A four-day truce between Israel and Hamas will begin on Friday morning, with civilian hostages and Palestinian prisoners to be released later in the afternoon, Qatar announced Thursday, hours after the deal was originally meant to take effect.

The pause in fighting will start at 7 a.m. local time (midnight ET), with 13 women and children hostages to be freed at 4 p.m., according to a spokesperson for Qatar’s foreign ministry, Majed Al-Ansari.

The list of hostages who are expected to be released has been handed to the Israeli intelligence service Mossad, Al-Ansari said.

The Mossad will also hand over a list of Palestinian prisoners expected to be released to the Qataris, he added. “Whenever we have both lists confirmed this is when we can begin with the process of getting people out,” the spokesperson said.

The prisoners will be taken from two jails – Damon and Megiddo, both southeast of Haifa – and driven to the Ofer prison, south of Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, for final checks by the Red Cross.

And Israel has started notifying the families of the first hostages set to be released on Friday, Israeli coordinator for hostages and missing persons Gal Hirsch said in a statement. “Liaison officers have informed all of those families whose loved ones appear on the list, as well as all of the hostages’ families,” the statement said.

“Nothing is finalized until it’s actually happening. And even amid the process, changes might occur at any moment,” Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson Daniel Hagari said in his daily press briefing on Thursday.

He said that the Israeli army continues to fight in the Gaza Strip “at this hour,” pointing out that once the pause goes into effect, IDF soldiers will be stationed along the “truce lines” established inside the territory.

Under the deal outlined earlier, 150 Palestinian prisoners would be released from Israeli jails. The prisoners concerned are women and children, Hamas said Wednesday, adding that the agreement also involves the entry of hundreds of trucks carrying aid relief, medical supplies and fuel to all parts of the besieged territory.

The Israeli government on Wednesday published a list of 300 Palestinian prisoners for possible release, as Israel is offering a potential second phase of exchanges.

The list includes the ages of the prisoners, and the charges on which they are being held – throwing stones and “harming regional security” are among the most common. Others are listed as detained for supporting illegal terror organizations, illegal weapons charges, incitement, and at least two accusations of attempted murder.

Delay until Friday

“Talks to release our hostages are advancing and are ongoing. The start of the release process will take place according to the original agreement between both sides, and not before Friday,” the statement said.

The comments over ongoing planning echo those from American officials.

A US National Security Council spokesperson stressed in a statement late Wednesday that the hostage deal “remains agreed,” adding that the parties were “working out final logistical details particularly for the first day of implementation.”

“It is our view that nothing should be left to chance as the hostages begin coming home,” NSC spokesperson Adrienne Watson said. “Our primary objective is to ensure that they are brought home safely. That is on track and we are hopeful that implementation will begin on Friday morning.”

One Israeli official familiar with the matter downplayed its seriousness, putting it down to “fairly minor implementation details.”

Netanyahu warned on Thursday, however, that getting the first group of hostages out of Gaza is “not without its challenges.”

“We hope to get this first tranche out, and then we’re committed to getting everyone out,” Netanyahu said during a meeting with British Foreign Secretary David Cameron.

Officials and analysts in Israel have long cautioned that any deal would be precarious up and until the hostages were safely across the border.

“The fighting will continue forcefully”

The IDF had continued ground and air operations in Gaza on Wednesday ahead of the expected start of the truce, carrying out strikes in the north-eastern and central parts of the Gaza Strip. Areas further south, including Khan Younis and Rafah, were also hit, according to Palestinian accounts.

Israeli forces continued to strike targets on Thursday, the IDF said, including in northwest Jabalya.

The IDF also said Thursday that Israeli soldiers had located a tunnel shaft inside a mosque and located and struck another tunnel shaft in an agricultural area in Beit Hanoun. It claimed IDF soldiers had located “numerous weapons” and identified a tunnel shaft inside a civilian residence in the area.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has said Israel’s military operation against Hamas will continue “forcefully” after the brief truce and that the fighting is expected to go on for at least two more months.

“This will be a brief pause, when it ends the fighting will continue forcefully, and will create pressure that will allow the return of more hostages… Fighting of at least two more months is expected,” Gallant said while visiting Israeli troops on Thursday.

The deal had marked a major diplomatic breakthrough nearly seven weeks after the start of a conflict that has spiraled into a grave humanitarian crisis in Gaza. The announcement was greeted with relief and heightened anticipation from the families of those taken hostage.

The truce, meanwhile, would also allow the entry of “a larger number of humanitarian convoys and relief aid,” as laid out by key negotiator Qatar in a statement.

There is an option for the pause to last as long as 10 days, but Israeli officials believe it is unlikely to last that long.

Netanyahu said when the deal was approved that for every additional 10 hostages released, there will be an additional one day pause in the fighting.

Hamas is holding 236 hostages captive in Gaza, including foreign nationals from 26 countries, according to figures from the Israeli military. The mass abductions at gunpoint took place during October 7, when Hamas militants struck across the border in a coordinated and bloody surprise attack killing around 1,200 people – the largest such attack on Israel since the country’s founding in 1948.

Prior to the deal, only a handful of hostages had been released.

Israel responded to the attack by declaring war against Hamas and imposing a siege on Gaza that cut off supplies of food, water, medicines and fuel, while launching a relentless air and ground assault. Some 12,700 people have been killed in Gaza since October 7, according to data from the Palestinian health ministry in the West Bank, which draws on information from Hamas-run health authorities.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

North Korea said Thursday it will deploy new military hardware along the military demarcation line that separates it from the South after Seoul partially pulled back from a 2018 agreement designed to ease tensions along the border, state-run media reported.

North Korea acted after Seoul vowed to increase its intelligence and surveillance along the demilitarized zone (DMZ) in response to the launch of North Korea’s first-ever spy satellite on Tuesday, which analysts said could give Pyongyang information to better target opponents’ forces.

The reactive move by Seoul represents a partial retreat from the Inter-Korean Military Agreement, which was signed in 2018 as part of efforts with the US to contain the threat of war on the Korean Peninsula – and broaden the buffer zone between the two Koreas.

It was signed by then-South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Panmunjom on the border, with the text declaring “there will be no more war on the Korean Peninsula and thus a new era of peace has begun.”

But any goodwill generated by the agreement has evaporated in recent years. Kim, who did not get the concessions he wanted from the US and South Korea during subsequent talks, has since ramped up the North’s ballistic missile program, pledging to give Pyongyang a nuclear deterrent like that possessed by Washington.

In response to the North Korean buildup, the US and South Korea – along with Japan – have stepped-up their military cooperation via exercises and deployments that Pyongyang sees as a threat.

Earlier this week North Korea denounced the US for its potential sales of advanced missiles to Japan and military equipment to South Korea, calling it “a dangerous act” in a report from KCNA.

North Korea said it was “obvious” who the offensive military equipment would be aimed at and used against.

On Thursday North Korea’s Defense Ministry said that its army will “never be bound” by the military agreement, vowing to deploy “more powerful armed forces and new-type military hardware in the region along the Military Demarcation Line,” according to KCNA.

It claimed that the agreement has “long been reduced to a mere scrap of paper owing to the intentional and provocative moves” of South Korea, and warned that it must “pay dearly” for its “irresponsible and grave political and military provocations that have pushed the present situation to an uncontrollable phase,” KCNA said.

Pyongyang also said that South Korea will be held “wholly accountable” for clashes that may break out between the two Koreas.

“The most dangerous situation in the area of the military demarcation line, where the world’s most acute military confrontation lingers and any slight accidental factor may aggravate an armed conflict to an all-out war, has become irreversibly uncontrollable, due to the serious mistake made by the political and military gangsters of the ‘ROK [Republic of Korea],’” KCNA said.

Peru has lost 56% of its tropical glaciers in the last six decades due to climate change, according to a new government inventory released on Wednesday.

Peru holds 68% of the world’s tropical glaciers and warming temperatures have led to melting and the creation of new mountain lagoons that risk overflowing and flooding, the National Institute of Research of Mountain Glaciers and Ecosystems said.

The report uses satellite imagery until 2020 and shows that 2,084 glaciers are covering 1,050 square kilometers (405 square miles) in Peru, compared to the 2,399 square kilometers of ice and snow in 1962.

“In four years, from 2016 to 2020 we have lost almost 6% of these high mountain glaciers,” Beatriz Fuentealba, the institute’s director, said from the Ancash region where many glaciers have disappeared.

According to the inventory, 164 lagoons have been formed or are in the process of formation in the last four years, bringing the number of glacial lagoons up to 8,466, covering about 1,081 square kilometers.

“The new lagoons could be, in the future, water reserves, but being at high altitudes they cause a danger of overflowing and flooding,” said Jesus Gomez, director of research on glaciers at the Ministry of the Environment.

Nearly all of Peru’s tropical glaciers are above 6,000 meters (19,685 feet) above sea level while the new lagoons are at an altitude of between 4,000 and 5,000 meters, the report said.

Almost 20 million Peruvians benefit directly or indirectly from the water that comes down from the glaciers, according to the report.

“This means that we have lost more than half of our water reserves,” said Environment Minister Albina Ruiz, noting that glacial retreat is impacting the natural mountain ecosystem.

“Although we cannot prevent glaciers from disappearing over the years, we can reduce the speed at which they are being lost,” she said, calling for less pollution, more green areas and “above all, recognizing that the mountain provides us with life.”

Plans to release the first hostages under the deal Israel reached with Hamas were delayed late Wednesday, just hours ahead of the expected beginning of a hard-negotiated pause in fighting.

“Talks to release our hostages are advancing and are ongoing. The start of the release process will take place according to the original agreement between both sides, and not before Friday,” the statement said.

On Thursday morning local time, Qatar said it would announce “in the next few hours” when the truce between Israel and Hamas will begin.

Talks about how to implement the hostage deal between Israel and Hamas are ongoing and progressing positively, the spokesperson of the Qatari Foreign Ministry Majed Al Ansari, said according to a Qatar Foreign Ministry statement published on X.

“The work between the two parties, and our partners in Egypt and the US, is ongoing to ensure the speedy implementation of the truce, and to provide what is necessary to ensure that both parties adhere to the agreement,” the statement added.

The comments over ongoing planning echo those from American officials.

A US National Security Council spokesperson stressed in a statement late Wednesday that the hostage deal “remains agreed,” adding that the parties were “working out final logistical details particularly for the first day of implementation.”

“It is our view that nothing should be left to chance as the hostages begin coming home,” NSC spokesperson Adrienne Watson said. “Our primary objective is to ensure that they are brought home safely. That is on track and we are hopeful that implementation will begin on Friday morning.”

One Israeli official familiar with the matter downplayed its seriousness, putting it down to “fairly minor implementation details.”

Speaking at a Wednesday evening press conference held before the delay was announced, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed confidence the agreement would soon go into effect, even as he offered few details about its implementation.

Still, officials and analysts in Israel have long cautioned that any deal would be precarious up and until the hostages were safely across the border.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had continued ground and air operations in Gaza on Wednesday ahead of the expected start of the truce, carrying out strikes in the north-eastern and central parts of the Gaza Strip. Areas further south, including Khan Younis and Rafah, were also hit, according to Palestinian accounts.

Israeli forces continued to strike targets into Thursday, the IDF said, including in northwest Jabalya.

The IDF also said Thursday that Israeli soldiers had located a tunnel shaft inside a mosque and located and struck another tunnel shaft in an agricultural area in Beit Hanoun. It claimed IDF soldiers had located “numerous weapons” and identified a tunnel shaft inside a civilian residence in the area.

In a briefing Wednesday before the delay was announced, Daniel Hagari, a spokesman for the Israeli army, had called the pending truce a “complicated process” that is “yet to be finalized.”

The process “could take time and last over a few stages,” he added.

The deal had marked a major diplomatic breakthrough nearly seven weeks after the start of a conflict that has spiraled into a grave humanitarian crisis in the enclave. The announcement was greeted with relief and heightened anticipation from the families of those taken hostage.

The deal, as laid out by key negotiator Qatar in a statement, would see hostages held captive by Hamas released in exchange for a number of Palestinian women and children in Israeli jails. The truce, meanwhile, would also allow the entry of “a larger number of humanitarian convoys and relief aid,” the statement said.

There is an option for the pause to last as long as 10 days, but Israeli officials believe it is unlikely to last that long.

Netanyahu said when the deal was approved that for every additional 10 hostages released, there will be an additional one day pause in the fighting.

Hamas is holding 236 hostages captive in Gaza, including foreign nationals from 26 countries, according to figures from the Israeli military. The mass abductions at gunpoint took place during October 7, when Hamas militants struck across the border in a coordinated and bloody surprise attack killing around 1,200 people – the largest such attack on Israel since the country’s founding in 1948.

Prior to the deal, only a handful of hostages had been released.

Israel responded to the attack by declaring war against Hamas and imposing a siege on Gaza that cut off supplies of food, water, medicines and fuel, while launching a relentless air and ground assault. Some 12,700 people have been killed in Gaza since October 7, according to data from the Palestinian health ministry in the West Bank, which draws on information from Hamas-run health authorities.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

The Netherlands woke up Thursday to an unexpected victory for Dutch anti-EU far-right populist Geert Wilders and his Freedom Party (PVV) – a forecast win that has triggered shockwaves in the Netherlands and could have reverberations across Europe and beyond.

The provisional outcome based on 98% of the votes counted showed the PVV had won 37 seats and will be the largest party in the House of Representatives, according to public broadcaster NOS.

In second place is the joint Labour/Green ticket with 25 seats, followed by the conservative People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) of outgoing Prime Minister Mark Rutte, and the Dutch center-right NSC party with 20 seats, according to NOS.

Wilders and his supporters applauded the results in a video he posted on social media Wednesday night.

He is now poised to start working on forming a coalition but the process could be challenging and take months.

Voter research showed that migration and asylum were important issues for voters and Wilders’ party has largely benefited from that, according to NOS.

Wilders has vowed that the Netherlands “will be returned to the Dutch” and “the asylum tsunami and migration will be curbed.”

He also maintains the Netherlands should stop providing arms to Ukraine, because it needs them to protect itself.

After the exit poll results Wednesday night, Wilders said he would not push for anti-Islam measures, such as a Quran ban or the closure of Islamic schools, according to NOS.

He said he wanted to adhere to the constitution and is already working towards forming a coalition, according to NOS.

According to Wilders, parties must now “jump over their own shadows” and try to find common ground, according to NOS. “It cannot be the case that Frans Timmermans will take charge due to a failed formation, that should not happen,” he said referring to the Labour/Green party leader.

French reaction

Key French politicians expressed their views on the results. “This is the consequence of all the worries and fears that have been surfacing in Europe since the last several years,” French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire told French TV Franceinfo Thursday.

“The fear over the war in Ukraine, the fear over the economic fall of Europe compared to China and the US and fear over the influx of migrants,” Le Maire added.

The Dutch party that is most aligned with French President Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance party is D66, which saw its seat counts collapse on Wednesday from 24 to only nine, based on the latest numbers, according to NOS.

Renaissance and D66 belong to the same political group in the European Parliament.

French far-right leader Marine Le Pen expressed her joy at the results Wednesday night, in a post on social media. Her party is an ally of PVV and Wilders.

“Congratulations to Geert Wilders and the PVV for their spectacular performance in the parliamentary elections, which confirms the growing attachment to the defense of national identities,” Le Pen said.

“It is because there are people who refuse to see the national torch extinguished, that hope for change remains strong in Europe,” she added.

Le Maire was quick to stress that the Netherlands is not the same as France, in his interview with Franceinfo.

“The only lesson [for us] is that we need to continue to get results for the French people,” he said.

Rosanne Roobeck contributed to this report.

You wouldn’t know if you tasted it, but Epic OneWater Brew is a beer with a peculiar ingredient: it’s made with water recycled from the showers, sinks and washing machines of a residential building.

The beer is safe to drink, thanks to a series of treatments that include microfiltration and ultraviolet light, and it is meant to bring attention to the issue of water scarcity and reuse.

“Buildings globally use 14% of all potable water,” says Aaron Tartakovsky, CEO and co-founder of Epic Cleantec, the San Francisco-based water treatment company that made the beer in collaboration with a local brewery. “Almost no buildings reuse that water — that’s what we’re trying to change.”

The beer is a Kölsch-style ale — a crisp, light-bodied drink originating from Germany — and was made with recycled graywater from Fifteen Fifty, a 40-story luxury apartment building in San Francisco. But it’s not for sale, as regulations prohibit the use of recycled wastewater in commercial beverages. At least for now.

A ‘solar’ moment

Epic Cleantec equips buildings with its water recycling system, eliminating the need to discharge wastewater into a sewer to transport it to a remote treatment facility. The system recycles up to 95% of wastewater, according to the company — either what is known as blackwater, which comes from toilets, or graywater, which comes from sinks, washing machines, bathtubs and showers.

It does so by first using biological treatment to remove organic matter, then microfiltration via membranes just 0.04 microns thick (about 0.05% of the thickness of a human hair), and finally disinfection by ultraviolet light and chlorine, which makes the water safe for reuse in non-potable applications like toilet and urinal flushing, irrigation and laundry. The system installed in Fifteen Fifty is designed to recycle 7,500 gallons of water per day, or up to 2.75 million gallons per year.

“What we’ve done is just take a lot of existing principles in the wastewater world and design it for single buildings instead,” Tartakovsky said. “We do for water what solar did for energy, which is moving away from a sole reliance on large, centralized infrastructure.”

Epic Cleantec says the system has other benefits: recovered heat from the wastewater can be used to pre-heat domestic hot water, cutting heating costs, and the organic matter in the wastewater can be used to produce natural soil products, usable in landscaping, gardens or parks.

An installation takes the space of a few parking spots, on average, but it’s expensive — from a few hundred thousand dollars into the millions, depending on the size of the building. However, Tartakovsky says that it pays for itself in just a few years, by lowering utility bills.

In San Francisco, since 2015, all new buildings of more than 100,000 square feet are required to have an on-site water recycling system; out of the few dozen currently installed, Epic Cleantec is responsible for five.

“It’s very common sense. Why are we still using pristine drinking water from our national parks to flush the toilets of our tech employees in downtown San Francisco?” Tartakovsky asks. “Scientifically, this water often meets or even exceeds drinking water standards.”

Cutting water usage

Epic Cleantec started its beer project in late 2022, for attendees of a conference on sustainable building technologies. “We ended up producing just over 7,000 cans, not as a commercial product, but as an educational effort,” Tartakovsky says, using 2,000 gallons of recycled water. “It was meant to tell the water reuse story in a new way. But frankly, we did not anticipate the tremendous response that we saw.”

While Epic Cleantec’s system isn’t intended to produce water for drinking, regulations currently allow potable reuse of wastewater in many US states, including California and Texas. More states, including Arizona, Colorado, Florida, New Mexico and Washington, are in the process of updating their water reuse regulations.

“Recycled water is already being used as a source of drinking water in places like Southern California, Singapore and Australia,” says David Sedlak, director of the Berkeley Water Center at the University of California, Berkeley. “All of those operations rely upon recycling plants that are associated with sewage treatment plants. Building-scale water recycling systems offer an opportunity for cities to reduce their reliance on water from rivers, lakes and reservoirs — sources that are vulnerable to climate change. It also offers opportunities to save energy and reduce the amount of pollutants that cities release to the environment.”

Sedlak, who is not involved in Epic Cleantec, says the water recycling system developed by the company has proven its technology to be a viable means of recycling water within buildings. “It is clean enough to use to produce a tasty beer and it is certainly clean enough to use for toilet flushing and landscape irrigation,” he adds.

In 2017, two California-based brewers produced limited-edition beers made from recycled water, to serve at local events. Daniel McCurry, an assistant professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Southern California, tried one. “I drank it with no reservations, but it was brewed with water from a municipal potable reuse project in San Diego,” he says.

He explains that municipal systems for potable reuse typically include two more steps than Epic Cleantec’s – reverse-osmosis and UV/advanced oxidation processes – which McCurry says can remove chemical contaminants such as industrial solvents and pharmaceuticals “to a much greater extent than by ultrafiltration, UV, and chlorine alone.”

Being able to sell beer or other drinks made with such water would require another regulatory step, but it isn’t out of the question, according to Tartakovsky. “When I got into the water industry, there was a lot of often-repeated tropes that the general public was just not ready for recycled water,” he says.

“In the industry, we call it the ‘yuck’ factor. There’s a mental perception that recycled water is not as clean as other sources of water. But what I often remind people of is that all water on this planet is recycled. The water we are drinking today is the same water that was consumed by the dinosaurs millions of years ago.”

He adds that, despite not being its focus, Epic Cleantec is now having conversations with some of the largest brewers in the world. “We have a lot of people who are asking for more of it, just because beyond being an interesting environmental story, the beer actually just tastes really good,” he says.

“You’re going to start hearing a lot more about a lot of different industries using recycled water for their products. I think the sky’s the limit for what we can do.”

In late September, Zimbabwe’s environment minister signed away control over a staggering amount of land — almost 20% of his country — to a little-known foreign company. Blue Carbon was a small, new outfit, not even a year old, but its chief was no fledgling entrepreneur: he was an Emirati royal whose family had ruled Dubai for 190 years, flush with oil money.

The Dubai-based Blue Carbon has secured forested land nearly equivalent to the size of the United Kingdom across five African nations to run projects to conserve forests that might otherwise be logged, preventing huge amounts of planet-heating carbon dioxide, or CO2, from entering the atmosphere.

Blue Carbon can then use that conservation to create carbon credits to sell to companies and governments to “offset” the climate pollution they generate while they continue to burn planet-warming fossil fuels.

At the same time, the UAE has said it plans to extract its very last barrel of oil 50 years from now, when its reserves are projected to dry up — decades beyond when scientists say society needs to be done with fossil fuel.

Climate advocates have criticized carbon removal — and scientists remain skeptical of its efficacy — as a ticket for companies to continue to produce and burn fossil fuels on a large scale, even expand, and profit handsomely.

The UAE has a lot to lose, financially. Oil and gas account for around 30% of its GDP and 13% of its exports as of last year, according to the US Department of Commerce. More than 80 countries support phasing out fossil fuels, and renewable energy, like wind and solar, are now so cost competitive in most parts of the world that market forces will eventually squeeze oil and gas out anyway.

Unless, that is, fossil fuel companies and lobbyists can convince the world at COP28 not to rely too much on wind and solar, and to keep pumping oil and gas.

The UAE has already been hit with a barrage of criticism since it put Sultan Al Jaber — who runs the nation’s mammoth oil and gas company, the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), and serves as the nation’s international climate envoy — in charge of the negotiations. More than 100 members of the US Congress and the European Parliament in May called for Al Jaber to be replaced as COP28 president.

Al Jaber has long argued that fossil fuel companies need to be at the table in climate negotiations to ensure the green transition actually happens.

There is a certain logic to the argument, but climate advocates aren’t buying it, pointing instead to all the time the fossil fuel industry has had to show leadership on the issue, but hasn’t. Some fossil fuel companies were among the first to understand their products were causing climate change. That was around four decades ago, yet they continued to profit from coal, oil and gas.

“I think that ADNOC has turned the UN climate negotiations into a giant greenwashing operation for one of the largest oil companies on the planet,” said Jamie Henn, founder and executive director of the non-profit Fossil Free Media, which supports the movement to end fossil fuels. “It’s been clear from the start when the UAE applied to host this COP that one of the main goals of the meeting was for them to try and situate themselves, and their oil and gas industry by extension, as somehow part of the climate solution.”

As of 2020, the UAE was responsible for around 0.53% of the world’s CO2 emissions, according to data from Climate Watch, but with a small population of nearly 10 million people, it’s the sixth-largest carbon polluter per capita. Despite its relatively small population, the UAE was the world’s seventh-biggest oil producer by volume in 2022.

Henn said it was “absurd” that the negotiations had been taken over by fossil fuel interests.

“It’s like the international tobacco control negotiations being run by Philip Morris. Luckily, the UN has rules in place for those negotiations, where they don’t let tobacco lobbyists at the table,” Henn said. “We need that at COP.”

Carbon offsets not a ‘get out of jail free’ card

Never has a COP, which is hosted by a different city each year, had so many apparent conflicts of interest. Not only is Al Jaber wearing leadership hats for climate and fossil fuels, but Blue Carbon is so intertwined with the nation’s royals and rulers, it’s difficult to separate its promotion of carbon offsets from the UAE’s interest in continuing fossil fuel production.

And it will be in Dubai, at COP28, where the rules of how to buy and sell these very carbon credits will be decided.

It’s not a big surprise that so many countries have signed up to work with Blue Carbon. Its parent company, Global Carbon Investments, has already agreed to transfer $1.5 billion to Zimbabwe in “pre-financing for carbon credits.” That’s more than the country spends on education and childcare, which combined are Zimbabwe’s biggest national expense.

With so little money trickling in from the developed to the developing world to adapt to the climate crisis, carbon credit schemes open a new channel of revenue for forest-rich countries.

Cutting down forests or letting them degrade accounts for at least 12% of global planet-warming emissions. It’s their ability to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere that makes them valuable as a climate solution.

Yet the idea of creating tradable carbon credits in exchange for not cutting down forests has been widely criticized as problematic. And some of the world’s biggest companies certifying carbon credits have been shown to use accounting methods that exaggerate their project’s true contribution to mitigating climate change.

In early November, Swiss entrepreneur Renat Heuberger stepped down from his role as CEO of South Pole — one of the world’s first major carbon credit trading companies — after media reports found the company had overstated the climate value of carbon credits that lay in its Kariba forest project in Zimbabwe.

South Pole has denied the media allegations, calling the reports “exaggerated” and “misleading.”

“Investment in efforts to conserve forests is always welcome. However, the challenge is that conserving forests isn’t a ‘get out of jail free’ card,” said Julia Jones, a conservation scientist at Bangor University in Wales.

“Globally, we need to both stop further loss of forests and drastically cut emissions,” she said. “Using one to offset the other, without very substantial investment in reducing emissions, is problematic.”

Land rights are another issue. In some cases, indigenous and customary landowners have been evicted to clear the way for such projects, as they witness their homes, once deemed nearly valueless, transformed into cash cows for polluting companies and countries.

The Forest Peoples Programme, a non-governmental organization, says that such evictions have become more common in Kenya since it began allocating land for carbon credits.

ADNOC to produce more oil than Shell, BP

Whatever the outcome at COP28, the UAE’s state-run oil and gas company, ADNOC, stands to emerge a big winner, especially if it can convince the world that its “Maximum Energy. Minimum Emissions” slogan is a viable climate solution, even as global temperatures soar and scientists press for rapid fossil fuel cuts.

ADNOC is expected to hike its oil production by 41% and its gas production by a third by 2030, compared to projections for this year, according to an analysis of industry data by Global Witness, a non-profit focused on environmental justice and human rights. That translates to a 40% rise in its greenhouse gas emissions, Global Witness said.

The production boost contrasts with plans among other oil majors: Shell’s production is projected to remain largely flat in that time, while BP envisions a 25-percent production cut by 2030. ADNOC, by 2030, plans to out-produce both companies.

To limit its carbon footprint amid the expansion, ADNOC said in October it plans to capture 10 million metric tons of CO2 a year from its operations by 2030 — a figure Global Witness found was wildly exaggerated in a recent analysis.

ADNOC currently has the capacity for 800,000 metric tons per year, though it hopes to capture another roughly 3 megatons per year through two facilities not yet completed. Even if those facilities do come online, Global Witness calculates it would take ADNOC more than 340 years to capture the amount of planet-heating carbon it is expected to emit between 2023 and 2030, if it captured both the emissions from its operations and those that occur from using its oil and gas.

“ADNOC plans not only to produce billions of barrels of oil for decades to come, but it is also positioning itself to be among the most aggressive expanders of oil and gas production out there.”

How much the UAE company expands beyond 2030 will depend on what role negotiators see for carbon capture at COP28, and whether it can find new markets abroad. Ironically, COP28 could be the arena that transforms ADNOC into a global oil major.

This story has been updated with additional information.

After enduring nearly seven weeks of uncertainty about the fate of family members kidnapped by Hamas, relatives of hostages were left with hope and a new set of anxieties after Israel and the militant group reached a breakthrough deal on Tuesday that will see a four-day humanitarian pause to allow the release of at least 50 Israeli women and children.

While the exact names of the hostages to be released has yet to be publicized by the government, officials say some have dual nationality. The Israeli military says Hamas is holding 239 hostages in Gaza, including foreign nationals from dozens of countries, who were taken during the October 7 attack.

Hamas militants stormed her kibbutz of Nir Oz on October 7, killing Kalderon’s mother and her niece while kidnapping her two children, Sahar and Erez, and their father Ofer. The 56-year-old says the last message she received from her son, who was staying in his father’s house that day, was: “Mum, be quiet, don’t move.”

After hearing about Tuesday’s deal, Thomas Hand said he wanted “to jump through the roof with hope. But I also have to keep a level head emotionally… I can’t let myself get too far ahead.”

It has been a period of anguish and hope for Hand, who was initially told his 8-year-old daughter Emily had died in the October 7 attack. Weeks later, Israeli officials told him that they’re not sure Emily was killed. They haven’t located her body and didn’t find any blood in the home where she was sleeping.

On October 7, Roman’s cousin, Yarden Roman-Gat, 36, handed her 3-year-old daughter to her husband hoping he could run faster as they tried to flee Hamas gunman. Her husband and child were able to escape, but Yarden has been missing ever since.

“As it seems, we’re going to have to wait and see every day who are going to be released the following day and that’s going to be extremely hard,” Roman continued, adding it’s causing a lot of tensions among the different families.

“For our family we have spent the last seven weeks worrying, wondering, praying, hoping,” she said.

“The one thing that we all hold on to is that hope now that Abigail comes home, she comes home by Friday,” she added. “Friday is her 4th birthday. We need to see Abigail come out and then we will be able to believe it.”

Some 1,200 people were killed in Israel during Hamas’ attack. Israel’s ensuing war with the group in Gaza has killed more than 12,000 Palestinians, including an estimated 5,000 children, according to the Hamas-run government’s press office.

Under the terms of the deal, which was approved by Israel’s cabinet overnight, Israel will release 150 Palestinian prisoners, who are all women and children, according to Hamas. It will also allow the entry of hundreds of trucks carrying relief, medical and fuel to the devastated enclave, Gaza.

Up to 83 Palestinian women and 380 children under the age of 18 are being held in Israeli prisons, more than half of whom have been detained since October, according to the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society, a non-governmental organization.

There are some 8,300 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails, according to Qadura Fares, the head of the Palestinian Commission for Detainees and Ex-Prisoners’ Affairs, 3,000 of whom are held in what is known as administrative detention, meaning they are held without known charges against them or an ongoing legal process.

There is potential for the truce to extend beyond the four-day period, where an extra day would be added to the truce for each 10 additional hostages available for release. On Wednesday, the Israeli government published a list with the names of 300 Palestinian prisoners as it offered the possibility of a second phase of exchanges of prisoners for hostages.

Anat Moshe Shoshany, whose grandmother was kidnapped from Nir Oz on the back of a moped, said hearing that the Israeli cabinet had approved a deal for the release of some hostages held by Hamas gave her “so much hope.”

As the war grinds into its 47th day Wednesday, families have learned to be patient, she said. “Because we can’t stand to fill all our hopes up and to (be) disappointed – but I really do hope to see someone walking out of there. I think it will fill us with hope for others.”

The deal gives some breathing room for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who many in Israel blame for failing to anticipate the October 7 attack, and for the lack of progress in securing hostage releases.

“This is what we wanted for our loved ones, to start coming back, and you see that,” she said.

“The one thing that’s important to us here is to get the hostages back. Me and my family kept faith all this time that our government really was putting the hostages at the top of the priority list.”

CLARIFICATION: This story has been updated to clarify Qadura Fares’ title.

Nearly seven weeks into the war, Israel and Hamas have agreed on a deal that would see the return of 150 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails in exchange for the release of at least 50 women and children held in Gaza, during a four-day pause in fighting.

The Palestinian prisoners concerned are women and children, Hamas said Wednesday, adding that the agreement also involves the entry of hundreds of trucks carrying aid relief, medical supplies and fuel to all parts of the besieged territory.

The Israeli government on Wednesday published a list of 300 Palestinian prisoners for possible release, as Israel is offering a potential second phase of exchanges.

The list includes the ages of the prisoners, and the charges on which they are being held – throwing stones and “harming regional security” are among the most common.

Others are listed as detained for supporting illegal terror organizations, illegal weapons charges, incitement, and at least two accusations of attempted murder. Some of the people are listed as being members of Hamas and other Islamic militant groups, but many of the prisoners are not listed as belonging to any organization.

Around 8,300 Palestinian prisoners are currently held in Israeli jails, said Qadura Fares, head of the Palestinian Commission for Detainees and Ex-Prisoners’ Affairs.

Most of the prisoners are men, Fares said, adding that there are also about 85 women and 350 children in detention.

Israel has stepped up its arrests since Hamas’ attacks on October 7. Up to 2,070 arrests were documented in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem in that month alone, according to the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society, a non-governmental organization dedicated to addressing the concerns of Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons. That figure includes 145 children and 55 women.

Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh claimed to Reuters last week that Israel had been ramping up arrests ahead of a hostage deal. “Israel is preparing for an exchange of prisoners, and they are arresting as many people as they can simply because they are preparing for such a deal,” Shtayyeh said.

Wednesday’s diplomatic breakthrough offers a glimmer of hope for the families of Palestinian prisoners, as well as those of Israeli hostages.

Hamas is holding 236 hostages in Gaza, including foreign nationals from 26 countries, according to the latest figures from the Israeli military. The abductions took place on October 7, when Hamas militants launched their brutal attack on Israel, killing at least 1,200 people.

Four hostages have been freed so far – two American women and two Israeli women. An Israeli soldier who was abducted by Hamas was rescued by Israeli forces, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said.

While the first phase of the deal will include the release of 150 prisoners in four stages over four days, the Israeli Cabinet Secretariat said, more Palestinians could potentially be released from the list of 300 detainees, in exchange for at least 10 Israeli abductees being handed over to Israeli security forces each day.

Israel said there would be a lull in the fighting during those four days under the deal.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Local authorities are warning people to keep their distance and avoid approaching the poisonous green mamba, which is between 1.8 and 2 meters (6 to 6.5 feet) long.

In the unlikely event someone is bitten by the snake, they should immediately call the emergency services, the spokesperson said.

The tropical snake has a fondness for warm, dark spaces, the spokesperson added, saying it is unlikely the runaway mamba has slithered out of its owner’s house to face the cold Dutch winter.

There are three species of green mamba, all native to Africa – one is found in the east and south of the continent, another in the west and another in the center. The municipality spokesperson did not specify which species the missing snake belonged to.

Normally found in trees, this timid snake produces a fast-acting venom that can kill within days, though it is rarely attacks humans, instead preying on birds, small mammals and lizards.