A building block of life may exist inside the global ocean on Europa, one of Jupiter’s icy moons.

Two independent teams of astronomers used the James Webb Space Telescope to observe the frozen surface of Europa, and each analysis of the space observatory’s detections revealed an abundance of carbon dioxide within a specific region of the frigid terrain. Both studies describing the findings were published September 21 in the journal Science.

“On Earth, life likes chemical diversity — the more diversity, the better. We’re carbon-based life. Understanding the chemistry of Europa’s ocean will help us determine whether it’s hostile to life as we know it, or if it might be a good place for life,” said Geronimo Villanueva, lead author of the first study and planetary scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, in a statement.

Europa is one of several ocean worlds in our solar system besides Earth where scientists believe life could exist. Beneath a thick ice shell, Europa harbors a subsurface global ocean that may contain twice as much water as our planet’s oceans.

But environments suitable for life need more than water — they also require a supply of organic molecules and an energy source, according to NASA.

Scientists have long questioned whether Europa’s ocean contained carbon and other chemicals necessary for life.

When Webb data revealed the presence of carbon on Europa’s surface, the researchers conducted an analysis to see whether it was delivered by meteorites, or if it originated within the internal ocean.

Carbon dioxide appears to be concentrated in a region of “chaos terrain” on Europa called Tara Regio. The geologically young area contains ice that has been disrupted and resurfaced, suggesting that material has been exchanged between the ocean and the surface.

Carbon dioxide isn’t stable on Europa’s surface, which also led the two teams to the same conclusion that it was supplied by the ocean.

“We now think that we have observational evidence that the carbon we see on Europa’s surface came from the ocean. That’s not a trivial thing. Carbon is a biologically essential element,” said Samantha Trumbo, lead author of the second study and a 51 Pegasi B Fellow at Cornell University, in a statement.

Previously, the Hubble Space Telescope detected ocean-derived salt in the same region.

“We think this implies that the carbon probably has its ultimate origin in the internal ocean,” Trumbo said.

Investigating Europa

Astronomers used data from Webb’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph to identify the signature of carbon dioxide on the moon’s surface.

“Scientists are debating how much Europa’s ocean connects to its surface. I think that question has been a big driver of Europa exploration,” Villanueva said. “This suggests that we may be able to learn some basic things about the ocean’s composition even before we drill through the ice to get the full picture.”

Previously, astronomers made tentative detections of plumes erupting from the surface of Europa using the Hubble Space Telescope. Webb did not detect any plumes during its observations of Europa, but that doesn’t mean they don’t occur, according to the researchers.

“There is always a possibility that these plumes are variable and that you can only see them at certain times. All we can say with 100% confidence is that we did not detect a plume at Europa when we made these observations with Webb,” said Heidi Hammel, a Webb interdisciplinary scientist and vice president for science at the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, in a statement.

Two future missions will be able to take a closer look at Europa in the future, including the European Space Agency’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer launched in April and NASA’s Europa Clipper, expected to lift off in October 2024.

Both will investigate Europa’s potential habitability to see whether the icy ocean world could be hospitable to life.

Future observations of Europa with the Webb Telescope could help astronomers determine whether there are other concentrated regions of carbon dioxide on the surface, Trumbo said.

“I am also very interested in whether there is any evidence for organic molecules anywhere on the surface,” she said. “Our upcoming JWST data will help with that as well, but Europa Clipper will be able to get up close and personal and really peer at some of the finer-scale and most promising geologic regions.”

Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau formally apologized on behalf of Canada’s parliament Wednesday, referring to the “deeply embarrassing” incident last week that saw the chamber applaud a Ukrainian veteran who fought for a Nazi military unit during World War II.

“This was a mistake that has deeply embarrassed parliament and Canada. All of us who were in this House on Friday regret deeply having stood and clapped, even though we did so unaware of the context,” said Trudeau in a media briefing in Ottawa Wednesday.

Trudeau also recognized diplomatic damage done to the visiting Ukrainian delegation in attendance that day, which included Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

“I also want to reiterate how deeply sorry Canada is for the situation this put President Zelensky and the Ukrainian delegation in. It is extremely troubling to think that this egregious error is being politicized by Russia and its supporters to provide false propaganda about what Ukraine is fighting for,” he said.

On Friday, following an address by Zelensky, House of Commons speaker Anthony Rota lauded veteran Yaroslav Hunka as a Ukrainian-Canadian war hero who “fought for Ukrainian independence against the Russian aggressors then, and continues to support the troops today.”

Hunka, 98, received an extended standing ovation.

But in the days since, human rights and Jewish organizations have said that Hunka served in a Nazi military unit known as the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS.

The 14th Waffen Grenadier Division was part of the Nazi SS organization declared a criminal organization by the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg in 1946, which determined the Nazi group had committed war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Jewish human rights organization B’nai Brith Canada in a statement condemned the Ukrainian volunteers who served in the unit as “ultra-nationalist ideologues” who “dreamed of an ethnically homogenous Ukrainian state and endorsed the idea of ethnic cleansing.”

Rota has resigned his post amid the fallout, and Poland’s Minister of Education has published a letter saying that he is taking steps towards Hunka’s possible extradition.

The inauguration of two new electricity-generating units in Zimbabwe’s Hwange power station last month was not an unfamiliar scene when it comes to major infrastructure projects in Africa.

There, in a rural corner of the southern African nation, government officials and the Chinese ambassador gathered to ribbon-cut and laud the expansion of the coal-fired plant meant to reduce power cuts in the country – and Beijing’s role in funding it.

The project, backed by roughly $1 billion in Chinese loans years before Beijing stopped funding new coal-powered projects overseas, is one of the continent’s numerous big-ticket projects bankrolled by Chinese lenders under leader Xi Jinping’s hallmark Belt and Road Initiative.

The impact of those funds is felt across Africa, where residents in major cities like Lagos, Nairobi and Addis Ababa now transit daily via railways, highways and airports built in recent years with Chinese loans and often by Chinese construction firms.

Now, as the global infrastructure building spree enters its second decade there are questions about how Beijing will choose to direct the initiative in the years ahead – and whether it will downsize funding amid new challenges and signs of a recalibration.

Debt repayment issues amid global economic headwinds from the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine, Beijing’s own bubbling financial woes and a need to better address environmental issues are among new pressures on how China lends and countries borrow.

Some data suggest a shift is already underway, with researchers from the Boston University Global Development Policy Center in the US tracking what they say is a steady decline in new loan commitments from Chinese entities to African government borrowers that deepened in the past two years.

Those new loans fell from a peak of $28.5 billion in 2016 down to just under $1 billion last year – the second consecutive year that lending fell below $2 billion and a drop the researchers say in a new report may not just be explained by the pandemic, but a broader shift toward lending that could see fewer large-scale loans.

And such a phenomenon may not just be limited to Chinese financing in Africa.

“Looking at decreasing loan averages globally, it is likely that this new phase (of Belt and Road lending) will be characterized by less financing overall,” said Moses, who is a data analyst at the center’s Global China Initiative.

But understanding how much money is flowing out of China into global development is notoriously tricky as Beijing doesn’t share this data openly and a wide range of financial entities play roles.

The data from the Global Development Policy Center, for example, focuses on African government borrowers or loans with a sovereign guarantee, excluding some Chinese lending that may be going to private borrowers for projects on the continent.

Some experts argue the key motivations that drove Beijing to become the world’s largest bilateral lender remain unchanged – suggesting it will continue to fund both large and smaller scale projects in the coming years, though it’s unclear at what scale.

How all this plays out could have a significant impact on developing countries’ access to much-needed infrastructure funding.

Policymakers will be looking to a major international forum focused on the initiative next month in Beijing for signs of what’s next.

Economic headwinds

Xi launched the initiative that would become a cornerstone of his foreign policy during a 2013 trip to Kazakhstan.

There, the Chinese leader called for a revamping of the ancient Silk Road to make countries’ “economic ties closer, mutual cooperation deeper and space of development broader.”

Since then, billions in loans not just from development finance institutions but China’s commercial banks have poured into railroads, power plants, highways, ports and telecoms across the developing world.

This gave the Chinese economy an outlet for its excess industrial capacity and funds, and allowed China to expand its global footprint and soft power – deepening relationships with what Beijing says are more than 150 countries that have signed on to cooperate in the initiative.

Many of its partners have reaped benefits from the new infrastructure.

But projects under the Belt and Road umbrella have generated accusations of lax environmental and labor standards, as well as risky lending, with critics saying China has saddled low- and middle-income governments with overly high levels of debt relative to their GDPs.

Beijing has pushed back on these assertions and instead hailed the initiative as a means for people around the world “to make the ‘cake’ bigger and share it more equally” and “foster new engines for economic development.”

Now, new economic realities – as countries still reeling from the pandemic are hit by rising interest rates and commodity prices driven by the war in Ukraine – are at play.

“The biggest change that we have to acknowledge is that the era of low interest rates (and) cheap money flowing out of China into these countries – that era is over. And now China is the biggest debt collector in the world,” said Ammar A. Malik, a senior research scientist at AidData research lab at William & Mary’s Global Research Institute in the US, which also tracks Chinese overseas development finance.

“So the challenge (for China) is now to basically make sure that these countries are sufficiently liquid and these projects are sufficiently functional that China would (be able to) collect their repayments with interest and on time,” he said.

In recent years, a number of recipient governments have asked for debt deferment or relief treatment from creditors including China, with Beijing issuing bailout loans and joining other lenders in joint negotiations on debt relief for troubled borrowers such as Zambia and Ghana.

Debt distress issues may mean that a number of low and middle income countries are not in a position to take on more debt currently, said Malik.

But many developing economies are likely “still very interested in receiving funds for large infrastructure projects that are so critical to grow their economies,” he said, and there are a range of factors that “incentivize both China and recipient countries to continue working together” that may not lead to a slowdown in financing ahead.

China is also navigating the second decade of the Belt and Road amid stark economic challenges at home.

An expected post-Covid economic rebound has never materialized and local governments are grappling with mounting debt linked to a property crisis.

It remains to be seen to what extent Beijing’s own domestic economic challenges will impact its overseas lending in the longer term, but there are signs of effects now, according to Moses from the Global Development Policy Center.

Beijing’s decisions on how to channel its foreign exchange reserves and calls for increased liquidity to address domestic challenges “show a current shift to lenders having a higher focus on domestic financing needs,” she said.

But while China’s economic troubles may cause financiers to be more circumspect, some of the economic priorities originally driving China’s global infrastructure spree – like an interest in generating new investment opportunities in a slowing economy – remain, according to Austin Strange, an assistant professor at the University of Hong Kong.

“This basic intuition is arguably still valid as the slowdown continues, particularly as geopolitical tensions are making it more difficult for Chinese firms in certain sectors to invest more in advanced economies,” he said.

A Beijing gathering

As representatives from more than 100 counties are expected to gather in Beijing for a Belt and Road forum next month, policymakers around the world will be watching closely for signals of how the initiative will evolve.

A decline in the scale of loans is not the only area being watched, as China may look to place more emphasis on environmental issues, better social protections and due diligence – especially as Beijing and its banks learn lessons from the project’s first decade, analysts say.

A 2021 AidData report found that some 35% of Belt and Road projects solely operated by Chinese entities from 2013-2017 had “implementation challenges,” including environmental incidents, corruption scandals and labor violations.

China in 2017 released guidance on promoting a “green” Belt and Road, which called for sustainable development and strengthening environmental protection. More recently, officials have begun calling for “small and beautiful” projects, which they suggest will appeal to local populations.

In 2021, Xi pledged that China would not build any new coal-fired power projects abroad.

But unlike Western lenders who look to apply their environmental and other standards onto projects they fund, China has traditionally allowed the recipient country to dictate the nature of the project, according to AidData’s Malik, who said this could limit how much Beijing can follow through on its green goals.

When it comes to Africa, researchers at the Global Development Policy Center say future lending to the continent could mean fewer large-scale loans over $500 million, more with smaller values under $50 million and loans with more beneficial social and environmental impacts.

It’s likely, however, that China will still continue to direct funding in alignment with its geopolitical aims, especially in areas where it is vying for influence against the United States, which has recently launched its own initiatives to rival Chinese overseas development funding.

And while China’s funding of large infrastructure projects may have peaked in global volume, there are “likely still considerable pockets of (Belt and Road Initiative) enthusiasm on the part of China and counterpart governments, for instance, in China’s regional neighborhood,” said HKU’s Strange.

If Chinese policymakers and project leaders have made serious investments to improve on how they manage these projects over the past decade, new ones “should in theory benefit from past lessons learned,” he said. “Hindsight is a potential benefit here.”

Activists in Australia are trying to stop oil and gas company Woodside Energy from conducting seismic blasting off the country’s western coast, which they say could deafen and ultimately kill endangered migratory whales.

The court challenge is part of a long-running campaign by Indigenous and environmental activists to frustrate Woodside’s plans for “Scarborough,” a massive fossil fuel project set to pump out carbon emissions for decades even as Australia attempts to meet tougher climate targets.

Earlier this month, Marthudunera woman Raelene Cooper sought an injunction to delay the blasting, but that order is due to expire on Thursday, allowing Woodside to resume work it says is required to indicate the location of large gas reserves.

On Tuesday, Cooper argued her case in the Federal Court, saying she was not properly consulted by Woodside Energy before it announced the blasting, a precursor to exploratory drilling.

During the process, airguns fire compressed air toward the ocean floor and the soundwaves penetrate the seabed before bouncing back to receivers towed by a boat. The pattern of the soundwaves gives geologists an indication of oil and gas reserves trapped under the ocean bedrock.

According to the Australian Marine Conservation Society, the noise can reach 250 decibels, around a million times “more intense” than the loudest whale sounds.

“Now, that’s really problematic if you’re a whale because whales depend on their hearing for everything – to navigate, to find their mates and their food,” said Richard George, Greenpeace Australia Pacific senior campaigner.

“So, a deaf whale is a dead whale.”

Huge gas project

Woodside Energy plans to extract millions of tons of gas from the Scarborough field, about 375 kilometers (233 miles) off the coast of Western Australia, mostly for export to Asia.

The project was signed off by the previous Australian government led by Scott Morrison, however it retains the support of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s administration, despite its pledge of achieving net zero emissions by 2050.

Gas is generally less carbon-intensive than coal, but it’s still a planet-warming fossil fuel, and there is a growing understanding that its infrastructure leaks huge amounts of methane – a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide in the shorter term.

Australia’s offshore oil and gas regulator, NOPSEMA, approved the blasting in July, despite acknowledging that Woodside may not have identified all Indigenous people in need of consultation on the seismic blasting plans, or given them adequate time to be consulted.

The document lists dozens of threatened and migratory species of sharks, mammals, reptiles and birds that can be found in the vicinity of the blast zone, including loggerhead and leatherback turtles, great white sharks and pygmy blue whales.

Greenpeace said Woodside’s plans “skirt close” to a major migration route for pygmy blue whales, a smaller subspecies of blue whale that travels north each year from the Antarctic into waters off Australia’s northwest.

The population size of pygmy blue whales is unclear, but the Australian government considers the mammal to be endangered.

The government’s species profile warns about the dangers of “man-made noise” to the whales, saying it can “potentially result in injury or death, masking of vocalisations, displacement from essential resources (e.g. prey, breeding habitat), and behavioural responses.”

“Potential sources of man-made underwater noise interference in Australian waters include seismic surveys for oil, gas and geophysical exploration,” the profile adds.

However in its environmental report, Woodside said any impact on whales would be short term.

“There will be no lasting effect on whales, however there could be short term hearing impacts,” Woodside wrote in its report.

The company also said it “will have dedicated marine fauna observers and systems which can listen for whale song on some vessels” and that the “presence of whales can postpone activities.”

Fight for cultural heritage

For local Indigenous people, whales are not only treasured for their role in the ecosystem – they carry cultural significance for those whose ancestors have lived on the land for more than 60,000 years.

“It’s what our ancestors left behind, they left us a story,” Cooper said. “Those animals represent a song, a dance that we as Indigenous people all over this continent hold.”

In its environmental plan, Woodside acknowledged the importance of marine habitats to the traditional customs and culture of Indigenous Australians.

“Woodside recognises the potential for marine ecosystems to include cultural features as well as environmental values,” the report said. “An impact to marine ecosystems has the potential to impact cultural values,” Woodside acknowledges, vowing to “adequately manage” that impact.

But the activists’ concerns extend beyond the sea – to ancient petroglyphs or rock art on Murujuga, also known as Burrup Peninsula, that Cooper and her group, Save our Songlines, fear will be damaged by emissions from the Scarborough project.

The art, believed to be 40,000 years old, contains some of the earliest depictions of human civilization and represent irreplaceable cultural links to the past.

“It’s our sacred significant areas that are continually getting hammered,” she said. “Our people are being attacked. Our ancient history, our wildlife, our ecosystems, our water.”

Woodside Energy has calculated a total emissions cost of 878.02 megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent over its 50-year lifespan.

Campaigners say the projected emissions made a mockery of Australia’s stated commitment to reducing its reliance on fossil fuels.

“Scarborough is a part of the Burrup Hub, and that is Australia’s largest fossil fuel project. If it goes ahead we’re looking at emissions equivalent to 12 years of Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions,” said Greenpeace’s Richard George.

“So it is a disaster for our climate and it’s a disaster for our oceans as well.”

Two Ukrainian soldiers huddle around a drone controller in darkness, their faces illuminated only by its screen.

“Oh, something is burning,” one says. They’ve just dropped a bomb on a Russian target.

“We will be hitting their first line and our guys will be advancing on the enemy,” says one of the drone pilots, who goes by his call sign “Groove.”

Ukrainian ground troops are equipped with Western night-vision equipment and have an advantage in night-time operations, but Kyiv’s ground attack aircraft are not suited for the dark, so this drone unit nicknamed “Code 9.2” is stepping up.

“The drones see in the night like in daylight,” ‘Groove explains. “We see the infantry, we hit the vehicles, cannons, everything we need to destroy.”

They are using Ukrainian-made ‘Vampire’ unmanned aerial vehicles, a hexacopter procured by the government in Kyiv, part of an initiative led by the Ministry for Digital Transformation to supply Ukrainian forces with technology on the battlefield.

“Each drone is equipped with a thermal imager, so it can operate effectively at night. They can carry up to 15 kilograms [33 pounds] of payload,” Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov said in a Telegram video last August, as he announced 270 of these machines would be sent to the front lines.

“The military will use them to destroy both armored cars and tanks, as well as enemy defense structures, fortifications, or ammunition depots.”

That’s what Groove and his unit have been doing.

“Sometimes there are a lot of them,” Groove says, searching the area with his drone, trying to scope out Russian forces. They chase a few Russian vehicles, dropping bombs on them as they go.

“At the moment we don’t see many. There was some vehicle there but we didn’t hit it,” he adds.

As the drone attack picks up pace, other units join the battlefield: powerful artillery makes itself heard, showering the moonlit Russian positions with US-donated cluster munitions at a fast pace.

Grad multiple launch rocket systems fill the sky with their rapid hissing projectiles, mortar units join in, zeroing in on Moscow’s armies with the help of flares, and infantry fighting vehicles race to the front to storm Russian lines.

It’s a comprehensive assault and, at their headquarters, Code 9.2 commander call sign ‘Flint’ says this operation has been weeks in the making.

“We’ve been setting it up for more than a month” he says, as his men prepare the ammunition they will be dropping on Russian positions.

“It’s a combined assault,” he adds, explaining the push south of Bakhmut is designed to build up on recent gains in the area, where Ukraine was able to regain important territory from Russian control.

An offensive in the South, gains in the East

Kyiv has concentrated a large portion of the Western equipment it received in the South where Ukrainian forces have been advancing along two axes: from Orikhiv towards Melitopol and from Velyka Novosilka towards Berdiansk.

German-made Leopard 2 tanks, American Bradley infantry fighting vehicles among others were sent to the area to support Ukrainian forces as they stormed Russian positions. The ultimate goal is to reach the Black Sea and cut off Russia’s supply route to Crimea. Gains so far have been slow and modest, with Ukraine retaking only a few small villages in the South.

Much less talked about have been operations in the Eastern part of the country, where Kyiv’s forces have slowly but surely retaken dozens of square kilometers, since Russia’s brutal assault on Bakhmut last winter.

“We are breaking through their line of defense here and we are hitting them well,” Groove says. He says the Russian mercenary group Wagner, responsible for much of Russia’s gains during the winter, has returned to the area.

“Yes, Wagner is here too,” he says. “They came back, they swiftly changed their commanders and returned here.”

Groove believes that the group’s presence is in part intended to compensate for personnel shortages on the Russian side. “[Russia] gathered troops from surrounding areas and brought them here,” he says. “They don’t have much personnel left here.”

Nevertheless, it is a slow grind – a war of attrition – and with less of the advanced Western equipment than their countrymen on the Southern frontline, Ukrainian forces here are forced to rely more on brains than brawn.

“We change tactics constantly,” commander ‘Flint’ explains. “It’s like boxing. We go for the body and then switch for the head.”

The European Court of Human Rights will hear an “unprecedented” lawsuit on Wednesday, brought by six young people against 32 European countries accusing them of failing to tackle the human-caused climate crisis.

The claimants, between ages 11 and 24 and all from Portugal, will argue that they are on the frontlines of climate change and ask the court to force these countries to rapidly accelerate climate action.

It is the first climate case to be filed with the European Court of Human Rights and is the largest of a total of three climate lawsuits the court is hearing.

The stakes are high. A win would force countries to rapidly scale up their climate ambitions and would also offer a huge boost to the chances of other climate lawsuits around the world – especially those arguing that countries have human rights obligations to protect people from the climate crisis.

If the court rules against the claimants, however, it could prove damaging for other climate claims.

“This is truly a David and Goliath case, that’s unprecedented in its scale (and) its potential impacts,” said Gearóid Ó Cuinn, the director of Global Legal Action Network, or GLAN, which has supported the claimants’ case.

Deadly wildfires

The journey to Wednesday’s hearing began six years ago. “Everything started in 2017 with the fires,” said Catarina Mota, one of the claimants.

The disaster catalyzed the lawsuit. Mota started talking to her friend and now fellow claimant, Cláudia Duarte Agostinho, and with the assistance of GLAN, they gathered four more claimants, all of whom were affected by the 2017 fires.

While the claim was triggered by the fires, climate change continues to affect their lives, the group argues, particularly the fierce heat waves that Portugal regularly experiences. They say these periods make it hard to go outside, to concentrate on schoolwork, to sleep and for some even to breathe, in addition to the impacts on their mental health.

“It makes us worried about our future. How could we not be scared?” said 15-year-old claimant André dos Santos Oliviera.

‘Like a legally binding treaty’

The lawsuit, which was filed in 2020 and has relied heavily on crowdfunding, was fast-tracked by the European Court of Human Rights due to the urgency of the issue and the large number of defendants.

On Wednesday, the claimants will argue that a failure to tackle the accelerating climate crisis is breaching their human rights, including their rights to life and family life, to freedom from inhuman treatment and to freedom from discrimination on the basis of age.

They are asking the court to rule that countries fueling the climate crisis have obligations to protect not only their own citizens but also those outside their borders.

Their demand is that the 32 countries, which include the 27 European Union countries plus Norway, Russia, Switzerland, Turkey and the United Kingdom, drastically cut their planet-heating pollution and also force companies headquartered within their borders to cut emissions across their whole supply chains.

For their part, the countries being sued have claimed in written submissions that none of the claimants has established they have suffered serious harm as a result of climate change.

The government in Greece – a country which has just experienced a deadly summer of heat, fire and storms – said in its response: “The effects of climate change as recorded so far do not seem to directly affect human life or human health.”

The lawsuit could go one of several ways.

The court could dismiss the claim on procedural grounds or decide that it doesn’t have the jurisdiction to hear it.

If it passes procedural hurdles, the court could rule that states do not have human rights obligations when it comes to climate change. “That could be very damaging to other similar cases,” said Michael B. Gerrard, director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School.

The lawsuit is the largest of three claims before the court, all of which concern countries’ obligations towards their citizens when it comes to climate change.

The other two were heard by the court in March. One was brought by more than 2,000 older Swiss women, who claimed that climate change-fueled heat waves undermined their health and quality of life, and the other by a French mayor, who claimed France’s failure to act on climate change breached his human rights.

It’s unclear if the courts will make a ruling on all the claims together but the time frame between the hearing and the judgment is typically nine to 18 months, said Gerry Liston, senior lawyer at GLAN.

The rise of climate litigation

As extreme weather worsens, climate litigation is proving to be an increasingly popular tool to try to force climate action, especially as the world’s nations have not done enough to cut pollution and avert catastrophic levels of warming.

Even if current climate policies are met, the world is still on track for more than 2.5 degrees Celsius of warming above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century. The planet has already warmed around 1.2 degrees, and the impacts are clear. This year alone has seen record-breaking heat waves, unprecedented wildfires and catastrophic floods.

Countries are currently doing the bare minimum, said Liston from GLAN, and if every nation does that, “we are just going to keep going on this totally catastrophic trajectory.”

That’s why people have been turning to the courts. There are more than 2,400 climate lawsuits globally, according to the Sabin Center, with more added every week.

Continued advocacy and climate conferences – such as the upcoming United Nations COP28 summit in Dubai – are also vital, she added.

For the Portuguese claimants, it will be an anxious wait for the court’s judgment. Even if the claim doesn’t go their way, Mota said, at least it will have got people to sit up and pay attention.

Still, she added, “we long for a positive outcome.”

Russia is formally seeking to rejoin the United Nations’ Human Rights Council, nearly 18 months after it was suspended from the body following its invasion of Ukraine.

The country is listed on the UN website as a candidate for the election of members of the council for the 2024-2026 term, with a vote due to take place on October 10.

Any move to reinstate Russia would be met with fury from the West, with several leading NATO states repeatedly insisting that Moscow’s illegal invasion of a neighboring state should disqualify it from membership of international bodies.

Russia has been accused of a huge number of human rights abuses over the course of its war in Ukraine, and the International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for its President Vladimir Putin over an alleged scheme to deport Ukrainian children to Russia.

The position paper, which Russia is circulating to UN members to drum up support, states that Moscow “believes it is important to prevent the increasing trend of turning the Human Rights Council into the instrument, which serves political wills of one group of countries punishing non-loyal governments for their independent internal and external policy.”

Russia was removed from the body in April 2022, weeks after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Membership of the council is based on equitable geographical distribution, with two vacant seats in the Eastern European States regional group. Russia, along with Albania and Bulgaria, is listed as having announced their candidacy for that region so far.

Russia’s position paper claimed it would “firmly promote principles of cooperation and strengthening of constructive mutually respectful dialogue” if re-elected to the body.

But Western countries will be expected to strongly oppose its application ahead of October’s vote.

A Human Rights Council commission said on Monday that there is “continuous evidence that Russian forces are “committing war crimes in Ukraine,” alleging that its attacks on the country include “unlawful attacks with explosive weapons, attacks harming civilians, torture, sexual and gender-based violence, and attacks on energy infrastructure.”

In the vote to suspend Russia from the council during the April 2022 UN General Assembly, 93 of the UN’s 193 countries supported the move to remove Moscow, while 24 voted against and 58 abstained.

China, Cuba, North Korea, Iran, Syria and Vietnam, alongside Russia, were among those opposing the move, while Brazil, South Africa, Mexico, Egypt and Saudi Arabia were among the abstentions.

Russia had joined the council in January 2021, as one of 15 countries elected to serve a three-year term.

It became the first country to be removed from the council since Libya, in 2011, following the repression of political protesters by its then-leader Muammar Gaddafi.

Russia remains one of five permanent members of the UN’s Security Council, and no clear legal framework exists to remove it from that post.

Moscow last took the presidency of that council, which rotates among the 15 members on a monthly basis, in April.

North Korea has decided “to expel” US Army Private Travis King, who crossed into the North from South Korea during a tour of the joint security area in July, state media KCNA reported on Wednesday.

“The relevant organ of the DPRK decided to expel Travis King, a soldier of the U.S. Army who illegally intruded into the territory of the DPRK, under the law of the Republic,” KCNA said. The report said the investigation into King “has been finished.”

It is unclear from KCNA’s report where, when and how King would be expelled.

North Korea claimed on Wednesday that King has “confessed that he illegally intruded into the territory of the DPRK as he harbored ill feeling against inhuman maltreatment and racial discrimination within the U.S. army and was disillusioned about the unequal U.S. society.”

National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said last month that it “would not be out of character” for North Korea to use US soldier Travis King as a propaganda tool or bargaining chip.

Kirby added at that time that King’s location was unclear, as well as “the conditions he’s being held” and information about his health.

Record-breaking NASA astronaut Frank Rubio has finally returned to Earth, feeling the pull of the planet’s gravity for the first time in more than a year.

Rubio and his two Russian colleagues — cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin — parachuted to a landing in Kazakhstan aboard the Russian Soyuz MS-23 capsule at 5:17 p.m. local time (7:17 a.m. ET) on Wednesday.

The crew’s arrival marked the end of a long — and unexpected — journey for Rubio, who had been slated to spend only six months aboard the International Space Station. He instead logged a total of 371 days in space following the discovery of a coolant leak coming from his original ride while docked to the orbiting outpost.

Rubio’s stay set a new record for the longest a US astronaut has ever spent in microgravity. He also became the first American to log an entire calendar year in orbit.

His record-breaking mission also marked other notable firsts for Rubio: This was his first journey to space after being selected for the NASA astronaut corps in 2017, and at the outset of the mission, he became the first astronaut of Salvadoran origin to travel to low-Earth orbit.

“And that’s only because of family things that were going on this past year,” he said. “And if I had known that I would have had to miss those very important events, I just would have had to say, ‘thank you, but no thank you.’”

Rubio, who has four children, is now expected to begin the journey home from the Soyuz spacecraft’s landing site near the town of Dzhezkazgan in Kazakhstan. He will first fly to Karaganda, which lies about 330 miles (530 kilometers) northeast of Dzhezkazgan, before boarding a flight to Houston.

All told, Rubio and his crewmates traveled 157.4 million miles (253.3 million kilometers) and completed 5,963 orbits of the Earth, according to NASA.

Rubio bested the previous record for the longest stay in space by a US astronaut — 355 days — which was set by NASA’s Mark Vande Hei in 2022.

The late Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov, who logged 437 continuous days in orbit aboard Russia’s Mir space station between January 1994 and March 1995 , holds the world record for the longest stay in space.

US and Russian cooperation in space

Rubio traveled to the space station on a Russian spacecraft as part of ride-sharing agreement between NASA and Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, that was hashed out in the summer of 2022 amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The seat-swap arrangement was an effort to continue longstanding policies that have sought to ensure access to the space station for both the United States and Russia — the primary operators of the outpost — should either country experience spacecraft issues that left their astronauts grounded.

Rubio, Prokopyev and Petelin launched aboard the Soyuz MS-22 vehicle on September 21, 2022, and safely arrived at the ISS three hours later, leaving the Soyuz capsule docked to the space station’s exterior as they went to work aboard the orbiting laboratory.

In an interview with reporters last week, Rubio thanked his family, noting their “resilience and strength has carried me through this entire mission.”

Increasing risk from space debris

Less than three months into its crew’s mission, the Soyuz MS-22 began spewing coolant. Investigations by Roscosmos, which were reviewed by NASA later, determined that the spacecraft was likely struck by a small object in orbit. The culprit was determined to be a micrometeorite or a piece of orbital debris, a growing threat in the increasingly congested environment of low-Earth orbit.

The Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft was deemed unfit to return the astronauts, and Roscosmos quickly worked to launch a replacement vehicle — the Soyuz MS-23 — in February.

But Rubio and his colleagues couldn’t return home yet: Officials determined that they would instead extend their stay as Roscosmos prepared for yet another Soyuz capsule to launch a fresh crew to replace them.

Space station crew rotation

The Soyuz MS-24 vehicle was finally ready this month and carried NASA astronaut Loral O’Hara and Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub to the space station on September 15, paving the way for Rubio’s return on Wednesday.

Rubio, a medical doctor and military helicopter pilot with more than 600 hours of combat experience, acknowledged that he likely will not be immediately returning to his pre-spaceflight life upon return because of the affects that long stints in microgravity can have on the body.

“We’re not walking, we’re not bearing our own weight (while in space), and so it’ll be anywhere from two to six months before I essentially say that I feel normal,” he said.

But there are plenty of earthly treasures he is looking forward to experiencing: “Up here we kind of have the constant hum of machinery that’s keeping us alive,” he said during an interview from space. “And so I’m looking forward to just being outside and enjoying the peace and quiet.”

A fire tore through a wedding hall in Qaraqosh in northern Iraq on Tuesday, killing at least 100 people and injuring 150 others, Iraqi state news agency INA reported citing local authorities.

Fireworks were set off at the venue in the Hamdaniya district of northeast Nineveh governorate, the Iraqi Civil Defense said, and an investigative committee was formed to identify the cause of the incident.

“The hall did not meet safety criteria. Because of the fireworks the ceiling collapsed on the people in the hall,” Interior Minister Abdul Amir al-Shammari told reporters on Wednesday.

“Justice will be served to those who were negligent,” Al-Shammari added.

Survivors of the blaze were transferred to hospitals in Nineveh and the nearby Kurdistan region, Nineveh governor Najm Al-Jubouri told INA. He said the final death and injury toll is yet to be determined.

ISIS invaded Qaraqosh in August 2014, during its years-long grip on power in northern Iraq. The group launched numerous assaults on the predominantly Christian town, destroying much of the infrastructure and leaving it in ruins.

Qaraqosh was liberated by US-backed Iraqi forces in October 2016. But a lack of resources complicated efforts to rebuild the town with adequate safety measures.

The wedding hall where the fire broke out was covered with highly flammable Ecobond panels that violated safety instructions requirements, according to the Iraqi Civil Defense, INA reported.

“The fire led to the collapse of parts of the hall as a result of the use of highly flammable, low-cost building materials that collapse within minutes when fire breaks out,” the Iraqi Civil Defense said in a statement.

‘The bride and groom are fine’

Videos from the scene in Qaraqosh show thick smoke billowing out of the Al Haytham Wedding Hall while crowds and ambulances gather outside the venue.

A wedding guest told local media the bride and groom were safe, but devastated by the disaster.

“The bride and groom are fine. I was just with them now, but their condition is devastating due to what happened to people here,” the guest told private Iraqi channel Alawla TV.

“There are hundreds of people injured, we are in need of blood,” Salm said. “This tragedy hurt us more than ISIS. At least when ISIS came we could escape, but now a wedding became a graveyard for us.”

Salm added that he has relatives who were injured and killed in the fire, while others are unaccounted for.

Prime Minister Mohammed Shiaa Al-Sudani has instructed his cabinet to assist those affected by the fire, according to a statement from his office.

The Iraqi leader has been in touch with the Nineveh governor by telephone about the incident and ordered a full mobilization to aid the victims, according to his office and INA.

The United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq expressed its condolences to family members of those killed and injured Tuesday, calling the incident “an immense tragedy.”

“Shocked and pained by the horrible loss of life and injuries in the fire,” the mission said on X, formerly known as Twitter.

The Iraqi government issued a three-day national mourning period following the blaze.