crisis

The British Basketball Federation says it will enter liquidation as the crisis engulfing the sport in the UK continues.

A statement from the BBF said it had ceased to trade “due to a significant and unanticipated reduction in income” and “unforeseen expenditure resulting in the company’s inability to meet its liabilities”.

It has been reported, external the BBF’s financial position had been affected by legal costs incurred during its battle with Super League Basketball (SLB).

In April, the BBF awarded a 15-year licence to run a new professional men’s competition – the Great Britain Basketball League – to GBB League Ltd (GBBL).

The BBF said GBBL, a consortium led by American businessman Marshall Glickman, would provide £15m funding in the first two years.

However, the existing nine SLB clubs claimed the tender process run by the governing body was “illegal and unjust” and refused to join the new league.

A week ago SLB reached an agreement with basketball’s world governing body Fiba to oversee the top-tier men’s competition in Great Britain.

Last month basketball’s world governing body Fiba suspended the BBF over governance issues.

The BBF statement added that the immediate priority was for domestic basketball stakeholders to work with Fiba “to ensure the ongoing stability and security of the Great Britain national teams”, including forthcoming Fiba competitions.

Fiba, which set up a taskforce in August to investigate regulatory non-compliance within British basketball, said it will continue to support the BBF to “restore its operations and secure its position as the basketball governing body in Great Britain”.

UK Sport said: “We have taken robust steps throughout this period of uncertainty to safeguard public funds and to help enable GB teams to continue to compete.

“We will now work closely with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and the basketball community to establish a way forward for the sport.”

A spokesperson for GBBL told BBC Sport it was “working with its legal counsel to evaluate its options” relating to the status of the licence it was awarded by the BBF.

“In accordance with the terms of the licence, significant sums of money have been paid to the BBF and this is of grave concern to GBBL,” they added.

The head of the UN migration agency says more than 10 million people have been forced to flee their homes in Sudan because of the war between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. The agency says humanitarian operations in North Darfur are on the brink of collapse.

Speaking of the 2,500 American “detainees,” President Bush said, “Anything that compels individuals to do something against their will would, of course, concern me.” I have to laugh and then cry. It never seems to bother Bush when he wants to compel several million women to be “detained” by a fetus.

If we had a sane planetary population policy, we would not need to be in the Persian Gulf. What we are watching is the start of the real wars, not for politics or ideology, but for real things–food and energy, natural resources and living space. We are fighting like bums over a bottle of wine, but today we are billions armed with chemical and nuclear weapons.

WOODROW J. HUGHES

Northridge

Nov. 11 (UPI) — Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy on Tuesday warned that the crisis facing air travel in the United States, exasperated by the ongoing government shutdown, is going to get worse unless Congress acts.

Speaking to reporters at Chicago O’Hare International Airport, Duffy said air travel will “radically slow down” as the country approaches the weekend if lawmakers don’t vote to approve legislation that is before the House to fund the government through January.

“You’re going to see this Friday, Saturday and Sunday — big disruption thus far — massively more disruption as we come into the weekend, if the government doesn’t open,” he said during the press conference.

The United States was grappling with a air traffic controller shortage before the government shutdown, but the situation deteriorated after federal funding lapsed, with most air traffic controllers required to work without pay.

On Friday, the Federal Aviation Administration ordered a 4% reduction in flights at 40 airports, resulting in thousands of delayed and canceled flights.

The Transportation Department has seen what Duffy called “significant staffing shortages,” causing “very rough travel days” last weekend.

During the press conference, Duffy called on air traffic controllers to come into work, explaining that within 24 to 48 hours after the shutdown ends, they will receive 70% of their backpay and the remainder within a week.

“So I encourage all of them to come to work, to be patriots, and help navigate the airspace effectively for the American people,” he said.

On Monday night, the Senate passed legislation to end the record 42-day government shutdown, sending the bill to the House for consideration.

If passed by the House, it will go to the desk of President Donald Trump for his signature.

Hundreds of people have joined an Indigenous-led protest on the second day of the UN climate summit in the Brazilian city of Belem, highlighting tensions with the Brazilian government’s claim that the meeting is open to Indigenous voices.

Dozens of Indigenous protesters forced their way into the 30th annual United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30) on Tuesday evening after hundreds of people participated in a march to the venue.

“We can’t eat money,” said Gilmar, an Indigenous leader from the Tupinamba community near the lower reaches of the Tapajos River in Brazil, who uses only one name, referring to the emphasis on climate finance at many of the meetings during the ongoing summit.

“We want our lands free from agribusiness, oil exploration, illegal miners and illegal loggers.”

A spokesperson from the UN, which is responsible for security inside the venue, said in a statement that “a group of protesters breached security barriers at the main entrance to the COP, causing minor injuries to two security staff, and minor damage to the venue”.

The protest came as Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has highlighted Indigenous communities as key players in this year’s COP30 negotiations, even as several industries continue to further encroach on the Amazon rainforest during his presidency.

Lula told a leaders summit last week that participants at the COP30 would be “inspired by Indigenous peoples and traditional communities – for whom sustainability has always been synonymous with their way of life”.

However, Indigenous participants taking part in rolling protests in and around the climate change meeting say that more needs to be done, both by Lula’s left-leaning government at home and around the world.

A joint statement ahead of the summit from Indigenous Peoples of the Amazon Basin and all Biomes of Brazil emphasised the importance of protecting Indigenous territories in the Amazon.

As “a carbon sink of approximately 340 million tons” of carbon dioxide, the world’s largest rainforest, “represents one of the most effective mitigation and adaptation strategies”, the statement said.

The statement also called for Indigenous territories to be excluded from mining and other activities, including “in particular, the Amazon, Congo, and Borneo-Mekong-Southeast Asia basins”.

Leo Cerda, one of the organisers of the Yaku Mama protest flotilla, which arrived at the summit after sailing 3,000km (1,864 miles) down the Amazon river, told Al Jazeera that Indigenous peoples are trying to secure nature not just for themselves but for humanity.

“Most states want our resources, but they don’t want to guarantee the rights of Indigenous peoples,” Cerda said.

As the flotilla sailed towards COP30, Brazil’s state-run oil company, Petrobras, received a licence to begin exploratory offshore oil drilling near the mouth of the Amazon River.

“You cannot make climate policies without indigenous people at the negotiation table.”

This Indigenous activist flotilla just sailed the entire length of the Amazon River to take their message to the #COP30 climate conference. pic.twitter.com/55YjlZgJct

— AJ+ (@ajplus) November 11, 2025

Cerda also said it was important for Indigenous people to be present at the conference, considering the fossil fuel industry has also participated in the meetings for several decades.

According to The Guardian newspaper, some 5,350 fossil fuel lobbyists participated in UN climate summits over the past four years.

Representatives from 195 countries are participating in this year’s summit, with the notable absence of the United States. Under President Donald Trump, the US has fought against action on climate change, further cementing its role as the world’s largest historical emitter of fossil fuels.

Most recently, Trump has torpedoed negotiations to address emissions from the shipping industry.

Notably, this year’s meeting is the first to take place since the UN’s top court, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), ruled that countries must meet their climate obligations and that failing to do so could violate international law.

In a world where 3.4 billion people live in countries that spend more on debt interest than on health and education combined, the global financial system isn’t just flawed, it’s fundamentally unjust. This alarming reality formed the core of our conversation with Bodo Ellmers, Managing Director of Global Policy Forum Europe, following the recent UNCTAD 16 conference in Geneva. Against the backdrop of widening inequality and escalating debt distress across the Global South, Ellmers—a veteran policy expert with over two decades in the field—offered a stark diagnosis of the systemic failures in our international financial architecture and charted a path toward meaningful reform.

The Double Squeeze: How Debt Worsens Inequality

For Ellmers, the debt crisis represents a double-edged sword cutting through global development. “It squeezes fiscal space,” he explains, “constraining governments’ ability to finance public services and development.” This creates a vicious cycle where indebted nations must choose between servicing external debts and investing in their people’s well-being.

The impact manifests in two dimensions: nationally, through reduced spending on social protection, education, and healthcare; and internationally, as debt service payments flow from poor countries to rich creditors, effectively widening the gap between Global North and South.

An Architecture of Imbalance

When asked about characterizations of the international financial architecture as “neo-colonial,” Ellmers focuses on the concrete imbalances. The IMF and World Bank operate on a “one dollar, one vote” system that gives wealthy nations disproportionate power, with the US holding veto rights. Meanwhile, crucial financial regulation bodies like the OECD and Financial Stability Board exclude smaller developing countries entirely, despite setting rules with global impact.

The reform path remains blocked, Ellmers notes, because any meaningful redistribution of voting power would reduce US influence below its veto threshold. This impasse has forced regions to develop alternatives, from China’s new development banks to Africa’s proposed stability mechanism. Yet these solutions come with their own challenges, potentially creating new dependencies even as they offer welcome alternatives to traditional donors.

The Missing Piece: A Sovereign Debt Restructuring Mechanism

Perhaps the most glaring gap in the current system, according to Ellmers, is the absence of a fair sovereign debt restructuring process. Unlike corporate insolvency, where independent courts balance interests, indebted nations must negotiate from weakness with diverse creditors.

Ellmers advocates for a system that would prioritize human rights, ensuring that “a state needs to have the financial capacity to fulfill its human rights obligations towards citizens. This money cannot be touched by creditors.” This approach would fundamentally reorient debt negotiations from purely financial calculations to human-centered outcomes.

Climate Finance or Climate Debt?

The conversation turned to climate finance, where Ellmers describes a “scandal” in the making. Wealthy, high-polluting nations continue to provide climate finance primarily as loans rather than grants, pushing vulnerable countries deeper into debt while addressing climate challenges they did little to create.

While mechanisms like Special Drawing Rights offer temporary relief, Ellmers sees them as treating symptoms rather than root causes. The deeper issue remains the voluntary nature of climate finance commitments and the reluctance of wealthy nations to provide adequate grant-based funding.

A Path Forward: Protest and Policy

For activists and social movements seeking change, Ellmers emphasizes the need for dual strategies. The successful Jubilee campaign of the 1990s combined technical advocacy with mass mobilization, creating pressure that neither approach could achieve alone. This combination remains essential today, expert analysis must meet street-level mobilization to drive meaningful reform.

Conclusion: Reclaiming Sovereignty: The Unfinished Fight for Debt Justice

As Ellmers soberly concludes, “debt kills the SDGs.” With 3.4 billion people affected by this crisis, the need for structural reform transcends economic policy, it becomes a moral imperative for global justice and human dignity. The insights from our conversation paint an unambiguous picture: the current international financial architecture perpetuates inequality, undermines development, and fails to address interconnected crises from debt to climate change.

Yet within this challenging landscape, Ellmers’ analysis also reveals pathways for change. From institutional reforms that rebalance power toward Global South nations, to innovative mechanisms that protect human rights in debt restructuring, to the powerful synergy between grassroots mobilization and technical advocacy, the tools for transformation exist. What’s needed now is the political will to implement them.

Ellmers’ analysis leaves us with a crucial takeaway: the power to change this system lies in a combination of technical precision and unrelenting public pressure. The solutions—from a sovereign debt restructuring mechanism that protects human rights to shifting climate finance from loans to grants—are within reach. What has been missing is the political will to implement them. That will must be forged, and it must be forged now. The future of global justice, and the lives of billions, depend on it.

About 50,000 people are expected to attend the 12-day climate summit in the Brazilian city of Belem.

The 30th annual United Nations climate change conference (COP30) has started in the Brazilian city of Belem, with leaders calling for countries to take a united approach against global warming.

“In this arena of COP30, your job here is not to fight one another – your job here is to fight this climate crisis, together,” the UN’s climate chief, Simon Stiell, told delegates on Monday.

Some 50,000 people from more than 190 countries are expected to attend the 12-day event, which is being held at the edge of the Brazilian Amazon rainforest.

Addressing the conference, Stiell said that previous climate talks had helped, but that there was “much more work to do”.

The UN climate boss noted that countries would have to move “much, much faster” in driving down greenhouse gas emissions. “Lamenting is not a strategy. We need solutions,” he said.

His comments came as a new UN analysis of countries’ climate plans found that the pledged reductions fall far short of the drop needed by 2035 to limit temperatures to 1.5C (2.7F) above pre-industrial temperatures.

If this threshold is breached, the world will experience far more severe impacts than it has so far, experts say.

“Climate change is no longer a threat of the future. It is a tragedy of the present,” Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva stressed at the start of COP30.

Brazil’s leader condemned those seeking to undermine efforts to combat the climate crisis.

“They attack institutions, they attack science and universities,” he said. “It’s time to inflict a new defeat on the deniers.”

The United States is not sending any delegates to COP30 in keeping with President Donald Trump’s anti-climate change stance.

“It’s a good thing that they are not sending anyone. It wasn’t going to be constructive if they did,” the US’s former special envoy for climate, Todd Stern, said of the Trump administration’s decision.

COP30 President Andre Correa do Lago said the US’s absence “has opened some space for the world to see what developing countries are doing”.

Pablo Inuma Flores, an Indigenous leader from Peru, urged world leaders to do more than simply give pledges at this year’s conference.

“We want to make sure that they don’t keep promising, that they will start protecting, because we as Indigenous people are the ones who suffer from these impacts of climate change,” he said.

In a letter to COP30 that was published on Monday, dozens of scientists expressed their fears about the melting of glaciers, ice sheets and other frozen parts of the planet.

“The cryosphere is destabilising at an alarming pace,” they wrote. “Geopolitical tensions or short-term national interests must not overshadow COP30. Climate change is the defining security and stability challenge of our time.”

Speaking at this year’s COP30 in Brazil, UN chief Antonio Guterres called the inability to limit global warming to 1.5C (2.7F) a “deadly moral failure”.

But does the same apply when it comes to protecting the environment in conflict?

Israel’s two-year war on Gaza has created 61 million tonnes of rubble, with nearly a quarter contaminated with asbestos and other hazardous materials.

And scientists warn that Israel’s use of water, food and energy as weapons of war in Gaza has left farmland and ecosystems facing irreversible collapse.

In Syria, President Ahmed al-Sharaa has cited his country’s worst drought in more than six decades as evidence of accelerating climate change and warned that it could hinder Syria’s post-war recovery.

So, why isn’t conflict seen as a climate issue? And why is the environmental toll of war so often ignored?

Presenter: Adrian Finighan

Guests: Kate Mackintosh – deputy chair of the Independent Expert Panel for the Legal Definition of Ecocide

Elaine Donderer – disaster risk specialist

Farai Maguwu – director of the Zimbabwe-based Centre for Natural Resource Governance

I don’t like the word unprecedented. But I’ve used it twice in less than 24 hours.

The first time was on Sunday night, after the resignations of Tim Davie and Deborah Turness. That, in fact, might have involved a bit of overreach.

After all, this has happened before at the BBC. Back in 2004, two senior figures departed – admittedly not on the same day, but on subsequent days.

The then BBC chairman, Gavyn Davies, and the director general, Greg Dyke, resigned in light of the Hutton report.

That was the inquiry into the death of government scientist Dr David Kelly which found that the BBC’s reporting on the Iraq “sexed-up dossier” was flawed.

But my use of unprecedented on Monday feels entirely appropriate.

A US president threatening to sue the BBC for $1bn is completely new territory for the corporation.

We’ve seen a succession of US media operations previously cave in as Donald Trump launched lawsuits.

Paramount Global paid him $16m to settle a dispute over an interview broadcast on CBS with former vice-president Kamala Harris.

ABC News paid him $15m to settle a defamation lawsuit after its anchor falsely claimed he had been found “liable for rape”.

Now the president has the BBC in his sights. He wants a full retraction of the Panorama documentary, an apology for the “false, defamatory, disparaging, misleading and inflammatory statements” made about him in it, and appropriate compensation “for the harm caused”.

If he doesn’t get them by Friday, he’s put the BBC “on notice” that he will be looking for damages of “no less than $1,000,000,000”.

Whether you are a supporter or a detractor of the BBC, I think everyone would agree these are incredibly testing times for the corporation.

Events have developed rapidly over a week.

First we got the series of claims about the Panorama documentary and also wider systemic bias first made in the Telegraph.

Six days later came the resignations of director general Tim Davie and news CEO Deborah Turness.

Quickly some were voicing concerns about a politically orchestrated campaign against the BBC from the right. Others said this was all about accountability in the face of gross failures.

Now the BBC faces a potentially very costly legal battle with Donald Trump.

It should be basking in the success of Celebrity Traitors with the programme’s hugely popular finale broadcast just last Thursday. Instead the BBC is plunged into a crisis some would argue of its own making.

It’s taken until Monday to apologise for the Panorama edit and to push back on the notion that the corporation suffers from institutional bias.

The interview I did with BBC chair Samir Shah should have been done much earlier – with the DG or Deborah Turness last week, as the headlines ramped up.

The apology should have come then. Now the BBC is on the back foot.

It will take robust leadership to steer a course through. But two of the leaders most likely to have been able to steady the ship are now on the way out.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva urged the world to fight the spread of misinformation and come together to defeat those who deny the devastating impact of climate change.

A strange scene unfolded at the Adams/Vermont farmers market near USC last week.

The pomegranates, squash and apples were in season, pink guavas were so ripe you could smell their heady scent from a distance, and nutrient-packed yams were ready for the holidays.

But with federal funding in limbo for the 1.5 million people in Los Angeles County who depend on food aid from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — or SNAP — the church parking lot hosting the market was largely devoid of customers.

Even though the market accepts payments through CalFresh, the state’s SNAP program, hardly anyone was lined up when gates opened. Vendors mostly idled alone at their produce stands.

A line of cars stretches more than a mile as people wait to receive a box of free food provided by the L.A. Food Bank in the City of Industry on Wednesday.

(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

As thousands across Southern California lined up at food banks to collect free food, and the fight over delivering the federal allotments sowing uncertainty, fewer people receiving aid seemed to be spending money at outdoor markets like this one.

“So far we’re doing 50% of what we’d normally do — or less,” said Michael Bach, who works with Hunger Action, a food-relief nonprofit that partners with farmers markets across the greater L.A. area, offering “Market Match” deals to customers paying with CalFresh debit cards.

The deal allows shoppers to buy up to $30 worth of fruit produce for only $15. Skimming a ledger on her table, Bach’s colleague Estrellita Echor noted that only a handful of shoppers had taken advantage of the offer.

All week at farmers markets where workers were stationed, the absence was just as glaring, she said. “I was at Pomona on Saturday — we only had six transactions the whole day,” she said. “Zero at La Mirada.”

CalFresh customers looking to double their money on purchases were largely missing at the downtown L.A. market the next day, Echor said.

A volunteer loads up a box of free food for a family at a drive-through food distribution site in the City of Industry.

(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

“This program usually pulls in lots of people, but they are either holding on to what little they have left or they just don’t have anything on their cards,” she said.

The disruption in aid comes as a result of the Trump administration’s decision to deliver only partial SNAP payments to states during the ongoing federal government shutdown, skirting court order to restart funds for November. On Friday night, Supreme Court Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson temporarily blocked the order pending a ruling on the matter by the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

But by then, CalFresh had already started loading 100% of November’s allotments onto users’ debit cards. Even with that reprieve for food-aid recipients in California, lack of access to food is a persistent problem in L.A., said Kayla de la Haye, director of the Institute for Food System Equity at USC.

A study published by her team last year found that 25% of residents in L.A. County — or about 832,000 people — experienced food insecurity, and that among low-income residents, the rate was even higher, 41%. The researchers also found that 29% of county residents experienced nutrition insecurity, meaning they lacked options for getting healthy, nutritious food.

Those figures marked a slight improvement compared to data from 2023, when the end of pandemic-era boosts to state, county and nonprofit aid programs — combined with rising inflation — caused hunger rates to spike just as they did at the start of the pandemic in 2020, de la Haye said.

“That was a big wake-up call — we had 1 in 3 folks in 2020 be food insecure,” de la Haye said. “We had huge lines at food pantries.”

But while the USC study shows the immediate delivery of food assistance through government programs and nonprofits quickly can cut food insecurity rates in an emergency, the researchers discovered many vulnerable Angelenos are not participating in food assistance programs.

Despite the county making strides to enroll more eligible families over the last decade, de la Haye said, only 29% of food insecure households in L.A. County were enrolled in CalFresh, and just 9% in WIC, the federal nutrition program for women, infants and children.

De la Haye said participants in her focus groups shared a mix of reasons why they didn’t enroll: Many didn’t know they qualified, while others said they felt too ashamed to apply for aid, were intimidated by the paperwork involved or feared disclosing their immigration status. Some said they didn’t apply because they earned slightly more than the cutoff amounts for eligibility.

Even many of those those receiving aid struggled: 39% of CalFresh recipients were found to lack an affordable source for food and 45% faced nutrition insecurity.

De la Haye said hunger and problems accessing healthy food have serious short- and long-term health effects — contributing to higher rates of heart disease, diabetes and obesity, as well greater levels of stress, anxiety and depression in adults and children. What’s more, she said, when people feel unsure about their finances, highly perishable items such as fresh, healthy food are often the first things sacrificed because they can be more expensive.

The USC study also revealed stark racial disparities: 31% of Black residents and 32% of Latinos experienced food insecurity, compared to 11% of white residents and 14% of Asians.

De la Haye said her team is analyzing data from this year they will publish in December. That analysis will look at investments L.A. County has made in food system over the last two years, including the allocation of $20 million of federal funding to 80 community organizations working on everything from urban farming to food pantries, and the recent creation of the county’s Office of Food Systems to address challenges to food availability and increase the consumption of healthy foods.

“These things that disrupt people’s ability to get food, including and especially cuts to this key program that is so essential to 1.5 million people in the county — we don’t weather those storms very well,” de la Haye said. “People are just living on the precipice.”

Climate-related disasters and conflict have displaced millions of people across the globe, the United Nations has warned before the opening of its annual climate change conference.

The UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said in a report, published on Monday to coincide with the launch of the 30th annual UN Climate Change conference (COP) in Brazil, that weather-related disasters caused about 250 million people to flee their homes over the past decade.

The migration agency issued its second major report on the effect of climate change on refugees – No Escape II: The Way Forward – in the run-up to COP 30, as it appears that the enthusiasm of countries to agree action to curb climate change continues to ebb.

“Over the past decade, weather-related disasters have caused some 250 million internal displacements – equivalent to over 67,000 displacements per day,” the report said. 

The UNHCR added that climate change is also increasing the difficulties faced by those displaced by conflict and other driving forces.

“Climate change is compounding and multiplying the challenges faced by those who have already been displaced, as well as their hosts, particularly in fragile and conflict-affected settings,” it continued.

Floods in South Sudan and Brazil, record heat in Kenya and Pakistan, and water shortages in Chad and Ethiopia are among the disasters noted in the report.

The number of countries facing extreme exposure to climate-related hazards is projected to rise from three to 65 by 2040.

Those 65 countries host more than 45 percent of all people currently displaced by conflict, it added.

“Extreme weather is … destroying homes and livelihoods, and forcing families – many who have already fled violence – to flee once more,” UN refugees chief Filippo Grandi said in a statement.

“These are people who have already endured immense loss, and now they face the same hardships and devastation again. They are among the hardest hit by severe droughts, deadly floods and record-breaking heatwaves, yet they have the fewest resources to recover,” he said.

By 2050, the report reads, the hottest 15 refugee camps in the world – in The Gambia, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Senegal and Mali – are projected to experience nearly 200 days of hazardous heat stress per year.

Weakening commitment

The refugee agency’s report emphasised that while the effect of climate change is growing, the commitment towards dealing with it has been weakening.

The UNHCR hopes to reawaken efforts to fight the effects at the conference in Brazil.

Under President Donald Trump, the United States, traditionally the world’s top donor, has slashed foreign aid.

Washington previously accounted for more than 40 percent of the UNHCR’s budget. Other major donor countries have also been tightening their belts.

“Funding cuts are severely limiting our ability to protect refugees and displaced families from the effects of extreme weather,” Grandi said.

“To prevent further displacement, climate financing needs to reach the communities already living on the edge,” he said. “This COP must deliver real action, not empty promises.”

About 50,000 participants from more than 190 countries will meet in Belem, in the Amazon rainforest, to discuss curbing the climate crisis.

One topic on the agenda exposing the difficulties of agreeing on global action is the European Union’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM).

The policy is designed to prevent “carbon leakage” by requiring importers of carbon-intensive goods like steel and cement to pay the same price for embedded emissions that EU producers face domestically.

While the EU promotes CBAM as a necessary environmental tool to encourage greener practices, critics of the policy, including major trading partners like the US and China, view it as a veiled act of protectionism.

Developing nations, meanwhile, are concerned that it unfairly shifts the financial burden of climate action onto them.

A suffocating blanket of smog has engulfed India’s capital, permeating the air with an acrid smell as pollution levels soar, intensifying a public health emergency that has driven residents to demand governmental action.

By Monday morning, New Delhi’s air quality index had reached 344, categorised as “severe” and hazardous to breathe according to the World Health Organization’s recommended exposure thresholds.

In a compelling demonstration of public concern, dozens of protesters assembled in New Delhi on Sunday, calling for government intervention to combat the capital’s toxic air crisis as dangerous haze shrouded the city.

Children joined their parents at the demonstration, wearing protective masks and carrying placards, including one that starkly declared: “I miss breathing.”

New Delhi, home to a metropolitan population of 30 million people, persistently ranks among the world’s most polluted capital cities.

Every winter, a toxic smog obscures the skyline when cooler temperatures trap pollutants close to ground level, creating a deadly combination of emissions from agricultural burning, industrial operations, and vehicle exhaust.

Levels of PM2.5 – carcinogenic particles small enough to penetrate the bloodstream – regularly surge to concentrations 60 times above the UN’s recommended daily health guidelines.

“Today I am here just as a mother,” said protester Namrata Yadav, who attended the protest with her son. “I am here because I don’t want to become a climate refugee.”

At the protest location near India Gate, the historic war memorial, PM2.5 readings surpassed the World Health Organization’s recommended daily maximum by more than 13 times.

“Year after year, it is the same story, but there is no solution,” said Tanvi Kusum, a lawyer who explained she joined because she was “frustrated”.

“We have to build pressure so that the government at least takes up the issue seriously.”

Government measures to tackle the crisis have proven inadequate, including limited restrictions on fossil fuel vehicles and water trucks spraying mist to suppress airborne particulate matter.

“Pollution is cutting our lives,” declared a young woman who identified herself as “speaking for Delhi” and declined to provide her name.

Research published in The Lancet Planetary Health last year estimated that 3.8 million deaths in India between 2009 and 2019 were attributable to air pollution.

The United Nations children’s agency, UNICEF, cautions that contaminated air dramatically increases children’s susceptibility to acute respiratory infections.

As evening descended on the smog-veiled skyline, the crowd expanded until police stepped in, forcing several activists onto a bus and seizing their protest materials, claiming they lacked proper demonstration permits.

One partially torn sign captured the essence of their plea: “I just want to breathe.”

On Marajo Island, at the confluence of the Amazon River and Atlantic Ocean in northern Brazil, life ebbs and flows with the tides.

For more than four decades, Ivanil Brito found paradise in her modest stilt house, just 20 metres (65ft) from the shoreline, where she and her husband Catito fished, cultivated crops, and tended to livestock.

“I was a very happy person in that little piece of land. That was my paradise,” she says.

That paradise vanished during a violent storm in February 2024, when relentless waters surged through Vila do Pesqueiro town, eroding the coastline that had nourished generations. “Even though we didn’t move far, it feels like a completely different world,” says Ivanil from their new settlement less than a kilometre (half a mile) inland. “This is a mangrove area – hotter, noisier, and not a place where we can raise animals or grow crops.”

Vila do Pesqueiro, home to about 160 families, lies within the Soure Marine Extractive Reserve, a protected area under the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation. Established to preserve traditional ways of life and sustainable resource management, the reserve now confronts the harsh realities of climate change. While fishing remains the primary livelihood, local cuisine and tourism provide supplementary income to the residents. Yet, intensifying tides and accelerating erosion threaten their existence.

For Ivanil’s son Jhonny, a fisherman studying biology at Universidade do Para, in the Marajo-Soure campus, these transformations are worrying. “The place where our houses used to be is now underwater,” he says. “For me, moving isn’t just about safety – it’s about protecting the place and the people who shaped my life.”

Meanwhile, residents like Benedito Lima and his wife Maria Lima have chosen to remain, despite their home now standing perilously close to the water’s edge. Leaving would mean surrendering their livelihood. “Every new tide shakes the ground,” Benedito says, gazing towards what used to be a safely distant canal. “This isn’t even the high-tide season yet.”

Climate adaptation here takes various forms. Some rebuild farther inland, while others adjust their daily routines to accommodate the sea’s advance. Community leader Patricia Ribeiro believes a collective resilience sustains Vila do Pesqueiro. “Our stories have always been passed down through generations,” she says. “This is our home, our ancestry. We want to stay here to protect what our families built. As long as we’re together, we won’t give up.”

As Brazil prepares to host the 30th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30) in nearby Belem, communities like Vila do Pesqueiro exemplify what is at stake. Through its initiatives, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) says it supports efforts to enhance resilience, protect livelihoods, and ensure these families can continue living safely on their ancestral lands.

This photo gallery was provided by the International Organization for Migration.

WFP says a ‘deepening hunger crisis’ is unfolding and that it may have to pause food aid due to record low funding.

The number of people facing emergency levels of hunger in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo has nearly doubled since last year, the United Nations has warned.

The UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) said on Friday a “deepening hunger crisis” was unfolding in the region, but warned it was only able to reach a fraction of those in need due to acute funding shortages and access difficulties.

“We’re at historically low levels of funding. We’ve probably received about $150m this year,” said Cynthia Jones, country director of the WFP for the DRC, pointing to a need for $350m to help people in desperate need in the West African country.

“One in three people in DRC’s eastern provinces of North Kivu, South Kivu, Ituri, and Tanganyika are facing crisis levels of hunger or worse. That’s over 10 million people,” Jones said.

“Of that, an alarming three million people are in emergency levels of hunger,” she told a media briefing in Geneva.

She said this higher level meant people were facing extreme gaps in food consumption and very high levels of malnutrition, adding that the numbers of people that are facing emergency levels of hunger is surging.

“It has almost doubled since last year,” said Jones. “People are already dying of hunger.”

Years-long conflict

The area has been rocked by more than a year of fighting. The Rwanda-backed M23 armed group has seized swaths of the eastern DRC since taking up arms again in 2021, compounding a humanitarian crisis and the more than three-decade conflict in the region.

The armed group’s lightning offensive saw it capture the key eastern cities of Goma and Bukavu, near the border with Rwanda. It has set up an administration there parallel to the government in Kinshasa and taken control of nearby mines.

Rwanda has denied supporting the rebels. Both M23 and Congolese forces have been accused of carrying out atrocities.

Jones said the WFP was facing “a complete halt of all emergency food assistance in the eastern provinces” from February or March 2026.

She added that the two airports in the east, Goma and Bukavu, had been shut for months.

WFP wants an air bridge set up between neighbouring Rwanda and the eastern DRC, saying it would be a safer, faster and more effective route than from Kinshasa, on the other side of the vast nation.

In recent years, the WFP had received up to $600m in funding. In 2024, it received about $380m.

UN agencies, including the WFP, have been hit by major cuts in US foreign aid, as well as other major European donors reducing overseas aid budgets to increase defence spending.

In July, the humanitarian organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) revealed that Nigeria’s northwestern region is facing an alarming malnutrition crisis, with Katsina State at the epicentre, and is currently witnessing a surge in admissions of malnourished children. It was not the first time the organisation had raised the alarm. It had also done so several times in the past year. 

Against this backdrop, government leaders, international organisations, and civil society convened in Abuja, the federal capital city, on Thursday to mobilise against the escalating crisis in the region.

Hosted by the Katsina State Government, the Northwest Governors Forum, and MSF, the event drew participation from the Office of the Vice President, UNICEF, WFP, the World Bank, the INGO Forum, ALIMA, IRC, CS-SUN, and the European Union.

MSF’s country representative, Ahmed Aldikhari, noted that 2025 has been flagged as the worst, recording the highest cases of malnutrition in the last five years.

“We are here to highlight the situation and solidify commitments, collaborations, and engagement from all partners and government officials.”

He echoed a silent sentiment: “We acknowledge that resources are invested in conferences like this, but the real solutions lie within the communities. So, we must go beyond the hall and get practical in finding real solutions.”

HumAngle had reported the broader impact of this crisis, noting that displacements, armed conflicts, limited access to healthcare, and climate change have compounded the nutritional emergency. In one of our reports, we documented how 30 per cent of children under five in Katsina’s Jibia and Mashi local government areas are suffering from acute malnutrition. 

Most recently, HumAngle produced a 21-minute-long conversation via The Crisis Room, a monthly podcast series that focuses on crisis signalling and explores existing responses and solutions to crises in Nigeria. The conversation with the state’s MSF coordinator focused on the state’s malnutrition crisis—where aid workers fight to save lives on the edge.

Despite these reports, malnutrition in Katsina and northwestern Nigeria remains dire with limited systemic change.

While reacting to MSF’s latest report on the scale of the issue in Katsina state, the governor said he saw it as an opportunity to find feasible solutions to the crisis in the state.

“Instead of criticising the latest MSF report on malnutrition, my administration saw it as a call to action for confronting the crisis head-on. To address this challenge, we set up a high-level committee to investigate the root causes of malnutrition across the state,” he said. 

“We are promoting local production of therapeutic foods such as Tom Brown to reduce dependency on imports, distributing thousands of food baskets to at-risk families, and training hundreds of women to produce nutritious meals at the community level.”

However, the commercialization of Tom Brown and other therapeutic food is a present threat that has been documented all over the country, and was highlighted in his speech. This suggests that beyond making the foods available, the distribution process needs to be strengthened.

The federal government’s concerted efforts are also needed for an enduring impact, an area many, especially displaced people, have found insufficient. Uju Vanstasia Anwukah, Senior Special Assistant to the President on Public Health, who was present at the event as the Vice President’s representative, said the government was committed to fixing the issue. 

“This partnership with MSF and the convening of this high-level conference reaffirm the government’s understanding that real progress begins with the health and nourishment of every child,” she said.

Adding to the discussion, Nemat Hajeebhoy, Chief of Child Nutrition at UNICEF, outlined an affordable financing strategy.

“The global architecture of financing is changing, but there is still very much the recognition that there is a need to invest and support countries. UNICEF is here to partner with the government. They are our clients, so to speak, but children are our bosses.”

She introduced UNICEF’s Child buy-one-get-one-free-to-one match initiative: “It’s a buy one get one free. For every Naira the government invests—federal, state, or LGA—we will match it to help procure high-impact nutrition commodities.”

“But we need more. It’s not sufficient. This is the pavement for the future. It’s no longer just about aid—it’s about partnership.”

While commending the Katsina State government, Nemat emphasised the need for a 360 advocacy, involving bilateral engagement with governors, technical communities, media, and champions like actors.

“We also need communities to speak out and demand. There is hope. The Nutrition 774 Initiative, launched by the vice president in February, puts accountability and action at the LGA level. Nigeria is a big country, and unless we go ward by ward, we may not see change.”

Though the conference seems to have set the stage for concrete, coordinated action to protect the health and future of millions of vulnerable communities, citizens are eager to see improvement in the coming months and years. 

“You have to deliver on addressing that crisis.” New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani criticised President Donald Trump for not fixing the affordability crisis he campaigned on, adding that Republicans are scared the new mayor may actually deliver.

On her first day in office, Mayor Karen Bass declared a state of emergency on homelessness.

The declaration allowed the city to cut through red tape, including through no-bid contracts, and to start Inside Safe, Bass’ signature program focused on moving homeless people off the streets and into interim housing.

On Tuesday, nearly three years after she took the helm, and with homelessness trending down two years in a row for the first time in recent years, the mayor announced that she will lift the state of emergency on Nov. 18.

“We have begun a real shift in our city’s decades-long trend of rising homelessness,” Bass said in a memorandum to the City Council.

Still, the mayor said, there is much work to do.

“The crisis remains, and so does our urgency,” she said.

The mayor’s announcement followed months of City Council pushback on the lengthy duration of the state of emergency, which the council had initially approved.

Some council members argued that the state of emergency allowed the mayor’s office to operate out of public view and that contracts and leases should once again be presented before them with public testimony and a vote.

Councilmember Tim McOsker has been arguing for months that it was time to return to business as usual.

“Emergency powers are designed to allow the government to suspend rules and respond rapidly when the situation demands it, but at some point those powers must conclude,” he said in a statement Tuesday.

McOsker said the move will allow the council to “formalize” some of the programs started during the emergency, while incorporating more transparency.

Council members had been concerned that the state of emergency would end without first codifying Executive Directive 1, which expedites approvals for homeless shelters as well as for developments that are 100% affordable and was issued by Bass shortly after she took office.

On Oct. 28, the council voted for the city attorney to draft an ordinance that would enshrine the executive directive into law.

The mayor’s announcement follows positive reports about the state of homelessness in the city.

As of September, the mayor’s Inside Safe program had moved more than 5,000 people into interim housing since its inception at the end of 2022. Of those people, more than 1,243 have moved into permanent housing, while another 1,636 remained in interim housing.

This year, the number of homeless people living in shelters or on the streets of the city dropped 3.4%, according to the annual count conducted by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. The number of unsheltered homeless people in the city dropped by an even steeper margin of 7.9%.

The count, however, has its detractors. A study by Rand found that the annual survey missed nearly a third of homeless people in Hollywood, Venice and Skid Row — primarily those sleeping without tents or vehicles.

In June, a federal judge decided not to put Los Angeles’ homelessness programs into receivership, while saying that the city had failed to meet some of the terms of a settlement agreement with the nonprofit LA Alliance for Human Rights.

Councilmember Nithya Raman, who chairs the City Council’s Housing and Homelessness Committee, said the end of the emergency does not mean the crisis is over.

“It only means that we must build fiscally sustainable systems that can respond effectively,” she said. “By transitioning from emergency measures to long-term, institutional frameworks, we’re ensuring consistent, accountable support for people experiencing homelessness.”

Times staff writer David Zahniser contributed to this report.