PARIS: Nearly all nations missed a UN deadline Monday to submit new targets for slashing carbon emissions, including major economies under pressure to show leadership following the US retreat on climate change.
Just 10 of nearly 200 countries required under the Paris Agreement to deliver fresh climate plans by February 10 did so on time, according to a UN database tracking the submissions.
Under the climate accord, each country is supposed to provide a steeper headline figure for cutting heat-trapping emissions by 2035, and a detailed blueprint for how to achieve this.
Global emissions have been rising but need to almost halve by the end of the decade to limit global warming to levels agreed under the Paris deal.
UN climate chief Simon Stiell has called this latest round of national pledges “the most important policy documents of this century.”
Yet just a handful of major polluters handed in upgraded targets on time, with China, India and the European Union the biggest names on a lengthy absentee list.
Most G20 economies were missing in action with the United States, Britain and Brazil — which is hosting this year’s UN climate summit — the only exceptions.
The US pledge is largely symbolic, made before President Donald Trump ordered Washington out of the Paris deal.
There is no penalty for submitting late targets, formally titled nationally determined contributions (NDCs).
They are not legally binding but act as an accountability measure to ensure governments are taking the threat of climate change seriously.
Last week, Stiell said submissions would be needed by September so they could be properly assessed before the UN COP30 climate conference in November.
A spokeswoman for the EU said the 27-nation bloc intended to submit its revised targets “well ahead” of the summit in Belem.
Analysts say China, the world’s biggest polluter and also its largest investor in renewable energy, is also expected to unveil its much-anticipated climate plan in the second half of the year.
The UAE, Ecuador, Saint Lucia, New Zealand, Andorra, Switzerland and Uruguay rounded out the list of countries that made Monday’s cut-off.
The sluggish response will not ease fears of a possible backslide on climate action as leaders juggle Trump’s return and other competing priorities from budget and security crises to electoral pressure.
Ebony Holland from the London-based International Institute for Environment and Development said the US retreat was “clearly a setback” but there were many reasons for the tepid turnout.
“It’s clear there are some broad geopolitical shifts underway that are proving to be a challenge when it comes to international cooperation, especially on big issues like climate change,” she said.
Almost all nations miss UN deadline for new climate targets
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Almost all nations miss UN deadline for new climate targets
- Just 10 of nearly 200 countries required under the Paris Agreement to deliver fresh climate plans by February 10 did so on time
- Under the climate accord, each country is supposed to provide a steeper headline figure for cutting heat-trapping emissions by 2035
Trump has no plans to call Musk, White House says after feud
“The president does not intend to speak to Musk today,” a senior White House official told AFP
WASHINGTON: The White House squashed speculation that Donald Trump and Elon Musk would patch up their stunning public feud, saying the US president had no plans to call his billionaire former aide Friday.
Trump lobbed fresh insults at the South African-born Musk a day after the fiery implosion of their unlikely political marriage, saying the tech tycoon had “lost his mind.”
In a telling symbol of how their relationship had deteriorated, the president was even considering selling or giving away a Tesla he had bought to show support for Musk amid protests against the company.
The row exploded on Thursday when Trump said he was “very disappointed” by Musk and threatened to end his government contracts, after his ex-aide criticized the president’s flagship budget bill as an “abomination.”
Reports had emerged that Musk and Trump would speak by phone on Friday in a bid to patch up the damaging public row, but the White House scotched such speculation.
“The president does not intend to speak to Musk today,” a senior White House official told AFP on condition of anonymity when asked if the feuding pair planned to speak.
Trump told broadcaster ABC in a phone call earlier Friday that he was “not particularly interested” in talking to Musk.
“You mean the man who has lost his mind?” ABC quoted Trump as saying.
Trump, who once called Musk a “genius,” branded him “crazy” on social media on Thursday.
The row could have major political and economic fallout, as shares in Musk’s Tesla car company seesaw and the SpaceX boss vowed that he would end a critical US spaceship program.
The White House called a special meeting on Thursday to discuss how to handle the crisis with Musk, a government source told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Trump meanwhile may ditch the red Tesla that he bought from Musk’s firm at the height of their relationship. The electric vehicle was still parked on the White House grounds on Friday.
“He’s thinking about it, yes,” the senior White House official told AFP when asked if Trump would sell or give away the Tesla.
Trump and Musk had posed inside the car at a bizarre event in March, when the US president turned the White House into a pop-up Tesla showroom after protests against Musk’s government role tanked the firm shares.
Speculation had long swirled that a relationship between two big egos like the president and the tycoon could not last long — but the speed of the meltdown took Washington by surprise.
Trump said in a televised Oval Office diatribe on Thursday that he was “very disappointed” after his former top donor criticized his “big, beautiful” spending bill before Congress.
The pair then hurled insults at each other on social media — with Musk even posting, without proof, that Trump was referenced in government documents on disgraced financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
US citizen Joseph Tater leaves Russia after detention and psychiatric treatment, TASS says
- Tater was sentenced to 15 days in jail last August for “petty hooliganism“
- He was also being investigated on a more serious charge of assaulting a police officer
MOSCOW: US citizen Joseph Tater, who was detained in Moscow last August and later sent for compulsory psychiatric treatment, has left Russia, the state news agency TASS said on Friday.
Tater, who according to a Kremlin source last month was one of nine Americans being held in Russia that Washington wanted returned in a prisoner exchange, was sentenced to 15 days in jail last August for “petty hooliganism” after being accused of abusing staff at a Moscow hotel, something he denied.
Russian state news agencies later said he was also being investigated on a more serious charge of assaulting a police officer, which carries up to five years in prison.
But on April 6 a court ordered Tater be removed from pre-trial detention, saying he was not criminally responsible for his actions after doctors diagnosed him with a mental disorder, according to state media.
TASS reported on Friday that Tater had been discharged from the psychiatric clinic where he was being treated. It cited unnamed medical sources as saying that the clinic had no grounds to keep him there and had let him leave for outpatient treatment.
TASS cited a law enforcement source as saying Tater’s current whereabouts were unknown, but that he had left Russia.
Germany’s Munich Re withdraws from climate initiatives
- The groups all aim to help financial giants reach net-zero carbon emissions
- “Climate related disclosures and associated administrative requirements have become very complex for international corporations,” said the firm
FRANFURT: German reinsurance giant Munich Re said on Friday it had withdrawn from several climate alliances but insisted that it would keep pursuing green targets independently.
It is the latest sign that major firms are going cold on such initiatives, amid concerns about their effectiveness and growing political opposition in the United States and elsewhere.
Munich Re said it had pulled out of the UN-backed Net Zero Asset Owner Alliance, the Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative, Climate Action 100+ and the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change.
The groups all aim to help financial giants reach net-zero carbon emissions.
“Climate related disclosures and associated administrative requirements have become very complex for international corporations,” said the firm, which acts as an insurer for insurers.
“Moreover, they are disproportionate to the impact achieved in terms of climate protection.”
It also said there was an “increasing ambiguity in assessing private initiatives under the legal and regulatory regimes across various jurisdictions.”
The group, which last year booked a net profit of 5.7 billion euros ($6.5 billion), said it believed that it could pursue its climate targets “in a more focused and targeted manner on our own.”
“Climate protection remains an urgent priority for Munich Re,” it said.
“We continue to pursue our goal of contributing to the achievement of the Paris climate targets.”
The 2015 Paris climate accords aimed to limit global warming to well below two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels — and to 1.5 if possible.
The group said it had achieved or exceeded the interim targets that it had set itself for 2025.
Taiwan accuses China of carrying out ‘provocative’ military patrol near island
- Taiwan, which China views as its own territory, has complained of repeated Chinese military drills and patrols nearby
- Taiwan’s defense ministry said that starting mid-afternoon Friday, it had detected 21 Chinese military aircraft
TAIPEI: Taiwan accused China on Friday of raising tensions in the region with a “provocative” military patrol involving warplanes and warships near the island, an unusual public rebuke in what are typically routine accounts of Chinese military activity.
Taiwan, which China views as its own territory, has complained of repeated Chinese military drills and patrols nearby. Since President Lai Ching-te took office last year China has held three major rounds of war games.
Taiwan’s defense ministry said that starting mid-afternoon Friday, it had detected 21 Chinese military aircraft, including J-16 fighters, operating with warships to carry out “so-called joint combat readiness patrols” and “harass the airspace and seas around us.”
“The Ministry of National Defense stresses that these acts are highly provocative, fail to pay proper attention to the maritime rights of other countries, bring anxiety and threat to the region, and blatantly undermine the status quo in the region,” it said.
Taiwan regularly reports such Chinese “combat patrols,” but does not generally attach such commentary to its statements.
China’s defense ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
China says democratically governed Taiwan is its “sacred territory” — a position the government in Taipei strongly rejects — and that it has a right to carry out drills in Chinese territory.
Lai, who last month marked a year in office, is hated by Beijing, which calls him a separatist and has rebuffed his repeated offers for talks.
Lai says only Taiwan’s people can decide their future. China has never renounced the use of force to bring Taiwan under its control.
‘One hell after another’: US travel ban deepens despair for Afghans awaiting visas
- Trump’s sweeping new travel ban on 12 countries, including Afghanistan, will go into effect from Monday
- Thousands of Afghans have applied for visas to settle in US, either as refugees or under Special Immigrant Visa program
KABUL: Mehria had been losing hope of getting a visa to emigrate to the United States but her spirits were crushed when President Donald Trump raised yet another hurdle by banning travel for Afghans.
Trump had already disrupted refugee pathways after he returned to power in January but a sweeping new travel ban on 12 countries, including Afghanistan, will go into effect on Monday.
The ban changes little for most Afghans who already faced steep barriers to travel abroad, but many who had hung their hopes on a new life in the United States felt it was yet another betrayal.
“Trump’s recent decisions have trapped not only me but thousands of families in uncertainty, hopelessness and thousands of other disasters,” Mehria, a 23-year-old woman who gave only one name, said from Pakistan, where she has been waiting since applying for a US refugee visa in 2022.
“We gave up thousands of hopes and our entire lives and came here on a promise from America, but today we are suffering one hell after another,” she told AFP.
The United States has not had a working embassy in Afghanistan since the Taliban ousted the foreign-backed government in 2021, forcing Afghans to apply for visas in third countries.
The Taliban’s return followed the drawdown of US and NATO troops who had ousted them two decades earlier in response to the September 11, 2001, attacks.
The Taliban government has since imposed a strict view of Islamic law and severe restrictions on women, including bans on some education and work.
Hundreds of thousands of Afghans have applied for visas to settle in the United States, either as refugees or under the Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) program reserved for those who aided the US government during its war against the Taliban.
Afghans with SIV visas and asylum cases will not be affected by Trump’s new order but family reunification pathways are threatened, the Afghan-American Foundation said in a statement condemning the ban.
Some 12,000 people are awaiting reunification with family members already living in the United States, according to Shawn VanDiver, the president of the AfghanEvac non-profit group.
“These are not ‘border issues’. These are legal, vetted, documented reunifications,” he wrote on social media platform X. “Without exemptions, families are stranded.”
Refugee pathways and relocation processes for resettling Afghans had already been upset by previous Trump orders, suddenly leaving many Afghans primed to travel to the United States in limbo.
The Trump administration revoked legal protections temporarily shielding Afghans from deportation in May, citing an improved security situation in Afghanistan.
“We feel abandoned by the United States, with whom we once worked and cooperated,” said Zainab Haidari, another Afghan woman who has been waiting in Pakistan for a refugee visa.
“Despite promises of protection and refuge we are now caught in a hopeless situation, between the risk of death from the Taliban and the pressure and threat of deportation in Pakistan,” said Haidari, 27, who worked with the United States in Kabul during the war but applied for a refugee visa.
Afghans fled in droves during decades of conflict, but the chaotic withdrawal of US-led troops from Kabul saw a new wave clamouring to escape Taliban government curbs and fears of reprisal for working with Washington.
Pakistan and Iran have meanwhile ramped up deportation campaigns to expel Afghans who have crossed their borders.
The Taliban authorities have not responded to multiple requests for comment on the new travel ban but have said they are keen to have good relations with every country now that they are in power — including the United States.
Visa options for Afghans are already severely limited by carrying the weakest passport globally, according to the Henley Passport Index.
However, travel to the United States is far from the minds of many Afghans who struggle to make ends meet in one of the world’s poorest countries, where food insecurity is rife.
“We don’t even have bread, why are you asking me about traveling to America?” said one Afghan man in Kabul.
Sahar, a 29-year-old economics graduate who has struggled to find work amid sky-high unemployment, said the new rules will not have any impact on most Afghans.
“When there are thousands of serious issues in Afghanistan, this won’t change anything,” she told AFP.
“Those who could afford to travel and apply for the visa will find another way or to go somewhere else instead of the US.”
