International

Climate plans would allow up to 2.6C of global warming: UN

Photo: Acnur

| By AFP | Patrick Galey |

Country climate pledges leave the world on track to heat by as much as 2.6 degrees Celsius this century, the United Nations said on Wednesday, warning that emissions must fall 45 percent this decade to limit disastrous global warming.

The United Nations Environment Programme, in its annual Emissions Gap report, found that updated national promises since last year’s COP26 summit in Glasgow would only shave less than one percent off global greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.

The world has warmed nearly 1.2C since the start of the Industrial Revolution and already faces increasingly ferocious climate-enhanced weather extremes like heatwaves, storms and floods.

The Emissions Gap report examines the difference between the planet-heating pollution that will still be released under countries’ decarbonisation plans and what science says is needed to keep to the Paris Agreement goal of limiting warming to between 1.5-2.0C.

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A day after the UN’s climate change agency said governments were still doing “nowhere near” enough to keep global heating to 1.5C, UNEP found progress on emissions cutting had been “woefully inadequate”.

It said that additional pledges made since the COP26 summit in Glasgow last year would not even cut emissions by one percent by 2030.

Failure left the world “hurtling towards” a temperature rise far in excess of the Paris goals, it added.

“It’s another year squandered in terms of actually doing something about the problem,” the report’s lead author, Anne Olhoff, told AFP.

“That’s not to say that all nations have not taken this seriously. But from a global perspective, it’s definitely very far from adequate.”

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The report found that in order for temperature rises to be capped at 2C, emissions would need to fall 30 percent faster by 2030 than envisioned under countries’ most up-to-date plans.

To limit heating to 1.5C, the gap is 45 percent.

Under the 2015 Paris deal, countries are required to submit ever deeper emission cutting plans, known as Nationally Determined Contributions, or NDCs.

UNEP found that “unconditional” NDCs — which countries plan regardless of external support — would probably lead to Earth’s average temperature rising by 2.6C by 2100. Scientists warn that level would be catastrophic for humanity and for nature.

Conditional NDCs — which rely on international funding to achieve — would probably lead to a 2.4C temperature rise this century, it said.

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All told, current plans are likely to see a five- to 10-percent reduction in emissions by 2030 — a far cry from the drop of nearly 50 percent required for 1.5C.

‘Missed opportunity’

UNEP said that in 2020, carbon pollution fell more than seven percent, largely thanks to Covid-19 lockdowns and travel restrictions. A fall of that magnitude is needed every year this decade to stay on track for 1.5C.

But it said greenhouse gas emissions in 2021 could end up being the highest on record — some 52.8 billion tonnes — because countries threw themselves into fossil-fuelled pandemic recoveries.

“We see a full bounce-back in emissions after Covid,” said Olhoff.

“It’s a missed opportunity in terms of utilising these unprecedented recovery funds to accelerate a green transition.”

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Separately, the International Energy Agency said on Thursday it believed global energy emissions would peak in 2025 as surging oil and gas prices spurred a drive to renewables.

But UNEP said that while the switch to greener tech in the power sector was accelerating, several industries were lagging behind in the push towards net-zero emissions.

For example, in the food sector, which is responsible for around a third of emissions, dietary changes and cutting food loss could help reduce the sector’s footprint by more than 30 percent by 2050.

‘Avoid as much damage as possible’

Olhoff said the financial sector was “part of the problem rather than part of the solution” to climate change, with hundreds of billions funnelled annually to fossil fuel projects.

UNEP suggested the introduction of an effective carbon price under a global cap and trade system that would push investors to consider the environmental impact of their portfolios.

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It also called for central banks to make more funds available and help create global low-carbon technology markets.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said Thursday’s report showed the world “cannot afford any more greenwashing”.

“Commitments to net zero are worth zero without the plans, policies and actions to back it up,” he said in a video message.

Last year the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said that the world was likely to reach and even exceed 1.5C within decades, no matter how quickly emissions fall in the short term.

Olhoff said that for every year that passed without significant emissions cuts, 1.5C was getting “less realistic and less feasible”.

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But she insisted that governments needed to accelerate the green transition to avoid as much damage as possible.

“The more we learn, it’s absolutely clear that we should aim to get (temperature rises) as low as possible,” Olhoff said.

“Even if that means 1.6C instead of 1.5C, that’s definitely better than 2C degrees, just as 1.7C is worse than 1.6C.”

International

Three U.S. Executions Set for Same Day as Trump Pushes to Expand Death Penalty

The death penalty has been abolished in 23 of the 50 U.S. states, while three others —California, Oregon and Pennsylvania— currently have moratoriums in place.

The United States is set to carry out three executions on the same day, a rare occurrence that has not happened since 2010, according to the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center.

President Donald Trump has sought to expand the use of capital punishment for what he describes as “the most heinous crimes.” In April, the Department of Justice proposed expanding execution methods to include firing squads, lethal gas and electrocution.

Tennessee is scheduled to execute Anthony Darrell Dugard Hines, 66, on Thursday. He was sentenced to death for the 1985 murder of a woman, according to local media.

In Oklahoma, Carlos Cuesta-Rodríguez, 70, is scheduled to be executed for a 2003 murder.

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Meanwhile, Alabama plans to execute Jeremy Williams, 42, who was sentenced to death for the rape and murder of a five-year-old girl.

The United States carried out 47 executions in 2025, the highest number since 2009, when 52 executions were recorded.

Florida conducted the largest number of executions last year, with 19, followed by Alabama, South Carolina and Texas, with five each.

Of the executions carried out in 2025, 39 were conducted by lethal injection. Three were carried out by firing squad and five through nitrogen hypoxia, a method that involves forcing nitrogen gas into a face mask, depriving the prisoner of oxygen.

The United Nations has condemned nitrogen gas as a cruel and inhumane method of capital punishment.

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International

Colombia Earthquake Death Toll Reaches 265 as Rescue Teams Race Against Time

The 7.4-magnitude earthquake that struck Colombia on Monday, the strongest to hit the country this century, has so far left 265 people dead and around 3,500 injured.

In Cali, Pereira and other cities in western Colombia, rescue teams are working around the clock as they search for survivors. The first 72 hours following the earthquake will be reached at 7:34 a.m. local time (12:34 GMT), a critical window for rescue efforts as the chances of finding survivors generally decline significantly after that point.

Among those anxiously awaiting news is Valeria Cardona, a 26-year-old student searching for two of her cousins in Cali.

“We have some suspicions about their location, but there are no signs of life,” she said. “Hope is the last thing you lose, but we are anxious about receiving news we don’t want to hear.”

A team of members from the Topos Aztecas, the renowned Mexican volunteer rescue group, has also arrived in Cali to join the search. The rescuers had been working in neighboring Venezuela, where a double earthquake on June 24 left more than 6,000 people dead.

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“We all came from Venezuela, from La Guaira. The 41 days we spent working there made us stronger because we overcame hunger, pain and sleepless nights,” said Héctor Méndez, 80, president of Topos Aztecas.

Méndez encouraged those affected by the disaster not to lose hope and emphasized the commitment required from rescue teams during an emergency.

“Do not feel like victims. This is not an office or workshop schedule. This is real life, where the best part of the human spirit emerges. These are things of nature that happen,” he said.

International

German Authorities Investigate More Than 100 New Cases Against Convicted Nurse

German authorities announced Monday that they are investigating more than 100 additional cases involving a nurse who was sentenced to life in prison in November for the murder of 10 patients.

The man, who was 44 at the time of his conviction, worked in palliative care at a hospital in Würselen, near Aachen. He was also found guilty of 27 attempted murders.

Aachen prosecutors are now examining 121 new cases, a spokesperson for the office said.

Prosecutors leading the investigation are preparing a new indictment that could be filed next year. Nearly 40 bodies have so far been exhumed as part of the investigation, which covers alleged incidents dating back to September 2022.

Meanwhile, prosecutors in the city of Cologne are investigating 18 additional cases. According to a spokesperson, the oldest case dates back to 2010.

Before working at the Würselen hospital, the nurse is believed to have worked at a clinic in eastern Cologne, according to local media reports.

At the time of his November conviction, the court ruled that the severity of his crimes was particularly serious, a finding that would make it difficult for him to obtain early release after 15 years in prison.

Between December 2023 and May 2024, the nurse administered overdoses of sedatives or painkillers to terminally ill patients, most of them elderly, according to the indictment in the original case.

His alleged motive was to sedate patients who required care so that he could minimize his workload during night shifts, prosecutors said.

According to the indictment, the nurse worked «without enthusiasm» and «without motivation». When faced with patients requiring extensive care, he allegedly became «irritated» and showed a lack of empathy.

The case has revived painful memories in Germany of Niels Högel, a former nurse and serial killer who was sentenced to life imprisonment in June 2019 for the murders of at least 85 patients.