BAKU, Azerbaijan — Cities in Asia and the United States emit the most heat-trapping gas that feeds climate change, with Shanghai the most polluting, according to new data that combines observations and artificial intelligence.

Seven states or provinces spew more than 1 billion metric tons of greenhouse gases, all of them in China, except Texas, which ranks sixth, according to new data from an organization co-founded by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and released Friday at the United Nations climate talks in Baku, Azerbaijan.

Nations at the talks are trying to set new targets to cut such emissions and figure out how much rich nations will pay to help the world with that task.

Using satellite and ground observations, supplemented by artificial intelligence to fill in gaps, Climate Trace sought to quantify heat-trapping carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, as well as other traditional air pollutants worldwide, including for the first time in more than 9,000 urban areas.

Earth’s total carbon dioxide and methane pollution grew 0.7% to 61.2 billion metric tons with the short-lived but extra potent methane rising 0.2%. The figures are higher than other datasets “because we have such comprehensive coverage and we have observed more emissions in more sectors than are typically available,” said Gavin McCormick, Climate Trace’s co-founder.

Plenty of big cities emit far more than some nations

Shanghai’s 256 million metric tons of greenhouse gases led all cities and exceeded those from the nations of Colombia or Norway. Tokyo’s 250 million metric tons would rank in the top 40 of nations if it were a country, while New York City’s 160 million metric tons and Houston’s 150 million metric tons would be in the top 50 of countrywide emissions. Seoul, South Korea, ranks fifth among cities at 142 million metric tons.

“One of the sites in the Permian Basin in Texas is by far the No. 1 worst polluting site in the entire world,” Gore said. “And maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised by that, but I think of how dirty some of these sites are in Russia and China and so forth. But Permian Basin is putting them all in the shade.”

In terms of states and provinces, seven of them emit more than 1 billion metric tons of carbon pollution, led by Shandong, China’s 1.28 billion metric tons. Other billion-ton polluters are Hebei, Shanxi, Inner Mongolia, Jiangsu and Guangdong, all in China, and Texas.

Which countries are going up, and which are going down

China, India, Iran, Indonesia and Russia had the biggest increases in emissions from 2022 to 2023, while Venezuela, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States had the biggest decreases in pollution.

The dataset — maintained by scientists and analysts from various groups — also looked at traditional pollutants such as carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds, ammonia, sulfur dioxide and other chemicals associated with dirty air. Burning fossil fuels releases both types of pollution, Gore said.

Burning fossil fuels releases both types of pollution, said Gore, and noted the millions of people who die worldwide each year from air pollution.

This “represents the single biggest health threat facing humanity,” Gore said.

Gore criticized the hosting of climate talks, called COPs, by Azerbaijan, an oil nation and site of the world’s first oil wells, and by the United Arab Emirates last year.

“It’s unfortunate that the fossil fuel industry and the petrostates have seized control of the COP process to an unhealthy degree,” Gore said. “Next year in Brazil, we’ll see a change in that pattern. But, you know, it’s not good for the world community to give the No. 1 polluting industry in the world that much control over the whole process.”

Brazil President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has called for more to be done on climate change and has sought to slow deforestation since returning for a third term as president. But Brazil last year produced more oil than both Azerbaijan and the United Arab Emirates, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. 
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A study by the World Bank on Thursday said urgent action is needed to address rising sea levels in the Pacific atoll islands of Kiribati, the Marshall Islands and Tuvalu, which under current projections could be 50% to 80% submerged in the next 50 years.

The World Bank’s “Pacific Atoll Countries Country Climate and Development Report” says the low-lying nations and the roughly 200,000 people who live on them face some of the most severe existential threats from climate change of any region in the world.

The study cites projected sea level rises of up to a half meter in the last half of this century and suggests 50% to 80% of major urban areas in the countries could be underwater.

The region is already seeing annual losses from climate events — such as more frequent and powerful storms — equivalent to 7% of the total economic output in Tuvalu. About 3% to 4% of output in the Marshall Islands and Kiribati are projected to increase.

The bank said that without urgent global and local action, a 1-in-20-year climate event in Tuvalu could lead to damage and losses equivalent to 50% of current annual output by 2050.

The study makes near-, medium- and long-term recommendations for the island nations. The near- and medium-term suggestions include investments in sustainable construction to protect freshwater resources, fisheries and energy supplies, among other crucial infrastructure.

The study’s long-term suggestions include investments in education, legal and regulatory frameworks, economic development and climate resilience.

The study also called on the international donor community to make contributions to the Pacific atoll countries, which still face a significant climate funding gap.

The World Bank produces diagnostic country climate and development reports, CCDRs, that integrate climate change and development considerations and suggest concrete actions that countries can take to mitigate and adapt to climate change. The bank has completed over 45 CCDRs around the world as of October 2024.
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Islamabad — The World Health Organization has labeled a forced repatriation of Afghan nationals from Pakistan as a “major setback” for polio eradication efforts, contributing to the regional resurgence of the paralytic disease.

Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan are the only two polio-endemic nations, reporting 49 and 23 cases respectively, so far this year, up from only six cases each in 2023. 

The latest case in Pakistan was confirmed Thursday in the southwestern province of Balochistan, which sits on the Afghan border and accounts for half the cases reported in 2024.

“Until you get rid of polio completely, it will resurge and come back, and this is what we are seeing now in Pakistan [where] nearly half of the districts are infected, and in Afghanistan, a third of the provinces are infected,” Hamid Jafari, the WHO director for the Eastern Mediterranean, said Wednesday while discussing causes of polio resurgence in both countries. 

“I think the major setback was a forced repatriation of Afghan nationals that led to a massive and unpredictable movement of populations within Pakistan and across both borders and within Afghanistan, so the virus moved with these populations,” Jafari told the virtual discussion hosted by the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, or GPEI. 

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has said that Pakistan’s crackdown on undocumented foreign nationals has resulted in more than 730,000 Afghan migrants returning to Afghanistan since August 2023.

Jafari also mentioned other factors contributing to the rise of polio in Pakistan, including authorities’ inability to consistently carry out vaccination campaigns in areas affected by militancy, where children cannot be effectively immunized against the crippling disease. He also highlighted the presence of “significant vaccine hesitancy and community boycotts” rooted in public frustration over the lack of essential services in impoverished districts.

Pakistani and WHO officials say vaccine boycotts in some regions also result from the false propaganda that anti-polio campaigns are a Western plot to sterilize Muslim children. Additionally, anti-government militants in violence-hit regions occasionally stage deadly attacks on polio teams, suspecting them of spying for authorities, routinely disrupting vaccination drives in districts near the Afghan border. 

Afghan polio ban

While sharing the latest polio situation in Afghanistan, the senior WHO official stated they are collaborating with various humanitarian actors and partners to promote vaccination against polio and all other diseases.

“We cannot implement house-to-house vaccination,” Jafari stated, referencing the ban imposed by Taliban authorities on polio teams over security concerns. 

“The program is working closely with [Taliban] authorities to re-update micro plans and work closely with the communities and local officials to make sure children are mobilized to vaccination sites,” he added. 

In September, the Taliban abruptly halted house-to-house vaccine deliveries in parts of southern Afghanistan, including Kandahar, without publicly stating any reason. 

An independent monitoring board of the GPEI recently said that the Taliban’s action had stemmed from their “administration’s concerns about covert surveillance activities.” The report quoted de facto Afghan authorities as explaining that their leadership is living in Kandahar and has concerns about their security.

Jafari stated that Pakistan and Afghanistan are taking measures to address the challenges in their bid “to rebuild community confidence” and work closely with security agencies in both countries to be able to access all children. 

He cautioned that the current resurgence of polio in Pakistan and Afghanistan does not guarantee a low point next year.

“We are confident that we will come very close to elimination, but the key is to make sure that in these final safe havens for poliovirus in insecure areas, among migrant and mobile populations, and vaccine-hesitant communities, we can finally overcome these residual challenges to make sure that finally polio is eradicated,” the regional WHO director said. 

Polio once paralyzed an estimated 20,000 children in Pakistan each year until the country initiated national vaccination campaigns in the 1990s to control the infections, according to the WHO. In 2019, there were 176 reported cases in Pakistan and Afghanistan. In 2021 and 2022, however, the countries reported only one and two infections, respectively.
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BAKU, Azerbaijan — For the third straight year, efforts to fight climate change haven’t lowered projections for how hot the world is likely to get — and recent developments in China and the United States are likely to slightly worsen the outlook, according to an analysis Thursday.

The analysis comes as countries come together for the 29th edition of the United Nations climate talks, hosted in Baku, Azerbaijan, where nations are trying to set new targets to cut emissions of heat-trapping gases and figure out how much rich nations will pay to help the world with that task.

But Earth remains on a path to be 2.7 degrees Celsius warmer than pre-industrial times, according to Climate Action Tracker, a group of scientists and analysts who study government policies and translate that into projections of warming.

If emissions are still rising and temperature projections are no longer dropping, people should wonder if the United Nations climate negotiations known as COP are doing any good, said Climate Analytics CEO Bill Hare.

“There’s an awful lot going on that’s positive here, but on the big picture of actually getting stuff done to reduce emissions … to me it feels broken,” Hare said.

Climate action is stifled by the biggest emitters

The world has already warmed 1.3 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times. That’s near the 1.5-degree limit that countries agreed to at 2015 climate talks in Paris. Climate scientists say the atmospheric warming, mainly from human burning of fossil fuels, is causing ever more extreme and damaging weather including droughts, flooding and dangerous heat.

Climate Action Tracker does projections under several different scenarios, and in some cases, those are going up slightly.

One projected track based on what countries promise to do by 2030 is up to 2.6 degrees Celsius, a tenth of a degree warmer than before. And even the analysts’ most optimistic scenario, which assumes that countries all deliver on their promises and targets, is at 1.9 Celsius, also up a tenth of a degree from last year, said study lead author Sofia Gonzales-Zuniga of Climate Analytics, one of the main groups behind the tracker.

“This is driven highly by China,” Gonzales-Zuniga said. Even though China’s fast-rising emissions are starting to plateau, they are peaking higher than anticipated, she said.

Another upcoming factor not yet in the calculations is the U.S. elections. A Trump administration that rolls back the climate policies in the Inflation Reduction Act, and carries out the conservative blueprint Project 2025, would add 0.04 degree Celsius to warming projections, Gonzales-Zuniga said. That’s not much, but it could be more if other nations use it as an excuse to do less, she said. And a reduction in American financial aid could also reverberate even more in future temperature outlooks.

“For the U.S. it is going backwards,” said Hare. At least China has more of an optimistic future with a potential giant plunge in future emissions, he said.

“We should already be seeing (global) emissions going down” and they are not, Hare said. “In the face of all of the climate disasters we’ve observed, whether it’s the massive floods in Nepal that killed hundreds of people or whether it’s the floods in Valencia, Spain, that just killed hundreds of people. The political system, politicians are not reacting. And I think that’s something that people everywhere should be worried about.”

Experts say $1 trillion is needed in climate cash for developing nation

The major battle in Baku is over how much rich nations will help poor countries to decarbonize their energy systems, cope with future harms of climate change and pay for damage from warming’s extreme weather. The old goal of $100 billion a year in aid is expiring and Baku’s main focus is coming up with a new, bigger figure.

A special independent group of experts commissioned by United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres issued its own estimate of costs and finances on Thursday, calling for a tripling of the old commitment.

“Advanced economies need to demonstrate a credible commitment” to helping poor nations, the report said.

A coalition of poor nations at the Baku talks are asking for $1.3 trillion in annual climate finance. The independent experts’ report said about $1 trillion a year is needed by developing nations from all outside sources, not just government grants.

The report detailed how expensive decarbonizing the world’s economy would be, how much it would cost and where the money could come from. Overall climate adaption spending for all countries is projected to reach $2.4 trillion a year.

“The transition to clean, low-carbon energy, building resilience to the impacts of climate change, coping with loss and damage, protecting nature and biodiversity, and ensuring a just transition, require a rapid step-up in investment in all countries,” said the report.
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Washington — National Geographic scientists say they’ve discovered the world’s largest coral near the remote Solomon Islands in the Pacific Ocean — an undersea mass that is so big, it can be seen from space.

The man who found it, Manu San Felix, director of cinematography for National Geographic Society’s Pristine Seas, a program dedicated to marine conservation, says the giant organism measures 34 meters wide and 32 meters long and is “close to the size of a cathedral.”

“I see this as a living library that has the information of the conditions of the oceans for centuries,” he told reporters this week, underscoring it is a reminder of the need to better protect the ocean from global climate change.

Eric Brown, a Pristine Seas coral scientist, said the enormous coral species, Pavona clavus, is healthy and has “high reproductive potential,” making it essential to help other coral reef ecosystems recover from the damage of a warming ocean.

Corals “are very vulnerable ecosystems. So, it’s important for us to do whatever we can to protect these environments that are both small and mighty,” Brown said at a Tuesday press briefing to announce the find.

The announcement comes as world leaders gather for the United Nations climate conference, known as COP29, in Azerbaijan. Attendees are trying to agree on new mechanisms to finance a global energy transition to renewables and help nations like the Pacific Islands pay for the cost of adapting to rising oceans.

Pristine Seas is also encouraging nations to designate marine protected areas, or MPAs. The goal is to protect 30% of the world’s oceans by 2030.

Palau President Surangel Whipps Jr. is attending the summit. Palau has walled off 80% of its waters to development, while the nearby Pacific Island nation of Niue has designated 40% of its waters for protection.

“It cannot just be big countries. Small countries need to do their part,” he told VOA in an interview. “So, it’s all of us working together … protecting our oceans, because we know that healthy oceans are an important part of the ecosystem and important in regulating climate.”

Solomon Islands Prime Minister Jeremiah Manele agreed.

“Our survival depends on healthy coral reefs, so this exciting discovery underlines the importance of protecting and sustaining them for future generations,” he said in a press release.

But so far, the Solomon Islands has created a network of 79 designated ocean conservation areas — less than 1% of its exclusive economic zone. What’s more, its economy is largely dependent on forestry — the very industry that threatens the viability of coral through sedimentation.

“All that sediment is going onto a reef, and it’s smothering the reef, thereby preventing the corals from being able to feed, to grow, to reproduce,” Molly Timmers, Pristine Seas lead scientist on the Solomon Islands, said at the press briefing.

According to the Observatory of Economic Complexity, an online platform that seeks to visualize the distribution of international trade, the Solomons exported $308 million in rough wood in 2022, with $260 million of it going to China.

VOA asked Chief Dennis Marita, director of culture at the Ministry of Culture & Tourism, how the government can find a balance.

“Much of the logging activities are happening on the mainland” away from the coral, Marita said in an interview, but “there needs to be a serious awareness about the impacts of what’s happening in the logging industry to the marine environment.”

Marita sees this coral discovery as a way to attract researchers, biologists and tourists to bring in revenue to the small island nation of 740,000 people. Earlier this week, the Solomon Islands signed an agreement with China to provide visa-free travel between the two countries.

“Suddenly, people will start coming to the island, but then we need to be prepared for them, and also, we need to ensure that the coral is safeguarded,” Marita said.

Dr. Daniel Barshis of Old Dominion University’s Ecological Sciences Department in Norfolk, Virginia, said that idea has merit.

“I would imagine this discovery would draw tourists to the area, similar to how old-growth trees inspire folks to visit,” he told VOA via email.

“The fact that [corals] like this still exist is a reminder that coral reefs are still surviving and deserve us working as hard as we possibly can to save them from some of the worst-case scenarios if we don’t reverse course on greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible,” said Barshis.

William Yang contributed to this report.
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The world’s largest coral colony has been discovered near the remote Solomon Islands in the Pacific Ocean – an undersea mass that is so big, it can be seen from space, National Geographic scientists announced Nov. 12, 2024.   
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Hours after Donald Trump was elected president for the second time, Dr. Clayton Alfonso had two messages from patients seeking to replace their IUDs. Over the next few days, three women inquired about getting their tubes tied.

All of them said the election was the reason they were making these choices now.

Requests for long-term birth control and permanent sterilizations have surged across the nation since the election, doctors told The Associated Press. And companies that sell emergency contraception and abortion pills say they’re seeing significant spikes in requests from people who are stockpiling the medications — one saw a 966% increase in sales of emergency contraception from the week before in the 60 hours after the election.

“I saw this bump after the Trump election in 2016” and after Roe vs. Wade was overturned in 2022, said Alfonso, an OB-GYN at Duke University in North Carolina. “But the patients seem more afraid this time.”

Although anti-abortion advocates are pressing Trump for more restrictions on abortion pills, it’s unclear what — if much — will be done regarding access to contraceptives of any kind during the second Trump administration. Trump told a Pittsburgh television station in May that he was open to supporting regulations on contraception. But after media reports on the interview, he wrote on his social media platform Truth Social that he “has never and will never” advocate for restricting birth control and other contraceptives.

Alfonso said his patients want to replace still-effective IUDs and “restart” the 3-to-12-year clock on them before the inauguration. He also said the women are particularly concerned about IUDs, which have been attacked by abortion opponents who believe life begins when an egg is fertilized. Experts believe the devices work mostly by blocking fertilization, but also may make it harder for a fertilized egg to implant in the womb.

A patient who requested a tubal ligation Tuesday told Alfonso she doesn’t want kids and is “just absolutely terrified of either forced pregnancy or inability to access contraception.”

Pittsburgh OB-GYN and abortion provider Dr. Grace Ferguson said more of her patients are scheduling IUD insertions or stockpiling emergency contraception, telling her upfront that it’s “because of the upcoming administration change.”

One patient, Mara Zupko, said she wants prescription emergency contraception since she’s on the cusp of the weight limit for Plan B, the most well-known over-the-counter type. Her husband is getting a vasectomy.

“We always kind of teetered on whether we wanted children or not,” said Zupko, 27. “But as the world has become scarier and scarier, we realized we didn’t want to bring a child into that environment. And I also have several health risks.”

Women are also turning to companies that sell emergency contraception online or offer abortion pills mifepristone and misoprostol through telehealth — something that’s been happening even before the election, but that some companies say has accelerated.

A study earlier this year showed the abortion pill supplier Aid Access received about 48,400 requests from across the U.S. for so-called “advance provision” pills from September 2021 through April 2023 — with requests highest right after news leaked about Roe being overturned but before the formal announcement. Other research found that more women had their tubes tied post-Roe, with the biggest increases in states that ban abortion.

Mifepristone has a shelf life of about five years and misoprostol around two years, according to Plan C, an organization that provides information about medical abortions. Plan B typically has a shelf life of four years.

Telehealth company Wisp saw orders for abortion pills spike 600% between Election Day and the following day. And between Nov. 6 and 11, the company saw a 460% increase in sales of its emergency contraception and birth control offerings.

At Gen Z-focused Winx Health, which sells emergency contraception called Restart, company leaders saw a 966% increase in sales in the 60 hours following the election compared with the week before. Sales of “value packs” of Restart — four doses instead of one — were up more than 7,000% in the past week.

“Morning after pills” are legal in all states, but Winx co-founder Cynthia Plotch said many people seem confused about what emergency contraception is compared to abortion pills. In a 2023 poll by the health policy research organization KFF, a majority of responders said they know these two things aren’t the same, but only 27% reported knowing emergency contraceptive pills cannot end a pregnancy.

Doctors agree confusion around morning after pills may explain some of the stockpiling. But Alfonso at Duke suspects most people are doing this for the same reason they are seeking longer-term methods of birth control: to avoid abortion by preventing pregnancy in the first place.

Alfonso predicts the birth control and abortion pill surge may level out like it did in 2016 and 2022. If the new administration “is not focused on health care right away,” he said, “then I think it’ll go to the back of people’s minds until it picks up in the media.”
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BAKU, Azerbaijan — When more than two dozen world leaders deliver remarks at the United Nations’ annual climate conference on Wednesday, many have detailed their nations’ firsthand experience with the catastrophic weather that has come with climate change.

“Over the past year, catastrophic floods in Spain, Bosnia and Herzegovina as well as well as in southern Croatia have shown the devastating impact of rising temperatures,” said Croatia’s prime minister, Andrej Plenkovic. “The Mediterranean, one of the most vulnerable regions, calls for urgent action.”

The Greek prime minister said Europe and the world needs to be “more honest” about the trade-offs needed to keep global temperatures down.

“We need to ask hard questions about a path that goes very fast, at the expense of our competitiveness, and a path that goes some much slower, but allows our industry to adapt and to thrive,” he said. His nation this summer was hammered by successive heat waves after three years of below-average rainfall. In Greece, the misery included water shortages, dried-up lakes and the death of wild horses.

Other speakers on the list include Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, whose nation has seen deadly flooding this year from monsoon rains that scientists say have become heavier with climate change. Just two years ago, more than 1,700 people died in widespread flooding. Pakistan has also suffered from dangerous heat, with thousands of people hospitalized with heatstroke this spring as temperatures soared to 47 degrees Celsius.

Also on the list of speakers Wednesday is Bahamas Prime Minister Philip Edward Davis. Like many other countries in the Global South, the Bahamas has piled up debt from warming-connected weather disasters it did little to cause, including Hurricanes Dorian in 2019 and Matthew in 2016. Leaders have been seeking help and money from the Global North and oil companies.

Early on Wednesday, ministers and officials from African nations called for initiatives to advance green development on the continent and strengthen resilience to extreme weather events — from floods to droughts — across the region.

Plenty of big names and powerful countries are noticeably absent from COP29 this year. That includes the 13 largest carbon dioxide-polluting countries — a group responsible for more than than 70% of the heat-trapping gases emitted last year — were missing. The world’s biggest polluters and strongest economies — China and the United States — didn’t send their No. 1s. Neither did India and Indonesia.

But U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer was there, and he announced an 81% emissions reduction target on 1990 levels by 2035, in line with the Paris Agreement goal to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times. That’s up from the 78% the U.K. had already pledged.

The main focus of this year’s talks is climate finance — wealthier nations compensating poor countries for damages from climate change’s weather extremes, helping them pay to transition their economies away from fossil fuels and helping them with adaptation.
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TORONTO, canada — A teenager is in critical condition in a British Columbia children’s hospital, sick with Canada’s first presumptive human case of avian influenza.

“This was a healthy teenager prior to this, so no underlying conditions,” said provincial health officer Bonnie Henry in a news conference on Tuesday. “It just reminds us that in young people this is a virus that can progress and cause quite severe illness, and the deterioration that I mentioned was quite rapid.”

British Columbia health officials said on Saturday the province had detected Canada’s first human case of H5 bird flu in a teenager.

Henry said the province is still identifying the exact strain but assumes the case is H5N1.

The World Health Organization says H5N1’s risk to humans is low because there is no evidence of human transmission, but the virus has been found in an increasing number of animals, including cattle in the United States.

Henry would not disclose the teen’s gender or age but said the patient had first developed symptoms on November 2 and was tested on November 8, when admitted to a hospital. Symptoms included conjunctivitis, fever and coughing.

As of Tuesday, the teen was hospitalized with acute respiratory distress syndrome, she said.

The teen had no farm exposure but had been exposed to dogs, cats and reptiles, Henry said. No infection source had been identified. “That is absolutely an ongoing investigation.”

More severe illness takes place when the virus binds to receptors deep in the lungs, she said.

Public health officials had identified and tested about three dozen contacts and had not found anyone infected with the virus.

There has been no evidence that the disease is easily spread between people. But if that were to happen, a pandemic could unfold, scientists have said.

Earlier in November, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention asked that farm workers exposed to animals with bird flu be tested for the virus even if they did not have symptoms.

Bird flu has infected nearly 450 dairy farms in 15 U.S. states since March, and the CDC has identified 46 human cases of bird flu since April.

In Canada, British Columbia has identified at least 26 affected premises across the province, Henry said Tuesday, and numerous wild birds have tested positive.

Canada has had no cases reported in dairy cattle and no evidence of bird flu in samples of milk.
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BAKU, Azerbaijan — World leaders are converging Tuesday at the United Nations annual climate conference in Baku, Azerbaijan although the big names and powerful countries are noticeably absent, unlike past climate talks which had the star power of a soccer World Cup.

But 2024’s climate talks are more like the International Chess Federation world championship, lacking recognizable names but big on nerd power and strategy. The top leaders of the 13 largest carbon dioxide-polluting countries will not appear. Their nations are responsible for more than 70% of 2023’s heat-trapping gases.

The world’s biggest polluters and strongest economies — China and the United States — aren’t sending their No. 1s. India and Indonesia’s heads of state are also not in attendance, meaning the four most populous nations with more than 42% of all the world’s population aren’t having leaders speak.

“It’s symptomatic of the lack of political will to act. There’s no sense of urgency,” said climate scientist Bill Hare, CEO of Climate Analytics. He said this explains “the absolute mess we’re finding ourselves in.”

Transition to clean energy

The world has witnessed the hottest day, months and year on record “and a master class in climate destruction,” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the world leaders who did show up.

But Guterres held out hope, saying, in a veiled reference to Donald Trump’s re-election in the United States, that the “clean energy revolution is here. No group, no business, no government can stop it.”

United Nations officials said in 2016, when Trump was first elected, there were 180 gigawatts of clean energy and 700,000 electric vehicles in the world. Now there are 600 gigawatts of clean energy and 14 million electric vehicles.

Host Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev kicked off two scheduled days of world leaders’ speeches by lambasting Armenia, western news media, climate activists and critics who highlighted his country’s rich oil and gas history and trade, calling them hypocritical since the United States is the world’s biggest oil producer. He said it was “not fair” to call Azerbaijan a “petrostate” because it produces less than 1% of the world’s oil and gas.

Oil and gas are “a gift of the God” just like the sun, wind and minerals, Aliyev said. “Countries should not be blamed for having them. And should not be blamed for bringing these resources to the market because the market needs them.”

As the host and president of the climate talks, called COP29, Aliyev said his country will push hard for a green transition away from fossil fuels, “but at the same time, we must be realistic.”

Lack of star power

Aliyev, United Kingdom’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan are the headliners of around 50 leaders set to speak on Tuesday.

There’ll also be a strong showing from the leaders of some of the world’s most climate-vulnerable countries. Several small island nations presidents and over a dozen leaders from countries across Africa are set to speak over the two-day World Leaders’ Summit at COP29.

As a sense of how the bar for celebrity has lowered, on Tuesday morning photographers and video cameras ran alongside one leader walking through the halls of the meeting. It was the emergency management minister for host country Azerbaijan.

United Nations officials downplayed the lack of head of state star power, saying that every country is represented and active in the climate talks.

One logistical issue is that next week, the leaders of the most powerful countries have to be half a world away in Brazil for the G20 meetings. The United States recent election, Germany’s government collapse, natural disasters and personal illnesses also have kept some leaders away.

The major focus of the negotiations is climate finance, which is rich nations trying to help poor countries pay for transitioning their economies away from fossil fuels, coping with climate change’s upcoming harms and compensating for damages from weather extremes.

Nations are negotiating over huge amounts of money, anywhere from $100 billion a year to $1.3 trillion a year. That money “is not charity, it’s an investment,” Guterres said.

“Developing countries must not leave Baku empty-handed,” Guterres said. “A deal is a must.”
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MEXICO CITY — Cassandra Garduño squinted in the sunlight, her pink boots smudged by dirt as she gazed out over her family’s chinampa — one of the islands first built up by the Aztecs with fertile mud from the bottom of a lake that, later drained, would one day become Mexico City.

Food from these islands has fed people for hundreds of years, but the chinampas are under threat from urbanization. The produce grown here doesn’t fetch much money, and many families are abandoning the ancient practice to rent out or sell their land for more lucrative uses such as soccer fields.

“People don’t want to farm anymore,” said Garduño. “They don’t see it as a necessity, they don’t want to produce, and people don’t want to buy the products.”

Some of those remaining, like Garduño, are banding together to preserve and promote the traditional use of the chinampas.

“None of this can exist without human hands, the hands of those who worked here and created the chinampa a thousand years ago,” she said on a recent morning as the smell of celery growing nearby filled the air.

The gardens crisscrossed by canals in the capital’s southern Xochimilco borough are built up from layers of dredged soil, held together by tall, thin ahuejotes — a kind of willow tree — planted around their perimeter. Xochimilco has more than 2,500 acres of protected land owned by generations of local chinamperos, as those who farm the islands are known.

Garduño’s earliest memories of her family’s chinampa came from peering through her grandparents’ window at the plot of land and watching canoes weave in and out of the canals. Even then, she saw how the chinampas were deteriorating under pressure from urbanization and as some farmers began to drop the practice.

When her grandfather died in 2010 and her uncles didn’t want to carry on, Garduño took it upon herself to learn and conserve generations of farming. Her neighbors and relatives were skeptical at first, but she bought land for her own chinampa from a friend’s uncle in 2020 and now grows an assortment of produce, including sunflowers, eggplant, and the Mexican marigold “cempasuchil.”

Now the 32-year-old Garduño is one of the growing collective called Chinampa Refuge, started by the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and she and other famers encourage chinamperos to preserve their land. They follow ancient growing techniques but are trying new commercial approaches to compete with cheaper produce grown on massive farms elsewhere in Mexico. That includes a special tag — Etiqueta Chinampera — that tells buyers the produce came from a chinampa, and may tout things like water quality or the chinampa’s status as a biodiversity refuge.

“Change comes with educating the new generations,” said Garduño. “Talking about the origins and efforts to conserve and why it’s important to do it.”

Luis Zambrano, an ecologist from the National Autonomous University of Mexico who has worked in Xochimilco for decades, said the fields are largely self-sustaining. Nourished by the lake, they can produce three to five crops of vegetables a year without the need of chemicals or irrigation, he said.

Moreover, the ecosystem of Xochimilco benefits the sprawling city. Many different species of birds and fish thrive there, and the extensive canals help reduce the city’s overall temperature, he said.

But now, on weekends, it’s common to see more soccer players boating to islands in their jerseys and cleats than farmers tending their crops. The soccer fields stretch for miles along the canals after what Zambrano called “a massive increase” over the past two to three years.

In Xochimilco, many people are reluctant to talk about transforming their chinampas to soccer fields. One landowner who declined to be identified for fear of legal or community backlash said keeping the chinampas productive required more work and financial investment and yielded less revenue. Instead, she has established multiple businesses on her land — a soccer field for weekend games, a food stand and kayaking tours for foreign visitors.

“If you do well (farming) you could earn $5,000 to $10,000 (100,000 to 200,000 pesos) a year,” Garduño said. “In the tourist area you could have that within a couple of weekends.”

But converting the agricultural fields carries ecological impact. While traditional farming methods avoid insecticides and fertilizers, the soccer fields are another story.

“It doesn’t look that detrimental because there’s no construction,” said Zambrano. But “it’s just as damaging because the amount of chemicals that are used, the amount of pollution that is generated is very, very large.”

The chinampas are among the significant features that led Mexico City’s historic center and Xochimilco to be recognized as a world heritage site by UNESCO. But any protective measures are up to federal, state and local authorities. Carlos Vasquez, director of the Natural Protected Areas under Mexico City’s Environmental Department, said they are working on proposals to address the soccer fields.

“Many are counter to the conservation of the ecosystems,” he said. “We’re looking to regulate these activities.”

After a long day’s work out in the sun, Garduño and some neighboring farmers congregate under Garduño’s makeshift hut for a feast of chicken and tortillas. They catch up on their tasks and outline what’s left to do.

Juan Ávalos, 63, and his brother Salvador Gonzalez Ávalos, 55, have been working on chinampas all their lives. Their family has several plots in Xochimilco’s San Gregorio neighborhood. A year ago, after some convincing by Garduño, the brothers joined Chinampa Refuge to adopt a more holistic approach to their farming.

Salvador said the approach is a continuous reminder of his family’s legacy in maintaining the ancient practices — something they want to pass on to their grandchildren.

“That’s something we need to work on as grandparents,” he said. “That they integrate themselves with a taste for this earth.” 
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OTTAWA, Ontario — Canada has detected its first presumptive case of H5 bird flu in a person, a teenager in the western province of British Columbia, health officials said Saturday.

The teenager likely caught the virus from a bird or animal and was receiving care at a children’s hospital, the province said in a statement.

The province said it was investigating the source of exposure and identifying the teenager’s contacts. The risk to the public remains low, Canada’s Health Minister Mark Holland said in posting on X.

“This is a rare event,” British Columbia Health Officer Bonnie Henry said in a statement. “We are conducting a thorough investigation to fully understand the source of exposure here in B.C.”

H5 bird flu is widespread in wild birds worldwide and is causing outbreaks in poultry and U.S. dairy cows, with several recent human cases in U.S. dairy and poultry workers.

There has been no evidence of person-to-person spread so far. But if that were to happen, a pandemic could unfold, scientists have said.

Earlier in November, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention asked for farm workers who have been exposed to animals with bird flu to be tested for the virus even if they do not have symptoms.

Bird flu has infected nearly 450 dairy farms in 15 U.S. states since March, and the CDC has identified 46 human cases of bird flu since April.

In Canada, British Columbia has identified at least 22 infected poultry farms since October, and numerous wild birds tested positive, according to the province.

Canada has had no cases reported in dairy cattle and no evidence of bird flu in samples of milk.  
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Most strokes could be prevented, according to new guidelines aimed at helping people and their doctors do just that. 

Stroke was the fourth-leading cause of death in the U.S. in 2023, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and more than half a million Americans have a stroke every year. But up to 80% of strokes may be preventable with better nutrition, exercise and identification of risk factors. 

The first new guidelines on stroke prevention in 10 years from the American Stroke Association, a division of the American Heart Association, include recommendations for people and doctors that reflect a better understanding of who gets strokes and why, along with new drugs that can help reduce risk. 

The good news is that the best way to reduce your risk for stroke is also the best way to reduce your risk for a whole host of health problems — eat a healthy diet, move your body and don’t smoke. The bad news is that it’s not always so easy to sustain. 

Dr. Sean Duke, a stroke doctor at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, blames the forces in society that keep people sedentary and eating poorly, like cell phones and cheap, unhealthy food. “Our world is stacked against us,” he said. 

Here’s what to know about stroke and the new guidelines: 

What is a stroke? 

A stroke happens when blood flow to part of the brain is blocked or if a blood vessel in the brain bursts. That deprives the brain of oxygen which can cause brain damage that can lead to difficulty thinking, talking and walking, or even death. 

How eating healthy can reduce your risk for stroke 

Eating healthy can help control several factors that increase your risk for stroke, including high cholesterol, high blood sugar, and obesity, according to the heart association. 

The group recommends foods in the so-called Mediterranean diet such as fruits, vegetables, whole grains and olive oil, which can help keep cholesterol levels down. It suggests limiting red meat and other sources of saturated fat. Instead, get your protein from beans, nuts, poultry, fish and seafood. 

Limit highly processed foods and foods and drinks with a lot of added sugar. This can also reduce your calorie intake, which helps keep weight in check. 

Moving your body can help prevent strokes 

Getting up and walking around for at least 10 minutes a day can “drastically” reduce your risk, said Dr. Cheryl Bushnell, a neurologist at Wake Forest University School of Medicine who was part of the group that came up with the new guidelines. Among the many benefits: Regular exercise can help reduce blood pressure, a major risk factor for stroke. 

Of course, more is better: The heart association recommends at least 150 minutes of moderate aerobic or 75 minutes of vigorous activity — or some combination — per week. How you do it doesn’t matter so much, experts said: Go to the gym, take a walk or run in your neighborhood or use treadmills or stepper machines at home. 

New tools to reduce obesity, a risk factor for stroke 

Diet and exercise can help control weight, another important risk factor for strokes. But a new class of drugs that can drastically reduce weight have been approved by regulators, providing new tools to reduce stroke risk since guidelines were last updated. 

The guidelines now recommend that doctors consider prescribing these drugs, including those sold under the brand names Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro and Zepbound, to people with obesity or diabetes. 

But while those drugs can help, people still need to eat well and get exercise, cautions Dr. Fadi Nahab, a stroke expert at Emory University Hospital. 

Guidelines help identify people who might be at higher risk 

The new guidelines for the first time recommend doctors screen patients for other factors that could increase stroke risk, including sex and gender and non-medical factors such as economic stability, access to health care, discrimination and racism. For example, the risk for having a first stroke is nearly twice as high for Black adults in the U.S. as it is for white adults, according to the CDC. 

“If somebody doesn’t have insurance or they can’t get to a doctor’s office because of transportation issues or they can’t get off work to get health care … these are all things that can impact the ability to prevent stroke,” Bushnell said. 

Doctors may be able to point to resources for low-cost health care or food, and can give ideas about how to be active without breaking the bank for a gym membership. 

The guidelines also now recommend doctors should screen for conditions that could increase a woman’s risk for stroke, such as high blood pressure during pregnancy or early menopause. 

How do I know if I’m having a stroke and what do I do? 

Three of the most common stroke symptoms include face weakness, arm weakness and difficulty speaking. And time is important, because brain damage can happen quickly and damage can be limited if a stroke is treated quickly. Stroke experts have coined an acronym to help you remember: FAST. F for face, A for arm, S for speech, and T for time. If you think you or a loved one could be having a stroke, call 911 right away. 
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GENEVA — Ahead of next week’s U.N. Climate Change Conference, or COP29, in Baku, Azerbaijan, health experts warn that the climate crisis is also a health crisis and say they must be addressed in tandem to save the planet for future generations.

“Human health and planetary health are intertwined,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a statement. “Countries must take meaningful action to protect their people, boost resources, cut emissions, phase out fossil fuels and make peace with nature.”

His call for action is buttressed by Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO director-general, who calls COP29 “a crucial opportunity for global leaders to integrate health considerations into strategies for adapting to and mitigating climate change.”

In preparation for the climate summit, the World Health Organization, in collaboration with more than 100 organizations and 300 experts, has developed a plan of action to protect the health of all people, “particularly the estimated 3.6 billion people who live in areas which are most susceptible to climate change.”

“This document is a collective call from the health community to make sure that everybody understands the devastating impacts that climate change is having on our health” and to know what actions must be taken to prevent the worst from happening, Dr. Maria Neira, director of the WHO’s Environment Department, told journalists at a briefing Thursday.

“We must move away from fossil fuel subsidies,” she said, noting that “implementing fair carbon pricing and, of course, mobilizing the finance that is needed for climate and health action could save millions of lives every year.”

WHO data show the many ways in which climate change threatens human lives. Between 2030 and 2050, the WHO estimates that climate change will cause 250,000 additional deaths every year “from malnutrition, malaria, diarrhea and heat stress alone.”

Without preventive action, the WHO warns, temperature and precipitation changes will spread death and illness from vector-borne diseases, which currently stand at more than 700,000 a year. It says heat-related deaths among people over age 65 have risen by 70% in two decades and are likely to rise further as the planet heats up.

“If we were to meet the Paris Agreement goals, we would save somewhere in the region of a million lives a year from reduced air pollution alone,” said Dr. Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum, WHO team lead for climate change and health.

The 2016 Paris Agreement on climate change enjoins nations to keep greenhouse gas emissions from rising 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. The U.N. environment agency’s annual emissions gap report, however, finds the world is headed in the wrong direction, with temperatures likely to rise to 3.1 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels by the end of the century if preventive action is not taken.

“At the moment, the world is currently massively subsidizing fossil fuel consumption,” Campbell-Lendrum said. “The costs of fossil fuel consumption are not only felt in the atmosphere, they are felt in people’s lungs, old people’s lungs, triggering heart attacks and so on, but also young people’s lungs, impairing their development, giving them asthma, hampering their life chances.

“If we were to invest those resources more wisely, then we would have both a healthier planet and also much healthier populations,” he said, adding that financing climate action “is a really good investment, in that you get a lot more back than you put in.”

“We will be able to save almost 2 million lives a year and bring in $4 in benefits for every $1 that you invest in climate action,” he said.

His colleague, Dr. Vanessa Kerry, WHO director-general special envoy for climate change health, agreed that the world cannot afford to ignore the warnings of the impact of climate change on health.

“Whether we choose to recognize it or not, climate change is here. Its impacts are accelerating, altering our ecosystems and communities and threatening our lives.

“Poor health destabilizes economies, widens inequalities and drives political unrest,” she said. “When people cannot access essential needs for their families and lives, it leads to political and social instability. We must address health as a fundamental part of our climate response to prevent these cascading effects.”

Kerry called on leaders gathering for COP29 to urgently “fast-track a just transition and increase funding for health systems” and for frontline health workers to protect the most vulnerable.
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London — 2024 is likely to be the hottest year ever recorded, with global warming already exceeding the threshold of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, according to scientists, who released the latest data ahead of the COP29 climate summit due to start Monday in Azerbaijan. 

Carlo Buontempo, the director of the European Union’s Copernicus Earth observation program, which produced the data, said it was an important moment for humankind. 

“I call it psychological because it’s something that has been agreed not only among scientists, but between scientists and policymakers and society and nations to use as a reference point. … It is a benchmark with respect to that global discussion,” he told the Associated Press on Thursday. 

Paris Agreement 

Keeping global warming to within 1.5°C of pre-industrial levels was a central pillar of the 2016 Paris Agreement, a deal signed by 196 countries, which forms the basis for the annual COP summits. Scientists say exceeding that threshold will likely have catastrophic impacts. 

“It can be the difference between a country existing, particularly small island developing states, and not. We’re also nearing a lot of Earth system tipping points,” said Ruth Townend, a senior research fellow at Britain’s Chatham House and co-author of its recent report, Azerbaijan’s climate leadership challenge. 

“Our delicate Earth systems are in a fine balance. And once we pass certain thresholds, we can trigger climate impacts that might not be reversible, moving ourselves into new types of systems.” 

Emissions gap 

As for the current trajectory, the United Nations says the world is heading toward around 3°C of warming by the end of this century. 

“We are teetering on a planetary tightrope,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a recorded message ahead of the summit. 

“Either leaders bridge the emissions gap or we plunge headlong into climate disaster, with the poorest and most vulnerable suffering the most. This report shows annual greenhouse gas emissions at an all-time high, rising 1.3% last year. They must fall 9% each year to 2030 to limit global temperature rise to 1.5°C and avoid the very worst of climate change,” Guterres said. 

COP29 

Such is the backdrop for the COP29 summit in Baku.  

Over 12 days, hundreds of world leaders and thousands of delegates will enter thorny negotiations on how to cut global greenhouse gas emissions — and, crucially, who should pay for those cuts, along with the adaptation measures necessary to mitigate against climate change caused by past emissions. 

Who pays? 

A key part of COP29 is “to establish the finance in place to help developing countries produce strong new climate plans,” explained Townend.  

“And those climate plans are meant to be delivered ahead of COP30 in Brazil next year. Without the finance domino in that line of dominoes, everything will essentially fall apart a little bit because developing countries won’t have any kind of promise of support from developed countries in order to produce those ambitious new climate plans,” Townend said. 

Fossil fuels 

Some have questioned Azerbaijan’s suitability as host of the summit. It is a major producer of oil and gas — among the fossil fuels that drive climate change.  

“Around 90% of its export revenues come from oil and gas. And it is also a climate vulnerable country — so it gets around 50 to 70% of its water from over its borders, outside its borders,” Townend said. 

“So, it really is between a rock and a hard place on climate action and transition. And as such, it has a really strong interest in getting finance in place to help developing countries such as itself to find a feasible path forward,” she told VOA. 

Trump shadow 

Looming over the summit is Donald Trump’s victory in the Tuesday U.S. presidential election. 

In his first term, Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris Agreement and could do so again once he assumes the presidency in January. He has also pledged to open vast areas of the U.S. for oil and gas drilling. 

There are also fears that Trump’s proposed import tariffs could lead to a trade war with China. The U.S. and China are the top two emitters of greenhouse gases and together account for around a third of global emissions. 

The world must adapt to such tensions, said Townend. 

“We’re unlikely to be moving towards a world that is more stable with increasing climate impact. So, we do need to learn to manage under these conditions of geopolitical instability, which will only increase going forward.” 

Extreme weather 

From the wildfires currently raging in California to the recent deadly floods in Spain’s Valencia, scientists say extreme weather events are a clear indication of the urgency of curbing global warming.  

“There is very strong evidence suggesting that many of these extreme events have become more intense because of climate change. And there is a good understanding of why,” said Buontempo of the EU Copernicus program, who added it’s vital that COP29 is a success. 

“These multilateral negotiations and discussion is the mechanism we have to find a global solution,” he added.
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The COP29 climate summit is due to get under way on Monday in Baku, Azerbaijan — a country whose economy is largely based on selling fossil fuels. Over 12 days, world leaders and thousands of delegates will try to negotiate ways to cut greenhouse gas emissions, amid warnings that efforts to limit global warming are way off track. Henry Ridgwell reports.
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When a volcanic eruption buried the ancient city of Pompeii, the last desperate moments of its citizens were preserved in stone for centuries.

Observers see stories in the plaster casts later made of their bodies, like a mother holding a child and two women embracing as they died.

But new DNA evidence suggests things were not as they seem — and these prevailing interpretations come from looking at the ancient world through modern eyes.

“We were able to disprove or challenge some of the previous narratives built upon how these individuals were kind of found in relation to each other,” said Alissa Mittnik of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany. “It opens up different interpretations for who these people might have been.”

Mittnik and her colleagues discovered that the person thought to be a mother was actually a man unrelated to the child. And at least one of the two people locked in an embrace — long assumed to be sisters or a mother and daughter — was a man. Their research was published Thursday in the journal Current Biology.

The team, which also includes scientists from Harvard University and the University of Florence in Italy, relied on genetic material preserved for nearly two millennia. After Mount Vesuvius erupted and destroyed the Roman city in 79 A.D., bodies buried in mud and ash eventually decomposed, leaving spaces where they used to be. Casts were created from the voids in the late 1800s.

Researchers focused on 14 casts undergoing restoration, extracting DNA from the fragmented skeletal remains that mixed with them. They hoped to determine the sex, ancestry and genetic relationships between the victims.

There were several surprises in “the house of the golden bracelet,” the dwelling where the assumed mother and child were found. The adult wore an intricate piece of jewelry, for which the house was named, reinforcing the impression that the victim was a woman. Nearby were the bodies of another adult and child thought to be the rest of their nuclear family.

DNA evidence showed the four were male and not related to one another, clearly showing “the story that was long spun around these individuals” was wrong, Mittnik said.

Researchers also confirmed Pompeii citizens came from diverse backgrounds but mainly descended from eastern Mediterranean immigrants – underscoring a broad pattern of movement and cultural exchange in the Roman Empire. Pompeii is located about 241 kilometers from Rome.

The study builds upon research from 2022 when scientists sequenced the genome of a Pompeii victim for the first time and confirmed the possibility of retrieving ancient DNA from the human remains that still exist.

“They have a better overview of what’s happening in Pompeii because they analyzed different samples,” said Gabriele Scorrano of the University of Rome Tor Vergata, a co-author of that research who was not involved in the current study. “We actually had one genome, one sample, one shot.”

Though much remains to be learned, Scorrano said, such genetic brushstrokes are slowly painting a truer picture of how people lived in the distant past. 
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