Developing nations hope draft resolution will pave way for fresh talks on global tax policy
Developing nations are hoping to secure greater power over global tax affairs at a critical United Nations vote in New York on Wednesday.
If the body’s members vote in favour of a resolution put forward by the African Group of states, it could pave the way toward fresh intergovernmental talks on global tax policy.
Continue reading...Tory government eager to focus on trade rather than Cyril Ramaphosa’s refusal to put sanctions on Russia
The South African president has started a two-day state visit to the UK, the first since King Charles took the throne, with the Conservative government eager to focus on trade rather than challenge South Africa’s refusal to impose sanctions on Russia over the invasion of Ukraine.
Cyril Ramaphosa’s trip has been much delayed due to Covid and only by chance became the first state visit of the king’s reign.
Continue reading...Janusz Waluś murdered head of communist party in 1993, risking outbreak of political violence before first multiracial elections
South Africa’s top court has ordered the release on parole of the man convicted of assassinating anti-apartheid leader Chris Hani, a murder that threatened to plunge the country into political violence before its transition to democracy.
Janusz Waluś, 69, killed Hani, a hugely popular leader of the Communist party, a year before South Africa’s first multiracial elections. He was sentenced to life in prison and his applications to be released on parole have been rejected by several justice ministers.
Continue reading...Children among those seized from villages and farms, say residents
More than 100 people, including women and children, were abducted when gunmen raided four villages in Nigeria’s north-western Zamfara state on Sunday, the information commissioner and residents said.
Kidnapping has become endemic in north-west Nigeria as roving gangs of armed men seize people from villages, highways and farms and demand ransom money from their relatives.
Continue reading...Floods caused by warming temperatures and a lack of preventive care are driving the spread of the disease in a country racked with political and economic upheaval
More than 1,400 people in Sudan have been diagnosed with dengue fever this year in the worst outbreak in the country for more than a decade.
Half of the country’s 18 states have registered cases and nine deaths recorded, including one child, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) who suspect the true number to be far higher.
Continue reading...French president says Moscow is pursuing ‘predatory project’ to spread influence in African countries
Emmanuel Macron has accused Russia of feeding disinformation to further its “predatory project” in Africa, where France has had military setbacks.
In an interview with TV5 Monde on the sidelines of a conference of Francophone nations in Tunisia, he said there was a “predatory project” pushing disinformation into African countries, which was “a political project financed by Russia, sometimes others”.
Continue reading...Developed countries agree to ‘loss and damage’ fund for vulnerable nations, but delay approving wider deal
The world’s poorest countries have scored a historic victory at the Cop27 climate summit, after countries agreed to set up a fund to help poor countries being battered by climate disasters, but delayed approving a wider deal outlining global resolve to fight climate change.
After tense negotiations that ran through the night, the Egyptian Cop27 presidency early on Sunday released a draft text for an overall agreement – and simultaneously called a plenary session to gavel it through as the final, overarching agreement for the UN summit.
Continue reading...Despite breakthrough on fund for developing nations, Ursula von der Leyen says Cop27 has not delivered on commitment to phase down fossil fuels
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The main sticking point of Cop27 has been over the creation of a loss and damage fund – finance provided by rich nations to poorer ones to help them prepare for and recover from the worst impacts of climate breakdown.
Some, especially in the rightwing press, have framed this as “reparations”, a highly loaded term. It’s also misleading, as under article 8 of the Paris climate agreement it is explicitly made clear that loss and damage “does not involve or provide a basis for any liability or compensation”.
Continue reading...The European Union has backed a loss and damage fund, one of the key demands of developing countries at the climate talks
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The low-lying Pacific island of Tuvalu has been reacting to the EU’s proposal on “loss and damage”. Its finance minister, Seve Paeniu, called for support for phasing out all fossil fuels, language so far missing from the draft Sharm el-Sheikh agreement.
He described the EU position on loss and damage as a “breakthrough”.
Continue reading...China is responsible for more cumulative emissions than any country other than the US
Late on Thursday night in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, the Cop27 UN climate talks seemed stuck in an irretrievable logjam. Rich and poor countries had reached deadlock, a “breakdown between north and south”, according to the UN secretary general, António Guterres.
By Friday morning, the talks had been upended and the battleground dramatically redrawn, in a way it has not been in 30 years of these annual talks. At stake is the question of whether some of the world’s leading economies – countries such as China, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf petrostates, Russia and countries with high per capita income such as South Korea and Singapore – should start contributing for the first time to help the poorest and most vulnerable countries with the impacts of climate disaster.
Continue reading...Police say drugs and gun also found at Johannesburg property where they detained wanted Abergil gang member and seven others
A man reputed to be one of Israel’s most wanted gang leaders has been arrested during a raid on a home in an affluent Johannesburg suburb where South African authorities said they also found guns, drugs and a van equipped for torture.
South African police said on Thursday that the 46-year-old Israeli was a member of the Abergil gang, which deals in drug trafficking and extortion, and that he was wanted in Israel for several attempted murders.
Continue reading...Hollywood actor criticised by South Africans after saying settler language ‘not very helpful’
Charlize Theron has prompted anger in her native South Africa after suggesting that Afrikaans, a language descended from Dutch colonial settlers, is heading for oblivion.
“There’s about 44 people still speaking it … it’s definitely a dying language, it’s not a very helpful language,” the 47-year-old Oscar-winning actor said this week on a US podcast, Smartless.
Continue reading...Egypt foreign minister Sameh Shoukry says delegates are shying away from taking ‘difficult political decisions’. This live blog is closed
As global politicians face difficult discussions on the draft over the coming hours, public opinion appears to be supportive of the idea that richer countries should pay loss and damage finances for climate action in poor countries.
Damian Carrington, our environment editor writes: A significant majority of people in the UK think the country has a responsibility to pay for climate action in poorer and vulnerable countries, an opinion poll conducted for the Guardian shows.
No details of a fund on loss and damage financing for poorer countries
“Welcomes” the fact that parties agreed for the first time to include “matters related to funding arrangements responding to loss and damage” on the summit agenda.
No call for a phase down on all fossil fuels
Stresses the importance of exerting all efforts to meet Paris Agreement goal of holding global average temperature to well below 2C and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 C
Germany latest to end peacekeeping mission as operations prove unable to stop Islamic extremist insurgency
Thousands of international troops are withdrawing from Mali amid surging violence, growing Russian influence and an acute humanitarian crisis.
On Wednesday Germany became the latest country to end its participation in the UN peacekeeping mission in the unstable west African country. Earlier this week, British officials said that 300 British soldiers sent in 2020 to join the United Nations force would be returning earlier than planned.
Continue reading...Stark findings add pressure on Cop27 negotiators to deliver meaningful funding to vulnerable countries
The heavy rain behind recent devastating flooding in Nigeria, Niger and Chad was made about 80 times more likely by the climate crisis, a study has found.
The finding is the latest stark example of the severe impacts that global heating is already wreaking on communities, even with just a 1C rise in global temperature to date. It adds pressure on the world’s nations at the UN Cop27 climate summit in Egypt to deliver meaningful action on protecting and compensating affected countries.
Continue reading...Brazil’s president elect beat Jair Bolsonaro, under whose watch deforestation had rocketed, in last month’s election
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A long-mooted deposit return scheme in the UK will not be in place for a further two years, the UK environment secretary said on Wednesday, writes Fiona Harvey, Guardian environment correspondent.
“It will be another couple of years at least,” Thérèse Coffey told journalists at Cop27. “Scotland has not started theirs yet. We are getting on with our environmental targets and a business plan and Elms. We are coming up to the fifth anniversary of the 25 year environment plan.”
Let’s talk to the secretary-general of the UN for the next op to be done in Brazil, in the Amazon. I think it is important that the people who defend the Amazon know the region and the concrete reality.
Continue reading...Doctors and aid workers describe race against time to keep patients alive in northern Ethiopian region
Convoys carrying desperately needed food aid have entered Tigray, as humanitarian groups gained access to the war-torn northern Ethiopian region for the first time since a ceasefire agreement was signed two-week ago.
Doctors and aid workers in Tigray have described a race against time to keep sick or malnourished patients alive as they wait for humanitarian assistance.
Continue reading...Leaders say December biodiversity summit in Montreal is ‘unprecedented’ chance to turn tide on nature loss
The architects of the Paris agreement have urged world leaders to reach an ambitious sister deal for nature at the Cop15 biodiversity conference this December while warning that limiting global heating to 1.5C is impossible without protecting and restoring ecosystems.
On biodiversity day at the Cop27 climate conference in Egypt, Christiana Figueres, Laurence Tubiana, Laurent Fabius and Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, who helped design the Paris agreement, said that Cop15 would be an “unprecedented” opportunity to turn the tide on nature loss.
Continue reading...British-Egyptian political prisoner had been on a partial hunger strike of 100 calories or less a day for six months
Alaa Abd el-Fattah, the British-Egyptian democracy activist jailed in Egypt, has told his family in a letter that he has ended his six-month-long hunger strike, which he began in protest against his detention conditions.
“I’ve broken my strike. I’ll explain everything on Thursday,” he told them, in reference to his monthly family prison visits to the Wadi el-Natrun desert prison where he is being held. The democracy activist was sentenced to a further five years in prison last year for sharing a social media post about torture, shortly after gaining British citizenship through his mother.
Continue reading...Conference in Sharm el-Sheikh follows decade-long crackdown on civil society in Egypt
“Honestly, what I want is to be in Sharm el-Sheikh and just scream,” said Amr Magdi of Human Rights Watch. Like dozens of other prominent human rights defenders, researchers and environmentalists, Magdi has been unable to attend Cop27 as he is exiled from Egypt because of his work.
“I just want to tell everyone about the injustice happening in Egypt. I can’t do it personally and I’m trying to do it with my work. I’m even helping others who are able to travel there to do this,” he said.
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