crisis

The European Union’s plan to hike tariffs on steel imported over and above its annual threshold could tip the United Kingdom’s steel industry into its worst crisis in history, industry leaders have warned.

On Tuesday, the European Commission proposed that the 27-member bloc would slash its tariff-free steel import quota by 47 percent to 18.3 million tonnes and would impose a tariff of 50 percent on any steel imported in excess of this amount.

This represents a sharp hike: The EU’s current annual steel import quota stands at 33 million tonnes, and imports above this limit are subject to a 25 percent tariff.

The announcement has rattled the British steel industry, which exports nearly 80 percent of its steel to the EU.

“This is perhaps the biggest crisis the UK steel industry has ever faced,” Gareth Stace, director general of the lobby group UK Steel, said on Tuesday. He described the move as a “disaster” for British steel.

Community, a trade union representing UK steelworkers, said the EU’s proposal represents an “existential threat” to the UK steel industry.

Here’s what we know about the EU’s new levies and why the UK is worried:

Why has the EU announced a tariff hike for steel imports?

The new tariff is expected to come into effect from June 2026, as long as EU countries and the European Parliament approve it.

The EU says it has no choice but to bring in the new tariff as it seeks to protect its own markets from a flood of subsidised Asian steel, which has been diverted by US President Donald Trump’s latest 50 percent tariff on all steel imports to the US.

The EU also wants to protect its steel sector from the challenge of global overcapacity.

In a speech at the European Parliament in Strasbourg on Tuesday, the European Commissioner for Trade and Economic Security, Maros Sefcovic, defended the bloc’s steel tariffs proposal as a move to “protect the bloc’s vital sector” whose steel trade balance has “deteriorated dramatically”.

Sefcovic added that more than 30,000 jobs have been lost since 2018 in the EU’s steel industry, which employs about 300,000 people overall.

While the industry is ailing, he said, other countries have begun imposing tariffs and other safeguards to ensure their own domestic steel industries expand. The Commission’s proposal, therefore, seeks to “restore balance to the EU steel market”.

More succinctly, a senior EU official told The Times newspaper: “My dear UK friends, you have to understand that we have no choice but to limit the total volumes of imports that come into the EU, so this is the logic that we apply clearly. Not acting could result in potentially fatal effects for us.”

The EC’s proposal comes as the bloc’s steel sector faces stiff competition from countries like China, where steel production is heavily subsidised.

China produced more than a billion metric tonnes of steel last year, followed by India, at 149 million metric tonnes, and Japan, at 84 million metric tonnes, according to the World Steel Association, a nonprofit organisation with headquarters in Brussels.

By comparison, said Sefcovic, the EU produces 126 million tonnes per year but only requires 67 percent of this for its own use – “well below the healthy 80 percent benchmark and below profitable levels”.

Moreover, steel production within the EU has declined by 65 million tonnes per year since 2007 – with nearly half of that lost since 2018.

“A strong, decarbonised steel sector is vital for the European Union’s competitiveness, economic security and strategic autonomy. Global overcapacity is damaging our industry,” EC President Ursula von der Leyen said.

The Commission’s industry chief, Stephane Sejourne, told reporters in Strasbourg that “the European steel industry was on the verge of collapse” and said that through the tariffs plan, the Commission is “protecting it [EU’s steel industry] so that it can invest, decarbonise and become competitive again”.

Sejourne added that the Commission’s plan is “in line with our [EU] values and international law”.

Why would the UK bear the brunt of EU steel tariffs?

The EU is the UK’s largest market for steel exports by far. In 2024, the UK exported 1.9 million metric tonnes of steel, worth about 3 billion pounds ($4.02bn) and representing 78 percent of its home-made steel products to the EU.

While the EC’s steel tariffs proposal does not apply to members of the European Economic Area, namely Norway and Iceland, it will apply to the UK and Switzerland. Ukraine will also be exempt from the tariff quota since it is facing “an exceptional and immediate security situation”, according to the EC.

The EU says it is open to negotiations with the UK once it has formally notified the World Trade Organization (WTO) of the new levy. For now, however, uncertainty looms.

Compounding this, the UK also fears being flooded by cheaper, subsidised steel from Asia as both the EU and US markets close their doors to it.

In a statement, UK Steel added: “The potential for millions of tonnes that will be barred from the EU market, to be redirected towards the UK is another existential threat.”

Nicolai von Ondarza, an associate fellow at Chatham House, the London-based policy institute, told Al Jazeera that cheap steel diverted by the EU’s planned tariffs will mostly come from countries like China, “putting additional pressure on its industry”.

The British steel sector is also shouldering Trump’s 25 percent tariff on British steel imports, a global supply glut, and higher energy prices, and has been embattled by job losses in some of its biggest steelworks due to green transition initiatives.

Can the UK negotiate its way out of this?

That is currently its best hope, according to industry leaders.

“We would urge the UK and EU to begin urgent negotiations and do everything possible to prevent the crushing impact these proposals would have on our steel industry,” he added.

Chatham House’s Ondarza told Al Jazeera: “For the UK, the first route is to try to negotiate a carve-out of these EU tariffs. Both the EC and the UK have already signalled willingness to talk. These negotiations are likely to be tricky, but not unlikely that they come to an agreement.”

On his way for a two-day business trip to India, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer told reporters that his country is “in discussions with the EU” about the proposal.

“I’ll be able to tell you more in due course, but we are in discussions, as you’d expect,” he said.

Meanwhile, Chris McDonald, the UK industry minister, has suggested that retaliatory measures may not be completely off the table.

“We continue to explore stronger trade measures to protect UK steel producers from unfair behaviours,” he told reporters.

If the US caused this, can it help to solve it?

While the EU’s tariffs proposal has led to an outcry in the UK, it is also a measure which seeks to bring the US to the negotiating table, the EC says.

In August, the EU and US agreed a trade deal under which Washington will levy 15 percent tariffs on 70 percent of Europe’s exports to the country. Brussels and Washington have yet to discuss how tariffs would apply to European steel, which still faces a 50 percent tariff under Trump’s new trade regime.

Sefcovic told reporters the Commission’s steel tariffs proposal would be a good foundation to engage with the US and also fight the challenge of overcapacity as “like-minded partners”.

Many Los Angeles residents will soon be paying significantly more for trash collection after the City Council voted Tuesday to finalize a dramatic fee increase.

The trash program had become heavily subsidized, to the tune of about $500,000 a day, which officials said was no longer viable given the city’s dire financial straits, which left them scrambling to close a nearly $1-billion budget deficit earlier this year.

Having the cost subsidized by the city for so long contributed to that deficit, according to City Administrative Officer Matt Szabo.

“It should have been corrected a long time ago,” Szabo said. “If we didn’t get this rate increase, the subsidy would have been more than $200 million this year.”

The city hadn’t raised trash pickup fees in 17 years, and a 2016 state law governing organic waste disposal significantly increased operational costs. Large raises for city sanitation workers and rising equipment costs also bumped up expenditures.

Once the new fees go into effect, probably in mid-November, residents of single-family homes or apartments with four units or less will pay $55.95 a month per unit.

That sum is more than double the $24.33 a month that occupants of triplexes and fourplexes had been paying, and a roughly 50% increase on the $36.32 previously paid by residents of single-family homes and duplexes.

Those customers put their waste in black bins for regular trash, blue bins for recycling and green bins for organic waste, which are emptied by city workers once a week. Larger apartment buildings will be unaffected by the changes, because their waste collection is administered through a separate program.

The fees will increase by an additional $10 over the next four years.

By next year, the increased fees will reflect the actual cost of trash pickup and will be on par with or slightly below what residents pay in nearby cities such as Long Beach, Pasadena, Culver City and Glendale.

Still, the new fees will almost certainly engender sticker shock for L.A. residents already contending with skyrocketing insurance premiums, rising rents and eye-popping grocery prices. Rates will be reduced for low-income customers who qualify for the city’s EZ-SAVE or Lifeline programs.

The City Council approved the increase on a 12-2 vote, with Councilmembers Monica Rodriguez and Adrin Nazarian dissenting.

Last week, the council also voted to raise the prices and hours of city parking meters.

“After approving a $2.6-billion Convention Center expansion, the council is asking residents to pay more for basic services like trash collection while delivering less. That doesn’t reflect the priorities of working Angelenos,” Rodriguez said after Tuesday’s vote. “I can’t, in good conscience, support that approach.”

A number of factors catalyzed the city’s financial issues, which exploded into public view during the budget process earlier this year. Los Angeles had taken in weaker than expected tax revenues, paid out more in legal liabilities and adopted large-scale raises for city employees.

When Mayor Karen Bass first presented her budget in the spring, layoffs for more than 1,600 city workers were on the table. She and the City Council were ultimately able to avoid those cuts through a number of cost-saving measures.

Tuesday’s final vote on the trash fees came nearly six months after the council gave preliminary approval to the plan.

The matter was complicated by Proposition 218, a 1996 statewide ballot measure designed to make it harder for local governments to raise taxes and fees. To satisfy the proposition’s requirements, the city had to hold public hearings and give every affected resident the opportunity to weigh in via a notice mailed to their homes before the increase could move forward.

The fee hike legislation still has to be signed by the mayor and formally published by the city clerk. The fee can’t go into effect until 31 days after that, or mid-November at the earliest.

The city budget, however, was calculated under the assumption that the new fees would go into effect Oct. 1. The delay will leave the city on the hook for an extra $500,000 a day.

Because Tuesday’s vote was not unanimous, the ordinance will receive a second reading next week before the council formally approves it and sends it to the mayor — a technicality that will cost the city $3.5 million. The mayor plans to sign it as soon as she receives it, her office said.

The delay to mid-November will cost the city a total of at least $22 million, creating another deficit that will have to be adjusted for down the line.

Still, some residents decried the ballooning fees, with one calling the increase “preposterous.”

“Listen to our cries,” the person, who did not give their name,said in a written public comment. “We can barely keep a roof over our heads — at this time! Los Angeles is falling apart. It is your job to fix it more practically.”

The Historic Highland Park Neighborhood Council also opposed the rate hike, arguing that residents are already facing steep cost-of-living increases and that layering more fees on top of that would be “neither fair nor sustainable.”

The last time the city increased trash fees, back in the summer of 2008, City Controller Kenneth Mejia was a few months out of high school, George W. Bush was in the Oval Office and Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl” was topping the Billboard charts.

Amid a global economic downturn, the city was facing widespread cuts, and leaders looked — as they often do — to the price tag of city services to try to balance the budget.

Times staff writers David Zahniser and Dakota Smith contributed to this report.

France is facing political turmoil after President Emmanuel Macron’s fifth prime minister in less than two years quit after just 27 days.

There are growing calls for new elections and Macron is facing increasing pressure to resign.

So, what’s next for France?

Presenter: Nick Clark

Guests:

Thierry Mariani – Member of the European Parliament for the far-right National Rally Party

Eleonore Caroit – Member of Macron’s centrist Renaissance party and French National Assembly deputy

Eric Bocquet – Mayor of Marquillies and a member of the French Communist Party

Sebastien Lecornu to hold two days of talks to try to shore up cross-party support for his collapsed government.

France’s outgoing prime minister has launched a last-gasp bid to secure cross-party support for his government and chart a path out of the country’s deepening political crisis.

The frantic effort, which began on Tuesday, will see Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu seeking two days of talks with parliamentary figures, just a day after he tendered his resignation over the rejection of his proposed cabinet.

That snub, which came from allies and rivals alike, and Lecornu’s announcement that he would quit after just 27 days, have stoked the political crisis bubbling beneath President Emmanuel Macron since the 2024 snap elections.

Now, in a move that has caused confusion among lawmakers and the public, Lecornu has accepted a request from Macron that he hold talks to try to find a way out of the deadlock.

Lecornu, whose 14-hour administration was the shortest in modern French history, was scheduled on Tuesday morning to meet several members of the conservative Republicans and the centre-right Renaissance parties – the so-called “common platform” – to see if they could agree on a new cabinet.

But voices on both sides have reacted with shock, and suggestions that it is now time for Macron himself to make way.

Macron has tasked Lecornu with “conducting final negotiations by Wednesday evening to define a platform of action and stability for the country”, according to the Elysee Palace.

It was not immediately clear what Lecornu’s task would entail. France’s constitution allows Macron to appoint another prime minister, or to reappoint Lecornu – the fifth PM he has installed in less than two years – should he wish.

Politicians of all stripes have expressed surprise over the move. Some said it appeared to be an effort by Macron to buy time.

Others insisted that it means an early presidential election is needed.

Unsurprisingly, Jordan Bardella, leader of the far-right National Rally, was among them. He said he believed parliament should be dissolved, with parliamentary or early presidential elections to follow.

However, Edouard Philippe, once a close ally of Macron who served as prime minister, also told French media that he was in favour of a presidential vote.

Another former prime minister under Macron, Gabriel Attal, expressed bafflement, saying, “Like many French people, I do not understand the president’s decisions any more.”

Political chaos

Macron tasked Lecornu with forming a government in early September after the fractured French parliament toppled his predecessor, Francois Bayrou, over an austerity budget that prompted nationwide strikes in recent weeks.

Despite Lecornu’s promises to “break” with Bayrou’s strategies, his new cabinet, unveiled on Sunday evening, immediately drew criticism for containing many of the same faces from the previous government, with opponents complaining that it contained too many right-wing representatives or not enough.

The French parliament has been sharply divided since Macron, in response to gains made by the far right, announced snap elections last year, resulting in a hung parliament and now nearly two years of political crisis.

The 47-year-old centrist president has repeatedly said he will see out his second term, which is due to end in 2027.

Yusuf Abdullahi stood beside the only well left in his town, its rim ringed with rust and water tinted a cloudy brown. For decades, the people of Bultu Briya, a village in Nigeria’s northeastern Adamawa State, had pulled their lives from this liquid in the ground, whether drinking, cooking, or watering their animals. But now, he said, the well has turned against them.

When the rains came last year, children who drank from the well fell sick with diarrhoea and clutched their stomachs in pain. The community had no choice but to abandon it forever. 

In Bultu Briya, desertification has seeped into the very veins of the villagers’ lives. Runoff washes through the encroaching sand each rainy season, leaching minerals like potassium into the water and leaving it contaminated, according to villagers, who claim it has made the water poisonous. More than 2,000 people once relied on this well, but many have already gone to nearby towns, across the border into the Niger Republic, and even as far as Libya, chasing survival in places where the sand has not yet stolen the water.

Behind Abdullahi, the desert stretched out in ridges of sand where millet fields once ripened and acacia trees once stood. The land that fed generations is now barren, and its people scattered. 

Bultu Briya was not always like this. Half a century ago, the Sahara Desert stopped far to the north, and life here followed the rhythm of the rains. In the 1980s, families could still fill their granaries with millet and sorghum. Children herded goats through pastures that turned green after the storms, and wells ran deep enough to sustain people and livestock.

That world has since vanished. 

Over the past four decades, the Sahara has expanded by nearly 10 per cent, pushing its southern edge steadily into the Sahel. In Nigeria alone, desertification currently threatens 11 of the country’s 36 states, with dunes advancing at an estimated 0.6 kilometres per year. In Yusufari, a local government area of Yobe State, satellite analysis shows that between 1984 and 2021, vegetation cover shrank by over 90 per cent, while surface water declined by more than 70 per cent.

Land cover change in Yusufari from 1984 to 2021

Graphics by HumAngle/CCIJ (2022), Data: Landsat Landcover analysis

By the early 2020s, the shifting dunes had crept so close to Bultu Briya that fields that were once heavy with grain were reduced to ridges of sand, and the acacia trees that anchored the soil were uprooted one by one.

The sand has already consumed neighbouring villages. In Tulo-Tulo and Bula-Tura, dunes pressed so close that families abandoned their homes. In Zakkari, a town 30 miles away, residents say they have not harvested a whole crop in more than seven years.

“When we were growing up, there was no desert here,” said Mohammed Bukar, 51, who has lived in Zakkari all his life. “As children, we cut grass for our livestock. Now farming is finished. Before, we filled a granary. Now we can’t even fill a sack.”

Scarcity of resources like food and water forced many of his neighbours to leave long ago. Some boarded buses bound for Lagos or Abuja, while others slipped quietly into the Niger Republic, hoping for better soil. Those who remain survive on what little their goats can graze. “We sell our animals just to eat,” Bukar said.

As armed conflict, extremist violence, rural terrorism, and economic despair uproot locals in the heart of the Sahel, a catastrophic climate collapse is accelerating transnational mobility. A HumAngle investigation, involving cross-border reporting and interviews with climate refugees in Nigeria, Cameroon, and the Niger Republic, reveals that the phenomenon driving families away from home is beyond just war, as climate crises toughen up. Matched with open-source analyses and satellite imagery investigation, the on-the-ground reporting shows how desert encroachments, poisoned or vanishing water resources, and extreme weather are making communities unlivable across the Sahel, sparking a refugee crisis driven by a hostile climate.  

The exodus

In many villages across northeastern Nigeria, the story is more chilling: As the desert advances, the farms collapse, the water dries up or becomes contaminated, and people leave. Some journeys are short. Families in Yobe, for instance, walk across the border into the Niger Republic, where relatives have settled in refugee-like encampments. Others are longer and more perilous. In Bultu Briya, 31-year-old Sani Bagira was preparing for his third attempt to reach Libya.

In his first attempt, he walked through Niger to Agadez and then paid smugglers for a ride north. It took him a week to reach Libya. He worked for two years as a farmhand, harvesting tomatoes and melons, before returning home with his savings. But the money was gone. His second journey lasted four years. He says he had no choice but to try again this time. But it was not rosy at their destination either.

“In Libya, they don’t love us,” he said. “They cheat us, they shoot us. You work three months and they throw you out without pay. But at least there, you can eat. Here, nothing.”

He rubbed his palms together, dry and cracked from years of farm work that no longer yields gain. “If we had food and water, we would never go,” he said, sitting on a low stool outside his mud-brick home, referring to his home town in Nigeria, “but here, we would die.” 

In 2022, the United Nations Refugee Agency predicted and warned that countries across the Sahelian states might face a new wave of conflict and mass displacements driven by rising temperatures, resource scarcity, and food insecurity. These predictions are turning into a dangerous reality as described, and the human toll is devastating, as many communities live in ruin or are devoid of human existence.

“Rising temperatures and extreme weather in the Sahel are worsening armed conflict, which is already destroying livelihoods, disrupting food security, and driving displacement,” said the global agency’s Special Advisor for Climate Action, Andrew Harper, in the report. “Only a massive boost in collective climate mitigation and adaptation can alleviate the current and future humanitarian consequences.” 

The report examined 10 Sahelian countries, including Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger, and Senegal. It stated that unchecked climate emergencies like floods, droughts, and heatwaves will force more people to leave their homes for a saner world. 

HumAngle interviewed scores of locals trapped outside their homes, desperately searching for food and water sources, fertile lands and safer places to trade and thrive. While some showed interest in returning home to re-establish their lives, others said home was not a place to return to, as it reeks of ruins and devastation. 

Lukmon Akintola, the knowledge associate at the Global Centre for Climate Mobility, elaborated on the UN Refugee Agency’s predictions, stressing that transboundary climate migration is not the real problem but the lack of management on the part of authorities. The climate mobility expert believes that the best way to contain the climate-driven refugee crisis is to have conscious policies, such as planned relocation and climate adaptation schemes. He said that transboundary crises might emanate from these movements without conscious efforts. 

“Why are they moving? The lack of water? Build boreholes for them. Why do they want to move? There is desert encroachment. How can we build trees? But while we are trying to do that, do we have some sustainable solutions? Building trees is a nature-based solution,” he advised, noting that the government can adopt short-term solutions while planting trees for the long term.

“One way to manage people moving in and out is to help them adapt to their current location. Invest in adaptation strategies, starting from a blueprint or a policy, but also, like I said, engage with them. What do you want? Would you like to migrate? So I’m saying that even if they want to move, it will be because their agency decides to, and they are moving with the right knowledge.”

‘Without water, there’s no life’

Water is the difference between staying in one’s place and leaving in much of the Sahel; in Yobe State, it is the difference between life and death.

At the abandoned well in Bultu Briya, 45-year-old Yaana Mohammed pointed to the empty shaft. Built decades ago with World Bank funds, the well is now condemned. Villagers stopped using it after the water killed four animals: a ram, a cow, and two goats.

The well is located beside a potassium-contaminated pond, which leaves its water tinged with potassium. 

“It is not good to drink,” said Mohammed. “But that’s all we have.” He raised his voice, as if speaking to an unseen official. “We have called the government many times. They came, they assessed, but nothing happened. For the sake of Allah, give us a borehole. Without water, there is no life.”

Locals told HumAngle that they now trek five to seven kilometres in search of safer water. Some walk to Kuwaska and Bula Modu, nearby villages with solar-powered boreholes and hand pumps. Those with motorcycles, cows, or camels carry jerry cans. The rest go on foot, trudging under the sun with plastic containers balanced on their heads. 

“We are in dire need of this water,” Abdullahi said.

While Mohammed and hundreds of his fellow villagers struggle for water, billions of naira earmarked for environmental protection, including projects meant to halt desertification, continue to vanish without accountability.

At the centre of this story is the National Ecological Fund, established in 1981 as Nigeria’s flagship program to confront erosion, flooding and desert encroachment. It was meant to be a lifeline for communities like Bultu Briya, but it has become a cash cow for political elites over the decades. Billions flow into the fund each year. In 2023 alone, more than ₦8 billion (about $5 million) was directed to the three northeastern states most vulnerable to desertification: Borno, Adamawa, and Yobe. However, audits have repeatedly shown that the money rarely reaches the ground.

Yobe offers a unique case study. In 2020, state officials announced a three-million-tree planting scheme, budgeted at ₦3 billion ($2 million), to create green shelterbelts around towns like Bultu Briya and Zakkari. Such belts, if implemented, could have slowed the encroaching dunes.

While the plan looked ambitious, on the ground, there was nothing.

Villagers remember a brief appearance and launch of the project and a token distribution of seedlings to officials present for the launch. The government dubbed the place Dasuwa forest, giving hope to the community of a new expanse of forest area in the Lawan Kalam community in Yobe State. But most of the plants dried up during the dry season without water. 

When we visited what was supposed to be the Dusuwa Forest in August 2025, we confirmed that the project had effectively disappeared. Except for a handful of dried seedlings in sight, the supposed forest is without trees. 

“The government has a way of launching the project during the rainy season so that the seedlings can survive with human efforts. But as soon as it’s the dry season, nobody monitors the plants and they quickly dry up,” says Usman Adamu, a youth leader in Yobe state.

In Bultu Briya, where dunes have contaminated the water, villagers said the tree planting scheme never reached them. Yusuf, a community member, explained that while they heard of trees being planted in other villages, Bultu was left out entirely. 

Despite this, Yobe secured an even bigger climate project in 2024. The African Development Bank gave the state a $50 million loan to plant 40 million trees, more than ten times the scale of the failed scheme. The announcement infuriated communities that had never seen a grove since the first project.

“If they cannot plant three million trees, how will they plant forty million?” asked Adamu.

When asked about these failures, Yobe State’s Ministry of Environment insisted the government is taking steps to combat desert encroachment. Officials pointed to partnerships with the United Cities and Local Governments of Africa, the UN Development Programme, and World Bank–backed initiatives like ACReSAL and the SOLID project. They also cited an advocacy tour to desert-prone LGAs and a tree-planting competition to reward residents who nurture seedlings.

However, the ministry did not address the central question of accountability, especially the one asking why the 2020 tree-planting project was left unmonitored, why the seedlings dried up, and who, if anyone, was held responsible.

On the question of water, the Ministry of Water Resources distanced itself from responsibility. “Only the Ministry cannot solve the issue,” a message forwarded to our reporter from a Ministry of Water Resources official read. “However, the local government council is responsible for solving the issue. As I am speaking to you now, no complaint from that village has reached us.”

But villagers say they have been calling for boreholes and clean water for years, and that officials came to “assess” the situation without bringing relief.

Speaking on the mishandling of climate financing in Yobe state, Lukmon of the Global Centre for Climate Mobility, a US-based organisation, found a gap in how the tree-planting schemes were funded. He noted that it is clear some funds channelled to tackle climate shocks in Yobe took the top-down approach, meaning that the funders only engaged the state actors and ignored affected locals.

“I would say the agency of local actors is vital to address climate mobility. You don’t just pass it from top to bottom. You need to work with people on the ground, a bottom-up approach. This is highly intersecting with existing challenges, and one of the ones that we have mentioned is that there is a big problem of ungoverned spaces, a big problem of poor socio-economic realities, and the climate change issue is just exacerbating these existing issues,” he stressed.

A sea of sand

The Yusufari local government is primarily arid, with agricultural activity limited to its southernmost regions. The predominant vegetation is Shrub/Scrub, a low-growing, woody plant community that includes grasses and herbs, adapted to the dry conditions. Trees are sparse, consisting of individual, drought-resistant desert species found in patches within the shrubland. Satellite analysis indicates vegetation covers less than 10 per cent of the land surface.

What villagers describe in Yusufari is visible from space. Satellite data shows that the northern part of Yobe has become one of the most fragile environments in the Sahel.

NASA’s GRACE satellites, which measure underground water, reveal that while some parts of the Sahel region have gained water in recent years, Yusufari has not. Its groundwater levels have stayed flat for two decades. That means wells are not being replenished the way they are in nearby areas.

On the surface, the story is the same. A land cover analysis by the European Space Agency shows that Yobe has about 12 per cent of its land dedicated to cropland, the highest share in the entire corridor. But satellite records reveal that Yobe, unlike its neighbours, is losing much of the farmland that sustains its people. 

Over the past 20 years, vegetation in Borno, Yobe’s neighbour to the east, has actually increased, and even Diffa and Zinder across the border in Niger have shown signs of improvement. Yobe, however, has gone in the opposite direction, with satellite data indicating a loss of nearly a quarter of its vegetation cover in just two decades. This makes the state especially vulnerable to desert-induced land degradation, since most of its population depends directly on farming for food and survival. 

“From above, the view is unmistakable,” said GIS analyst Mansir Muhammed, who led the study. “Yusufari is an island of villages in a sea of sand. In this kind of condition, environmental displacement is just inevitable.”

Pressure across borders

The effects of environmental collapse in areas like Bultu Briya and Yusufari are an exodus. But most are leaving the frying pan for the fire. 

Farmers in Adamawa’s Ganye town are now crossing into Cameroon, where they clash with local communities over land and water resources. In Yobe, villagers who flee into the Niger Republic face hostility from hosts who are also battered by drought. Migration flows in both directions. Cameroonians, fleeing their climate shocks, are moving into Nigeria’s Adamawa state. The influx has strained schools, markets, and water sources. The competition for resources is feeding suspicion between neighbours.

In Niger, desertification is close to a permanent threat, with over 50 per cent of the land showing signs of degradation, according to environmental assessments. A World Food Programme report noted that the country loses nearly 100,000 hectares of productive land to erratic rainfall, rising temperatures, and frequent droughts and floods yearly. The human toll is that about 2.2 million people are acutely food insecure, while an estimated 1.5 million children suffer from moderate acute malnutrition and 400,000 more from severe malnutrition.

Cameroon, too, is feeling the pressure. Communities in the northern regions bordering Nigeria and the Sahel face declining rainfall and increasingly erratic seasons. Competition for water, pasture, and arable land is intensifying and leading to localised conflicts that echo across the porous national borders.

Satellite imagery shows that those who flee Yusufari into neighbouring areas of Chad and northern Cameroon are likely to meet with advancing aridity and competition for land. Data from the Living Atlas’s World Atlas of Desertification, analysed using United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) metrics, classifies the entire Yusufari belt, stretching across Nigeria into Niger, Chad, and Cameroon, as an arid zone highly “susceptible to desertification.” In other words, migration along this corridor often leads people from one fragile landscape into another that is equally at risk.

Even where conditions look slightly better, the relief is often short-lived. Diffa and Zinder in Niger have shown some signs of greening and water recovery, but their soils remain fragile and dry. For instance, satellite imagery indicates that Diffa alone is nearly 80 per cent bare land. And the northern regions in Cameroon struggle with the same aridity as Niger. 

Hostile sky, horrible land

When Abubakar Mohammed of Borno state decided to move to Cameroon, the climate of drought and dune crises was at its peak. The season carried a smell of scorched earth, he said, but beyond that, repeated sounds of gunfire from Boko Haram terrorists were enough reason to leave. Mohammed had been a farmer in Borno all his life. But the rains grew erratic over the years, the lake receded, and the soil cracked under the sun’s relentless glare. Then came Boko Haram.

“They came at night,” Abubakar recalled, his voice low. “We heard the shouting, the shots. They burned the storehouse. We ran with nothing.” His family joined a stream of neighbours heading east, toward the border with Cameroon. The journey was long, the air thick with fear and the uncertainty ahead. The culprit for this mass exodus is a deadly combination of climate and conflict, two intertwined forces setting families apart and homes shattered in the northeastern region of Nigeria.

Abubakar’s forceful migration is a macrocosm of this deadly crisis, but he’s obviously not the only one moving with the violent climatic wind toward the Cameroon border. Farming was once stable back home, but that changed with a noticeable shift in the weather. “The water we had the previous year was not the same this year,” he lamented, pointing to a severe change in rainfall patterns. This water scarcity wasn’t just a natural phenomenon; it was exacerbated by massive tree felling, a direct contributor to desertification and drought. As the land dried up, the competition for water and viable grazing land turned deadly.

This is where the conflict began. The drying farmlands of the north pushed herdsmen south, forcing them to trespass on cultivated lands to feed their cattle. “They will come and put their cattle in people’s farms,” Abubakar said, describing a situation where dialogue was no longer an option. When farmers like him tried to protest, the response was swift and violent. “If we talk, they fight us. And some were killed as a result.” 

The conflict wasn’t a minor inconvenience; it was a full-blown crisis that cost Abubakar his two brothers and his elder brother. This brutal violence, coupled with a breakdown of law and order where “even soldiers know about the situation,” left him and his family with no hope for safety or justice. Their home was burned, and they were forced to flee for their lives. The six-day journey to Cameroon was a desperate escape from a land that no longer supported them.

For 25-year-old Christiana Yusuf, the decision to leave was not made in a single night of violence, but over years of watching the land betray her. In Adamawa State, her small plot had once yielded enough maize to feed her children and sell at the market. But the rains had shifted, arriving late and ending early. When they did come, they came in torrents, washing away seedlings in muddy floods.

“First the drought, then the floods,” she said. “We could not plant in time. We could not harvest enough. And then the fighters came.”

The Boko Haram fighters turned already fragile livelihoods into impossible ones. Markets closed. Roads became dangerous. Even tending to a field became a gamble with life. By the time Abubakar and Christiana reached the Cameroonian frontier, they were part of a much larger exodus. In the Far North Region of Cameroon, local authorities and aid agencies were already struggling to cope with the influx. Many new arrivals came from Nigeria’s Borno, Adamawa, and Yobe states, areas hit hardest by the twin crises of climate and conflict.

In Cameroonian villages like Fotokol and Kousseri, Nigerian families found shelter in makeshift camps or with host communities. But the welcome, though warm, was strained. “We share what we have,” said a Cameroonian farmer interviewed by aid workers, “but the land is not enough for all of us now.”

Now in a camp in Cameroon, Christiana still clings to her identity as a farmer, growing small patches of maize and onions. “My body is used to farming,” she said. Even in a new country, the scars of climate-induced conflict and loss of livelihood run deep. Abubakar learned to live in the camps with ration cards and water queues. Christiana tried to keep her children in school, but classrooms were overcrowded, with few teachers. The host communities, affected by erratic rains and climate disruptions, struggled to absorb the newcomers. Back home, competition for land, water, and grazing intensified. In some areas, especially in Yobe state, disputes between farmers and herders, fueled by climate-driven scarcity, erupted into violence, displacing even more people.

We spoke of scores of Nigerians who fled to Cameroon, especially in the Adamawa and Far North regions. All of them echoed one fact: The twin forces of climate and conflict driving them away from home persist. Although their host communities might be hostile to them, they said, going back home is never an option. For both Abubakar and Christiana, Cameroon was not an end, but a pause. They dream of returning to Nigeria, to a land that can once again sustain them. But they know that return is a dangerous fantasy without peace and a climate they can depend on.

“I want to go home,” Abubakar said, “but home must be safe. And the land must live again.”

Until then, they will remain among the thousands whose lives have been reshaped by the collision of two forces, one born of human conflict and the other of a changing planet. In the Lake Chad Basin, neither shows signs of relenting.

From frying pan to fire

Interestingly, the Niger Republic is both a transport hub and a destination for many migrants fleeing climate hostility in northeastern Nigeria. When most locals from Nigeria flee to Niger, they find the place not quite different; the climate shocks in the country terrify its citizens, just as in Yobe, Borno or Adamawa. While many have resorted to starting their lives all over again in Niger, others, like Sani, will only stop where the grass is greener. Sani would stay for a few months in Niger before finding his route to Libya, through Agadez. His reason? “Niger’s extreme weather is not any better.”

Many young Nigerian climate migrants have ventured into illegal gold mining in the Djado area of Nthe iger Republic. They would labour for days under the hellish weather before touching a gold cut. The terrain is hazardous, as terrorists exploit it, and host communities are not exactly welcoming. Water resources are the bone of contention, even on the Djado mining site. In rural communities, water is scarce, just as in villages in the Yusufari axis of Yobe state. This condition puts migrants in a tight situation, competing with local Nigeriens for limited resources. 

“We were working in atrocious conditions,” said Mahamadou Ibrahim, a local miner from the Maradi region, who claimed to have worked with dozens of Nigerian climate migrants on the Djado gold site. “I’ve never seen a site as difficult as Djado.” According to him, the main difficulty was the lack of water. Najib Harouna, another miner in Djado, described the situation to our correspondent: “First of all, you have no shelter. These are makeshift sheds, built with straw reinforced with plastic.  If it rains, all the rain pours down on you, and you can always hear gunfire in the vicinity. And then, there are the abuse and exploitation.

“Some well owners take people to drive them into the bush, do a week or two weeks digging, if you haven’t found anything, you can’t leave, unless you pay them what they spent on you.”

The gruelling conditions of working on the Djado mining site forced Sani to Libya, but when he got there, a more appalling situation brought him back to his home country. But there is more to the danger of moving to another man’s land in the name of climate hazards: continual communal clashes.

Locals in the Niger Republic told our correspondent that they often brawl with Nigerians seeking greener pastures over land and water resources. Ironically, Nigerian climate migrants are moving to communities in Niger facing similar issues to what pushed them beyond borders. What the locals told HumAngle matched a 2021 study by the International Organisation for Migration on how climate change is driving internal migration within towns in the Niger Republic and even beyond the country’s borders.

IOM’s investigators interviewed over 350 rural households in Niger and 147 internal climate migrants who had moved from different areas to Niamey. The study showed that rising temperatures (75.5 per cent), droughts (63.9 per cent), and strong winds (34.6 per cent) are the climatic drivers of forced displacements and migrations in the country.

“85 per cent of the population of Niger depends on the environment for their livelihood. Unfortunately, environmental and climate shocks such as droughts, floods, wildfires, erratic rainfall, and desertification are intensifying and impacting the livelihoods of communities. This is causing a growing number of people to leave their homes,” said Barbara Rijks, IOM Chief of Mission in Niger.

Way forward through COP

Sahelian states have been spotlighted as hotspots for extreme climate crises. During COP29 in Baku, African leaders tried to negotiate immediate climate financing to contain the region’s hostile climate shocks and environmental setbacks. Although a New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) was established to raise $300 billion annually by 2035, the conference failed to deliver effective mechanisms to support the Sahel in combating climate hostility.

According to UNHCR, over 129.9 million people are forcibly displaced worldwide, with the Sahel contributing significantly due to compounding climate shocks and governance failures. The report noted how weak institutions, corruption, and limited capacity to manage conflict have hindered effective climate response, exacerbating forced migration and instability. Climate analysts reviewing the outcome of COP29 have urged the summit to prioritise African-led resilience strategies and transboundary climate adaptation risks (TCARs). Ahead of COP30 in Belém, Brazil, the analyst said the stakes for the Sahel are higher than ever, as African leaders call for binding standards for transparent governance and inclusive climate finance.

Climate mobility expert Lukmon said COP30 must confront the widening climate reality gap by scaling adaptation and financing resilience using a bottom-up approach. For the Sahel, the expert noted, this means investing in community-led solutions, strengthening governance frameworks, and ensuring that climate action translates into tangible protection for those most at risk.

“At the core of COP is the ability to discuss various aspects of climate change and forge partnerships. It is crucial to highlight that human mobility in the context of climate change is a growing reality, encompassing more than just forced displacement. Those of us working in this space prefer the term ‘mobility’over ‘migration’ to address related issues, including planned relocation,” he said.

Dorcas Ekupe and Amma Mousa contributed cross-border reporting/research. Mansir Muhammed analysed satellite images and illustrated maps. Satellite imagery was sourced from Google Earth Pro.

This story was supported by the Pulitzer Centre.

The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) is “irreplaceable” and “indispensable” – not just for Gaza and the occupied West Bank but for the entire region.

That was the message several top diplomats stressed on Thursday at the UN General Assembly as they pleaded for political and financial support for the agency.

“UNRWA is a force for stability in the most unstable region of the world,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said at a meeting held on the sidelines of the summit.

“UNRWA is vital to any prospects of peace and stability in the region. I urge you to do all you can to support its work.”

The agency’s role has been under the microscope since the outbreak of Israel’s war in Gaza in October 2023.

As bombing campaigns and a ground invasion displaced thousands of Palestinians, UNRWA became one of the main distributors of aid in the territory.

But with the United States – once UNRWA’s largest donor – cutting off funding, the UN agency is now facing a major financial crisis with a budget deficit of $200m.

On Thursday, Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi warned that “UNRWA is collapsing”.

“I do not have to make the case for UNRWA. The starving children of Gaza so painfully make that case,” Safadi said.

“The mothers who are watching their infants fade before their eyes make the case for UNRWA. The 600,000 or more students in Gaza, who have not gone to school for two years, make the case for UNRWA.”

The UN organisation provides healthcare, education, humanitarian aid and cash assistance to millions of Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territory and across the Middle East.

The agency was founded in 1949 to look after the needs of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees who were ethnically cleansed from their towns during the establishment of the state of Israel a year earlier.

Since then, UNRWA has been providing services to displaced Palestinians and their descendants, who remain stateless refugees.

For years, successive Israeli governments have pushed to delegitimise UNRWA, accusing it of distributing anti-Semitic materials and having ties to armed groups.

But critics have argued that efforts to undermine UNRWA are designed to erase the plight of Palestinian refugees who seek to return to their homes in modern-day Israel.

In the wake of the Hamas-led attack against Israel on October 7, 2023, pressure on UNRWA increased.

Israel falsely claimed that a significant number of UNRWA employees participated in the attack, despite providing no credible evidence.

That led several countries to suspend funding for the agency. While many subsequently restored the aid to UNRWA, the US has not.

At Thursday’s meeting, which aimed to rally international support for UNRWA, Safadi explained that the agency had been facing a “political assassination campaign” long before October 2023.

He also paid tribute to the sacrifices of UNRWA staff members, hundreds of whom have been killed since Israel’s war on Gaza began.

“And yet, UNRWA persists. It perseveres,” the Jordanian diplomat said.

“UNRWA staff, who bury their kin, leave and try to give help to others in need in Gaza. That’s why we must save. That’s why we say UNRWA is indispensable. Its role is irreplaceable.”

For his part, Brazil’s Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira decried the push to discredit UNRWA.

“Legal restrictions on UNRWA operations and the closure of UNRWA offices and facilities in East Jerusalem are part of a troubling pattern of obstruction and violence carried out by the Israeli government,” he said.

“Equally concerning are attempts to delegitimise UNRWA through disinformation campaigns, defamation, legal harassment [and] initiatives aimed at replacing the agency with other humanitarian actors in Gaza with mechanisms that militarise aid distribution.”

In recent months, Israel has passed laws to ban the agency from the country and prohibit contact with it.

That, in turn, has hampered UNRWA’s operations in occupied East Jerusalem, which has been annexed by Israel.

Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares announced his country will provide 10 million euros ($11.66m) to the agency, bringing the sum that Madrid has donated to UNRWA since the start of the war to about 60 million euros ($70m).

“The needs are immense, and we need to stand by the agency and provide the financial support that it requires to operate,” Albares said.

He added that countries that do not like the UNRWA works should push for the establishment of a Palestinian state that would take on UNRWA’s tasks and take care of its own people.

UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said that, despite the dire situation on the ground in Gaza, the agency remains operational in the territory.

“We still have 12,000 staff,” he said. “They are still – on a daily basis and against all odds – providing health services, doing nutritional screening for the children, ensuring access to clean water, managing shelters, [and] providing – whenever it is possible – some psychosocial support to the children.”

China’s new target for cutting greenhouse-gas emissions has been branded “disappointing” and “underwhelming” by climate experts, who warn the pledge falls far short of the action needed to avert climate catastrophe.

But the goal also raised hopes that China, which until now has only promised to stop emissions from rising, may be underpromising the level of cuts it can deliver amid a massive expansion in the country’s renewable energy capacity.

In a video address to the United Nations on Wednesday, Chinese President Xi Jinping said China would lower its emissions by 7-10 percent from their peak by 2035.

It was the first time that China, the world’s biggest polluter, outlined a goal for cutting emissions outright.

Xi, who called the shift away from carbon “the trend of our time”, also pledged to raise the share of non-fossil fuel sources in energy consumption to more than 30 percent, and increase wind and solar capacity sixfold compared with 2020.

While a significant moment in the global fight against climate change at a time when the United States is abandoning efforts to cut emissions, China’s target fails by some distance to align with the goals of the Paris Agreement, said some analysts.

“It’s unfortunately very disappointing: This target will not drive down emissions – it is below what China is likely to achieve already under its current climate policies,” Bill Hare, CEO of Berlin-based policy institute Climate Analytics, told Al Jazeera.

“China can do a lot better than this, and it hardly reflects its highest possible ambition.”

The Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) has estimated that China would need to cut emissions by about 30 percent to be consistent with the Paris accord.

The agreement, adopted by 195 countries in 2015, calls for the rise in the average global temperature to be limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.

China’s actions on climate are viewed as especially critical following the US’s exit from the Paris accord under President Donald Trump, who used his UN speech this week to call the scientific consensus on climate change the “greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world”.

“China’s underwhelming headline target misses a chance to deliver real leadership,” Li Shuo, director of China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute, told Al Jazeera.

“Beijing is choosing to tiptoe forward when science calls for a full sprint. The pledge would, unfortunately, still put the world on a pathway to catastrophic climate impacts.”

Xi’s announcement left key questions about the emissions target unanswered, including how Beijing would define peak emissions.

Many climate experts believe that China’s emissions have already peaked or will do so this year, though some observers caution that the trend has been driven as much by the decline in business activity during the COVID-19 pandemic as the rollout of renewable energy.

China has had a paradoxical influence on global efforts to address climate change.

While responsible for roughly one-third of global emissions, the country is also a leader in green energy.

China produces about 80 percent of the world’s solar panels and 70 percent of its electric cars, according to the International Energy Agency.

The country also manufactures about 60 percent of wind turbines worldwide, according to London-based energy think tank Ember.

At the same time, China has continued to invest heavily in coal.

Last year, construction began on nearly 100 gigawatts (GW) of new or suspended coal power projects, the most in a decade, according to the CREA.

“China’s new pledge clearly falls short of expectations. Despite President Xi’s earlier promise to strictly control new coal power, the country has just approved more projects than at any point in nearly a decade,” Andreas Sieber, the associate director of policy and campaigns at 350.org, told Al Jazeera.

“The targets announced today, which are vague on the base year and conservative on renewables, leave ample room for continued emissions growth from coal-heavy sectors.”

Still, climate experts expressed hope that China’s target could be a signal of more transformative change to come.

While China’s announcement fell short of expectations, Beijing has a tendency to set targets that it can “confidently deliver”, said Yao Zhe, a Beijing-based policy adviser to Greenpeace East Asia.

“What’s hopeful is that the actual decarbonisation of China’s economy is likely to exceed its target on paper,” Yao said in a statement responding to the target, adding that her organisation’s latest analysis showed that emissions from China’s power sector could peak this year.

In a world “increasingly driven by self-interest”, China is in a stronger position than most to spur climate action, the Asia Society’s Li said.

“The country has emerged as a global clean tech superpower, and its dominant role in this sector could enable it to surpass current targets,” he said.

“Over time, this could push China toward a more proactive role on the international stage.”

THIS is the moment a Ukraine naval drone strikes one of Vladimir Putin’s key fuel sites sparking chaos in Russia.

The Salavat factory was hit for the second time in less than a week amid Volodymyr Zelensky’s soaring campaign against Russian oil.

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Footage shows thick black smoke billowing out of the facility as an inferno rages on the ground.

A second explosion, meanwhile, is seen pounding the building.

Locals reported hearing a “loud noise” before flames ravaged the surrounding area.

The Salavat refinery, considered a linchpin in Russia’s oil industry, was last hit on September 18 – causing a “massive explosion”, according to local media.

It’s just one of a number of facilities Ukraine has targeted in recent weeks as it steps up its campaign on Russian energy infrastructure.

The strikes have sparked chaos in Moscow with petrol stations reportedly not able to stockpile fuel.

Widely used petrol – such as Ai 92 and Ai 95 – are often unavailable, according to reports.

One employee at a petrol station in the western Belgorod suggested the oil crisis had reached a tipping point, with stations forced to close “because there was no gasoline”.

She told Reuters: “The station in the neighbouring village also closed, and others simply ran out of gasoline.”

Moscow has been forced to ban fuel exports for six months, sacrificing vital revenue just to stop unrest at home.

Military intelligence expert Philip Ingram MBE previously explained how “Putin’s greatest fear” is “the Russian people rising up.”

Before the invasion, energy exports made up around 40 per cent of the Kremlin’s budget.

Even under sanctions, oil and gas still bring in 30 per cent of Russia’s income.

He showed how Ukraine has zeroed in on this “river of oil money” with pinpoint strikes hundreds of miles inside Russian territory.

Long-range drones have torched colossal refineries, exploded pumping stations and set storage tanks ablaze – systematically dismantling Moscow’s refining capacity.

The campaign has shattered Russia’s aura of invulnerability, exposed its sprawling oil empire as a fatal weakness, and brought the war crashing into the lives of ordinary Russians.

And as Ingram puts it: “It proves that in modern warfare, the most effective battle plans aren’t always about brute force on the tactical frontline, but about finding your enemy’s single point of failure – and striking it again and again with unrelenting precision.”

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It comes as Donald Trump announced in his keynote speech at the UN General Assembly that Ukraine could win back “every inch” of its territory with Russia.

In a major pivot from his previous stance on the three-and-a-half-year conflict, Trump also dismissed Russia’s military strength and mocked its inability to beat Ukraine in just a few days.

Posting on his social media platform Truth Social, Trump said Ukraine “may be able to take back their country in its original form and, who knows, maybe even go further than that”.

Trump’s Vlad-bashing follows months of growing frustration at Putin’s refusal to end the offensive in Ukraine.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov hit back at Trump’s insults, particularly those levelled at the Russian economy.

“The phrase ‘paper tiger’ was used in relation to our economy,” he said.

“Russia is more associated with a bear. And paper bears don’t exist.

“Russia is a real bear.”

Peskov did, however, admit that the Russian economy had faced “tensions”.

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Iraq is advancing several solar power projects as part of a plan to meet its electricity needs.

Iraq is set to open its first industrial-scale solar plant in a vast desert area in Karbala as the government attempts to tackle an electricity crisis that has led to widespread blackouts.

Authorities said the plant, the largest of its kind in Iraq, will be inaugurated on Sunday to eventually produce up to 300 megawatts of electricity at its peak, according to Iraqi media reports.

Tens of thousands of black panels are set out in rows in a huge desert area, spanning some 4,000 dunams (1,000 acres or 400 hectares) in the al-Hur area of Karbala, located southwest of capital Baghdad.

Nasser Karim al-Sudani, head of the national team for solar energy projects in the Iraqi prime minister’s office, said another project under construction in Babil province will have a capacity of 225 megawatts, and work will also begin soon on a 1,000-megawatt project in the southern province of Basra.

قطاع الطاقة 🇮🇶 | الاول في العراق.. صحراء محافظة كربلاء المقدسة تكتسي بالألواح الشمسية مع تواصل مشروع انشاء محطة كهرباء للطاقة الشمسية ستولد 300 ميغاواط من الطاقة الكهربائية pic.twitter.com/ZTn9MwArat

— مشاريع العراق – Iraq projects (@IraqProjects) July 29, 2025

Translation: The first in Iraq. The desert of the holy Karbala Governorate is covered with solar panels as the project to establish a solar power plant continues, which will generate 300 megawatts of electrical energy.

The projects are part of a larger vision to account for a portion of Iraq’s electricity needs using large-scale solar power plants that could help ease the electricity crisis while also reducing the negative environmental impact of gas emissions.

Deputy Minister of Electricity Adel Karim said Iraq has solar projects with a combined capacity of 12,500 megawatts either being implemented, in the approval process, or under negotiation. Barring the semi-autonomous northern Kurdistan region of Iraq, the projects could potentially supply up to 20 percent of Iraq’s total electricity demand, according to the official.

But despite its massive oil and gas resources, Iraq continues to face – as it has for decades – electricity shortages rooted in war, corruption and mismanagement.

Nationwide electricity consumption peaked at about 55,000 megawatts this summer as scorching temperatures exceeded 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit) in some areas.

This is while deputy minister Karim said the country is now producing up to 28,000 megawatts of electricity, including about 8,000 megawatts fuelled by natural gas imported from neighbouring Iran and fed to power plants in Iraq.

The critical supplies from Iran have faced many challenges over the years as well, particularly from unilateral sanctions imposed by the United States in an effort to pressure Tehran and squeeze its revenue streams amid a standoff over Iran’s nuclear programme and military capabilities.

In March, Washington announced it was ending a sanctions waiver that allowed Iraq to directly purchase electricity from Iran, which needed to be renewed every 120 days. The US has, for now, left another waiver in place that lets Iraq buy Iranian natural gas to feed its power plants.

Iran is also facing multiple crises, including massive energy shortages, an issue that has affected its exports to Iraq.

Last year’s record heat led to prolonged droughts and extreme floods across the globe.

Climate change is making the Earth’s water cycle increasingly erratic, resulting in extreme swings between deluge and drought across the world, the United Nations has warned.

The UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said in a report released on Thursday that the global water cycle was becoming ever more unpredictable, with shrinking glaciers, droughts, unbalanced river basins and severe floods wreaking havoc.

“The world’s water resources are under growing pressure and, at the same time, more extreme water-related hazards are having an increasing impact on lives and livelihoods,” WMO chief Celeste Saulo said in a statement accompanying the release of the annual State of Global Water Resources report.

The international group of scientists assessed freshwater availability and water storage across the world, including lakes, river flow, groundwater, soil moisture, snow cover and ice melt.

Last year was the hottest on record, leading to prolonged droughts in northern parts of South America, the Amazon Basin and Southern Africa.

Parts of Central Africa, Europe and Asia, meanwhile, were dealing with wetter weather than usual, being hit with devastating floods or deadly storms, said the report.

At a global level, WMO said, 2024 was the sixth consecutive year where there had been a “clear imbalance” in the world’s river basins.

“Two-thirds have too much or too little water – reflecting the increasingly erratic hydrological cycle,” it said.

While the world has natural cycles of climate variability from year to year, long-term trends outlined in the report indicate that the water cycle, at a global scale, is accelerating.

Stefan Uhlenbrook, WMO director of hydrology in the water and cryosphere division, said scientists feel it is “increasingly difficult to predict”.

“It’s more erratic, so either too much or too low on average flow per year,” he said.

As global warming drives higher global temperatures, the atmosphere can hold more water, leading either to longer dry periods or more intense rainfall.

Uhlenbrook said: “The climate changing is everything changing, and that has an impact on the water cycle dynamics.”

The WMO also flagged how the water quality in vital lakes was declining due to warmer weather, and glaciers shrank across all regions for the third year in a row.

The meltwater had added about 1.2mm to the global sea level in a single year, contributing to flooding risk for hundreds of millions of people living in coastal zones, the report warned.

The WMO called for more monitoring and data sharing across the board.

“Understanding and quantifying water resources and hydrological extremes … is critical for managing risks,” the report said, flagging the dangers of droughts, floods and glacier loss.

Lost decades

WE are now in a new cost of living crisis — or perhaps we never really escaped the first one.

A dismal report yesterday revealed family incomes are £20,000 less than they should have been had economic growth in the UK not flatlined after 2005.

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It means Brit households have effectively lived through two lost economic decades.

Covid, the credit crunch, war in Europe and energy price shocks were hammer blows.

But inflation is now firmly entrenched in the economy thanks to Rachel Reeves’s policies, which have directly driven up prices.

Her National Insurance rise has left hard-pushed customers facing bigger bills at the tills, as shops were forced to pass on huge extra costs.

Unnecessary Net Zero measures only add to the misery.

The irony is that yesterday’s report on living standards was by the Left-leaning Resolution Foundation.

Many of its former members are now sitting in Downing Street as key advisers to the Prime Minister and Treasury.

Yet most of their ideas to fix the economy are based on seizing ordinary people’s hard-earned savings, property taxes and taxing the rich so highly they flee the country.

Big business is already warning of the folly of this outdated 1970s-style approach.

Don’t do it, Chancellor.

Action, not talk

NEW Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood says she will not allow migrants to avoid deportation through bogus last minute claims that they are the victims of modern slavery.

She insists these “vexatious” appeals make a mockery of our laws.

Of course, she is right that migrants are gaming a broken asylum system.

But for all her tough talk, how exactly does she plan to do it?

Successive Home Secretaries have promised to do “whatever it takes” to secure our borders.

All have foundered on the immovable rock that is European human rights laws.

Those same laws which are defended to the hilt by her cabinet colleague, Attorney General Lord Hermer.

We wish Ms Mahmood well. But it’s actions that count.

Hope & glory

FOR all the talk of trade deals and tariffs worth billions there is one British institution that remains priceless.

Our Royal Family — such a vital asset to this country — once again totally charmed the world’s most powerful man, Donald Trump.

Amid the doom and gloom it’s good to remember that no-one does pomp and pageantry quite like us Brits.

Ever since a massive immigration raid on a Hyundai manufacturing site swept up nearly 500 workers in southeast Georgia this month, Rosie Harrison said her organization’s phones have been ringing nonstop with panicked families in need of help.

“We have individuals returning calls every day, but the list doesn’t end,” Harrison said. She runs a nonprofit called Grow Initiative that connects low-income families — immigrant and nonimmigrant alike — with food, housing and educational resources.

Since the raid, Harrison said, “families are experiencing a new level of crisis.”

A majority of the 475 people who were detained in the workplace raid — which U.S. officials have called the largest in two decades — were Korean and have returned to South Korea. But lawyers and social workers say many of the non-Korean immigrants ensnared in the crackdown remain in legal limbo or are otherwise unaccounted for.

As the raid began the morning of Sept. 4, workers almost immediately started calling Migrant Equity Southeast, a local nonprofit that connects immigrants with legal and financial resources. The small organization of approximately 15 employees fielded calls regarding people from Mexico, Guatemala, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador and Venezuela, spokesperson Vanessa Contreras said.

Throughout the day, people described federal agents taking cellphones from workers and putting them in long lines, Contreras said. Some workers hid for hours to avoid capture in air ducts or remote areas of the sprawling property. The Department of Justice said some hid in a nearby sewage pond.

People off-site called the organization frantically seeking the whereabouts of loved ones who worked at the plant and were suddenly unreachable.

Like many of the Koreans who were working there, advocates and lawyers representing the non-Korean workers caught up in the raid say that some who were detained had legal authorization to work in the United States.

Neither the Department of Homeland Security nor Immigration and Customs Enforcement responded to emailed requests for comment Friday. It is not clear how many people detained during the raid remain in custody.

Atlanta-based attorney Charles Kuck, who represents both Korean and non-Korean workers who were detained, said two of his clients were legally working under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA, which was created under President Obama. One had been released and “should have never been arrested,” he said, while the other was still being held because he was recently charged with driving under the influence.

Another of Kuck’s clients was in the process of seeking asylum, he said, and had the same documents and job as her husband, who was not arrested.

Some even had valid Georgia driver’s licenses, which aren’t available to people in the country illegally, said Rosario Palacios, who has been assisting Migrant Equity Southeast. Some families who called the organization were left without access to transportation because the person who had been detained was the only one who could drive.

“It’s hard to say how they chose who they were going to release and who they were going to take into custody,” Palacios said, adding that some who were arrested didn’t have a so-called alien identification number and were still unaccounted for.

Kuck said the raid is an indication of how far reaching the Trump administration crackdown is, which officials claim is targeting only criminals.

“The redefinition of the word ‘criminal’ to include everybody who is not a citizen, and even some that are, is the problem here,” Kuck said.

Many of the families who called Harrison’s initiative said their detained relatives were the sole breadwinners in the household, leaving them desperate for basics like baby formula and food.

The financial impact of the raid at the construction site for a battery factory that will be operated by HL-GA Battery Co. was compounded by the fact that another large employer in the area — International Paper Co. — is closing at the end of the month, laying off 800 more workers, Harrison said.

Growth Initiative doesn’t check immigration status, Harrison said, but almost all families who have reached out to her have said that their detained loved ones had legal authorization to work in the United States, leaving many confused about why their relative was taken into custody.

“The worst phone calls are the ones where you have children crying, screaming, ‘Where is my mom?’” Harrison said.

Riddle writes for the Associated Press. R

Activists from 40 countries sail from Tunisia to defy Israel’s blockade and deliver aid to Gaza.

An international convoy of boats, the Global Sumud Flotilla (GSF), has set sail from Tunisia, aiming to defy Israel’s siege on Gaza and deliver humanitarian aid.

The GSF, which departed Bizerte Port on Saturday, includes more than 40 vessels carrying between 500 and 700 activists from more than 40 countries, according to Anadolu.

Participants say they are determined to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza.

Among those joining is Franco-Palestinian lawmaker Rima Hassan, a member of the French National Assembly, who announced her participation after boarding in Tunisia.

“Our governments are responsible for the continuation of the genocide in Gaza,” Hassan wrote on X, accusing European leaders of silence in the face of Israeli attacks on aid convoys. In June, she joined another Gaza-bound boat that Israeli forces seized in international waters.

he flotilla is supported by prominent activists, including Swedish climate campaigner Greta Thunberg, who has long been vilified by Israeli officials for her solidarity with Palestinians.

The flotilla reported this week that two of its ships – the Family, which had members of the steering committee on board, and the Alma – were attacked while anchored near Tunis.

Activists suspect Israeli involvement, noting that one of the vessels was struck by a drone.

Tunisia’s Ministry of the Interior confirmed a “premeditated aggression” and said an investigation had been launched.

Despite the attacks, flotilla organisers insist they will press ahead. “Faced with this inaction, I am joining this citizens’ initiative, which is the largest humanitarian maritime convoy ever undertaken,” Hassan said.

History of intervention

This is not the first time Israel has moved to stop such missions.

In early June, Israeli naval forces intercepted the Madleen ship in international waters, seizing its aid supplies and detaining the crew of 12 activists. Another vessel, the Conscience, was struck by drones in May near Maltese waters, leaving it unable to continue its journey.

Organisers say the GSF – named after the Arabic word for resilience – represents one of the boldest challenges yet to Israel’s control of Gaza’s coastline.

The attempt comes as the United Nations warns of famine in Gaza, with more than half a million people facing catastrophic hunger.

PARIS — Legislators toppled France’s government in a confidence vote on Monday, a new crisis for Europe’s second-largest economy that obliges President Emmanuel Macron to search for a fourth prime minister in 12 months.

Prime Minister François Bayrou was ousted overwhelmingly in a 364-194 vote against him. Bayrou paid the price for what appeared to be a staggering political miscalculation, gambling that lawmakers would back his view that France must slash public spending to repair its debts. Instead, they seized on the vote that Bayrou called to gang up against the 74-year-old centrist who was appointed by Macron last December.

The demise of Bayrou’s short-lived minority government — now constitutionally obliged to submit its resignation to Macron after just under nine months in office — heralds renewed uncertainty and a risk of prolonged legislative deadlock for France as it wrestles with pressing challenges, including budget difficulties and, internationally, wars in Ukraine and Gaza and the shifting priorities of President Trump.

Hunt for a replacement

Although Macron had two weeks to prepare for the government collapse after Bayrou announced in August that he’d seek a confidence vote on his unpopular budget plans, no clear front-runner has emerged as a likely successor.

After Gabriel Attal’s departure as prime minister in September 2024, followed by former Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier’s ouster by parliament in December and Bayrou now ousted, too, Macron again faces an arduous hunt for a replacement to build consensus in the parliament’s lower house that is stacked with opponents of the French leader.

As president, Macron will continue to hold substantial powers over foreign policy and European affairs and remain the commander in chief of the nuclear-armed military. But domestically, the 47-year-old president’s ambitions are increasingly facing ruin.

The root of the latest government collapse was Macron’s stunning decision to dissolve the National Assembly in June 2024, triggering a legislative election that the French leader hoped would strengthen the hand of his pro-European centrist alliance. But the gamble backfired, producing a splintered legislature with no dominant political bloc in power for the first time in France’s modern republic.

Shorn of a workable majority, his minority governments have since lurched from crisis to crisis, surviving on the whim of opposing political blocs on the left and far-right that don’t have enough seats to govern themselves but can, when they team up, topple Macron’s choices.

Bayrou’s gamble

Bayrou, too, rolled the dice by calling the confidence vote, a decision that quickly backfired on the political veteran as left-wing and far-right legislators seized the opportunity to oust his government, seeking to increase pressure on Macron.

Bayrou conceded in his last speech as prime minister to the National Assembly that putting his fate on the line was risky. But he said that France’s debt crisis compelled him to seek legislative support for remedies, in the face of what he called “a silent, underground, invisible, and unbearable hemorrhage” of excessive public borrowing.

“The greatest risk was to not take one, to let things go on without changing anything, to go on doing politics as usual,” he said. “Submission to debt is like submission through military force. Dominated by weapons, or dominated by our creditors, because of a debt that is submerging us — in both cases, we lose our freedom.”

At the end of the first quarter of 2025, France’s public debt stood at 3.346 trillion euros, or 114% of gross domestic product. Debt servicing remains a major budget item, accounting for around 7% of state spending.

Le Pen wants new election

The 577-seat National Assembly interrupted its summer recess to convene for the extraordinary session of high political drama. Macron’s opponents worked to leverage the crisis to push for a new legislative election, pressure for Macron’s departure or jostle for posts in the next government.

Far-right leader Marine Le Pen called for Macron to again dissolve the National Assembly, seemingly confident that her National Rally party and its allies would win a majority in another snap legislative election, positioning it to form a new government.

“A big country like France cannot live with a paper government, especially in a tormented and dangerous world,” she said in the National Assembly.

Pressing problems

In a last-ditch effort to save his job before the vote, Bayrou warned that France is risking its future and its influence by racking up trillions in state debts that are “submerging us,” pleading for belt-tightening.

Macron’s chosen successor will operate in the same precarious environment and face the same pressing budget problems that dogged Bayrou and his predecessors. Macron himself has vowed to stay in office until the end of his term, but risks becoming a lame duck domestically if political paralysis continues.

Under the French political system, the prime minister is appointed by the president, accountable to the parliament and is in charge of implementing domestic policy, notably economic measures.

Arguing that sharp cuts are needed to repair public finances, Bayrou had proposed to cut $51 billion in spending in 2026, after France’s deficit hit 5.8% of GDP last year, way above the official EU target of 3%.

He painted a dramatic picture of the European Union’s No. 2 economy becoming beholden to foreign creditors and addicted to living beyond its means. He castigated opponents in the National Assembly who teamed up against his minority government despite their own sharp political differences.

“You have the power to overthrow the government, but you do not have the power to erase reality,” Bayrou said. “Reality will remain inexorable. Spending will continue to increase and the debt burden — already unbearable — will grow heavier and more costly.”

Leicester writes for the Associated Press.

The California Department of Justice will sue the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and its sheriff, Robert Luna, for what Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta called a “humanitarian crisis” inside of the county jails.

Inmates are housed in unsafe, dirty facilities infested with roaches and rats, Bonta said in a news conference Monday, and lack basic access to clean water and edible food. “More alarming, people are dying,” he said.

There have been over 205 in-custody deaths in four years, Bonta said, with 40% caused by suicide, homicides and overdoses. He called for comprehensive reform, but said the county forced his hand by refusing to comply.

“I’d prefer collaboration over litigation, but the county has left us with no choice, so litigation it is,” he said.

Bonta called for L.A. County and the sheriff’s department to provide inmates with adequate medical, dental and mental health care, protect them from harm, provide safe and humane confinement conditions. He also called on jail officials to better accommodate the needs of disabled inmates and those with limited English proficiency.

Bonta painted a dark portrait of L.A. County’s jails, describing filthy conditions, vermin and insect infestations, a lack of clean water and moldy and spoiled food. He said prisoners face difficulty obtaining basic hygiene items and are not permitted to spend enough time outside of their cells.

L.A. County, which houses the largest jail system in the country, has long been criticized for poor conditions. As it has expanded to hold around 13,000 people on any given day, decades — perhaps a century — of mistreatment and overcrowding have been documented.

The system lost a federal lawsuit in 1978 after decades of dirty, mold-ridden and overcrowded jails prompted inmates to fight back through the courts, and frequently faces suits alleging it fails to provide proper food, water and shelter.

The state’s lawsuit comes amid a years-long struggle to close and replace Men’s Central Jail in downtown Los Angeles, from which inspectors regularly document poor conditions: mold, mildew, insufficient food and water and, more recently, a report last year that said jailers were too busy watching an “explicit video” to notice a noose hung inside a cell.

“In June 2024, the Sybil Brand Commission reported that multiple dorms at Men’s Central were overcrowded with broken toilets, some containing feces that could not be flushed; a urinal that caused ‘effluence to emerge through the mid-floor drain’ when flushed; and ceilings that had been painted over to cover mold,” Bonta’s office wrote in its complaint.

In addition to Luna and the sheriff’s department, the county Department of Health Services, Correctional Health Services and its director, Timothy Belavich, were also named as defendants.

The lawsuit decried the “dilapidated physical condition of the facility and the numerous instances of violence and death within its walls.” It went on to explain that the county Board of Supervisors voted to close the chronically overcrowded Men’s Central Jail twice, including in 2020.

The sheriff’s department has said it would be difficult to close the jail because of the high volume of inmate admissions and lack of viable alternatives.

But in-custody deaths this year are on track for what Bonta’s office described as at least a 20-year high with 36 reported so far, or about one a week, according to the county’s website.

Inmates have been known to set fires in rooms with no smoke alarms — not to cause mischief, but to cook and supplement cold, sometimes inedible meals.

Some inmates — many of whom have been arrested recently and have not been convicted of crimes — are left to sleep on urine-soaked floors with trash bags as blankets and no access to medications and working plumbing. A 2022 lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union called the conditions “medieval.”

“The LASD jails,” the state attorney general’s office wrote in the complaint, “have a longstanding history of deplorable conditions and constitutional violations.”