US, Britain, Canada accuse Russia of plot to sway Moldova election
Updated 14 June 2024
Reuters
KYIV/WASHINGTON: The United States, Britain and Canada accused Russia on Thursday of carrying out a plot to sway the outcome of the Moldovan presidential election in October and incite protests if a pro-Moscow candidate should lose.
Russia is working to exacerbate societal tensions and foment negative perceptions of the West and the incumbent team of Moldova’s pro-Western President Maia Sandu through disinformation and online propaganda, they said in a statement issued by the State Department in Washington.
“We are taking this step to warn our democratic partners and allies that Russian actors are carrying out a plot to influence the outcomes of Moldova’s fall 2024 presidential election,” they said.
The plot, they said, is part of wider attempts by Moscow to subvert democratic elections to “secure results favorable to the Kremlin.”
The threat is especially relevant this year as hundreds of million of voters in Europe and North America cast ballots in national, regional and local elections, the statement said.
The Russian embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Moldovan Prime Minister Dorin Recean said on social media platform X that he was grateful for support from the three allies and vowed that the “Kremlin’s attempts to undermine our sovereignty and incite unrest will not succeed.”
Grateful for the strong support of the US, the UK & Canada as we defend Moldova's democracy. Kremlin’s attempts to undermine our sovereignty & incite unrest will not succeed. Our institutions stand strong, ensuring peace, security & the right of our people to choose their future.
Moldova, a former Soviet republic of 2.5 million people, has fiercely condemned Russia’s invasion of neighboring Ukraine, accused Moscow of plotting the Moldovan government’s overthrow and expelled Russian diplomats.
Russia, the allies said, is backing presidential candidates in Moldova and unidentified pro-Russia actors are “actively using disinformation and propaganda online, on the air and on the streets to further their objectives.”
These actors are fanning criticism of Sandu and her Party of Action and Solidarity to incite protests and plan to spread lies about her character and “supposed electoral irregularities.”
The allies issued the statement a day after the United States imposed sanctions on Evgenia Gutul, the pro-Russia governor of Moldova’s Gagauzia region.
Yevgenia Gutsul, leader of Moldovia's Gagauzia region. R)EUTERS/File Photo
Gutul faces criminal allegations of channelling funds from Russia to finance the now-banned Shor Party set up by Ilan Shor, an exiled pro-Russia businessman convicted of fraud in Moldova.
She denies the allegations as fabricated.
During a visit by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Chisinau last month, Sandu accused the Kremlin of using criminal groups in Gagauzia to bring in Russian money to finance de-stabilizing activities and attempts “to bribe the elections.”
In the joint statement, the allies said they shared Sandu’s concerns that the Kremlin is using criminal groups to finance political activities.
Moscow’s political interference, they said, dates back years, and they cited as an example “direct support” that employees of Russia’s state-funded RT media network have provided to Shor.
India’s capital New Delhi frequently ranks among the world’s most polluted cities
One study estimate India’s economic losses due to worsening air pollution at $95 billion yearly
Updated 10 sec ago
AFP
NEW DELHI: Noxious smog smothering the plains of north India is not only choking the lungs of residents and killing millions, but also slowing the country’s economic growth.
India’s capital New Delhi frequently ranks among the world’s most polluted cities. Each winter, vehicle and factory emissions couple with farm fires from surrounding states to blanket the city in a dystopian haze.
Acrid smog this month contains more than 50 times the World Health Organization recommended limit of fine particulate matter — dangerous cancer-causing microparticles known as PM2.5 pollutants, that enter the bloodstream through the lungs.
Experts say India’s worsening air pollution is having a ruinous impact on its economy — with one study estimating losses to the tune of $95 billion annually, or roughly three percent of the country’s GDP.
The true extent of the economic price India is paying could be even greater.
“The externality costs are huge and you can’t assign a value to it,” said Vibhuti Garg, of the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.
Bhargav Krishna of the Delhi-based research collective Sustainable Futures Collaborative said “costs add up in every phase.”
“From missing a day at work to developing chronic illness, the health costs associated with that, to premature death and the impact that has on the family of the person,” Krishna told AFP.
A school teacher conducts an online class near a basketball court at Swami Sivananda Memorial Institute in New Delhi on Nov. 22, 2024. (AFP)
Still, several studies have tried to quantify the damage.
One by the global consultancy firm Dalberg concluded that in 2019, air pollution cost Indian businesses $95 billion due to “reduced productivity, work absences and premature death.”
The amount is nearly three percent of India’s budget, and roughly twice its annual public health expenditure.
“India lost 3.8 billion working days in 2019, costing $44 billion to air pollution caused by deaths,” according to the study which calculated that toxic air “contributes to 18 percent of all deaths in India.”
Pollution has also had a debilitating impact on the consumer economy because of direct health-related eventualities, the study said, reducing footfall and causing annual losses of $22 billion.
The numbers are even more staggering for Delhi, the epicenter of the crisis, with the capital province losing as much as six percent of its GDP annually to air pollution.
Restaurateur Sandeep Anand Goyle called the smog a “health and wealth hazard.”
“People who are health conscious avoid stepping out so we suffer,” said Goyle, who heads the Delhi chapter of the National Restaurant Association of India.
Tourism has also been impacted, as the smog season coincides with the period when foreigners traditionally visit northern India — too hot for many during the blisteringly hot summers.
“The smog is giving a bad name to India’s image,” said Rajiv Mehra of the Indian Association of Tour Operators.
Delhi faces an average 275 days of unhealthy air a year, according to monitors.
Piecemeal initiatives by the government — that critics call half-hearted — have failed to adequately address the problem.
Academic research indicates that its detrimental impact on the Indian economy is adding up.
A 2023 World Bank paper said that air pollution’s “micro-level” impacts on the economy translate to “macro-level effects that can be observed in year-to-year changes in GDP.”
The paper estimates that India’s GDP would have been 4.5 percent higher at the end of 2023, had the country managed to curb pollution by half in the previous 25 years.
Another study published in the Lancet health journal on the direct health impacts of air pollution in 2019 estimated an annual GDP deceleration of 1.36 percent due to “lost output from premature deaths and morbidity.”
Desperate emergency curbs — such as shuttering schools to reduce traffic emissions as well as banning construction — come with their own economic costs.
“Stopping work for weeks on end every winter makes our schedules go awry, and we end up overshooting budgets,” said Sanjeev Bansal, the chairman of the Delhi unit of the Builders Association of India.
Pollution’s impact on the Indian economy is likely to get worse if action is not taken.
With India’s median age expected to rise to 32 by 2030, the Dalberg study predicts that “susceptibility to air pollution will increase, as will the impact on mortality.”
Biden praises COP29 deal, vows US action despite Trump
Biden hailed the goal as “ambitious,” though poorer nations quickly decried it as inadequate
As agreed, developed nations will pay at least $300 billion a year by 2035 to help developing countries green their economies and prepare for worse disasters
Updated 45 min 15 sec ago
AFP
WASHINGTON: US President Joe Biden praised the COP29 deal Saturday as a “significant step” to fighting global warming, and pledged continued action by America despite his incoming successor Donald Trump’s climate skepticism.
“While there is still substantial work ahead of us to achieve our climate goals, today’s outcome puts us one significant step closer,” Biden said in a statement.
After two exhausting weeks of negotiations in Azerbaijan, the pact hammered out commits developed nations to pay at least $300 billion a year by 2035 to help developing countries green their economies and prepare for worse disasters.
Biden hailed the goal as “ambitious,” though poorer nations quickly decried it as inadequate.
The Baku meeting kicked off shortly after Trump won a new term in the White House, potentially setting the stage for him to undo actions by Biden’s administration.
Biden, who leaves office on January 20, said he was “confident” the United States “will continue this work: through our states and cities, our businesses, and our citizens, supported by durable legislation like the Inflation Reduction Act.”
“While some may seek to deny or delay the clean energy revolution that’s underway in America and around the world, nobody can reverse it — nobody.”
A $300B a year deal for climate cash at UN summit sparks outrage for some and hope for others
Updated 24 November 2024
AP
BAKU, Azerbaijan: United Nations climate talks adopted a deal to inject at least $300 billion annually in humanity’s fight against climate change, aimed at helping developing nations cope with the ravages of global warming in tense negotiations.
The $300 billion will go to developing countries who need the cash to wean themselves off the coal, oil and gas that causes the globe to overheat, adapt to future warming and pay for the damage caused by climate change’s extreme weather. It’s not near the full amount of $1.3 trillion that developing countries were asking for, but it’s three times a deal of $100 billion a year from 2009 that is expiring. Some delegations said this deal is headed in the right direction, with hopes that more money flows in the future.
But it was not quite the agreement by consensus that these meetings usually operate with and some developing nations were livid about being ignored.
COP29 President Mukhtar Babayev gaveled the deal into acceptance before any nation had a chance to speak. When they did they blasted him for being unfair to them, the deal for not being enough and the world’s rich nations for being too stingy.
“It’s a paltry sum,” India negotiator Chandni Raina said, repeatedly saying how India objected to rousing cheers. “I’m sorry to say we cannot accept it.”
She told The Associated Press that she has lost faith in the United Nations system. After a deal, nations express their discontent
A long line of nations agreed with India and piled on, with Nigeria’s Nkiruka Maduekwe, CEO of the National Council on Climate Change, calling the deal an insult and a joke.
“I’m disappointed. It’s definitely below the benchmark that we have been fighting for for so long,” said Juan Carlos Monterrey, of the Panama delegation. He noted that a few changes, including the inclusion of the words “at least” before the number $300 billion and an opportunity for revision by 2030, helped push them to the finish line.
“Our heart goes out to all those nations that feel like they were walked over,” he said.
The final package pushed through “does not speak or reflect or inspire confidence,” India’s Raina said.
“We absolutely object to the unfair means followed for adoption,” Raina said. “We are extremely hurt by this action by the president and the secretariat.”
Evans Njewa, an environmental officer at Malawi's Environmental Affairs Department, attends the COP29 United Nations Climate Change Conference, in Baku, Azerbaijan, on Nov. 23, 2024. (REUTERS)
Speaking for nearly 50 of the poorest nations of the world, Evans Davie Njewa of Malawi was more mild, expressing what he called reservations with the deal. And the Alliance of Small Island States’ Cedric Schuster said he had more hope “that the process would protect the interests of the most vulnerable” but nevertheless expressed tempered support for the deal.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a post on X that he hoped for a “more ambitious outcome.” But he said the agreement “provides a base on which to build.” Some see deal as relief following tough talks
There were somewhat satisfied parties, with European Union’s Wopke Hoekstra calling it a new era of climate funding, working hard to help the most vulnerable. But activists in the plenary hall could be heard coughing over Hoekstra’s speech in an attempt to disrupt it.
Eamon Ryan, Ireland’s environment minister, called the agreement “a huge relief.”
“It was not certain. This was tough,” he said. “Because it’s a time of division, of war, of (a) multilateral system having real difficulties, the fact that we could get it through in these difficult circumstances is really important.”
UN Climate Change’s Executive Secretary Simon Stiell called the deal an “insurance policy for humanity,” adding that like insurance, “it only works if the premiums are paid in full, and on time.”
Simon Stiell, Executive Secretary of UNFCCC, speaks during a closing plenary meeting at the COP29 United Nations Climate Change Conference, in Baku, Azerbaijan, on Nov. 24, 2024. (REUTERS)
The deal is seen as a step toward helping countries on the receiving end create more ambitious targets to limit or cut emissions of heat-trapping gases that are due early next year. It’s part of the plan to keep cutting pollution with new targets every five years, which the world agreed to at the UN talks in Paris in 2015.
The Paris agreement set the system of regular ratcheting up climate fighting ambition as away to keep warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. The world is already at 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.3 degrees Fahrenheit) and carbon emissions keep rising. Hopes that more climate cash will follow
Countries also anticipate that this deal will send signals that help drive funding from other sources, like multilateral development banks and private sources. That was always part of the discussion at these talks — rich countries didn’t think it was realistic to only rely on public funding sources — but poor countries worried that if the money came in loans instead of grants, it would send them sliding further backward into debt that they already struggle with.
Wopke Hoekstra, EU climate commissioner, speaks to members of the media at the COP29 UN Climate Summit, on Nov. 24, 2024, in Baku, Azerbaijan. (AP)
“The $300 billion goal is not enough, but is an important down payment toward a safer, more equitable future,” said World Resources Institute President Ani Dasgupta. “This deal gets us off the starting block. Now the race is on to raise much more climate finance from a range of public and private sources, putting the whole financial system to work behind developing countries’ transitions.”
And even though it’s far from the needed $1.3 trillion, it’s more than the $250 billion that was on the table in an earlier draft of the text, which outraged many countries and led to a period of frustration and stalling over the final hours of the summit. Other deals agreed at COP29
The several different texts adopted early Sunday morning included a vague but not specific reference to last year’s Global Stocktake approved in Dubai. Last year there was a battle about first-of-its-kind language on getting rid of the oil, coal and natural gas, but instead it called for a transition away from fossil fuels. The latest talks only referred to the Dubai deal, but did not explicitly repeat the call for a transition away from fossil fuels.
Countries also agreed on the adoption of Article 6, creating markets to trade carbon pollution rights, an idea that was set up as part of the Paris Agreement to help nations work together to reduce climate-causing pollution. Part of that was a system of carbon credits, allowing nations to put planet-warming gasses in the air if they offset emissions elsewhere. Backers said a UN-backed market could generate up to an additional $250 billion a year in climate financial aid.
Despite its approval, carbon markets remain a contentious plan because many experts say the new rules adopted don’t prevent misuse, don’t work and give big polluters an excuse to continue spewing emissions.
“What they’ve done essentially is undermine the mandate to try to reach 1.5,” said Tamara Gilbertson, climate justice program coordinator with the Indigenous Environmental Network. Greenpeace’s An Lambrechts, called it a “climate scam” with many loopholes.
With this deal wrapped up as crews dismantle the temporary venue, many have eyes on next year’s climate talks in Belem, Brazil.
Daesh group claims attack on Sufi shrine in Afghanistan
A local resident, who said he knew victims of the attack, said worshippers had gathered at the Sayed Pasha Agha shrine on Thursday evening
Updated 24 November 2024
AFP
KABUL: Daesh (IS-K), the terrorist group’s branch in Afghanistan, on Saturday claimed responsibility for a gun attack that left 10 people dead at a Sufi shrine in northern Baghlan province.
Taliban authorities in Kabul have repeatedly said they have defeated IS-K, but the group regularly claims responsibility for attacks, notably against Sufi or Shiite minorities, targets they consider heretical.
On Friday, interior ministry spokesman Abdul Matin Qani told AFP that a gunman opened fire on Sufis “taking part in a weekly ritual” at a shrine in a remote area of Nahrin district, killing 10 people.
A local resident, who said he knew victims of the attack, said worshippers had gathered at the Sayed Pasha Agha shrine on Thursday evening.
They had begun a Sufi chant when “a man shot at the dozen worshippers,” he said on condition of anonymity.
“When people arrived for morning prayers, they discovered the bodies,” he added.
The UN special rapporteur for human rights in Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, wrote on X: “Religious minorities remain under grave threat. More prevention, protection & justice needed.”
The Daesh group accuses Sufis of worshipping more than one god because of their devotion to saints.
In mid-September, the group claimed responsibility for an attack in central Afghanistan that killed 14 people who had gathered to welcome pilgrims returning from Karbala in Iraq, one of the holiest sites for Shiites.
India opposes COP29 finance deal after it is adopted
Updated 24 November 2024
Reuters
BAKU: India strongly objected to a climate finance deal agreed at the United Nations COP29 summit on Sunday, but their objection was raised after the deal was formally adopted by consensus.
“I regret to say that this document is nothing more than an optical illusion. This, in our opinion, will not address the enormity of the challenge we all face. Therefore, we oppose the adoption of this document,” Indian delegation representative Chandni Raina told the closing plenary session of the summit.
