Thousands of meters beneath the Pacific Ocean lie vast deposits of the metals needed for the shift to renewable energy. Mining companies are ready to scoop up this sunken treasure strewn across an area more than half the size of the continental United States. But not much is known about the ecosystem deep beneath the ocean and what impacts mining these rocks might have. VOA’s Steve Baragona has more.
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Day: October 31, 2023
A top U.N. agency is warning that if calls for a cease-fire in Gaza are not heeded, causalities will continue to mount, putting children in the densely populated Palestinian enclave at even greater risk.
“Gaza has become a graveyard for thousands of children,” said James Elder, UNICEF spokesperson, Tuesday. “It is a living hell for everyone else.”
The Hamas-controlled Gaza health ministry says that more than 8,300 Palestinians in Gaza, including at least 3,457 children, have been killed since Israel began a punishing bombing campaign following the horrific massacre of its civilians by Hamas militants October 7.
“From the earliest days of the unprecedented hostilities in the Gaza Strip, UNICEF has been forthright on the need for an immediate humanitarian cease-fire, for the aid to flow and for children abducted to be released,” he said. “Like many others, we have pleaded for the killing of children to stop.”
While Washington has thrown its support behind Israel, it has also called for the protection of civilians and pushed for the opening of humanitarian aid into Gaza as the Israeli military expands its ground campaign aiming to uproot Hamas, which is a U.S.-designated terrorist group.
Since Israel partially lifted its blockade of Gaza on October 21, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, OCHA, says 143 trucks carrying food, water, and medical supplies have entered Gaza through the Rafah Crossing with Egypt.
“Before this escalation, there were 500 trucks on average going in every working day. So about 22 days per month,” said Jens Laerke, OCHA spokesperson.
“The equivalent of 50 trucks of that daily average of 500 was fuel,” he said.
OCHA says that none of the trucks entering Gaza now contain fuel, which is needed to produce electricity at Gaza’s only power plant, to back up hospital generators, keep water desalination plants running, and prevent Gaza’s few remaining bakeries from shutting down.
“Fuel is not just a luxury commodity for fancy cars to drive around,” said Christian Lindmeier, spokesperson for the World Health Organization. “It is vital for the water supply. It is vital for the ambulances, for the hospitals to operate and many other instances to make life in Gaza a little bit lighter in this ongoing humanitarian catastrophe.”
Israel refuses to allow fuel to enter Gaza because it classifies diesel as a “dual use” good that can be used by Hamas for military purposes. It also argues that Hamas has stockpiled large quantities of fuel which it is hoarding for military use.
It also insists that no cease-fire is possible while it is engaged in an existential struggle against an organization that is committed to the killing of Jews and the destruction of Israel.
“Children are absolutely dying because there are situations where they do not have the medical supplies, the medical care they need … who have been impacted by the bombardments and should have had their lives saved,” said Elder.
“Without humanitarian access, the deaths from the attacks could be the tip of the iceberg,” he said, warning that deaths will increase substantially if hospitals continue to be deprived of the medicine they need, “if incubators start to fail, and hospitals go dark for lack of electricity.”
The WHO says 130 premature infants are dependent on incubators, 61 percent of whom are in the northern part of Gaza, where Israeli bombardment is most intense. It says 50,000 women are pregnant, with an average of 180 births a day, and 350,000 people with non-communicable diseases, such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer, need urgent medical care.
“None of this can happen without medical supplies, without electricity,” said Lindmeier. “This is an imminent public health catastrophe that looms with mass displacement, with overcrowding, with damage to water and sanitation infrastructure.”
Elder said UNICEF has sent 25 trucks across the border into Gaza since October 21. He said eight trucks, which arrived in Gaza Monday, were carrying water, hygiene and medical supplies, but no fuel.
“There is a lot of frustration and anger from agencies because we have so, so many trucks at that border, so many containers full and unable to get into Gaza.
“We know that even if we cannot get that cease-fire that we have so desperately been calling for from day one, that at least we must get these people the basics that any humans deserve — water, medicines.”
“Agencies are getting some in, UNICEF is getting some in,” he said. “But it remains a drop. It remains unacceptable.”
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With White House funding to put more electric cars on the road, some states are using the money to build out their part of a fast-charging EV network. Deana Mitchell has the story.
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Saudi Arabia is all but certain to host the men’s 2034 World Cup after the Australian soccer federation decided not to enter the bidding contest, which had been widely seen as shaped by FIFA to suit the oil rich kingdom.
FIFA had set Tuesday as the deadline to formally declare interest in hosting the tournament, but Australia’s decision not to enter the race leaves Saudi Arabia as the only declared candidate — to the dismay of many human rights activists.
“We have explored the opportunity to bid to host the FIFA World Cup and — having taken all factors into consideration — we have reached the conclusion not to do so for the 2034 competition,” Football Australia said in a statement.
FIFA still needs to rubber stamp Saudi Arabia as the host — a decision that is likely to be made next year — but that now seems a formality. It would be the culmination of Saudi Arabia’s ambitious drive to become a major player in global sports, having already spent massive amounts on bringing in dozens of star soccer players to its domestic league, buying English soccer club Newcastle, launching the breakaway LIV Golf tour and hosting major boxing fights.
But FIFA’s seeming eagerness to pave the way for Saudi Arabia to host its marquee event has drawn widespread criticism from activists who say it exposes the governing body’s human rights commitments as “a sham.”
Saudi Arabia’s sports spending program approved by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has been described as sportswashing to soften a national image often associated with its record on women’s rights and the 2018 killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
FIFA president Gianni Infantino has built close ties to Saudi soccer and the crown prince personally, and has long been seen as trying to steer the world soccer body’s competitions toward the kingdom.
When FIFA made deal this month to have just one host bid for the 2030 World Cup — uniting Spain, Portugal and Morocco with three games placed in South America — it also fast-tracked the 2034 hosting race with only member federations in Asia and Oceania eligible to bid. The tight deadline gave them less than four weeks to enter the race by Tuesday and just one month more to sign a bidding agreement that requires government support.
The timetable “was a little bit of a surprise,” Australian soccer federation leader James Johnson acknowledged Tuesday, adding “we’re adults and we just try to roll with it and deal with the cards that we have been given.”
Within hours of the FIFA announcement on October 4, the Saudi soccer federation said it was in and the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) — which includes Australia — said it was backing the kingdom to bring the World Cup back to the Middle East after neighboring Qatar hosted the 2022 edition.
Qatar hosted in November and December, in the heart of the European club soccer season, to avoid extreme heat in the summer months and a Saudi tournament likely also will be moved from the traditional June-July period.
Indonesia’s football association initially showed interest in a joint bid with Australia, potentially alongside Malaysia and Singapore, but that faded when Indonesia instead backed Saudi Arabia.
Australia will instead attempt to secure hosting the 2029 Club World Cup — which will relaunch in 2025 playing every four years in a new format with 32 teams qualifying — and the 2026 Women’s Asian Cup. Saudi Arabia also is bidding for the women’s Asian championship.
“I think there will be some goodwill created by not going for 2034,” Johnson told reporters in an online call, accepting that the resources of a government-backed Saudi bid “is difficult to compete with.”
Australia and New Zealand successfully co-hosted the Women’s World Cup in July and August. Brisbane, Queensland state, is due to become the third Australian city to host the Olympics when it stages the 2032 Summer Games.
Saudi Arabia also will host the men’s Asian Cup in 2027 and has started a widespread construction program to build and renovate stadiums that likely will be used for the World Cup. FIFA’s bidding documents say 14 stadiums are needed at the 48-team tournament.
Qatar’s World Cup was dogged by years-long allegations of rights abuses of migrant workers needed to build its stadiums.
“FIFA’s failure in 2010 to insist on human rights protections when it awarded the 2022 World Cup to Qatar is a major reason why serious reforms were so delayed, and so often weakly implemented and enforced,” Football Supporters Europe executive director Ronan Evain said Tuesday.
Saudi Arabia’s preparation should face some of the same scrutiny in the next decade.
“With Saudi Arabia’s estimated 13.4 million migrant workers, inadequate labor and heat protections and no unions, no independent human rights monitors, and no press freedom, there is every reason to fear for the lives of those who would build and service stadiums, transit, hotels, and other hosting infrastructure in Saudi Arabia,” Human Rights Watch director of global initiatives Minky Worden said in a recent statement.
“The possibility that FIFA could award Saudi Arabia the 2034 World Cup despite its appalling human rights record and closed door to any monitoring exposes FIFA’s commitments to human rights as a sham,” Worden said.
FIFA’s own World Cup bidding documents push potential hosts toward “respecting internationally recognized human rights,” though limits the remit to tournament operations rather than in wider society.
“FIFA must now make clear how it expects hosts to comply with its human rights policies,” Amnesty International official Steve Cockburn said in a statement Tuesday. “It must also be prepared to halt the bidding process if serious human rights risks are not credibly addressed.”
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In a little more than five years – sometime in early 2029 – the world will likely be unable to stay below the internationally agreed temperature limit for global warming if it continues to burn fossil fuels at its current rate, a new study says.
The study moves three years closer the date when the world will eventually hit a critical climate threshold, which is an increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since the 1800s.
Beyond that temperature increase, the risks of catastrophes increase, as the world will likely lose most of its coral reefs, a key ice sheet could kick into irreversible melt, and water shortages, heat waves and death from extreme weather dramatically increase, according to an earlier United Nations scientific report.
Hitting that threshold will happen sooner than initially calculated because the world has made progress in cleaning up a different type of air pollution — tiny smoky particles called aerosols. Aerosols slightly cool the planet and mask the effects of burning coal, oil and natural gas, the study’s lead author said. Put another way, while cleaning up aerosol pollution is a good thing, that success means slightly faster rises in temperatures.
The study in Monday’s journal Nature Climate Change calculates what’s referred to as the remaining “carbon budget,” which is how much fossil fuels the world can burn and still have a 50% chance of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius since pre-industrial times. That is the threshold set by the 2015 Paris agreement.
The last 10 years are already on average 1.14 degrees Celsius (2.05 degrees Fahrenheit) hotter than the 19th century. Last year was 1.26 degrees Celsius (2.27 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer and this year is likely to blow past that, according to scientists.
The new study set the carbon budget at 250 billion metric tons. The world is burning a little more than 40 billion metric tons a year (and still rising), leaving six years left. But that six years started in January 2023, the study said, so that’s now only five years and a couple months away.
“It’s not that the fight against climate change will be lost after six years, but I think probably if we’re not already on a strong downward trajectory, it’ll be too late to fight for that 1.5 degree limit,” said study lead author Robin Lamboll, an Imperial College of London climate scientist.
A 2021 United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report gave a budget of 500 billion metric tons pointed to a mid 2032 date for locking in 1.5 degrees, Lamboll said. An update by many IPCC authors this June came up with a carbon budget the same as Lamboll’s team, but Lamboll’s analysis is more detailed, said IPCC report co-chair and climate scientist Valerie Masson-Delmotte.
The biggest change from the 2021 report to this year’s studies is that new research show bigger reductions in aerosol emissions — which come from wildfires, sea salt spray, volcanoes and burning fossil fuels — that lead to sooty air that cools the planet a tad, covering up the bigger greenhouse gas effect. As the world cleans up its carbon-emitting emissions it is simultaneously reducing the cooling aerosols too and the study takes that more into account, as do changes to computer simulations, Lamboll said.
Even though the carbon budget looks to run out early in the year 2029, that doesn’t mean the world will instantly hit 1.5 degrees warmer than pre-industrial times. The actual temperature change could happen a bit earlier or as much as a decade or two later, but it will happen once the budget runs out, Lamboll said.
People should not misinterpret running out of the budget for 1.5 degrees as the only time left to stop global warming, the authors said. Their study said the carbon budget with a 50% chance to keep warming below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) is 1220 billion metric tons, which is about 30 years.
“We don’t want this to be interpreted as six years to save the planet,” study co-author Christopher Smith, a University of Leeds climate scientist, said. “If we are able to limit warming to 1.6 degrees or 1.65 degrees or 1.7 degrees, that’s a lot better than 2 degrees. We still need to fight for every tenth of a degree.”
Climate scientist Bill Hare of Climate Action Tracker, which monitors national efforts to reduce carbon emissions, said “breaching the 1.5 degree limit does not push the world over a cliff at that point, but it is very much an inflection point in increasing risk of catastrophic changes.”
As they head into climate negotiations in Dubai next month, world leaders still say “the 1.5-degree limit is achievable.” Lamboll said limiting warming to 1.5 degrees is technically possible, but politically is challenging and unlikely.
“We have got to the stage where the 1.5C carbon budget is so small that it’s almost losing meaning,” said climate scientist Glen Peters of the Norwegian CICERO climate institute, who wasn’t part of the research. “If your face is about to slam in the wall at 100 miles per hour, it is sort of irrelevant if your nose is currently 1 millimeter or 2 millimeters from the wall. … We are still heading in the wrong direction at 100 mph.”
People “shouldn’t worry — they should act,” said climate scientist Piers Forster of the University of Leeds, who wasn’t part of Lamboll’s team. Acting as fast as possible “can halve the rate of warming this decade.”
The Spanish soccer official who provoked a players’ rebellion and reckoning on gender when he kissed an unwilling star player on the lips at the Women’s World Cup final trophy ceremony was banned for three years on Monday by the sport’s global governing body.
Luis Rubiales’ conduct at the Aug. 20 final in Australia — and his defiant refusal to resign as Spanish soccer federation president for three weeks — distracted many people from the women’s career-defining title win.
Rubiales is now barred from working in soccer until after the men’s 2026 World Cup. His ban will expire before the next women’s tournament in 2027.
Spanish authorities have launched a criminal investigation against Rubiales for kissing Jenni Hermoso on the lips after the team’s 1-0 victory over England in Sydney, and his conduct in the fallout from the scandal.
Spanish prosecutors have formally accused Rubiales of sexual assault and coercion. Hermoso said that Rubiales pressured her to speak out in his defense amid the global furor.
Rubiales denied wrongdoing to a judge in Madrid who imposed a restraining order for him not to contact Hermoso, the record goal scorer for the Spain women’s team.
FIFA has said it was investigating whether Rubiales violated “basic rules of decent conduct” and “behaving in a way that brings the sport of football and/or FIFA into disrepute.”
In another incident, at the final whistle in Sydney Rubiales grabbed his crotch as a victory gesture while he was in an exclusive section of seats and Queen Letizia of Spain and 16-year-old Princess Sofía were standing nearby.
A third incident FIFA judges cited to remove Rubiales from office during their investigation — “carrying the Spanish player Athenea del Castillo over his shoulder during the post-match celebrations” — was detailed in a ruling to explain why he was provisionally suspended.
Women’s soccer has seen allegations of sexual misconduct by male soccer presidents and coaches against female players on national teams.
Two of the 32 World Cup teams, Haiti and Zambia, had to deal with such issues while qualifying for the tournament co-hosted by Australia and New Zealand.
Even before the Women’s World Cup, Rubiales — a former professional player and union leader — had been the target of unproven allegations of a sexual nature about his managerial culture, including at the national federation he led since 2018.
The Spanish players’ preparation for the Women’s World Cup also was in turmoil in the year ahead of the tournament because of their dissatisfaction with the leadership of their male coach, Jorge Vilda.
Vilda was supported by Rubiales to stay in the job despite 15 players asking last year not to be called up again because of the emotional pain it meant to play for the team. Three continued their self-imposed exile and refused to be selected for the World Cup.
As the Rubiales scandal continued into September, with lawmakers supporting the players, Vilda was fired by the federation’s interim management.
Rubiales resigned from his jobs in soccer on Sept. 10 after three weeks of defiance that increased pressure on him from the Spanish government and national-team players.
He also gave up his vice presidency of European soccer body UEFA which paid him $265,000 a year. One day later UEFA thanked Rubiales for his service in a statement that offered no backing to the women players.
When Rubiales resigned, he said he did not want to be a distraction from Spain’s bid to host the men’s 2030 World Cup in a UEFA-backed project with Portugal and Morocco.
That bid has since been picked by FIFA as the only candidate to host the 2030 tournament in a plan that now also includes its former opponents Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay.
The Morocco soccer federation that partnered with Spain on the men’s 2030 World Cup later hired Vilda to coach its women’s national team. The Morocco women were a standout story at their World Cup reaching the last-16 knockout round in their tournament debut.
The quick forgiveness of Vilda fueled the view that soccer administrators’ actions often do not meet their claims of zero-tolerance of misconduct.
Rubiales can choose to appeal his three-year ban, first to FIFA and subsequently at the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
FIFA said Rubiales has 10 days to request the full written verdict in his case which it would then publish.
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