Thursday, November 11, 2021

Six In The Morning Thursday 11 November 2021

 

China and India among 22 nations calling for key emissions section to be ditched from COP26 agreement


Updated 1534 GMT (2334 HKT) November 11, 2021


A group of 22 nations known at the Like-Minded Developing Countries (LMDC), which include China, India and Saudi Arabia, asked for the entire section on the mitigation of climate change to be removed from the draft COP26 text, in a sign of the enormous gaps that still remain a day before talks are due to close.

Bolivia's chief negotiator, Diego Pacheco, who represents the LMDC group, said Thursday that the countries felt the developed world was trying to transfer its responsibilities for the climate crisis onto the developing world.
"We requested the presidency remove completely the section on mitigation," Pacheco said at a press conference in Glasgow.



Foreign citizens caught up in crackdown on Tigrayans in Ethiopia

Americans and Britons among those detained as part of sweeping arrests critics say are based on ethnicity

Associated Press in Nairobi

American and British citizens have been swept up in Ethiopia’s mass detentions of ethnic Tigrayans under a new state of emergency in the country’s escalating war.

Thousands of Tigrayans in the capital, Addis Ababa, and across Africa’s second most populous country have already been detained amid fears of many more such detentions as authorities ordered landlords to register tenants’ identities with police. Men armed with sticks were seen on some streets as volunteer groups sought out Tigrayans to report them.

Ethiopia’s government says it is detaining people suspected of supporting the forces from the Tigray region who are approaching Addis Ababa after a year-long war with Ethiopian forces that was triggered by a political falling-out. But human rights groups, lawyers, relatives and the government-created Ethiopian human rights commission say detentions, including of children and elderly people, appear to be on the basis of ethnicity.


‘A real tragedy’: The Iraqi Kurd doctor helping treat desperate migrants trapped on Belarus border


Dr Arsalan Azzaddin is helping treat some of the more than 2,000 people stranded at the European frontier, reports Amanda Coakley from Sokolka, Poland

After 39 years in Poland the last few weeks have been some of the hardest in Dr Arsalan Azzaddin’s career.

Head of the emergency department at Bielsk Podlaski hospital, the physician has treated dozens of people who have crossed the treacherous border between Belarus and Poland and walked through freezing forests in the hope of seeking asylum in the European Union.

“There are usually in a very bad condition, dehydration and hypothermia mostly. Many have had bruises on their body which they said were from the Belarusian border police,” he told The Independent. “It’s been a real tragedy for me. I find myself coming to tears whenever I see these people.”


Israel's bet on early COVID booster shots pays off

An expert panel has just given the green light to vaccinate children aged 5 to 11 in Israel — the first country to offer booster shots. It has also tightened its green pass system to keep the economy and schools open.

People wait in line patiently at a pop-up vaccination center inside a city building in West Jerusalem. "I am here to get my third shot — it's really important so Israel can open up," says Leah Powell, a student visiting from the US. "There is still a mask mandate in some places, but it feels like real life is coming back."

The situation looked less optimistic this summer when the delta variant of the coronavirus was spreading rapidly. Infections started picking up at the start of July and by mid-September, cases were the highest they have ever been. Hospitals received many more severely ill patients — first among the vaccinated, and later among the mostly unvaccinated younger population. 


Sheikh Jarrah families ‘determined’ despite lingering uncertainty


Families say they will continue to stand their ground as the Israeli court is expected to decide the ownership of their homes.


 Palestinian residents of Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood continue to live with uncertainty as the Israeli Supreme Court is expected to decide on the status of land where they have lived for generations.

On November 2, four Palestinian families facing forced displacement unanimously rejected the court’s proposal, which required them to accept settler ownership of the land in the occupied East Jerusalem upon which their homes sit.

FW de Klerk: South Africa's former president dies at 85


FW de Klerk, the former president of South Africa and the last white person to lead the country, has died at the age of 85.

De Klerk, who was also a key figure in the transition to democracy, had been diagnosed with cancer this year.

He was head of state between September 1989 and May 1994.

In 1990, he ordered Nelson Mandela's release from prison, leading to historic elections that brought the anti-apartheid leader to power.

De Klerk shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Mandela for helping to negotiate an end to apartheid. But his legacy divides opinion in South Africa.




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