When a large Jewish cemetery was paved over last century to create a sports ground in Belarus, the headstones were used to make roads and buildings.

Decades later, the desecrated stone slabs began to emerge during renovation works. Now, thanks to the hard work of a charity based in Belarus and the United Kingdom, the headstones will be given the respect they deserve as part of a new memorial on the site.

The haunting structure will be erected at the site of the former cemetery in Brest, crafted from broken bits of headstones that have resurfaced over the past two decades in the city and the surrounding area.

Brest, also known as Brest-Litovsk, had been a hub of Jewish life before World War II, with Jewish residents first recorded there in the 14th century. It was home to more than 20,000 Jews before the war. After the Holocaust, only about 10 remained, according to Yad Vashem, Israel’s national Holocaust memorial center.

Tens of thousands of people are believed to have been buried in the cemetery, among them famous rabbis and talmudic sages, but today there is little evidence their graves ever existed.

The first stage of the desecration began during the war, when the Nazis tried to destroy the cemetery by selling off the headstones. That destruction continued under the Soviets in the post-war era when the Russians proceeded to use the religious markers for paving slabs and building works – before later covering the whole site in asphalt to create a running track and football stadium, according to representatives of the Jewish community in Belarus today. The sports facilities, although run down, still exist on the site and are open to the public.

All traces of the once-sprawling cemetery had been lost until the late 1990s, when parts of the broken stones began to resurface during construction work in and around the city.

“Currently there’s nothing there to say it’s a cemetery,” said Debra Brunner, chief executive and co-founder of The Together Plan, a charity spearheading the memorial project.

Over the past few years, hundreds of remnants of matzevot – the Hebrew word for headstones – have been collected and stored in a warehouse, where they have been photographed, cataloged and added to a detailed and searchable database. They will now form part of a large memorial at the site.

“There are 1,287 pieces with any sign of writing and probably between 2,000 and 2,500 more pieces but with no signs of writing,” said Artur Livshyts, co-director of The Together Plan, whose US partner organization is called The Jewish Tapestry Project.

Earlier this year, Livshyts, one of around 20,000 Jewish people living in the Belarusian capital, Minsk, was contacted by a young couple who had just bought a dilapidated house in Brest which had stood empty for more than 20 years.

Brunner said: “It was in very bad condition but they bought it to renovate it. During their building works they discovered that the basement was constructed out of matzevot. It turns out that after the war the family who lived in this house had used the matzevot as building materials.”

After that family suffered a series of misfortunes, people said this was “a curse from the headstones,” Brunner said.

“When this new couple discovered the headstones they felt compelled to do the right thing and so they reached out to the Jewish community in Brest to ask what to do.”

The memorial, which Brunner and Livshyts hope will be in situ by the end of 2024, aims to “acknowledge and honor the community that was so brutally extinguished, and educate visitors about Brest’s vibrant Jewish community of today,” according to the charity.

The memorial will be located on a corner of the site, away from the sports facilities. It will feature a black granite plaque with writing in English, Russian and Hebrew, while the surrounding area will be landscaped with trees, grass and wild flowers. The Brest municipality is supportive of the concept and has pledged to maintain its upkeep once it opens, according to The Together Plan.

The charity estimates that it must raise around $300,000 for the memorial – a third of which has been pledged by a donor with a close connection to Brest’s Jewish past.

In the 1990s, Grynberg worked as an interviewer for the Shoah Foundation, an initiative set up by Hollywood legend Steven Spielberg to record the testimonies of Holocaust survivors. Inspired by its work, he persuaded his father to try to open up about his wartime experiences and together they traveled back to Brest.

He added: “In 1997 there were no signs of the cemetery. We were taken there and our guide said ‘this is where the cemetery was.’ Like so many things with the Holocaust, you can’t really understand them, you just have these complicated visceral feelings. I was just trying to compute the idea of them bulldozing a cemetery and building on it. That was the empty feeling I had.”

In 2015, Grynberg returned to Brest, where he heard about the instances of headstones resurfacing during construction work, and met with Brunner and Livshyts.

Embracing their vision for a memorial at the former cemetery site, Grynberg commissioned Texas-based designer Brad Goldberg – whose family had taken in Grynberg’s father when he first arrived in the United States and knew him well – to come up with a plan for it.

“I’m not sure but I don’t think I had any relatives in this cemetery because my family came to Brest,” said Grynberg, who explained that his grandparents had moved to Brest, so his ancestors are likely to have been buried elsewhere in Belarus. “These are all people buried there before the war. It really feels more about my connection to what this town is.”

The intention, he said, is not to replicate a cemetery, but to bring “dignity back to the people who are buried in this place.”

“I call it an embrace,” he said. “This embrace is meant to house those headstones that are still intact.

“It isn’t a cemetery,” he added. “They are all facing in different directions as if they are having a conversation with each other.

“One rabbi that we have consulted has described it as being about life rather than about death.”

He added: “Of course we can’t locate the actual bodies to the stones that are there but at least we can bring back the stones and have them standing where the cemetery used to be.”

A US court on Tuesday sentenced a wildlife trade kingpin to 18 months in prison for conspiring to traffic hundreds of kilos of rhino horns, in a ruling conservation groups said would cause a major blow to the illicit business.

Teo Boon Ching, a Malaysian citizen nicknamed “the Godfather” by investigators, was part of a conspiracy to smuggle illegal rhino horns to international buyers, including in Manhattan, according to a news release from the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York.

Ching, who was already under US sanctions, was arrested in Thailand last year and later extradited to the United States, the release said.

“Wildlife trafficking is a serious threat,” said Damian Williams, US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, in the release. “The substantial sentence shows the resolve of this office to use every tool at our disposal to ensure the protection of endangered species.”

Rhinos are critically endangered despite persistent efforts to save the species. Their numbers have dropped drastically due to hunting and habitat loss and mere thousands remain in the wild in Africa and Asia, according to the World Wildlife Fund.

A lucrative black market trade is driven by demand for traditional medicine in Asia – especially in China and Vietnam. Rhino horn is made of keratin – the same material found in human nails – and there is little scientific evidence it has any medical efficacy.

‘Body blow’

Prosecutors said a covert operation exposed Ching’s efforts to traffic about 219 kilograms [483 pounds] of rhino horns “resulting from the poaching of numerous rhinoceros” with an estimated value of $2.1 million.

In August 2019, at the direction of law enforcement, a source bought 12 rhino horns from Ching with money that he believed were the proceeds of other illegal wildlife trafficking and was in bank accounts in New York, officials said.

The horns were delivered in a suitcase in Thailand by those working for the wildlife trafficking organization, officials said.

Ching was arrested in Thailand on June 29, 2022 at the request of US authorities and extradited to the United States on October 7, 2022.

The London-based Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), which supplied intelligence on Ching to US enforcement agents, said his jailing was a “body blow” to the illegal wildlife trade.

“Chinese and Vietnamese organized crime networks have long exploited Malaysia and other Southeast Asian countries as transit hubs for smuggling illegal wildlife commodities from Africa into Asia,” an EIA statement read.

“The jailing of Teo Boon Ching and related US Treasury Department sanctions against him and his alleged trafficking organisation constitute a body-blow to their ability to function.”

In a statement, Olivia Swaak-Goldman, executive director of the non-profit Wildlife Justice Commission, said Ching’s conviction “sends a strong message that wildlife crime will no longer be tolerated.”

“His arrest and imprisonment has significantly disrupted the illegal wildlife trade,” she said.

The Wisconsin-based company American Foods Group, doing business as Green Bay Dressed Beef, has recalled more than 58,000 pounds of raw ground beef due to concerns of possible contamination with the bacteria Escherichia coli, better known as E. coli, according to a Friday alert posted by the US Department of Agriculture.

The recall follows recent warnings issued by federal health officials about foodborne illnesses, including an alert for clinicians by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to be on the lookout for infections due to the flesh-eating Vibrio vulnificus bacteria, which caused at least five deaths on the East Coast this summer.

All of this has led me to look into foodborne illnesses and how people can improve food safety practices. What exactly is food poisoning? What can cause it? What are common symptoms? And, crucially, how can people prevent foodborne illnesses?

Dr. Leana Wen: Those two terms are often used interchangeably. When people become ill from the food they eat, this is generally due to infections occurring after ingesting food or drink that has been contaminated with infectious organisms such as bacteria, viruses or parasites. Foodborne illness also includes allergic reactions and other circumstances in which food is the carrier of the allergen or toxin.

According to the CDC, 31 major pathogens cause around 9 million episodes of illness, nearly 56,000 hospitalizations and more than 1,300 deaths each year.

Wen: Norovirus is the most frequent pathogen implicated in foodborne infections in the United States. This is a highly contagious virus. It can be spread through food and drink. The virus can also be spread from person to person by sharing utensils with an infected person and through handling objects that an infected person has touched and then touching your mouth.

Other common pathogens that cause foodborne illnesses include bacteria such as salmonella, campylobacter, listeria and E. coli, and parasites like toxoplasma.

Wen: Common symptoms include nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and abdominal pain. Depending on the infectious organism involved, the individual may also develop fevers, body aches and other flu-like symptoms.

Wen: Most foodborne illnesses can be treated at home and will resolve on their own. It’s crucial to drink plenty of fluids and prevent dehydration.

Reasons to seek medical assistance include inability to keep up fluid intake due to vomiting or severe diarrhea and signs of becoming too dehydrated, such as feeling dizzy when standing, decreased urination, high fever, persistent diarrhea lasting more than three days and bloody diarrhea.

Wen: E. coli live in the intestines of people and animals. Most forms of the bacteria are harmless, but some can cause illness. There is a particular kind of E. coli known as Shiga toxin-producing E. coli, or STEC, that has been implicated in serious foodborne illness outbreaks. Exposed individuals could get bloody diarrhea and even kidney failure. Treatment consists of supportive care for symptoms and fluids for hydration. It’s estimated that about 265,000 infections of STEC happen in the US every year.

The Vibrio bacteria causes around 80,000 illnesses around the country each year. Most illnesses are due to eating raw or undercooked shellfish, in particular oysters. People who have an exposed open wound could also become infected through swimming in salt water or brackish water. Infections can be treated with antibiotics and fluids.

Wen: Undercooking meat is a common and serious problem. Infectious organisms may not be killed at lower temperatures. I highly recommend getting a good meat thermometer to measure the internal temperature of the food you are cooking. The federal government has an excellent resource on what internal temperatures different kinds of meat and poultry should be cooked to.

Another common problem is neglecting to wash vegetables and fruits. Even if you are going to peel them, you should wash them first under running water. It’s not necessary or advisable to use soap, dishwashing liquid, disinfectants or other solutions.

Be aware of what containers and utensils are in contact with raw meat. Do not put salad items or cooked meat into these containers. Also, do not wash other uncooked meat or raw seafood in your sink. That could spread bacteria, and you could inadvertently contaminate other food.

Wen: Cooked meat should be kept at 140 degrees Fahrenheit (60 degrees Celsius) or higher until serving. Conversely, meat and poultry should be refrigerated until ready for use. They should only be taken out just before placing on the grill.

If you’re going to use a cooler in lieu of a refrigerator, make sure to use an insulated one with enough ice to keep the contents at 40 F (4.4 C) or lower. It’s best to store meat at the bottom of the cooler and also keep it in a separate container or a tightly sealed zip-top bag to keep it from contaminating other items.

Bring plenty of plates and utensils, and make sure you clearly separate the ones used to touch raw meat from other items.

Handwashing is so critical. You don’t want to touch raw meat with your hands only to then make a salad. Also, many foodborne illnesses are transferred from other infected people. Making sure you wash your hands regularly with soap will reduce cross-contamination.

Wen: Perishable food should not be left out for more than two hours. If the temperature around you is above 90 F (32.2 C), the food should be refrigerated within one hour.

Wen: People involved in making and serving food should be extra cautious, as they have the potential to infect many people. In addition, there are some individuals who are most likely to suffer ill effects if they were to have food poisoning. Those are older people, young children, pregnant people and those with immunocompromising medical conditions. These folks should take additional precautions to reduce their risk of foodborne illness.

Azerbaijan said it had taken back the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh after launching a lightning 24-hour assault that forced ethnic Armenian forces to surrender and agree to a Russia-brokered ceasefire.

Under the agreement, Azerbaijan said it would halt its military offensive – which killed at least 200 people and injured many more – and said it would hold talks with Karabakh officials “to discuss reintegration.”

The first round of talks took place Thursday, Azerbaijani state media reported, with Karabakh representatives meeting a delegation from Azerbaijan. Few details have been released on the meeting, which was also attended by a representative of the Russian peacekeeping contingent in the region.

In a speech to the nation Wednesday evening, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said his forces had “punished the enemy properly” and that Baku had restored its sovereignty “with an iron fist.”

Russia’s peacekeeping force said it had begun to evacuate civilians from Nagorno-Karabakh, but there are fears that Azerbaijan’s reclaiming of the region could create tens of thousands of refugees and Armenia’s government has repeatedly warned of the risk of ethnic cleansing.

Nagorno-Karabakh is a landlocked region in the Caucasus Mountains that is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan but is home to around 120,000 ethnic Armenians, who make up the majority of the population and reject Azerbaijani rule. The region has its own de facto government that is backed by Armenia, but is not officially recognized by Armenia or any other country.

The ceasefire began at 1 p.m. local time (5 a.m. ET) Wednesday, Nagorno-Karabakh’s presidential office announced. It said its army had been outnumbered “several times over” by Azerbaijani forces and had no choice but to surrender and agree to “the dissolution and complete disarmament of its armed forces.”

After the ceasefire was announced, local media reported that thousands of Karabakh residents rushed to the airport in the region’s capital Stepanakert, where Russian peacekeepers had established a base. Local officials urged residents to “remain in bomb shelters,” amid fears that Azerbaijani troops could breach the ceasefire.

Evacuation efforts have been complicated by the ongoing blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh, after Azerbaijan-backed forces established a military checkpoint along the Lachin corridor – the only road connecting the enclave to Armenia – in December 2022. For the past nine months, imports of food, medicine and fuel to the region have been cut off, prompting Western officials to warn that genocide was being committed against the Armenian population.

Tuesday’s offensive, while brief, will likely have more substantial consequences than the most recent war for control of the region in 2020. During that conflict, Azerbaijan won a crushing victory in 44 days, reclaiming about a third of Nagorno-Karabakh before Russia, historically the dominant power in the region, brokered a ceasefire which saw both sides lay down their weapons.

But, having exposed Armenia’s military inferiority in that war, Azerbaijan has since sought to press home its advantage. Wednesday’s ceasefire handed Azerbaijan a far more comprehensive victory than the 2020 agreement, and the terms of the truce mean returning the whole of the region to Baku’s control.

“Let those who cannot digest our successes remember: the iron fist is in place. And let them not forget: Karabakh is Azerbaijan!” said a triumphant Aliyev in a televised address Wednesday night.

Russia’s influence

Under the 2020 ceasefire, Russia deployed around 2,000 peacekeepers to the region to prevent a new conflict. But Armenian officials have grown frustrated by what it sees as the ineffectiveness of Russia’s contingent, which was laid bare on Tuesday.

Armenia’s Security Council Secretary Armen Grigoruyan accused Russian peacekeepers of failing to protect Nagorno-Karabakh from Azerbaijani aggression, according to state media Armenpress.

The Kremlin rejected Armenia’s criticisms of the Russian peacekeeping contingent. “Such accusations against us are unfounded,” spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday.

Russia’s defense ministry said Wednesday that an unspecified number of peacekeepers were killed when their car came under fire. It gave no further details of the incident, but said that Russian and Azerbaijani representatives would investigate.

In an earlier statement, the ministry said its peacekeepers were in contact with both Armenian and Azerbaijani officials and had discussed “prevention of bloodshed, compliance with humanitarian law in relation to civilians,” as well as the safety of its own forces.

Azerbaijan’s offensive came amid a sharp deterioration in the relationship between historic allies Armenia and Russia. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said it was “strange and perplexing” that his government did not receive “any information from our partners in Russia about that operation.”

Armenia has for decades trusted Russia to act as its sole security guarantor, which Russia purports to provide under the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), a military alliance of post-Soviet states that includes Armenia but excludes Azerbaijan.

After Azerbaijan’s offensive, a number of prominent Russian commentators and politicians were highly critical of Armenia’s leadership, at times mocking it for its inability to protect ethnic Armenians beyond its borders.

The Kremlin confirmed Wednesday that Moscow was arranging a telephone conversation between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. He said a conversation with the Azerbaijani president could also take place if necessary.

India has suspended visa services for Canadian citizens, escalating a diplomatic spat between both countries after Ottawa accused New Delhi of potentially being behind the assassination of a Sikh separatist activist on its soil.

BLS International, which handles visa applications for India in Canada, sent a letter to Indian stock exchanges on Thursday that said visa services “have been suspended till further notice.”

“Due to operation reasons, with immediate effect i.e. 21 September 2023, Indian visa services in Canada have been suspended till further notice,” the letter, sent to the Bombay Stock Exchange, the National Stock Exchange of India and the Metropolitan Stock Exchange, read.

Earlier, BLS International stated on its website that India had suspended visa services for Canadian citizens from Thursday, citing a notice from the Indian mission.

The notice was briefly removed on Thursday before reappearing again, without explanation.

The announcement followed a stern travel advisory from India on Wednesday urging its citizens to remain vigilant in Canada, warning them of “politically condoned hate crimes.”

“Recently, threats have particularly targeted Indian diplomats and sections of the Indian community who oppose the anti-India agenda,” an advisory released on Wednesday by the Indian Ministry of External Affairs said. “Given the deteriorating security environment in Canada, Indian students in particular are advised to exercise extreme caution and remain vigilant.”

It added that Indian nationals and students must register with the High Commission of India or Consulates General of India in Toronto and Vancouver to “better connect with Indian citizens in Canada in the event of any emergency or untoward incident.”

The travel warning comes days after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau claimed that authorities had been investigating “credible allegations” of a potential link between “agents of the government of India” and the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Sikh Canadian citizen who was gunned down by masked men in June.

New Delhi has vehemently denied the allegations, calling them “absurd and motivated.”

India’s foreign ministry said Canada has provided “no specific information” to support Delhi’s alleged involvement in Nijjar’s death.

“Let me also point out that from our side, very specific evidence of criminal activities by individuals based on Canadian soil has been shared with the Canadian authorities on a regular basis but not been acted upon,” the ministry’s spokesman, Arindam Bagchi, told reporters in New Delhi on Thursday.

But Trudeau’s statement has sent relations between the two countries into a tail spin, with both India and Canada expelling senior diplomats in reciprocal moves, raising the prospect of an awkward rift between key partners of the United States.

Nijjar was an outspoken supporter of the creation of a separate Sikh homeland known as Khalistan, which would include parts of India’s Punjab state.

The Khalistan movement is outlawed in India and considered a national security threat by the government. A number of groups associated with the movement are listed as “terrorist organizations” under India’s Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA).

Nijjar’s name appears on the Home Ministry’s list of UAPA terrorists and in 2020, the Indian National Investigation Agency accused him of “trying to radicalize the Sikh community across the world in favor of the creation of ‘Khalistan,’” adding that he had been “trying to incite Sikhs to vote for secession, agitate against the government of India and carry out violent activities.”

According to local police, he was gunned down in his truck in June by two masked killers outside a Sikh temple in Surrey, British Columbia.

His death both shocked and outraged the Sikh community in Canada, one of the largest outside India and home to more than 770,000 members of the religious minority.

Canadian police have not arrested anyone in connection with Nijjar’s murder. But in an August update, police released a statement saying they were investigating three suspects and issued a description of a possible getaway vehicle, asking for the public’s help.

Qatar is “so proud” to have facilitated the return home this week of five US citizens that had been jailed in Iran, said Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani on Tuesday – his first time speaking in depth about Qatar’s role in the episode.

Emad Shargi, Morad Tahbaz and Siamak Namazi, along with two Americans who have not been publicly named, arrived Tuesday at a military airfield in Virginia after being flown out of Iran the previous day on a Qatari government jet.

Asked by Amanpour if the deal could mark a rapprochement in US-Iranian relations, Al-Thani struck an optimistic note, saying, “I cannot claim that this will lead to a nuclear deal, but it’s going definitely to lead to a better environment.”

“What happened yesterday actually was a great building block for rebuilding the confidence between the two countries,” he said.

“I hope both countries are believing that this will lead to a better environment to go for an entire agreement on the nuclear issue, and any other outstanding issue,” he said.

The Qatar-mediated prisoner-release deal came amid a significant dialing back of tensions between Iran and the US in recent months.

Attacks by Iran and its proxies on US interests in the Middle East have almost ceased, and Iran’s oil exports have risen despite Western sanctions on its oil industry. Meanwhile, Iran’s uranium enrichment under its nuclear program has reportedly slowed.

Still, a senior Biden administration official said earlier this week that the prisoner deal “has not changed our relationship with Iran in any way.” Soon after the American prisoners took off from Iran, the Biden administration slapped new sanctions on the regime.

In speeches before the UN General Assembly in New York earlier in the day, the Iranian and American leaders traded well-worn accusations before delegates gathered in the UN’s General Assembly Hall.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi accused the US of “fanning the flames of violence in Ukraine” in his speech, and revisited former US President Donald Trump’s 2018 decision to exit the Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA), which he called “an official trampling upon (of) their commitments.”

To move forward, Raisi said, “the United States of America must explain transparently and demonstrate in a verifiable fashion that it does wish to reach a proper conclusion and show her commitment – choose a path, either JCPOA or not.”

“It is time now for the United States to bring a cessation to traveling on the wrong path and choose the right side,” he added.

In his own speech, US President Joe Biden mentioned only that the US is “working with our partners to address Iran’s destabilizing activities that threaten regional and global security and remain steadfast in our commitment that Iran must never acquire a nuclear weapon.”

Britain will delay a series of key climate targets, its beleaguered Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said Wednesday at a hastily organized press conference, in a move that angered businesses and political allies and intensified the government’s assault on green policies.

Sunak told reporters on Wednesday he will push back a ban on selling new petrol and diesel cars from 2030 to 2035, dramatically slow down plans to phase out gas boilers, and reject calls to regulate efficiency for homeowners.

The prime minister reiterated plans to expand oil and gas developments in Britain’s North Sea and drill for the fossil fuels that environmental groups condemned. He also announced that the ban on onshore wind will be lifted.

It marks a sharp turn away from a long-standing political consensus on the climate, just two years after the United Kingdom hosted the crucial COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, and seriously undermines efforts to portray Britain as a leader in the fight against the climate crisis.

The move intensifies Sunak’s newfound and controversial electoral strategy: binning Britain’s bolder emissions-cutting policies and picking fights with climate activists, in a gamble that the confrontation will appeal to traditional Conservative voters.

Sunak, who is scrambling to reverse dismal opinion polling ahead of an election anticipated next year, sought to present the rollbacks as a “more pragmatic, proportionate and realistic” way of reaching net zero – framing the reversals as a longer-term and overdue change to approaching climate policies.

In an attack on his own Conservative predecessors as prime minister, Sunak said: “You don’t reach net zero simply by wishing it. Yet that’s precisely what previous governments have done, both Labour and Conservative.”

“This idea that we’re watering down our targets is just wrong,” he said, adding, “If we continue down this path, we risk losing the consent of the British people.”

He said he will “set out the next stage” of his environmental agenda in the coming weeks, ahead of COP28.

Boris Johnson, whose premiership included the COP26 and embraced the net zero pledge, had earlier shot back in a rare public attack on his former chancellor-turned-political rival. “Business must have certainty about our net zero commitments,” Johnson said in a statement, calling on Sunak to give firms “confidence that government is still committed Net Zero and can see the way ahead.”

“We cannot afford to falter now or in any way lose our ambition for this country,” Johnson said.

Political pushback

Sunak attempted to stake an occasionally awkward middle ground in his Wednesday speech, insisting his plans will keep Britain on track to reach net zero by 2050, while presenting the previous plans as overbearing and unfair on British workers.

“We’ve stumbled into a consensus about the future of our country that no one seems to be happy with,” Sunak said. “Too often, motivated by short-term thinking, politicians have taken the easy way out… I’ve made my decision: we are going to change.”

It’s an argument that will do little to convince climate experts, many of whom have warned the UK was already missing its targets. The Climate Change Committee, the government’s independent adviser on climate change, published a report in June that criticized the UK’s net zero plans and said there was not enough urgency to reach the country’s goals.

Britain is legally required to have reached net zero – meaning the country would remove from the atmosphere at least as much planet-warming pollution as it emits – by 2050.

But the delays in phasing out petrol and diesel vehicles and gas boilers will mean the products remain on Britain’s roads and homes well into the 2040s, potentially complicating any efforts by future governments to accelerate emissions-cutting plans.

There was a dramatic political pushback on Wednesday too. Johnson’s comments led a chorus of concerns from within Sunak’s Conservative party at the plans, which were apparently hurriedly brought forward after Tuesday’s leaks to the media. Opposition lawmakers, businesses and climate groups joined the green wing of the party in attacking the shift.

Alok Sharma, a Conservative politician who served as president of the pivotal COP26 conference, told the BBC before Sunak’s press conference on Wednesday that rowing back from the cross-party consensus on net zero would be “incredibly damaging for business confidence.”

“Frankly, I really do not believe that it’s going to help any political party electorally which chooses to go down this path,” Sharma added. Chris Skidmore, the Conservative former energy minister, told the PA Media news agency the moves were “the greatest mistake of his premiership.”

Wednesday’s announcement comes at the same time as the Climate Ambition Summit at the UN General Assembly summit in New York, which Sunak is not attending.

“I have heard from many of my friends in the UK – including a lot of Conservative party members, by the way – who have used the phrase ‘utter disgust’ and some of the young people there feel as if their generation has been stabbed in the back. It’s really shocking to me, but again this is an issue for the UK to handle,” he continued.

“From a global perspective, this is not what the world needs from the United Kingdom,” the climate campaigner added.

“At least from the point of view of civil society from around the world, we’re really profoundly concerned about what’s happening in the UK. And it’s a sign that science doesn’t seem to be listened to anymore with that government,” Ioualalen said.

An anti-green agenda

Sunak has leaned into an anti-green agenda since his party unexpectedly and narrowly won a by-election in the far western edge of London in July that was dominated by plans to extend London’s low-emissions zone, charging drivers of the most polluting vehicles a fee for every day they used their car in the area.

The prime minister’s Conservative party is deeply unpopular with voters, with opinion polls projecting anything from a comfortable defeat to a historic wipeout at the next general election, which must be called by January 2025 at the latest.

Amid that context, and with a struggling economy that leaves the government with little wiggle room for dramatic fiscal changes, Sunak has emphasized a range of cultural issues and trumpeted socially conservative policies in a push to appeal to the party’s rightwing base.

But polls show that the climate crisis is increasingly high on the list of British voters’ concerns, and the opposition Labour party has sought to attack Sunak on what they describe as a withdrawal from Britain’s former position as a global leader. “Rolling back on key climate commitments as the world is being battered by extreme flooding and wildfires would be morally indefensible,” Friends of the Earth’s head of policy, Mike Childs, said in a statement.

British businesses also criticized Sunak’s plans on Wednesday. Lisa Brankin, the chair of Ford UK, said in a statement that the automobile giant “needs three things from the UK Government: ambition, commitment and consistency. A relaxation of 2030 would undermine all three.”

And Ed Matthew, Campaigns Director for independent climate change think tank E3G, said the moves would drive up household bills and “damage the UK’s ability to compete with other countries on clean technology.”

“Just as the United States, China and the European Union are racing ahead on green growth, Rishi Sunak appears ready to surrender,” he said. “The economic damage to the UK could be catastrophic.”

The crisis in Nagorno-Karabakh has come amid a sharp deterioration in the relationship between historic allies Armenia and Russia, and has been amplified by sometimes incendiary commentary from prominent individuals in Moscow.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and other officials in Yerevan have accused Russia of failing to deliver on its security commitments to Armenia, after Azerbaijani forces launched what it called “anti-terrorist” operations against the ethnic Armenian community in Nagorno-Karabakh, before a ceasefire was agreed Wednesday.

Pashinyan criticized Russia for not alerting him to Azerbaijan’s military plans, saying it was “strange and perplexing” that his government did not receive “any information from our partners in Russian about that operation.”

Armenia has for decades trusted Russia to act as its sole security guarantor, but has recently grown frustrated by what it sees as the ineffectiveness of Russia’s peacekeeping force in Nagorno-Karabakh, which was laid bare on Tuesday. But Russia has in turn been angered by Armenia’s attempts to forge new international partnerships, most recently through holding joint military exercises with the United States.

Armenia’s Security Council Secretary Armen Grigoryan accused Russian peacekeepers of failing to protect Nagorno-Karabakh from Azerbaijani aggression, according to state media Armenpress.

The Kremlin rejected Armenia’s criticisms of the Russian peacekeeping contingent. “Such accusations against us are unfounded,” spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday.

Ties between Moscow and Yerevan have been fraying for some time but in recent weeks have worsened significantly. Earlier this month, Armenia sent humanitarian aid to Ukraine for the first time, with Pashinyan’s wife, Anna Hakobyan, making an official visit to Kyiv.

A chorus of criticism

Russian commentators and politicians have been highly critical of Armenia’s leadership, at times mocking it for its inability to protect ethnic Armenians beyond its border – and expecting Russian peacekeepers to defend Nagorno-Karabakh where Yerevan cannot.

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev is among the most vocal critics. In a Telegram post, he derided Pashinyan. “He lost a war [a reference to the 2020 conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia] but in some strange way stayed in place. Then he decided to shift the responsibility for his talentless defeat onto Russia. Then he rejected a piece of the territory of his own country. Then he decided to flirt with NATO.”

“Guess what fate awaits him,” Medvedev added.

The prominent Russian military blogger Rybar said Armenia was over reliant on Russia to provide security for Nagorno-Karabakh. “Actions are expected from Russian peacekeepers – who are consistently discredited by pro-Pashinyan nationalists,” Rybar commented.

Russia purports to provide security to Armenia through the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), a military alliance of post-Soviet states that includes Armenia but excludes Azerbaijan.

Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of state television network RT, wrote on Twitter “Karabakh. Tragic, hopeless and predictable. The Armenian authorities handed over the Armenian shrine with their own hands… The fate of Judas is unenviable.”

Simonyan also wrote on Telegram about protests in Yerevan. “The crowd chants: ‘Nikol is a traitor.’ They’ve woken up. The Armenian, who came to power with anti-Russian slogans – is a traitor by definition. A traitor of Armenian interests, not Russian. Russia will get by without Armenia. Armenia without Russia – no.”

Pashinyan came to power in 2018 on the back of Armenia’s “Velvet Revolution” – an outpouring of anger against lingering corruption and cronyism in the former Soviet republic.

Vladimir Solovyov, one of the most prominent anchors on Russian television, also slammed Pashinyan’s government.

“The scum that shouts something against Lavrov or Putin – why they do not want to go and die for Karabakh where Armenians always lived?… No, they want some Russian Ivan to go and die instead of them,” Solovyov said.

“Where was Armenian army? They are training with Americans. So how did Americans help you?” he asked.

The independent Russian media project Meduza said it had obtained a guidance document from the Kremlin circulated Tuesday to state media outlets, which recommended blaming Armenia and Western countries for the aggravation of the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh, rather than Azerbaijan.

Meduza said that according to the document the Kremlin also stressed that “the Armenian leadership recognized the sovereignty of Azerbaijan over Karabakh,” but that Pashinyan had been pushed towards a more radical stance by his Western partners “who should fully share with him the responsibility for the consequences.”

Archaeologists have unearthed the oldest known wooden structure, and it’s almost half a million years old.

The simple structure — found along a riverbank in Zambia — is made up of two interlocking logs, with a notch deliberately crafted into the upper piece to allow them to fit together at right angles, according to a new study of cut marks made by stone tools.

Geoff Duller, a professor of geography and Earth sciences at the University of Aberystwyth in the United Kingdom, was part of the team that made the discovery in 2019. He said the structure, excavated upstream of Kalambo Falls near Zambia’s border with Tanzania, probably would have been part of a wooden platform used as a walkway, to keep food or firewood dry or perhaps as a base on which to build a dwelling. A digging stick and other wooden tools were found at the same site.

“That the wood has remained in place and intact for half a million years is extraordinary. And it gives us this real insight, this window into this time period,” said Duller, coauthor of the study on the wooden structure that published in the journal Nature on Wednesday.

“It’s completely changed my view of what people were capable of that time,” he added.

Wood artifacts are rarely preserved in the archaeological record, particularly at such an ancient site, because organic material easily rots and disintegrates. At Kalambo, Duller said high water levels and fine sediment encasing the structure helped to preserve the wood.

The discovery challenges the prevailing view that Stone Age humans led a nomadic lifestyle, Duller said. Kalambo Falls would have provided a reliable source of water and the surrounding forest ample food, perhaps allowing for a more settled existence.

“At the very least, they’re putting a huge amount of effort into this place,” he said.

The wooden structure has no real parallel in the archaeological record, according to the study.

The earliest known wood artifact is a 780,000-year-old fragment of polished plank found at the site of Gesher Benot Ya’aqov, Israel, while the oldest wooden tools for foraging and hunting on record — unearthed in Europe — date back about 400,000 years. It’s thought that Neanderthals made structures from bones or stalactites around 175,000 years ago.

How was the structure made?

Duller compared the technique used to connect the structure’s parts to Lincoln Logs, the children’s building toy made of miniature logs that lock together using square notches. He said it was improbable that the two logs drifted and linked together naturally.

“Colleagues have made modern replicas of the stone tools that we see and worked woods of similar density, and we can see that the shaping of these marks is identical,” Duller said. “So that’s what makes us really confident (that) this is not a natural process — it has been done intentionally using stone tools.”

The wood pieces were too old to be directly dated using radiocarbon techniques. Instead, the team used a technique called luminescence dating, which involved measuring the natural radioactivity in minerals in the fine sediment that encased the wood to figure out when it was last exposed to sunlight.

This dating method put the structure at 476,000 years old and determined that the four wooden tools — a wedge, digging stick, cut log and notched branch — go back 324,000 years.

Researchers aren’t certain which species of ancient human made the structure and wooden tools, but it is highly unlikely to have been our own. The earliest known Homo sapiens fossils date from around 300,000 years ago and were found in what’s now Israel, Duller said.

He said the complexity of the structure suggests the people who made it were cognitively sophisticated and were able to make and execute a complex plan — something that likely required the use of language.

Archaeologist Dr. Annemieke Milks, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Reading in the UK, wrote in a commentary published alongside the research that the discovery revealed when people started to structurally alter the planet for their own benefit. The paper also showed that a material widely used in the present day played, as long suspected, an important role in the Stone Age.

“Studies such as this one highlight the role of this most humble of materials in the human story,” said Milks, who wasn’t involved in the research.

A ceasefire has been agreed in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh, a day after Azerbaijan launched a military offensive against ethnic Armenian forces.

Whether this leads to a lasting peace is not yet clear. Armenia and Azerbaijan have already fought two wars over Nagorno-Karabakh since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The flare-up – which killed dozens of people – alarmed the international community and raised questions over Russia’s ability to maintain its long-term role as power broker in the region.

What is Nagorno-Karabakh?

Nagorno-Karabakh, known as Artsakh to Armenians, is a landlocked region in the Caucasus Mountains and lies within Azerbaijan’s borders. It is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan but is home to around 120,000 ethnic Armenians, who make up the majority of its population and reject Azerbaijani rule.

The region has its own de facto government which is backed by Armenia, but it is not officially recognized by Armenia or any other country.

Under the Soviet Union, of which Azerbaijan and Armenia are both former members, Nagorno-Karabakh became an autonomous region within the republic of Azerbaijan in 1923.

Karabakh officials passed a resolution in 1988 declaring its intention to join the republic of Armenia, causing fighting to break out as the Soviet Union began to crumble, in what became the First Karabakh War. About 30,000 people were killed and hundreds of thousands were displaced when the Armenian side gained control of the region and seven surrounding districts in Azerbaijan.

After years of sporadic clashes between the two sides, the Second Karabakh War began in 2020. Azerbaijan, backed by its historic ally Turkey, won a crushing victory in just 44 days, reclaiming the seven districts and about a third of Nagorno-Karabakh.

The war ended after Russia, a longtime ally of Armenia but with growing ties to Azerbaijan, negotiated a ceasefire. The Moscow-brokered deal provided for about 2,000 Russian peacekeepers to deploy to the region to prevent further Azerbaijani encroachments and guard the Lachin corridor, the only road connecting the enclave to Armenia.

Why are tensions flaring again?

Despite Russia’s peacekeeping presence, Nagorno-Karabakh has been under blockade for nine months. In December 2022, Azerbaijan-backed activists established a military checkpoint along the Lachin corridor, preventing the import of food and prompting fears that residents were being left to starve.

In the days leading up to the strikes on Stepanakert, the Karabakh foreign ministry warned that “the Azerbaijani side has been carrying out daily troop transfers and stockpiling of various weapons… preparing the ground for large-scale aggression.”

Despite the tensions, Tuesday’s escalation was sudden. Justifying its strikes on Stepanakert, Azerbaijan’s defense ministry said an Azerbaijani vehicle had struck a mine that had been planted in previously de-mined areas, killing two civilians.

Azerbaijan also said its army had come under “systematic shelling” from Armenia’s armed forces in Nagorno-Karabakh.

But Armenia’s foreign ministry rejected claims that its armed forces were in Nagorno-Karabakh, which instead is protected by the Artsakh Defense Army. “Armenia’s assistance to Nagorno-Karabakh is of a humanitarian nature” due to the ongoing blockade, it said in a statement.

By the time Karabakh officials agreed to the ceasefire, at least 32 people were reported to have been killed and 200 others wounded. The Nagorno-Karabakh presidency said its forces were outnumbered by Azerbaijani forces “several times over.”

The ceasefire came into effect at 1 p.m. local time Wednesday, after the Karabakh presidential office agreed to “the dissolution and complete disarmament of the armed formations.”

What are Azerbaijan and Armenia’s positions?

Armenia no longer disputes that Nagorno-Karabakh is part of Azerbaijan’s territory.

After the 2020 war exposed Armenia’s military inferiority, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan conceded in April this year that his government is willing to relinquish its claims on the region. He argued “peace is possible” only if Armenia limits its territorial ambitions to the borders of the former Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic – that is, excluding Nagorno-Karabakh.

Now, Azerbaijan’s longtime President Ilham Aliyev is seeking to press home what he sees as his advantage. His rhetoric has grown increasingly aggressive in recent months. In a speech delivered in May, Aliyev said of Karabakh Armenians: “Either they will bend their necks and come themselves, or things will develop differently” – a veiled threat of military action.

Azerbaijan’s position on Tuesday was uncompromising, as it called for “the unconditional and complete withdrawal of the Armenian armed forces” and “the dissolution of the puppet regime” in Nagorno-Karabakh.

Under the terms of Wednesday’s ceasefire, Nagorno-Karabakh has dissolved its army, while Armenia has continued to insist that it did not have a military presence of its own in the region. How far Azerbaijan is willing to go in insisting on the dissolution of the de facto government is not yet clear.

How are Russia and Turkey involved?

Russia is a historic ally of Armenia’s, while Turkey has long provided support to Azerbaijan.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Turkey supports “the steps taken by Azerbaijan, where we act with the motto of one nation, two states, to protect its territorial integrity,” during his speech at the 78th session of the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday.

Turkey has itself launched a campaign of ethnic cleansing against Armenians, in a genocide of the Armenian subjects of the Ottoman Empire during World War I.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov expressed “concern about the sharp escalation of tensions and the outbreak of hostilities.”

However, the latest violence came during what some analysts have argued may constitute a fracture in the close relationship between Armenia and Russia.

Armenia has for decades trusted Russia as the sole guarantor of its security, which Moscow purports to provide through the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), a military alliance of post-Soviet states that includes Armenia but not Azerbaijan.

But Armenia has grown frustrated by Russia’s unwillingness or inability to defend it against Azerbaijani aggression, as ties between Moscow and Baku have grown.

This month, Armenia sent humanitarian aid to Ukraine for the first time. It then hosted joint military training exercises with the US. Its parliament is also set to ratify the ICC’s Rome Statute – meaning it would be obliged to arrest Russian President Vladimir Putin if he were to set foot in the country.

Pashinyan criticized Russia on Tuesday for not alerting his government about Azerbaijan’s plans to launch military action: “We haven’t received any information from our partners in Russia about that operation,” he was quoted by Armenpress as saying.

The news of fresh strikes on Nagorno-Karabakh sparked cryptic reactions from prominent Russian figures showing little sympathy for Armenia. Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of state-owned Russia Today, said the news was “tragic, hopeless and predictable,” adding “the fate of Judas is unenviable.”