albeit two years after the deadline. It is hoped that this could go some way to fostering goodwill at the summit.

“COP28 has a massive role to play in setting the political direction for a transformational shift in climate ambition. But without finance and economic confidence, countries won’t be able to act at the pace and scale needed,” said Alex Scott, program lead at E3G, an independent climate think tank.

Loss and damage

Another major financial issue will be to operationalize the so-called “loss and damage” fund, arguably the main legacy of last year’s COP27 summit in Egypt.

Rich countries, despite accounting for the bulk of historical greenhouse gas emissions, have long opposed the creation of a fund to compensate low-income countries for the loss and damage they’ve caused.

Advocates argue, however, that it is required to account for climate impacts — including hurricanes, floods and wildfires or slow-onset impacts such as rising sea levels — that countries cannot defend against because the risks are unavoidable, or the countries cannot afford it.

The establishment of the loss and damage fund at COP27 was seen as a historic breakthrough and potential turning point in the climate crisis, although many key details were left unresolved — such as who should pay into the fund, how large should it be and who should administer the money.

Countries reached a consensus on how to approach loss and damage payments during tense discissions that ran into overtime earlier this month. Yet it remains to be seen whether this fragile agreement can hold for countries to successfully operationalize the fund in the UAE.

“Billions of people, lives and livelihoods who are vulnerable to the effects of climate change depend upon the adoption of this recommended approach at COP28,” Sultan al-Jaber, president-designate of COP28, said in a statement on Nov. 5.

People carry their belongings while crossing the section of a road collapsing due to flash floods at the Mwingi-Garissa Road near Garissa on November 22, 2023. The Horn of Africa is experiencing torrential rainfall and floods linked to El Nino climate pattern. Several communities are isolated as thousands of homes have been destroyed or damaged by floods that struck at least 33 of Kenya’s 47 counties, killing more than 70 people and displacing many across the East African nation. (Photo by LUIS TATO / AFP) (Photo by LUIS TATO/AFP via Getty Images)

Luis Tato | Afp | Getty Images

Al-Jaber was seen as a controversial choice to lead COP28 discussions in Dubai given that he also works as the head of the state-run Abu Dhabi National Oil Company.

Climate activists criticized his appointment saying his position as an oil executive reflects a clear conflict of interest — akin to “putting the fox in charge of the henhouse.” His office has said he will play a pivotal role in the intergovernmental discussions to build consensus at the event.

Fossil fuels

Melanie Robinson, global climate program director at the World Resources Institute, said COP28 will be the biggest accountability moment for climate action in history — and fossil fuels will be at the heart of the talks.

She anticipated three main debates around the use of oil, gas and coal — the burning of which is the chief driver of the climate crisis.

“So, one is this ‘phase out’ or ‘phase down’ [of fossil fuels]. Actually, for us at WRI, since neither of those has got a timeline, the most important thing for us is that whatever language they agree to, it needs to send a really strong signal that the world is rapidly shifting away from fossil fuels and it will do so equitably,” Robinson told CNBC via telephone.

“The second, but perhaps slightly linked, issue is whether it is ‘abated’ or ‘unabated.’ There’s a whole debate about the role of carbon capture technology abating emissions and there are certainly some oil companies and producer countries who would try to have us believe that with CCS [carbon capture and storage] we can continue to burn fossil fuels and still achieve our climate goals,” she continued.

“We think the science suggests that is simply not true. There is no credible scenario where CCS will allow continued use of fossil fuels, let alone expanding oil and gas. So, for us, it is important that COP28 acknowledges the limited role CCS will play.”

Sultan Al Jaber, chief executive of the UAE’s Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) and president of this year’s COP28 climate summit gestures during an interview as part of the 7th Ministerial on Climate Action (MoCA) in Brussels on July 13, 2023.

Francois Walschaerts | Afp | Getty Images

Abated fossil fuels refer to the process in which emissions are captured and stored with carbon capture and storage technologies. The definition of unabated fossil fuels lacks clarity, despite the term cropping up in several climate commitments, but it is said to refer to fossil fuels produced and used without interventions to substantially reduce the amount of emitted greenhouse gases.

Robinson said the third talking point on fossil fuels was that there is a risk Dubai “could become a platform celebrating pledges from the oil and gas industry that fail to curb the emissions of their products.”

She warned that any net zero pledge from the oil and gas industry that doesn’t involve so-called Scope 3 emissions would not be significant. Scope 3 emissions refer to the emissions produced from across a company’s entire value chain, and often account for the lion’s share of a firm’s carbon footprint.

“For us, it’s a bit like a cigarette company saying that whatever happens to cigarettes after they leave the factory gate has got nothing to do with them. So, that I think we have to watch,” Robinson said.

A course correction?

One unique component of the Dubai climate talks is the conclusion of the first global stocktake since the landmark Paris Agreement — the 2015 accord that aims to limit global heating to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.

The world has already warmed by around 1.1 degrees Celsius, scientists say, after over a century of burning fossil fuels as well as unequal and unsustainable energy and land use. Indeed, it is this temperature increase that is fueling a series of extreme weather events around the world.

The stocktake is the main tool through which progress under the Paris Agreement is assessed. According to the U.N. global stocktake synthesis report released in early September, only transformational change will be enough to get the world back on track to meeting its climate goals.

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November 28, 2023
Nuclear’s uncertain role in the shift away from fossil fuels is seen as critical and very contentious

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Cooling towers at a nuclear power plant in Slovakia. Nuclear power is likely to be discussed in great detail at the COP28 climate change summit in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

Janos Kummer | Getty Images News | Getty Images

The role that nuclear power should play in creating a more sustainable future has long provoked strong feelings — among advocates and critics alike.

It’s set to be a hot topic at the COP28 summit in Dubai, which begins this week. There are reports that there will be a concerted effort to get behind a big increase in nuclear capacity from now to 2050.

Of particular interest to observers will be a ministerial event called “Atoms4NetZero” on Dec. 5. Co-hosted by the International Atomic Energy Agency and the COP28 presidency, the event will “announce the IAEA Statement on Nuclear Power,” according to the COP28 website.

That, it adds, reflects the “critical role of nuclear in the net zero transition.”

Atoms4NetZero was namechecked by the World Nuclear Association in September when it announced the launch of an initiative called "Net Zero Nuclear," which aims to triple the planet's nuclear capacity by the middle of the century.

In a statement issued alongside that announcement, Rafael Mariano Grossi, the IAEA's director general, stressed the importance of the coming climate summit.

"Building on the efforts made during COP 26 and COP 27, nuclear energy will feature even more prominently at COP28," he said.

"As more nations understand the role nuclear can play in achieving energy security and decarbonisation targets, global support for nuclear energy is growing," he added.

The IAEA, for its part, will also have its own "Atoms4Climate" pavilion at COP28, where it says it will "showcase how nuclear technology and science are addressing the twin challenge of climate change mitigation and adaptation."

A major debate

In a sign of how polarizing the debate around the subject can be, this month, the leader of Germany's center-right Christian Democratic Union lamented his country's move away from nuclear power after the closure of its last three plants in April 2023.

"The German government took a decision which was in our view absolutely wrong, a strategic mistake to get out of nuclear," Friedrich Merz told CNBC's Annette Weisbach.

Merz — whose party is not in the coalition government led by Chancellor Olaf Scholz — said rather than focusing only on wind and solar, "all energy sources" need to be utilized.

"The energy supply — for this country, for our industry — is decisive for our competitiveness," he went on to state.

High-profile figures in the German government do not share Merz's viewpoint.

"The phase-out of nuclear power makes our country safer; ultimately, the risks of nuclear power are uncontrollable," Steffi Lemke, Germany's federal minister for the environment and nuclear safety, said in April.

"We now face decades full of challenges before we can safely and responsibly dispose of our nuclear legacy," she later added.

"But switching off the final three nuclear power plants will usher in a new era in energy production."

This kind of analysis — that nuclear is not the answer — is shared by environmental organizations like Greenpeace.

"Nuclear power is touted as a solution to our energy problems, but in reality it's complex and hugely expensive to build," its website says. "It also creates huge amounts of hazardous waste."

"Renewable energy is cheaper and can be installed quickly," it added. "Together with battery storage, it can generate the power we need and slash our emissions."

While Germany — Europe's largest economy — has moved away from nuclear, other countries are looking to expand their capacity.

They include the U.K., which says it wants to deliver as many as 24 gigawatts by 2050, and Sweden, which is looking to construct new reactors.

France, a major player in nuclear power, is also planning to increase its number of reactors.

Stock picks and investing trends from CNBC Pro:

Energy markets are still affected by the shocks from Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and discussions about nuclear power are not going away anytime soon.

"Amid today's global energy crisis, reducing reliance on imported fossil fuels has become the top energy security priority," noted the International Energy Agency, viewed by many as a leading authority on the energy transition.

"No less important is the climate crisis: reaching net zero emissions of greenhouse gases by mid-century requires a rapid and complete decarbonisation of electricity generation and heat production," it added.

"Nuclear energy, with around 413 gigawatts (GW) of capacity operating in 32 countries, contributes to both goals by avoiding 1.5 gigatonnes (Gt) of global emissions and 180 billion cubic metres (bcm) of global gas demand a year."

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November 26, 2023
Israel says these photos show how Hamas places weapons in and near U.N. facilities in Gaza, including schools

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United Nations — Israel has accused the Palestinian militant group Hamas of committing “double war crimes” by not only firing rockets at civilians, but firing them from and near United Nations-run facilities in the Gaza Strip that should be “out of bounds” — and at least one senior U.N. official who spoke with CBS News agrees.

Hamas’ use of civilians as human shields in Gaza was confirmed during the last major conflict in 2014, but its use of U.N. facilities to house and launch weapons has increased over the last eight years, putting U.N. staff and other civilians at greater risk, Israeli officials say.

U.N. officials told CBS News on Wednesday that 99 members of their staff have been killed in Gaza since the Palestinian enclave’s Hamas rulers triggered the current war with their brutal Oct. 7 terror attack. UNRWA, the U.N.’s Palestinian refugee relief agency, says it has more than 13,000 staff in Gaza running schools, health clinics and other services.

Israel Defense Forces spokesman Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus told CBS News that Israel’s forces have seen “a systemic abuse by Hamas of sites and locations that are supposed to enjoy special protection under the Geneva Convention and humanitarian law,” including not only U.N. facilities, but other schools, clinics, mosques, churches and hospitals.

U.N. facilities are “supposed to be out of bounds, according to the law of armed conflict, and specially protected,” Conricus said, calling Hamas’ use of U.N. locations “a double war crime.”

IDF says photos show Hamas rockets at U.N. facilities

The IDF shared three recent photos with CBS News, including one that it said showed a Hamas rocket launching site positioned in a UNRWA warehouse facility in southern Gaza, and another very close to an UNRWA-run school.

Israel Defense Forces officials say this photo shows a Hamas rocket launch site located in a diplomatic building near a U.N. school in Gaza.

Israel Defense Forces photo

As Israel moves into the sites during its ground operations in Gaza, it is sharing photos and video of what it says it has found. This week, Conricus said, it found “Boy Scout camps that have rocket launchers in them, rocket launchers next to children’s playgrounds, rocket launchers and ammunition and military facilities within school compounds, and the false systematic abuse of hospitals and ambulances by Hamas.”

Israel Defense Forces officials say this photo shows a Hamas rocket launch site located inside a U.N. building in Gaza.

Israel Defense Forces photo

Hamas also takes advantage of its extensive network of tunnels running under Gaza neighborhoods.

“Instead of building schools and roads and hospitals and proper housing for civilians, which is what the international aid is intended for, Hamas has taken that cement and construction material and the money and the resources and built a city underneath the city, with hundreds of miles — and I’m not exaggerating — hundreds of miles of tunnels underneath the city,” U.S. alternate Ambassador to the U.N. Robert Wood told a U.N. committee on Tuesday.

“Palestinian civilians are not to blame for Hamas’s atrocities or for the grave humanitarian crisis in Gaza. They are its victims,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken wrote this week.

Israel says Hamas’ use of U.N. facilities has “expanded over the years”

Hamas’ use of U.N. buildings for its weapons and fighters is not new. During the group’s last major war with Israel, between 2012 and 2014, a U.N. inquiry found weapons had been placed inside an UNRWA school in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip and that it was highly likely that an unidentified Palestinian armed group could have used the school premises to launch attacks.

In the same 2015 report, then-Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said that he was “dismayed that Palestinian militant groups would put United Nations schools at risk by using them to hide their arms.”

UNRWA, the U.N. agency that supports Palestinians across the region, said at the time that it “strongly and unequivocally condemns the group or groups responsible for this flagrant violation of the inviolability of its premises under international law,” adding that “especially during escalations of violence, the sanctity and integrity of U.N. installations must be respected.”

Juliette Touma, director of communications for UNRWA, told CBS News on Wednesday, “We are committed to stay in Gaza and to continue to deliver humanitarian assistance to people who need us most, but we are facing significant challenges. … We hope to have more assistance coming in, we hope to have the siege lifted, we hope to have a humanitarian cease-fire as soon as possible.”

Asked about the IDF photos, Touma said she did not have specific information on weapons in or near facilities, but said, “What I can confirm is that UNRWA does inspections of all of its facilities across the Gaza Strip. And towards the end of September we had done an inspection of all of our U.N. facilities across the Gaza Strip, and this inspection was complete.”

Touma said UNRWA shares the coordinates of all their facilities every day with the parties, including “with Israel and the de-facto authorities,” meaning Hamas.

But on Wednesday, in a sign of increased tension between the U.N. and Hamas, Salama Maruf, head of the media bureau of Hamas, accused UNRWA of “colluding” with Israel in the “forced displacement” of residents of Gaza, the AFP news agency reported. “UNRWA and its officials bear responsibility for this humanitarian catastrophe, in particular the residents of the Gaza (City) area and north of it” who are following instructions to evacuate, Maruf said.

U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric disputed that claim, telling reporters at U.N. headquarters on Wednesday, “UNRWA, and the U.N. in general, doesn’t collude with anyone. Our only focus, and UNRWA’s only focus, is to support the civilian population in Gaza in what is a horrendous and indescribable moment in their history, and we will continue to do that.”

The IDF says it’s no mystery who’s putting weapons in U.N. schools, and that Hamas is doing it now more than ever.

“According to our intelligence, not only is it happening but it has been expanded over the years, tunnels underneath U.N. facilities, rocket launchers next to or very — just within the compounds of U.N. facilities, and the general endangering of U.N. staff and U.N. facilities by Hamas, systematically,” Conricus told CBS News.

He added that “the greatest shortcoming is the fact that we don’t hear clear, unequivocal statements by the leaders at the U.N. calling out Hamas for what they’re doing… endangering the lives of U.N. personnel.”

A precarious balance for the U.N. in Gaza

“Hamas and other militants use civilians as human shields and continue to launch rockets indiscriminately towards Israel,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said this week.

U.N. officials have been reluctant, however, to speak about Hamas’ use of schools or other facilities run by U.N. agencies in Gaza.

“It would put our staff in jeopardy to call out Hamas for use of our buildings or schools,” a U.N. official told CBS News, speaking on condition that he remain anonymous.

He said the U.N. was not aware of any weapons being hidden at its facilities, just as it was unaware of the same practice in Gaza before it carried out its inquiry after the last conflict in 2015, and he added an observation to highlight the difficulties for a humanitarian agency in trying to detect items that have been deliberately hidden.

“If the Israelis, with all their intelligence capabilities, did not know an attack was going to happen, how can we know that weapons are hidden under or near the U.N. in Gaza?”

The official added, “Right now we are in the middle of a humanitarian disaster and the only priority is the safety of our 13,000 staff and getting aid in, particularly with 99 U.N. staff already killed in the conflict.”

A second senior U.N. official, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive topic, told CBS News: “Of course, we assume that Hamas is using U.N. facilities in one way or another; it uses mosques, hospitals, schools, and those all should have extra protection status under international law.”

The U.S. and Israel have been in agreement on many of the issues related to the current conflict, but on Wednesday, statements differed. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel will have “security responsibility” in Gaza after the war, while senior U.S. officials called for a Palestinian-led future.

These differences were again apparent on Israeli intelligence. Asked about the pictures that the IDF provided, one U.S. official told CBS News that they’ve seen no information to suggest there are Hamas rockets at U.N. facilities. But another U.S. official said, “Hamas has been known to store weapons at U.N. facilities, endangering U.N. staff.”

One of the senior U.N. officials noted that Hamas remains, for the time being, the de-facto authority in Gaza, and they both said U.N. agencies should try to protect their staff while continuing to carry out their missions to help civilians caught up in the war.

–CBS News’ Eleanor Watson contributed reporting.

Israel & Hamas At War

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Pamela Falk

Pamela Falk is the CBS News correspondent covering the United Nations, and an international lawyer.

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November 8, 2023
U.N. aid warehouses looted in Gaza as Netanyahu declares

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Thousands of people broke into aid warehouses in Gaza to take flour and basic hygiene products, a U.N. agency said Sunday, in a mark of growing desperation and the breakdown of public order three weeks into the war between Israel and Gaza’s militant Hamas rulers.

Tanks and infantry pushed into Gaza over the weekend as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced a “second stage” in the war, three weeks after Hamas launched a brutal incursion into Israel. The widening ground offensive came as Israel also pounded the territory from air, land and sea.

The bombardment — described by Gaza residents as the most intense of the war — knocked out most communications in the territory late Friday, largely cutting off the besieged enclave’s 2.3 million people from the world. Communications were restored to much of Gaza early Sunday.

The Israeli military said Sunday it had struck over 450 militant targets over the past 24 hours, including Hamas command centers, observation posts and anti-tank missile launching positions. It said more ground forces were sent into Gaza overnight.

A UN vehicle moves as the Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA) says it relocated its central operations centre and international staff to the south of Gaza Strip, amid Israeli strikes, in Gaza City, October 13, 2023.

AHMED ZAKOT / REUTERS

Thomas White, Gaza for the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, known as United Nations Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA, said the warehouse break-ins were “a worrying sign that civil order is starting to break down after three weeks of war and a tight siege on Gaza. People are scared, frustrated and desperate,” he said.

UNRWA provides basic services to hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza. Its schools across the territory have been transformed into packed shelters housing Palestinians displaced by the conflict. Israel has allowed only a small trickle of aid to enter from Egypt, some of which was stored in one of the warehouses that was broken into, UNRWA said.

Juliette Touma, a spokesperson for the agency, said the crowds broke into four facilities on Saturday. She said the warehouses did not contain any fuel, which has been in critically short supply since Israel cut off all shipments after the start of the war.

Residents living near Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest, meanwhile said Israeli airstrikes overnight hit near the hospital complex and blocked many roads leading to it. Israel accuses Hamas of having a secret command post beneath the hospital, without providing much evidence.

Tens of thousands of civilians are sheltering in Shifa, which is also packed with patients wounded in the strikes.

“Reaching the hospital has become increasingly difficult,” Mahmoud al-Sawah, who is sheltering in the hospital, said over the phone. “It seems they want to cut off the area.” Another Gaza City resident, Abdallah Sayed, said the Israeli bombing over the past two days was “the most violent and intense” since the war started.

The army recently released computer-generated images showing what it said were Hamas installations in and around Shifa Hospital, as well as interrogations of captured Hamas fighters who might have been speaking under duress. Israel has made similar claims before, but has not substantiated them.

Little is known about Hamas’ tunnels and other infrastructure, and the claims could not be independently verified. Hamas’ government denied the allegations and said they were aimed at justifying future strikes on the facility.

The Palestinian Red Crescent rescue service said another Gaza City hospital received two calls from Israeli authorities on Sunday ordering it to evacuate. It said airstrikes have hit as close as 50 meters (yards) from the Al-Quds Hospital, where 12,000 people are sheltering.

Israel had ordered the hospital to evacuate more than a week ago, but it and other medical facilities have refused, saying it would mean death for patients on ventilators.

There was no immediate Israeli comment on the latest evacuation order or the strikes near Shifa.

Israel says most residents have heeded its orders to flee to the southern part of the besieged territory, but hundreds of thousands remain in the north, in part because Israel has also bombarded targets in so-called safe zones.

An Israeli airstrike hit a two-story house in the southern city of Khan Younis on Sunday, killing at least 13 people, including 10 from one family. The bodies were brought to the nearby Nasser Hospital, according to an Associated Press journalist at the scene.

The escalation has meanwhile ratcheted up domestic pressure on Israel’s government to secure the release of some 230 hostages seized in the Oct. 7 rampage, when Hamas fighters from Gaza breached Israel’s defenses and stormed into nearby towns, gunning down civilians and soldiers in a surprise attack.

Desperate family members met with Netanyahu on Saturday and expressed support for an exchange for Palestinian prisoners held in Israel.

Hamas’ top leader in Gaza, Yehia Sinwar, said Palestinian militants “are ready immediately” to release all hostages if Israel releases all of the thousands of Palestinians held in its prisons. Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, an Israeli military spokesman, dismissed the offer as “psychological terror.”

Netanyahu told the nationally televised news conference that Israel is determined to bring back all the hostages, and maintained that the expanding ground operation “will help us in this mission.” He said he couldn’t reveal everything that is being done due to the sensitivity and secrecy of the efforts.

“This is the second stage of the war, whose objectives are clear: to destroy the military and governmental capabilities of Hamas and bring the hostages home,” he said in his first time taking questions from journalists since the war began.

Netanyahu also acknowledged that the Oct. 7 “debacle,” in which more than 1,400 people were killed, would need a thorough investigation, adding that “everyone will have to answer questions, including me.”

The Israeli military said it was gradually expanding its ground operations inside Gaza, while stopping short of calling it an all-out invasion. Casualties on both sides are expected to rise sharply as Israeli forces and Palestinian militants battle in dense residential areas.

Despite the Israeli offensive, Palestinian militants have continued firing rockets into Israel, with the constant sirens in southern Israel a reminder of the threat.

The Palestinian death toll in Gaza rose Saturday to just over 7,700 people since the war began, with 377 deaths reported since late Friday, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Most of those killed have been women and minors, the ministry said.

An estimated 1,700 people remain trapped beneath the rubble, according to the Health Ministry, which has said it bases its estimates on distress calls it received.

Israel says its strikes target Hamas fighters and infrastructure and that the militants operate among civilians, putting them in danger.

More than 1.4 million people across Gaza have fled their homes, nearly half crowding into U.N. schools and shelters, following repeated warnings by the Israeli military that they would be in danger if they remained in northern Gaza.

Gaza’s sole power plant shut down shortly after the start of the war, and Israel has allowed no fuel to enter, saying Hamas would use it for military purposes.

Hospitals are struggling to keep emergency generators running to operate incubators and other life-saving equipment, and the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees is also trying to keep water pumps and bakeries running to meet essential needs.

Israel & Hamas At War

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October 29, 2023
Why is there a fuel shortage in Gaza, and what does it mean for Palestinians?

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Almost three weeks after the terror attack by Hamas militants against Israel sparked a wave of retaliatory airstrikes on the Gaza Strip, international humanitarian agencies are warning that the Palestinian territory is running out of critical and life-saving resources, especially fuel.

Gaza, a narrow stretch of land along the Mediterranean Sea between Israel and Egypt, has been under an Israeli military blockade since Hamas took control of the enclave in 2007. Home to a densely packed population of about 2.3 million people, Gaza depends largely on Israel for drinking water, food supplies, electricity and fuel for its only power plant.

Israeli officials took steps when the blockade was implemented to reduce the electricity and fuel distributed to Gaza, arguing those resources served the Hamas regime. Conflict between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, which presides over the Israeli-occupied West Bank, further exacerbated the energy crisis in the Gaza Strip in recent years, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

More than 1,400 people in Israel, most of them civilians, were killed and hundreds of others were taken hostage during Hamas’ rampage on Oct. 7, according to Israeli officials. Shortly after, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant ordered a tightening of the Gaza blockade.

“Nothing is allowed in or out,” Gallant said in a statement. “There will be no fuel, electricity or food supplies.”

But over the weekend, twenty trucks carrying humanitarian aid, including drinking water and medial supplies, were allowed to enter Gaza via the Rafah crossing in Egypt, the first time aid was allowed in the territory since Israel declared war earlier this month.

Trucks loaded with humanitarian aid enter Gaza through the Rafah border crossing on Oct. 21, 2023.

Khaled Omar/Xinhua via Getty Images

Israeli airstrikes in Gaza have killed and wounded thousands of Palestinians, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza run by Hamas. Four of the trucks that crossed into Gaza on Saturday carried medical supplies, including medicine to treat chronic diseases, trauma and three months’ worth of other essential supplies for 300,000 people, the World Health Organization said. Trucks also brought 44,000 bottles of drinking water, enough for 22,000 people for a single day, according to UNICEF.

But very little fuel has been allowed in — and, on Tuesday, the United Nations’ main relief agency in Gaza warned that they would not be able to continue operating in the territory without it.

“If we do not get fuel urgently, we will be forced to halt our operations in the #GazaStrip as of tomorrow night,” the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) wrote in a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Tuesday. Around the same time, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned the Security Council that “without fuel, aid cannot be delivered, hospitals will not have power, and drinking water cannot be purified or even pumped.” U.N. representatives have estimated that Gaza needs about 160,000 liters —more than 42,000 gallons— of fuel per day to meet the basic needs of its population.

The World Health Organization said one third of Gaza’s hospitals could no longer function because of the fuel scarcity, noting in a social media post that the territory’s “medical burden is enormous” amid the Israeli military siege.

The agency said in a statement that it was able to deliver “34,000 liters of fuel to four major hospitals in southern Gaza and the Palestine Red Crescent Society to sustain its ambulance services” on Tuesday. It was “only enough to keep ambulances and critical hospital functions running for a little over 24 hours,” the WHO said.

As Gaza’s health system disintegrates, WHO calls for safe passage of fuel, supplies for health facilities

WHO remains unable to distribute fuel and essential, life-saving health supplies to major hospitals in northern Gaza due to lack of security guarantees. WHO calls for an… pic.twitter.com/naftum0ANy

— World Health Organization (WHO) (@WHO) October 24, 2023

“Unless vital fuel and additional health supplies are urgently delivered into Gaza, thousands of vulnerable patients risk death or medical complications as critical services shut down due to lack of power,” the agency said. “These include 1000 patients dependent on dialysis, 130 premature babies who need a range of care, and patients in intensive care or requiring surgery who depend on a stable and uninterrupted supply of electricity to stay alive.”

An Israel Defense Forces spokesperson, Daniel Hagari, said Tuesday that the military would not provide fuel to Gaza because of concerns that fuel shipments could be intercepted by Hamas and used to perpetuate more violence, Reuters reported.

“Petrol will not enter Gaza. Hamas takes the petrol for its military infrastructure,” Hagari said.

These fuel tanks are inside Gaza.

They contain more than 500,000 liters of fuel.

Ask Hamas if you can have some. https://t.co/Dlag6VdbMq pic.twitter.com/WXzZMFr8yI

— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) October 24, 2023

Responding to a thread on X where the UNRWA cautioned that the humanitarian consequences of withholding fuel could be severe, the Israel Defense Forces claimed that Hamas has been stockpiling fuel in tanks inside Gaza that it does not give to Palestinian civilians. CBS News has not verified this claim.

“These fuel tanks are inside Gaza. They contain more than 500,000 liters of fuel,” wrote the Israeli military with an aerial photograph showing what appears to be two rows of white circular containers on the ground below. “Ask Hamas if you can have some.”

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October 25, 2023
American Families Have a Massive Food-Waste Problem

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If you have children, you probably already understand them to be very adorable food-waste machines. If you do not have children, I have five, so let me paint you a picture. On a recent Tuesday night, the post-dinner wreckage in my house was devastating. Peas were welded to the floor; my 5-year-old had decided that he was allergic to chicken and left a pile of it untouched on his plate. After working all day, making the meal in the first place, and then spending dinnertime convincing five irrational, tiny people to try their vegetables, I didn’t even have the energy to convince them to take their plates into the kitchen, let alone box up their leftovers for tomorrow. So I did exactly what I’m not supposed to do, according to the planet’s future: I threw it all out, washed the dishes, and flopped into bed, exhausted.

Tens of millions of tons of food that leaves farms in the United States is wasted. Much of that waste happens at the industrial level, during harvesting, handling, storage, and processing, but a staggering amount of food gets wasted at home, scraped into the garbage can at the end of a meal or tossed after too long in the crisper drawer. According to a 2020 Penn State University study, almost a third of the food that American households buy is wasted.

On the individual level, all of this waste is expensive, annoying, and gross. In the aggregate, it’s unfortunate, given that about a fifth of American families reported not having enough to eat last year. But it’s also bad for the planet. Every step of the modern food-production process generates greenhouse gases. Before they ended up in the trash, all of those slimy vegetables and uneaten hunks of chicken were grown using water and farmland and pesticides and fertilizer. They were most likely packed in plastic and paper, and then stored and transported using fossil fuels and electricity. Throwing away food means throwing away all of the resources it requires, but the problems don’t end there: As food rots in landfills and open dumps, it emits methane, a greenhouse gas much more potent than carbon dioxide. According to the United Nations, food loss and waste accounts for about 8 to 10 percent of global greenhouse-gas emissions.

Read: Your diet is cooking the planet

Some amount of food waste is probably inevitable, especially with young kids. “The very youngest children … are still kind of understanding what they like, with novel foods and healthy foods. We want to give them that opportunity,” Brian Roe, a farm-management professor and the director of the Food Waste Collaborative at Ohio State University, told me. “You need to waste a little bit of food while they develop palates.”

More saliently, Roe’s research indicates that food waste is often inversely proportional to spare time: We get busy, we eat out, and our well-intended groceries head to the trash. His data show a 280 percent increase in food waste from February 2021 to February 2022, right as pandemic restrictions were loosening and people with the income to do so started eating out more. In other words, as soon as people had the option to eat without cooking, they did. “When you’ve got more kids and more craziness and a time crunch, all of a sudden, what you thought was going to be 40 minutes to prep dinners is out the window,” he told me. Thus, “those ingredients are more likely to go to waste.”

Wasting less food starts at the grocery store: Most financially secure families simply need less food than they buy. The sustainability consultant Ashlee Piper told me that she likes to take a picture of her fridge and pantry before heading to the store, in order to avoid buying duplicates. She also recommends shopping not for your “aspirational life” but for the one you are actually living: If, realistically, you’re never going to make your own pasta or pack gourmet lunches for your kids, don’t shop for those meals. “There’s no lunchbox sheriff,” she told me. (Comforting!)

Once you unpack the groceries, experts say to be strategic about making perishable foods highly visible, accessible, and appetizing. Julia Rockwell, a San Francisco mom and sustainability expert, recommends an “Eat Me” station, whether it’s a basket, a bowl, a tray, or a section of the refrigerator, which she says is especially helpful for teenagers, inclined as they are to “go full claws into the fridge.” A designated place for high-urgency snacks reminds them, “Here’s a yogurt that you missed, or here’s a half of a banana, or here’s the things let’s go to first,” she told me. Leftovers and soon-to-spoil foods also make great dinners or lunches for younger kids, who will be happy to snack on items that don’t necessarily go together in a traditional meal.

If you’re cleaning out your fridge and pantry strictly according to expiration dates, stop: If a food is past its expiration date but looks and smells fine, it probably is; most of the time, expiration dates are an indicator of quality, not safety. (Deli meats and unpasteurized cheeses are notable exceptions.) Brush up on the language of food packaging—“best by” is just a suggestion, while “expiration” is the date the manufacturer has decided when quality will begin to decline. Frozen food is pretty much always safe, and packaged foods and canned goods without swelling, dents, or rust can last for years, though they may not taste as good. (You can conceal your less-than-fresh nonperishables in another meal, such as adding older ground beef from the freezer to a chili. When in doubt about, say, an older vegetable, Roe says, “coat it in panko and fry it up.”)

Read: Expiration dates are meaningless

And whatever you’re feeding your kids, experts repeatedly told me, you should probably be feeding them less. How many blueberries does your pickiest kid really eat at the breakfast table? And how many do you put on their plate that you wish they’d eat? The difference in this pint-size math equation is an essential factor in food-waste management for families. Jennifer Anderson, a mom and registered dietician, discourages “wishful portions.” “You know the amount you want your child to eat, so you put that much on their plate … Take that amount, cut it in half, then cut it in half again,” she told me. “A practical portion is a quarter of what you wish they would eat.”

Since talking to Anderson, I’ve kept her advice in mind. I still spend more time than I’d like trying to convince my kids to eat yellow peppers when they’ve decided the red ones are the only acceptable type. But the math is simple: Smaller portions on their plate means fewer leftovers in the trash later, and I’ve noticed a real difference.

And I still find myself dumping plates of picked-over food into the trash or compost. But I move on to the next meal with more grace and less guilt for having helped my kids become little stewards of a healthier planet. I want them to understand that our food comes from somewhere, and that not eating it has consequences. That doesn’t mean guilting them for not liking dragon fruit, or demanding that they clean their plate at every meal, or scaring them about climate change. It’s more like bringing them along, helping them participate in a family project with planetary implications. Wish me luck with the peppers.

This story is part of the Atlantic Planet series supported by HHMI’s Science and Educational Media Group.

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October 24, 2023
UN committee deadlocked on climate disaster recovery fund

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Sultan Al Jaber, chief executive of the UAE’s Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) and president of this year’s COP28 climate summit gestures during an interview as part of the 7th Ministerial on Climate Action (MoCA) in Brussels on July 13, 2023.

Francois Walschaerts | Afp | Getty Images

United Nations representatives failed to secure a deal during late-night talks on how to implement a reparations fund for climate disaster recovery in developing nations.

The “loss and damage fund” would call on rich countries to finance the recovery of climate disasters that have wrecked developing nations and set them behind on their sustainability goals.

The commitment to establish the fund was one of the highlight announcements of last year’s UN Climate Conference, or COP27, after a series of down-to-the-wire negotiations. Part of the agreement at COP27 was the creation of a Loss and Damage Transitional Committee, which would be in charge of negotiating the details on how to set up and operate the fund.

The group was made up of representatives from developing nations like Pakistan, Egypt and Venezuela, as well as rich countries like the United States and the United Kingdom.

The 24-member committee met four times over the past week to settle on official recommendations for how to implement the fund. Those recommendations have been in dispute over the past year and are due to be completed in time to be adopted at this year’s COP28, which is set to take place at the end of November in Abu Dhabi.

At the beginning of the fourth meeting, Sultan Al-Jaber, the director of COP28 and a United Arab Emirates minister, pressed the representatives to pick up the pace of their negotiations: “I don’t want this to be an empty bank account. This committee has to deliver its recommendations.”

However, the talks slowed with representatives unable to reconcile their differences on how to operate the fund and who would pay for it.

The fourth meeting bled into the late hours of Friday night and early Saturday morning, as committee members grew increasingly frustrated by the lagging progress.

“I spent all day with a cold working on this, feeling like crap and I want to see it affected somewhere,” Diann Black-Layne, an environmental director for Antigua and Barbuda, said at the meeting.

The meeting ended with no solid resolution and a plan to set up a fifth meeting on the issue, as the COP28 deadline inches nearer.

“What message do I take back home?” said Ali Waqas Malik, representing Pakistan. “You came empty-handed. There is nothing on the table. No recommendations.”

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October 21, 2023
First trucks carrying aid enter Gaza but besieged enclave desperately needs more | CNN

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Gaza and Rafah
CNN
—

The first trucks carrying aid entered Gaza on Saturday, but international leaders have warned that much more is needed to combat the “catastrophic” humanitarian situation in the enclave that holds more than 2 million people.

The admission of trucks comes two weeks after Israel launched a complete siege of the enclave in response to deadly attacks by the Islamist militant group Hamas.

The trucks entered through the Rafah crossing, the only entry point to Gaza not controlled by Israel, as seen by CNN’s team on the Palestinian side of the border. The crossing closed quickly after the 20 trucks went through.

The Egyptian trucks unloaded the humanitarian aid and returned to the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing, according to a CNN stringer on the ground.

People on the Egyptian side of the border – where aid organizations had waited for days to be given the green light – were jubilant as the crossing opened, celebrating with ululations and chants.

According to Egyptian authorities at the Rafah crossing, 13 trucks were carrying medicine and medical supplies, five were carrying food and two trucks had water.

European commission chief, Ursula von der Leyen, called it an “important first step that will alleviate the suffering of innocent people.”

While these supplies are desperately needed, aid workers said they are a fraction of what’s required for the 2.2 million people crammed into Gaza under a blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt.

Martin Griffiths, United Nations under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, said the delivery followed “days of deep and intense negotiations,” adding that the humanitarian situation in Gaza “has reached catastrophic levels.”

Conditions have grown more dire each day, with hospitals on the verge of collapse and Gazans fast running out of food, water and other critical supplies amid near-constant bombardment by Israel.

UNICEF said it managed to send more than 44,000 bottles of water with the convoy, which the agency said amounts to a day’s water supply for only 22,000 people.

The lack of food is also a serious concern, with the World Food Programme’s (WFP) executive director Cindy McCain telling CNN that starvation is “rampant” in Gaza.

World Health Organization (WHO) director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stressed that “the needs are far higher” than the aid people in Gaza have received.

The WHO said it is working with the Egyptian and Palestine Red Crescent societies to ensure the safe passage of supplies to health facilities, adding shortages have left hospitals in Gaza at “breaking point.”

The Ministry of Health in Gaza said the aid convoy “constitutes only 3% of the daily health and humanitarian needs that used to enter the Gaza Strip before the aggression.”

From Ramallah, in occupied West Bank, head of the Palestinian National Initiative Mustafa Barghouti said Gaza needs “7,000 trucks of immediate aid,” adding, “20 trucks will not really change much.”

A lack of fuel is also a concern. Wael Abu Mohsen, head of communications for the Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing, told Saudi state media Al Hadath TV Saturday that fuel was not delivered, “despite fuel supplies running dangerously low at hospitals and schools in Gaza.”

Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari confirmed that none of the trucks were carrying fuel.

Injured Palestinian child describes moment missile landed near him

The arrival of aid comes as world leaders gathered in Cairo, Egypt, for the Cairo Peace Summit on Saturday.

Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi initiated the peace summit on Gaza in a bid to de-escalate the situation and protect civilians in the enclave. Representatives from 34 countries, including the Middle East, Africa and Europe, and the UN are in attendance, according to organizers. Israel was absent from the summit.

After aid is delivered to Gaza, efforts should be focused on brokering a truce and ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, Sisi said.

Then, negotiations should resume for a peace process leading to a “two-state solution and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state that lives side by side with Israel on the basis of international legitimacy,” Sisi added.

But one political scientist played down hopes of a breakthrough. Dalia Dassa Kaye, a senior fellow from the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations, told CNN: “I doubt we are going to see very immediate concrete results,” adding “it is clear the Egyptians and others in the region feel a need to show some kind of diplomatic horizon.”

In pictures: The deadly clashes in Israel and Gaza

Every day the civilian deaths in Gaza mount, fueling anger in the Middle East and beyond.

The enclave, which was already under a blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt for the past 17 years, became further isolated after the latest war broke out and Israel declared a complete siege.

The UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that about 1.4 million people had been displaced in Gaza – more than 60% of the entire strip’s population.

More than 544,000 people are staying at UN-designated emergency shelters “in increasingly dire conditions,” with many at risk of infectious disease due to unsafe water, the OCHA added in a statement.

On Friday, two American hostages were released from Gaza, the first since Hamas’ October 7 attacks – but their freedom also deepened questions about the fate of other hostages should Israeli troops go into the enclave. The IDF said Saturday that it believes 210 people are being held hostage in Gaza.

Hamas, the Islamist militant group that controls Gaza, handed over the hostages at the border on Friday, with Judith Tai Raanan and her 17-year-old daughter Natalie Raanan now on their way to be reunited with loved ones.

For their family, the release marked the end of a nightmare that began on October 7 when Hamas members carried out the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, killing more than 1,400 people and abducting scores back to Gaza.

So far at least 4,385 people have been killed in Israel’s retaliatory strikes on Gaza, according to the Hamas-controlled Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, including hundreds of women and children – even as Israel claims it is only targeting Hamas locations.

“We are ready to start this incredible journey of healing and trauma relief for her,” said Ben Raanan, Natalie’s brother.

But, he pointed out, the nightmare continues for countless others.

“There are families all over in Gaza and in Israel that are experiencing a loss that I can’t even imagine,” he said.

Many of those Israeli families attended a ceremony in Tel Aviv on Friday, where a Shabbat dinner table was laid with 200 empty place settings to represent the hostages. Shabbat, a holy day of rest and reflection each week, is often a time when Jewish families gather for meals and prayer.

A Hamas spokesperson claimed on Friday that the two US hostages had been released “for humanitarian reasons” and to “prove to the American people and the world” that claims made by the United States government “are false and baseless.”

And while the release has been welcomed by world leaders, including those in the United States, United Kingdom and France, those in Israel have voiced skepticism about Hamas’ motivations and have promised to continue their blistering counterattack.

Palestinian prime minister: Blind support of Israel is a license for killing

“Two of our hostages are home. We will not ease the effort to bring back all abductees and those missing. Simultaneously, we keep fighting until a victory is reached,” said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a statement on social media on Friday.

Maj. Doron Spielman, a spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), told CNN on Friday it was an “absurd” attempt by Hamas to “gain more world favor by playing that humanitarian card.”

Others have suggested the release could be an attempt by Hamas to buy time, as speculation swirls of a potential ground incursion by Israeli forces, who have massed by the border and warned Palestinians to evacuate northern Gaza.

Israeli officials have not publicly shared details about their plans, besides saying the goal is to eliminate Hamas and its infrastructure, much of which consists of heavily reinforced tunnels underground the densely populated cities.

“Hamas is really under great pressure, and it is trying every trick in the book, and they will try many more as we go along, to stop the Israeli maneuver into the Gaza Strip,” said Rami Igra, former division chief of the hostages and MIA unit with the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence service.

“They are trying to postpone this. They are trying to ease the pressure on them, and they will use anything they can in order to get a ceasefire,” he added.

The US and its allies have not tried to discourage this kind of ground assault – but they have urged Israel to be strategic and clear about its goals in the case of an incursion, warning against a prolonged occupation and emphasizing civilian safety, US and Western officials told CNN.

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October 21, 2023

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