Era Of Global Warming Ends, Era Of Global Boiling Has Arrived: UN Chief

UNITED NATIONS, July 27: UN chief Antonio Guterres on Thursday pleaded for immediate radical action on climate change, saying that record-shattering July temperatures show Earth has passed from a warming phase into an "era of global boiling."

Addressing a press conference here, the secretary-general described the intense heat across the Northern Hemisphere as a "cruel summer."

"For the entire planet, it is a disaster," he said, noting that "short of a mini-Ice Age over the next days, July 2023 will shatter records across the board."

"Climate change is here. It is terrifying. And it is just the beginning. The era of global warming has ended; the era of global boiling has arrived."

The extreme impacts of climate change have been in line with scientists' "predictions and repeated warnings," Guterres said, adding that the "only surprise is the speed of the change."

In the face of "tragic" consequences, he repeated his call for swift and far-reaching action, taking aim once again at the fossil fuel sector.

"The air is unbreathable. The heat is unbearable. And the level of fossil fuel profits and climate inaction is unacceptable," said the former Portuguese prime minister.

"Leaders must lead," he said. "No more hesitancy. No more excuses. No more waiting for others to move first."

Ahead of the Climate Ambition Summit he is set to host in September, Guterres called on developed countries to commit to achieving carbon neutrality as close to 2040 as possible, and for emerging economies as close as possible to 2050.

The "destruction" unleashed by humanity "must not inspire despair, but action," he said, warning that to prevent the worst outcomes humanity "must turn a year of burning heat into a year of burning ambition."

US To Assume the Presidency of the UN Security Council for August with a Focus on Food Insecurity and Human Rights

By Deepak Arora

UNITED NATIONS, July 27: The United States that assumes the Presidency of the United Nations Security Council for the Month of August would focus on food insecurity and human rights.

Signature event on August 3 will address food insecurity for the third consecutive Security Council Presidency. 

A top priority for the United States during its Security Council presidency will be addressing food insecurity. “The Biden Administration has been rallying the world to address this challenge, including by launching the Roadmap for Global Food Security last year,” said Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, U.S. Representative to the United Nations.

“I’ve seen starvation up close with my own eyes, which is why I’ve made food security the focus of all three of our UN Security Council presidencies during my tenure. We cannot look away from the millions who are worried about where they’ll find their next meal or how they’ll feed their families.”

As part of the focus on addressing food insecurity, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken will chair the United States’ signature event, a High-Level Open Debate on Famine and Conflict-Induced Global Food Insecurity planned for August 3.

This event builds on the March 2021 and May 2022 UN Security Council signature events drawing attention to the link between conflict and food insecurity.

The United States will also prioritize the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms by calling attention to human rights situations in countries like the DPRK and Syria.

It will also elevate human rights at every opportunity throughout the month – a nod to the upcoming 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – by including voices from civil society in the Council’s meetings.

As President of the United Nations Security Council, a position that rotates every month among the 15 Council members, the United States will be responsible for setting the agenda of the Security Council for the month, organizing Security Council meetings, managing the distribution of information to Council members, issuing statements, and communicating the Council’s actions to the public.

'Many May Die' Due To End Of Black Sea Grain Deal, Warns UN

UNITED NATIONS, July 22: The spike in grain prices in the days since Russia quit a deal allowing the safe Black Sea export of Ukraine grain "potentially threatens hunger and worse for millions of people," the United Nations' aid chief told the Security Council on Friday.

Russia quit the Black Sea grain deal on Monday, saying that demands to improve its own food and fertilizer exports had not been met and complaining that not enough Ukrainian grain had reached poor countries.

U.S. wheat futures in Chicago rose over 6% this week and had their biggest daily gain on Wednesday since Russia invaded Ukraine, but pared some of those gains on Friday in part due to hopes Russia may resume talks on the deal.

"Higher prices will be most acutely felt by families in developing countries," Martin Griffiths told the 15-member body, adding that currently some 362 million people in 69 countries were in need of humanitarian aid.

"Some will go hungry, some will starve, many may die as a result of these decisions," he said.

The deal was brokered a year ago by the United Nations and Turkey to combat a global food crisis worsened by Russia's February 2022 invasion. Ukraine and Russia are leading grain exporters.

The U.N. argued that the Black Sea deal had benefited poorer countries by helping lower food prices more than 23% globally. The U.N. World Food Programme also shipped some 725,000 metric tons of Ukraine grain to aid operations in Afghanistan, Djibouti Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.

But Mikhail Khan, a macroeconomist who Russia asked to brief the Security Council, said the poorest countries had received just 3% of the grain.

"The qualitative assessment of the impact of the grain deal in terms of provisions of Ukrainian grain to global markets is essentially not very significant," he said.

Russia is negotiating exports of food to countries most in need following its exit from the deal, but has not yet signed any contracts, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Vershinin said in Moscow on Friday.

Russia pounded Ukrainian food export facilities for a fourth day in a row on Friday and practiced seizing ships in the Black Sea. Moscow has described the port attacks as revenge for a Ukrainian strike on Russia's bridge to Crimea on Monday.

"The new wave of attacks on Ukrainian ports risks having far-reaching impacts on global food security, in particular, in developing countries," U.N. political affairs chief Rosemary DiCarlo told the Security Council.

Russia has said it would now view any ships traveling to Ukraine's Black Sea ports as possibly carrying military cargoes. Kyiv responded by announcing similar measures against vessels bound for Russia or Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory.

DiCarlo said those threats were "unacceptable."

"Any risk of conflict spillover as a result of a military incident in the Black Sea – whether intentional or by accident - must be avoided at all costs, as this could result in potentially catastrophic consequences to us all," she said.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan hopes to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin next month and said those talks could lead to restoration of the Black Sea grain deal, calling on Western countries to consider Russia's demands, Turkish broadcasters reported on Friday.

Watchdog Says World's Chemical Weapons Irreversibly Destroyed

THE HAGUE, July 8: The world's chemical weapons watchdog said Friday that all declared stocks had been "irreversibly destroyed" after the United States revealed it had finally got rid of its last toxic arms.

President Joe Biden announced that the Blue Grass Army Depot, a US Army facility in Kentucky, had eliminated its decades-old stocks, completing a global effort started in 1997 to rid the world of chemical weapons.

"The end of destruction of all declared chemical weapons stockpiles is an important milestone", Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) chief Fernando Arias said in a statement.

The Hague-based body said that the step by the United States, the "last possessor state", meant that "all declared chemical weapons stockpiles (were) verified as irreversibly destroyed".

But recent use of chemical weapons meant the world still had to be on guard, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning OPCW warned.

The watchdog has in recent years blamed Syria for carrying out chemical attacks during its civil war, and investigated the use of Soviet-era nerve agents against a former Russian spy in Britain and Kremlin opponent Alexei Navalny in Russia.

"Recent uses and threats of use of toxic chemicals as weapons illustrate that preventing re-emergence will remain a priority for the organisation," Arias cautioned.

9,000 Civilians, Including 500 Children, Killed In Russia's War In Ukraine: UN

UNITED NATIONS, July 8: The United Nations condemned the civilian cost inflicted by Russia's war in Ukraine as the fighting passed the 500-day mark with no end to the conflict in sight.

More than 9,000 civilians, including 500 children, have been killed since Russia's February 24, 2022 invasion, the UN's Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (HRMMU) said in a statement on Friday, though UN representatives have previously said the real count is likely to be much higher.

"Today we mark another grim milestone in the war that continues to exact a horrific toll on Ukraine's civilians," Noel Calhoun, the deputy head of HRMMU, said in the statement marking the 500th day since the invasion.

While this year the casualty numbers have been lower on average than in 2022, the figure began to climb again in May and June, the monitors noted.

On June 27, 13 civilians, including four children, were killed in a missile strike on Kramatorsk in eastern Ukraine.

And far from the front line in the western city of Lviv, rescuers found a 10th body in the rubble of buildings on Friday.

At least 37 people were wounded during an early Thursday strike that Mayor Andriy Sadovyi called the biggest attack on civilian infrastructure in his city since the start of Russia's invasion of the country.

More than 50 apartments had been "ruined" and a dormitory at Lviv Polytechnic University had been damaged, he wrote on Telegram.

UNESCO said that attack was also the first to take place in an area protected by the World Heritage Convention and had damaged a historic building.

Russia regularly bombards Ukraine with air attacks, including indiscriminate artillery and missile fire that have been especially deadly. The strikes have also targeted infrastructure and supply lines, depriving civilians of power and water.

The cities of Bucha and Mariupol became bywords for Russian atrocities last year, after reports and images of massacres there shocked the world and prompted allegations of war crimes and even genocide.

In the once-sleepy commuter town Bucha, journalists witnessed a single street filled with corpse after corpse in civilian clothes in April.

Satellite images later showed that several bodies had been lying in the street since mid-March, when the town was under Russian control, while Ukrainian authorities said that hundreds of people had been killed in Bucha by Moscow's retreating forces.