- Monday, 29 December 2025
AP
World leaders gather to talk climate amid many distractions
More than 100 world leaders are about to discuss a worsening problem that scientists call Earth’s biggest challenge, yet observers say it will be hard to make progress given all that is happening in the world.
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Loss and damage: Fight over human harm, huge climate costs
It was a total loss the type that is usually glossed over in big impersonal statistics like $40 billion in damage from this summer’s Pakistan floods that put one-third of the nation underwater. “We lost everything, our home and our possessions,” said Taj Mai, a mother of seven who is four months pregnant and in a flood relief camp in Pakistan’s Punjab province. “At least in a camp, our children will get food and milk.”
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Activists fear for Qatar workers as World Cup spotlight dims
With just days to go before Qatar hosts the World Cup, rights groups fear that a window for addressing the widespread exploitation of foreign workers could soon close. The long run-up to this month’s World Cup has brought unprecedented scrutiny to the treatment of the millions of foreign workers in the Gulf Arab nation who built stadiums and other infrastructure, and who will staff hotels and sweep the streets during the world’s biggest sporting event.
Lula’s team meets Bolsonaro as Brazil’s transition kicks off
President Jair Bolsonaro met briefly on Thursday with the envoy coordinating the transfer of power to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, four days after Bolsonaro’s tight election loss that sparked protests by his supporters amid his refusal to publicly concede.
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Pakistan’s ex-PM Imran Khan wounded in gun attack
A gunman opened fire at a container truck carrying Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Imran Khan on Thursday, wounding him slightly and also some of his supporters, a senior leader from his party and police said.
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Lebanon-Israel deal a landmark but with limits, experts say
U.S. mediators tried for more than a decade to broker a maritime border agreement between Lebanon and Israel. Finally, the elements fell into place for a landmark deal between two countries officially — and sometimes actively — at war since 1948.
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Hunt for deep sea minerals draws scrutiny amid green push
High demand for metals ranging from copper to cobalt is pushing the mining industry to explore the world’s deepest oceans, a troubling development for scientists who warn that extracting minerals from critical ecosystems that help regulate climate could cause irreparable damage.
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Biden implores voters to save democracy from lies, violence
Warning that democracy itself is in peril, President Joe Biden called on Americans Wednesday night to use their ballots in next week’s midterm elections to stand up against lies, violence and dangerous “ultra MAGA” election disruptors who are trying to “succeed where they failed” in subverting the 2020 elections.
Hurricane Lisa makes landfall in Belize in Central America
Hurricane Lisa made landfall Wednesday near Belize City in the Central American nation of Belize, and moved inland.
3 tragedies in Asia take hundreds of lives in 1 month
More than 400 people died in October in a series of crowd-related disasters in Asia when a bridge packed with revellers collapsed in India, Halloween partiers were crushed in South Korea’s capital, and spectators fled a stadium in Indonesia after police fired tear gas.
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2 Koreas exchange missile launches near tense sea border
Air raid sirens sounded on a South Korean island and residents there evacuated to underground shelters after North Korea fired at least 17 missiles Wednesday, at least one of them in its direction and landed near the rivals’ tense sea border. South Korea quickly responded by launching its own missiles in the same border area.
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Climate change and rising seas threaten Egypt’s breadbasket
Sayed Abuel-Ezz has seen his crops wither from seawater before. As the Nile Delta farmer walks among his mango trees on his land not far from the Mediterranean Sea, he worries it will happen again despite spending the equivalent of tens of thousands of dollars to prevent it.
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After tragic crush, lost shoes await owners at Seoul gym
Days after more than 150 Halloween revellers died in South Korea’s deadliest crowd surge, a quiet but wrenching reminder of the disaster remained Tuesday: Hundreds of abandoned shoes have been laid out in neat rows in a badminton court in the capital Seoul.
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Hoopa Valley Tribe sues US over California water contracts
The Hoopa Valley Tribe alleged in a lawsuit Monday that the federal government is violating its sovereignty and failing to collect money from California farms that rely on federally supplied water to pay for damages to tribal fisheries.
Suspension bridge collapse kills at least 132 in India
At least 132 people died and many are injured after a century-old cable suspension bridge collapsed into a river Sunday evening in the western Indian state of Gujarat, sending hundreds plunging in the water, officials said.
