Новини

After the 24-hour storm dumped more rain on his olive trees than 55-year-old Gianluca can recall having seen in a September, the part-time farmer shook his head as he inspected his forlorn crop. 

“This is the third year I have not seen much to harvest,” he lamented. “Last year was even worse, mind you. But look at this,” he said, pointing to trees with few olives and many threadbare branches. 

In the distance, Lago di Bolsena shimmered and the Italian countryside just north of Rome seemed picture perfect. The sun had returned after Monday’s extreme storm and with it warm autumnal temperatures. But for all the surrounding bucolic beauty, farmers and smallholders in northern Lazio, as in much of rural Italy, are becoming alarmed at the increasingly fickle weather with erratic rainfall, spring frost, tempestuous wind and summer drought.

Farmers say the change in climate patterns across Italy is causing poor olive harvests, which are leaving in their wake predictions that the country could become dependent on olive oil imports.

That’s a remarkable turnaround for a country that many see as synonymous with olive oil — although olive trees weren’t natural to Italy and first arrived in Italy from Greece, thanks to Greeks who settled in Sicily.

By early in the first century AD, the Roman historian Pliny could brag that Italians produced more olives than the Greeks and the quality was superior.

Last year, Italy saw a 57 percent plunge in the country’s olive harvest, sparking protests by thousands of Italian farmers who descended on Rome wearing orange vests, calling for climate action. 

According to Riccardo Valentini, a professor in forest ecology at the University of Tuscia in Viterbo, the development of olive trees can suffer greatly when there are sudden extremes in weather.

“Three or four days of 40 (degree Celsius) temperatures in summer, or 10 days without rain in spring — even two days of freezing temperatures in spring — are important,” he said in a recent interview with Italian media. “The alarm bell is ringing loud and clear: If we do not limit emissions and pollution levels, the land that we all know is in great danger.”

Climate change, disease and insects are reducing Italy’s production of homegrown olive oil, say scientists and farmers. Last year’s unusual weather patterns inflicted an estimated $1 billion worth of damage on the olive-oil sector, according to the national farmers’ association Coldiretti. The sharp drop in production was the worst the country has witnessed in a quarter-century. 

Insects, disease

The weather is also hurting the trees by helping insect infestations — especially of a species of fly that lays eggs in the trees after burrowing into them.

Of even greater threat is a bacteria called Xylella fastidiosa, thought to have come from Costa Rica and spread by the meadow spittlebug. The bacteria starts in the leaves, turning them a rusty brown color, then proceeds into the trunks, disrupting arteries that allow the tree to absorb water. 

The disease first broke out around 2013 in the southern region of Puglia, in the heel of the Italian boot. Until recently, Puglia was responsible for more than half of Italy’s olive oil production but it has slipped as a result of hundreds of thousands of olive trees dying. Last year, the region’s production plunged by 65 percent. 

Altogether, an estimated one million Italian trees have died as a result of the disease, and farmers in Lazio are fearful that they will soon see what they dub “tree cemeteries.” While climate change isn’t being held responsible for the appearance of the bacteria in Italy, it is thought to have helped its quick spread. 

The EU has called on Italy to create a buffer zone by cutting down diseased trees, but the work has been patchy and trees elsewhere — in Lazio and Tuscany — are showing early signs of the disease. 
 

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VOA Connect Episode 89 – Meet a homesteader who tries to get by on what he and his family make for themselves; a young seamstress who turns old clothes into fashionable new ones, and visit a church that has been turned into a brewery.  

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An Iranian woman sentenced in the United States for violating sanctions against Tehran was released and has returned home, her lawyer told AFP Thursday, following her country’s unsuccessful attempt at a prisoner swap.

A judge in Minneapolis sentenced Negar Ghodskani to 27 months in prison Tuesday, but determined the time she had spent in custody in Australia and the United States was enough to fulfill her punishment.

Ghodskani “is now free in Iran with her family,” her lawyer Robert Richman said in an email.

Arrested in Australia

A legal resident of Australia, Ghodskani was arrested in Adelaide in 2017 after U.S. prosecutors said she sought U.S. digital communications technology by presenting herself as an employee of a Malaysian company.

U.S. prosecutors said she in fact was sending the technology to Iranian company Fanamoj, which works in public broadcasting.

After extradition to the United States, she confessed to participation in a conspiracy to illegally export technology to Iran in breach of sanctions, according to the U.S. Justice Department.

Pregnant at the time of her arrest, she gave birth while in Australian custody. Her son was sent to Iran to live with his father.

Prisoner swap offered

Her case was raised by Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in April, who floated a potential prisoner swap for a British-Iranian mother being held in Tehran.

He suggested exchanging Ghodskani for Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, in jail in Tehran for alleged sedition.

Both women have been separated from their young children while being detained.

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The United States is pressing other countries to join its proposed International Religious Freedom Alliance, in what diplomat Sam Brownback calls “the most significant” new human rights initiative in a generation.

“We’re going to call like-minded nations together and ask them to join this alliance and push on the issue of religious freedom and against religious persecution around the world,” Brownback, ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom, said at a news briefing earlier this week. “We want to see the iron curtain on religious persecution come down.”

Brownback’s remarks came at a Monday press conference following the “Global Call to Protect Religious Freedom,” a U.S.-sponsored event on the opening day of the annual U.N. General Assembly. At the event, President Donald Trump pledged an additional $25 million to counter a trend of increasing religious intolerance around the globe.

The president’s chief envoy for that mission is Brownback. Since early 2018, the former Republican governor from the Midwestern state of Kansas has headed the office that he helped establish as a U.S. senator. He was a key sponsor of the 1998 Religious Freedom Act, as Religion News Service has pointed out. 

Brownback spoke with VOA after the news conference about what his brief entails — “fighting for religious freedom all around the world for all faiths all the time,” as well as for “people of no faith.”

“We’ll stand up and we’ll do something,” Brownback said of the Trump administration, saying it employs tools ranging from private diplomacy to public designations and “sanctions against countries that persecute people for their faith.”

For instance, the State Department in July publicly designated four Burmese military officials as responsible for “gross human rights violations,” including the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya people, the Muslim minority group in Myanmar.

Government restrictions on religion have “increased markedly around the world,” according to the Pew Research Center, which began tracking the issue in 2007. The Washington-based center reported this summer that “52 countries, including some in very populous countries such as China, Indonesia and Russia, impose either ‘high’ or ‘very high’ levels of restrictions on religion, up from 40 in 2007.” It found increases in the number of states enacting restrictive laws and policies, as well as in religion-related hostilities and violence against individuals.

“Approximately 80% of the world’s population live in countries where religious liberty is threatened, restricted or even banned,” Trump said Monday, using a State Department figure extrapolated from Pew’s research.

Pew does not attempt to calculate the share of people around the world who are affected by such restrictions, a spokeswoman for the center told VOA.

Brownback told VOA that he sees religious freedom, enshrined in both the U.N. Charter and U.S. Constitution, as a harbinger of whether other rights are respected or not.

“When you’re willing to protect a person’s religious freedom, you generally are willing to protect the rest of their rights,” the diplomat said. “If you’re willing to persecute a person for their religious beliefs, you’re generally willing to persecute on a number of other rights.”

Brownback said the United Arab Emirates, while “certainly not perfect,” was a model of religious freedom. “They allow faiths to practice. They allow people to build” houses of worship. “And you have this robust, dynamic, growing economy and a lot of other things moving forward.”

He added that he’s “very hopeful” about Algeria and Sudan, African countries where “there are new governments coming in” to replace oppressive regimes.

The U.S. is supporting “better security at religious institutions, where we see a lot of them destroyed around the world, people killed at these houses of worship,” Brownback said at the press conference. He noted that he’s co-hosting a conference in Morocco next week on preserving religious heritage sites.

The Trump administration, which has strong support among evangelical Christians, has been criticized for favoring certain faith groups over others.

“President Trump was elected on the promise of a ‘complete and utter shutdown’ of Muslim immigration to the U.S.,” Rabbi Jack Moline, who leads the Interfaith Alliance, told USA Today. “Since then, his administration has worked tirelessly to redefine ‘religious freedom’ as a license to discriminate.”

The alliance promotes the separation of church and state.

The role of faith-based initiatives in U.S. foreign policy has risen during the last two decades under both Republican and Democratic administrations, according to scholar Lee Marsden, noting a strong interest in curbing radical Islam after the al-Qaida terrorist attacks in September 2001.

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The Trump administration is proposing to accept a maximum of 18,000 refugees in the coming year, in what would be the lowest refugee ceiling in the country’s history, the U.S. State Department said Thursday.

If the government follows through, 2020 will be the third year of significant cuts to refugee resettlement under President Donald Trump.

For now, however, the latest figure remains a proposal.

The final decision, in the form of a “presidential determination,” will be made in the coming weeks after the required consultations with Congress, a senior administration official told reporters in a phone briefing organized by the White House on Thursday.

In fiscal 2018, the first full year of the Trump administration, the ceiling was set at 45,000, and 22,491 refugees were admitted.

In fiscal 2019, the ceiling was 30,000. With only three full days remaining in the fiscal year, the U.S. is close to the limit, with 29,972 refugees admitted, according to State Department data.

Prior to Trump’s election, the refugee ceiling average was 60,000 to 70,000 every year.

The proposed ceiling is one of three fundamental changes to the resettlement program announced Thursday.

Trump also issued an executive order that will require state and local governments to “consent” to accept refugees for resettlement.

While not a widespread issue, the order would allow states like Tennessee, which unsuccessfully sued the federal government to stop resettlement, to potentially prevent willing nonprofit organizations in the state from accepting refugees.

Additionally, the U.S. State Department is creating new categories — a procedure used rarely to meet specific needs, usually for a specific region.

For fiscal 2020, however, the total will include up to 5,000 refugees persecuted on account of their religious beliefs; 4,000 spots for Iraqis who assisted the U.S. during its operations in the country; and up to 1,500 of what the White House called “legitimate refugees” from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

Those specific allocations would allow for a maximum of 7,500 refugees who fall outside those categories.

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In an earlier time, boxes on wheels raced on American streets.  Now, an energy drink company sponsors motorless, homemade car races around the world.  VOA’s Arash Arabasadi takes us on this bumpy ride through Jordan.

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Faith Aweko of Uganda describes herself as a “waste-preneur.”  She has come up with an innovative way to transform discarded plastic bags into backpacks for everyday use.  Halima Athumani reports from the town of Mpigi. 
 

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The international community must do more to tackle networks of global corruption that are fueling violence in South Sudan, according to activists. The call follows publication of a report detailing how corporations profited from the country’s civil war. The investigation by The Sentry organization, co-founded by actor George Clooney, shows the links between armed groups involved in the civil war, global oil giants, and British and American citizens. Henry Ridgwell has more.
 

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A Zimbabwean doctor desperate to leave the country for medical treatment after his recent abduction has been blocked after police approached the High Court asserting he is “unfit to travel.”

The head of the Zimbabwe Hospital Doctors Association, Dr. Peter Magombeyi, was freed last week after disappearing for several days. His alleged abduction after leading a pay strike led to days of protests by health workers and expressions of concern by diplomats and rights groups, who said more than 50 government critics and activists in Zimbabwe have been abducted this year alone.
 

Police stopped Magombeyi from leaving for treatment in neighboring South Africa on Tuesday even after a judge ruled he could travel outside Zimbabwe as he is not under arrest. He has been recuperating in a local hospital, and lawyers have said preliminary medical assessments show possible physical harm and psychological trauma.
 
Magombeyi’s lawyers now say police are violating the court order, and they worry his condition will deteriorate as the drama plays out. The doctor must stay in Zimbabwe until the police application to the court is resolved.
 
Police dismissed accusations that they are preventing the doctor from traveling, saying they are providing him with protection “for his own personal safety.”
 
In the court application filed Tuesday night, police said Magombeyi should remain at the hospital until he is fit to travel, adding that they also want to sort out his security while in South Africa.
 
Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights, a non-governmental group helping the doctor, described the police assertions as “shocking.”

The government has bristled at the accusations of abductions, with President Emmerson Mnangagwa and other officials over the weekend warning against so-called “false” abductions they assert are meant to make the government look bad. Mnangagwa is attending the United Nations annual gathering of world leaders this week.
 
Zimbabwe’s health sector, like its economy, is in crisis. Many services are unavailable due to collapsed infrastructure, lack of medicines or unavailability of doctors and nurses who say they can no longer afford transport to return to work.
 

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Due to climate change, the world’s oceans are getting warmer, rising higher, losing oxygen and becoming more acidic at an ever-faster pace and melting even more ice and snow, a grim international science assessment concludes.

But that’s nothing compared to what Wednesday’s special United Nations-affiliated oceans and ice report says is coming if global warming doesn’t slow down: three feet of sea rise by the end of the century, many fewer fish, weakening ocean currents, even less snow and ice, stronger and wetter hurricanes and nastier El Nino weather systems.

“The oceans and the icy parts of the world are in big trouble and that means we’re all in big trouble too,” said one of the report’s lead authors, Michael Oppenheimer, professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton University. “The changes are accelerating.”

Protesters in Washington Disrupt Morning Commute to Press for Climate Action

These changes will not just hurt the 71% of the world covered by the oceans or the 10% covered in ice and snow, but it will harm people, plants, animals, food, societies, infrastructure and the global economy, according to the special report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The oceans absorb more than 90% of the excess heat from carbon pollution in the air, as well as much of the carbon dioxide itself. The seas warm more slowly than the air but trap the heat longer with bigger side effects — and the report links these waters with Earth’s snow and ice, called the cryosphere, because their futures are interconnected.

“The world’s oceans and cryosphere have been taking the heat for climate change for decades. The consequences for nature and humanity are sweeping and severe,” said Ko Barrett, vice chair of the IPCC and a deputy assistant administrator for research at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Climate Change Campaign Continues Despite Criticism

The report found:

—Seas are now rising at one-seventh of an inch (3.66 millimeters) a year, which is 2.5 times faster than the rate from 1900 to 1990.

—The world’s oceans have already lost 1% to 3% of the oxygen in their upper levels since 1970 and will lose more as warming continues.

—From 2006 to 2015, the ice melting from Greenland, Antarctica and the world’s mountain glaciers has accelerated and is now losing 720 billion tons (653 billion metric tons) of ice a year.

—Arctic June snow cover has shrunk more than half since 1967, down nearly 1 million square miles (2.5 million square kilometers).

—Arctic sea ice in September, the annual minimum, is down almost 13% per decade since 1979. This year’s low, reported Monday, tied for the second-lowest on record. If carbon pollution continues unabated, by the end of the century there will be a 10% to 35% chance each year that sea ice will disappear in the Arctic in September.

—Marine animals are likely to decrease 15%, and catches by fisheries in general are expected to decline 21% to 24% by the end of century because of climate change.

And for the first time, the international team of scientists is projecting that “some island nations are likely to become uninhabitable due to climate-related ocean and cryosphere change.”

“Climate change is already irreversible,” French climate scientist Valérie Masson-Delmotte, a report lead author, said in a Wednesday news conference in Monaco. “Due to the heat uptake in the ocean, we can’t go back. ”

UN Meets as Climate Change Action is Supported, Questioned

But many of the worst-case projections in the report can still be avoided depending on how the world handles the emissions of heat-trapping gases, the report’s authors said.

The IPCC increased its projected end-of-century sea level rise in the worst-case scenario by nearly four inches (10 centimeters) from its 2013 projections because of the increased recent melting of ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica.

The new report projects that, under the business-as-usual scenario for carbon emissions, seas by the end of the century will rise between two feet (61 centimeters) and 43 inches (110 centimeters) with a most likely amount of 33 inches (84 centimeters). This is slightly less than the traditional 1 meter (39 inches) that scientists often use.

“Sea level continues to rise at an increasing rate,” the report said. “Extreme sea level events that are historically rare (once per century in the recent past) are projected to occur frequently (at least once per year) at many locations by 2050.”

And sea level will rise two to three times as much over the centuries to come if warming continues, so the world is looking at a “future that certainly looks completely different than what we currently have,” said report co-author Hans-Otto Portner, a German climate scientist.

The Nobel Prize-winning IPCC requires nations meeting this week in Monaco to unanimously approve the report, and because of that the group’s reports tend to show less sea level rise and smaller harms than other scientific studies, outside experts said.

“Like many of the past reports, this one is conservative in the projections, especially in how much ice can be lost in Greenland and Antarctica,” said NASA oceanographer Josh Willis, who studies Greenland ice melt and wasn’t part of the report. “We’re not done revising our sea level rise projections and we won’t be for a while.”

Willis said people should be prepared for a rise in sea levels to be twice these IPCC projections.

The oceans have become slightly more acidic, but that will accelerate with warming. In the worst case scenario, the world is looking at a “95% increase in total acidity of the oceans,” said study co-author Nathan Bindoff of the University of Tasmania.

UN Plans Vast Urban Forests to Fight Climate Change

UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) says pace of urbanization in Africa and Asia contributing to climate change and planting trees could improve air quality, cut risk of floods and heatwaves and halt land degradation

Even if warming is limited to just another couple of tenths of a degree, the world’s warm water coral reefs will go extinct in some places and be dramatically different in others, the report said.

“We are already seeing the demise of the warm water coral reefs,” Portner said. “That is one of the strongest warning signals that we have available.”

The report gives projections based on different scenarios for emissions of heat-trapping carbon dioxide. One is a world that dramatically decreases carbon pollution — and the worst case is where little has been done. We are closer to the worst-case situation, scientists said.

Outside scientists praised the work but were disturbed by it.

“It is alarming to read such a thorough cataloging of all of the serious changes in the planet that we’re driving,” said Texas A&M University climate scientist Andrew Dessler, who wasn’t part of the report. “What’s particularly disturbing as a scientist is that virtually all of these changes were predicted years or decades ago.”

The report’s authors emphasized that it doesn’t doom Earth to this gloomy outlook.

“We indicate we have a choice. Whether we go into a grim future depends on the decisions that are being made,” Portner said. “We have a better future ahead of us once we make the right choice.”

“These far-reaching consequences can only be brought under control by acute emissions reductions,” Portner said.

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