The state is at a geographical meeting point between tropical and polar atmospheres, which has created a weather pattern with periods of intense rains and others of drought.
Local scientists believe the pattern has been intensifying due to climate change.
Heavy rains had already hit Rio Grande do Sul last September, as an extra tropical cyclone caused floods that killed more than 50 people.
Two people walking over debris in front of houses.
Rio Grande do Sul's civil defence authority said 68 people were still missing.(Reuters: Diego Vara )
That came after more than two years of a persistent drought due to the La Nina phenomenon, with only scarce showers.
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva travelled to the state on Thursday to visit affected locations and discuss rescue efforts with the governor.
Back in Brasilia, Mr Lula vowed on Friday that his government would support local rescue and reconstruction efforts.
The chief says the social, mental, and physical well-being of Peguis First Nation members have been impacted negatively from the flooding...
Since 2000, on average, Peguis has suffered a flood every two years.
More than 540 members remain unable to return to Peguis due to the 2022 flood, and 235 more have been displaced since flooding evacuations occurred in 2014 and 2017.
The community recently filed a $1 billion flood damage lawsuit against the federal and provincial governments, as well against two rural communities.
“Both levels of government, the Manitoba government, and the Government of Canada, have declared this to be an era of truth and reconciliation and the litigation is really about seeking truth and the declaration is about reconciliation,” said Jeremy McKay, legal council for Peguis First Nation.
“We need to know what has been causing the flooding problems in Peguis, and as you heard today, the chief and council have committed to working with both levels of government to try and find a solution quickly to prevent future disasters from harming Peguis and its community members.”
Known as the “man who repairs women”, Mukwege, 69, has treated more than 80,000 survivors of sexual violence by armed groups at Panzi hospital, which he founded in Bukavu, South Kivu, in 1999. In 2018, along with the Yazidi activist Nadia Murad, he was awarded the Nobel peace prize for his work, which he dedicated to sexual violence survivors across the world.
In his Nobel lecture, he talked about the first patients admitted to the hospital. One had been raped and shot in her genitals; another was an 18-month-old baby horrifically injured by rape.
“The macabre violence knew no limit,” he said at the time. That violence has never stopped. Every day, between five and seven new survivors of rape come through the doors of the hospital.
Médecins Sans Frontières said last year that it was treating 48 people a day after a surge in cases of sexual violence around Goma. Photograph: Marion Molinari/MSF
“Raping a woman, raping the children and hurting them, and showing it to the community, is a way of traumatising [everyone],” says Mukwege, who, with Murad, set up the Global Survivors Fund to provide reparations for victims...
DRC has experienced three decades of conflict, with militias >and groups of bandits emerging from two civil wars fought between 1996 and 2003. The east of the country has borne the brunt of the fighting. More than 100 armed groups now operate there.
Among them is a resurgent M23, which the UN says is backed by neighbouring Rwanda, a claim Kigali denies. Since 2021, about 1.7 million people have fled fighting linked to the group in North Kivu, and hundreds of thousands of people are living in overcrowded camps in Goma and the surrounding area.
Mukwege has been critical of the Congolese government’s response to the fighting, denouncing its impunity over war crimes and crimes against humanity, and the “plundering of [the country’s] natural resources”. His comments have brought him enemies and he narrowly survived an assassination attempt in 2012. For a time he was under UN protection, but that ended in 2020.
In December, he ran in the presidential election. “I wanted to take my responsibility before history,” he says. “And we tried to offer an alternative vision to say that there is no fatality, that there is the possibility of changing things.”
Mukwege took about 1% of the vote and the incumbent, Felix Tshisekedi, won a second term in office in a vote that nine opposition candidates condemned as a “sham”.
He wants the international community to ditch “double >standards” in prioritising the crises in Ukraine and Gaza over that of the DRC.
“We’re experiencing almost the same tragedy as those taking place in the Middle East and Ukraine, but nobody is talking about the DRC, or very little,” he says.
Despite this, Mukwege retains his optimism and will continue to fight for those who suffer.
“I have hope,” he says, “because I am convinced that the victims who are suffering today will be able to take their destiny into their own hands and put an end to all the injustices we are experiencing here.”..
Scarce food sources for the bears due to poor crops are believed to be behind the increased instances of bears entering human spaces.
The government has stepped up efforts to address bear attacks under a policy compiled in February, and the swift detection of the animals when they show up in urban areas as well as speedy information-sharing among police, municipalities and local hunters have been seen as key.
The new system is expected to be helpful as it connects AI with governmental, municipal and private camera networks.
In the trial in Toyama Prefecture, the system is expected to use cameras installed for surveillance and disaster management by the central and prefectural government facilities, as well as those used by utility companies.
Cooperation from private entities would allow for wider coverage around urban areas, riversides and mountainous areas...
The eruption follows a series of eruptions earlier this month that forced hundreds to evacuate, and the airport in the provincial capital of Manado to close. That eruption also caused damage to some homes. At the time, the volcanology also issued a warning about the potential for a tsunami.
Footage shared by Indonesia's disaster agency showed strikes of lightning flashing above Ruang's crater, as fiery red clouds of lava and rocks were projected into the air and rained down around the island.
The #volcanology agency said the eruption column reached 5 kilometres (3.1 miles) high, and urged any remaining residents within a 7-km, previously 6-km, radius to immediately evacuate, warning of possible further "explosive eruptions".
Ruang island is about 100 km from Manado, the capital of North Sulawesi province in the north-central region of the sprawling Indonesian archipelago.
The eruption corresponded with a spike in seismic activity and deep volcanic earthquakes, the disaster agency said.
Authorities closed Manado's Sam Ratulangi airport again on Tuesday, citing the possible spread of volcanic ash, the airport operator said in an Instagram post. The airport will remain closed until noon on Wednesday, the transport ministry said.
Authorities downgraded the status level to level 3 last week before bumping it up again to level 4 on Tuesday.
Indonesia straddles the so-called "Pacific Ring of Fire," an area of high seismic activity where multiple tectonic plates meet.
Yes. And the US did and does use the exact same methods all across the world. Lots of this info is now public thanks to the leaks of the past couple decades post 911.
You are literally doing whataboutism. The article is about China. Nobody mentioned the US. Then you come in and go “what about the things that US does???”
The underrepresentation of Africa and South America in the scientific literature is critical since these regions are considered essential for CDR deployment. The few studies that do exist mostly highlight negative aspects,” says lead author Ruben Prütz, a Visiting Researcher at the Grantham Institute.
Understanding the impacts
The work, which used machine learning to select relevant research and produce an inventory of nearly 400 CDR co-benefits, challenges, and limits, found a similar focus on negative effects across the literature.
These negative side effects included impacts on biodiversity, soil and land use. In addition to specific impacts, there is uncertainty concerning the effectiveness and scalability of some CDR methods.
Some research has highlighted that CO2 removal could delay climate action and may shift the burden of mitigation to other countries. Previous research also suggests CO2 removal may be inconsistent with international law.
However, the authors note that this emphasis on the negative effects may only reflect the current evidence and not CDR’s real-world costs and benefits.
The authors did also find positive effects of CDR. Evidence exists showing positive impacts on soil (through increases in key nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium); yield increases for various crops such as maize, soybeans, and tomatoes; and increases in biodiversity.
The paper emphasises that these are highly dependent on the context and which CDR method is deployed. For instance, there may be big differences between sustainable forest management versus planting thousands of acres of non-native palm trees where there once was rainforest.
The authors argue this underlines the need for further evidence to better understand the size of the impacts of CDR, its side effects, the contexts, and the modes of implementation for affected countries...
The risk of famine is here, the risk of famine is real, but there is a window of opportunity to act,” said Paulsen. “Farmers need to be preparing their land now already, in April, seeds have to get in the ground in June. One thing is clear – if we have a main cereal cropping season that is compromised or that is not successful, we know that there is going to be a much worse situation coming in the months ahead.”
Paulsen said more funding and ensuring farmers could access their land was crucial to avoiding famine. He added that while food aid provided directly to people was still urgently needed, supporting locally produced food would be most cost-efficient and sustainable.
The FAO report said the conflict had restricted access to farmland and movement for livestock, as well as destroying infrastructure, leading to disruption of the production of key grains such as sorghum and millet, forcing Sudan to rely heavily on imported food.
Paulsen said food production fell 46% last year and hunger was worst in areas where the conflict was most intense, such as Darfur and Al Jazirah, which is often considered Sudan’s bread basket.
Former Sudanese prime minister Abdalla Hamdok told the Guardian the country is facing a “catastrophic situation” with more than 10 million people either displaced internally or made refugees in neighbouring countries.
“The most serious situation is the plight of 25 million people – more than half the population – subjected to starvation. People are dying of hunger, a lack of food and medicine, more than bullets. The situation is very bad,” said Hamdok...
This means that Armenia will return to Azerbaijan the villages of Baghanis Ayrum, Aşağı Eskipara, Heyrimli and Kızılhacılı, all of which it occupied during the First Karabakh War of 1988-1994.
The border coordinates will consider geodetic measurements on the ground and be signed by May 15.
During the meeting, the parties also agreed that a draft regulation on the joint activities of the commissions should be ready by July 1.
Agreeing to implement the border delineation process based on the 1991 Almaty Declaration, they also reached a consensus on continuing the border delineation process in all other parts of the border, including enclaves and exclaves...
The authors of the paper, published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, say the data provide evidence that climate change impacts on Indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLCs) are tangible, widespread and affect multiple elements of their ecosystems.
“There is the idea existing in the scientific community that local knowledge is not a valid source of knowledge, and the study aims to bridge this gap,” says Victoria Reyes-García, research professor at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and lead author of the study.
The study collected 1,661 firsthand reports of change in 48 sites inhabited by Indigenous peoples and local communities, covering all climate zones and nature-dependent livelihoods across all inhabited continents. The research is the largest global effort to compile and categorize local observations of climate change and its impacts by IPLCs.
Based on the information collected, Indigenous peoples and local communities across all continents are facing nuanced impacts of climate change that are hyperlocal.
Existing measures to track climate change impacts are barely able to relate to the diverse and complex ways in which local people understand and experience these environmental impacts, according to the study. This limits researchers in their risk analysis and adaptation planning, the researchers say.
For instance, instrumental measurements might capture changes in rainfall patterns but miss crucial relationships between climate change sensitivity and vulnerability. This underscores the significance of incorporating local knowledge and experience in climate research and policy for better climate adaption strategies, they say.
By gathering IPLC reports, they documented 369 local indicators of climate change impacts: 94 indicators of climate change (referring to changes in elements of the atmospheric system) and 275 indicators of climate change impacts (referring to changes in elements of the physical and the life systems).
The authors note that the study’s method isn’t able to discern whether the reported impacts can be fully attributed to climate change. Other intermingling environmental factors, such as land use change and overextraction of resources, make it difficult. Rather, climate change is understood as one driver, among multiple others, that exacerbate the environmental changes experienced by communities.
About 20% of reports showed changes in precipitation, especially in areas where agriculture prevailed. However, changes in air masses and impacts on marine ecosystems were more frequently observed in sites where fishing rivaled other livelihoods. Indicators referring to changes in freshwater were higher in tropical climates than in polar climates. But, the average number of indicators referring to impacts in pastures and grasslands was significantly higher in arid and polar climates than in tropical climates. And impacts on pastures, grasslands and land cover were more frequent where pastoralism dominated.
According to the report, these finding provide a basis to the previously untested hypothesis that the way local people interact with the environment through livelihood activities is an important predictor of the changes they observe.
The next part of the article discusses specific examples.
According to the report, Romani people are systematically discriminated against: in refugee shelters, by the police, who raise doubts about their nationality, by railway employees, who force them out of waiting areas, train stations, or trains, by school authorities, who have denied Romani children access to school, by social workers or volunteers who are committed to helping other Ukrainians. "It really shocked us," says Ruiz. Some Romani families were treated so badly that they traveled back to the war zone. Reports of racial discrimination continue to come in from all over Germany.
'Ukrainian Romani people are descendants of Holocaust survivors'
Representatives of municipalities in Bavaria said: "We can continue to take in Ukrainian refugees, but not Roma." One district administrator said that they would "take in refugees, but not dogs and Roma." These statements are particularly alarming, Ruiz emphasizes because they were made by German authorities. "Germany has a historical obligation to this minority."
In Europe, up to half a million Romani people were murdered in the genocide perpetrated by Nazi Germany. "The Ukrainian Romani refugees are the descendants of Holocaust survivors," says Ruiz. According to estimates, almost half of the Romani people in Ukraine were murdered during the German occupation...
Many Romani people in Ukraine were also pushed to the margins of society, forced to live in extreme poverty on the outskirts of cities, sometimes without electricity or sanitation. Many have reported being denied access to school, Conkova said, which has left generations illiterate. The MIA report highlights marginalization and even violence in the 2010s.
Racism is commonplace for Romani refugees in Germany as well, Conkova observed. Guillermo Ruiz agrees: Even today, long-standing antiziganist prejudices against the minority are widespread. They are accused of criminality, child abduction, or the trafficking of children and women. "Unfortunately, antiziganism is still the norm in Germany."
Prejudices are being spread through media reports, but also through gatherings of so-called "concerned citizens" from the right or far right, some of which have been organized by the AfD, said MIA managing director Ruiz. At these gatherings, the alleged "Roma problem" was discussed. Ruiz asked a mayor why his citizens were worried: "What are the Romani people doing, where's the problem?" The mayor said: "They are just there."...
Since 2010, Africa, which sees the highest burden of meningitis infection in the world, has been fighting outbreaks using the MenAfriVac vaccine. Although it has successfully eradicated about 80% of meningitis infections across the continent, the vaccine only protects against a single strain of the meningococcal bacteria, serogroup A.
That means Africans haven't had protection against the four other strains of the bacteria (C, W, Y and X), all of which cause the disease. Cases of meningitis have continued to rise in meningitis-prone areas, and have been attributed to the C, W, Y, and X strains, but not the A strain.
Last year, reported meningitis cases jumped 50% across Africa, according to the WHO. "According to any standards, it's unbearable to keep this disease burden," Marie-Pierre Preziosi, an expert on meningitis at the WHO, told DW. Between October 2023 and mid-March of this year, Nigeria experienced an outbreak of the C strain, which led to around 1,700 suspected meningitis cases and some 150 deaths across the country, the WHO reports. The vaccine was rolled out to address that epidemic. Other countries, such as Togo, have seen similar outbreaks in past years.
Meningitis belt
Africans located in the 26 countries considered part of the continent's meningitis belt are more susceptible than anyone in the world to meningitis. Preziosi said that is because of the area's climate.
At any given time, around 10% of the global population is carrying the bacteria that causes meningitis in the back of their throat or nose. The bacteria normally sits in mucus membranes, which protects against the spread of bacterial infection. Trouble only comes when the membrane is breached, allowing the bacteria to enter the bloodstream......
Even with early diagnosis and antibiotics, meningitis is deadly in about 10% of cases, and about 20% of those infected experience long-term health issues. "For those who survive, one-in-five can develop long-lasting disabilities — that can be neurological disabilities, loss of hearing, deafness, also losing limbs," said Preziosi. “So it's quite dramatic, and it can drive a whole community into poverty.” Meningitis is most commonly spread through droplets from coughing, sneezing or kissing. The incubation period is generally between three and four days.
Initial symptoms are usually non-specific and can look like the flu. If untreated, the carrier can develop high fever, light sensitivity, neck stiffness, bleeding in the skin and, in the worst cases, blood poisoning that can lead to sepsis. Infection leads to the inflammation of membranes surrounding and protecting the brain and spinal cord.
By protecting people from all five strains of meningitis, experts hope the new Men5CV vaccine will prevent the burden of the disease initially in the African meningitis belt, but eventually in other meningitis-prone regions.
Men5CV vaccine rollout
The Men5CV vaccine rolled out in Nigeria has been in the works for 13 years,, and uses the same infection fighting mechanism as the MenAfriVac....
"We must clear the island because we anticipate there could be more eruptions. No activity is allowed within four kilometres from the crater," she said.
Footage seen by Reuters showed flows of red lava streaming down the mountain, reflected in the waters below, and billowing clouds of grey ash above its crater.
Ruang island is home to about 838 residents, most of whom have now been evacuated to the nearest island Tagulandang, said Heruningtyas.
Indonesia straddles the so-called "Pacific Ring of Fire," an area of high seismic activity that rests atop multiple tectonic plates.
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