International
Brazil sees area burned by fire nearly double in November
| By AFP |
Fires scorched almost two million acres of territory in Brazil in November, according to data released by an NGO group Wednesday, nearly 90 percent more than in the same month last year.
That is an area about three-quarters of the size of the Brazilian Amazon city of Manaus.
More than 80 percent of the burned land is located in the Amazon rainforest, according to MapBiomas, the NGO consortium made up of nonprofits, Brazilian universities and startups that use satellite imagery to track the destruction of natural lands.
“The data confirms the escalation of environmental destruction in the final months of the Bolsonaro government,” the organization said in a statement.
Fires and deforestation have increased since right-wing Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, a proponent of expanding mining and farming in the Amazon, took office in 2019.
In October, Bolsonaro lost re-election to leftist Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who will take office in January and has promised to “fight for zero deforestation.”
For MapBiomas, the spike in November’s fire numbers was a surprise as the month usually coincides with the rainy season.
“Clearly this is a reaction to the expectation of more effective anti-deforestation and anti-fire policies from the new government,” said Ane Alencar, MapBiomas Fire coordinator and director of science at the Institute of Amazonian Environmental Investigation.
Together with November’s numbers, the area burned in the first 11 months of 2022 totaled about 40 million acres, or just under the size of Uruguay, according to MapBiomas, a 13 percent increase over the same period in 2021.
Nearly half of that land is within the Amazon, the group said.
International
Uribe requests freedom amid appeal of historic bribery conviction
Former Colombian President Álvaro Uribe on Monday requested that the Supreme Court restore his freedom while he appeals the historic 12-year house arrest sentence he received for bribery and procedural fraud.
Uribe, the most prominent figure of Colombia’s right wing, was convicted last week by a lower court for attempting to bribe paramilitary members into denying his ties to the violent anti-guerrilla squads.
Since Friday, the 73-year-old has been under house arrest at his residence in Rionegro, about 30 km from Medellín. The judge justified the measure by citing a risk of flight.
However, Uribe’s defense team rejected that argument and formally petitioned the court to immediately lift the detention order, claiming it lacks legal basis.
Uribe, a dominant force in Colombian politics for decades, is now the first former president in the country’s history to be convicted and placed under arrest, found guilty of witness tampering and obstruction of justice to prevent links to paramilitary groups.
He has repeatedly denounced the trial as politically motivated, blaming pressure from the leftist government currently in power.
His political party, Centro Democrático, has called for nationwide protests on August 7 in support of Uribe, who remains popular for his hardline stance against guerrilla groups.
Uribe has until August 13 to submit his written appeal. The case will then move to the Bogotá High Court, which has until October 16 to uphold, overturn, or dismiss the sentence. If the deadline passes without a decision, the case will be archived.
International
U.S. Embassy staff restricted as gunfire erupts near compound in Port-au-Prince
The poorest country in Latin America and the Caribbean is currently engulfed in a deep political crisis and a wave of violence driven by armed groups — a situation that an international security mission led by Kenya is attempting to stabilize.
Due to the worsening security conditions, the U.S. government has suspended all official movements of embassy personnel outside the compound in Port-au-Prince, the U.S. State Department announced Monday in a security alert posted on social media platform X.
“There are intense gunfights in the Tabarre neighborhood, near the U.S. Embassy,” the alert reads, urging the public to avoid the area.
Tabarre is a municipality located near Port-au-Prince International Airport, northeast of the Haitian capital.
According to a July report by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, at least 3,141 people were killed in Haitibetween January 1 and June 30 of this year.
International
Israel says 136 food aid boxes airdropped into Gaza by six nations
The Israeli military announced on Sunday that 136 boxes of food aid were airdropped into Gaza by the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Egypt, Germany, and Belgium.
“In recent hours, six countries conducted air drops of 136 aid packages containing food for residents in the southern and northern Gaza Strip,” read the statement, which added that the operation was coordinated by COGAT, the Israeli defense body overseeing civil affairs in the occupied Palestinian territories.
The Israeli military emphasized that they will “continue working to improve the humanitarian response alongside the international community” and reiterated their stance to “refute false allegations of deliberate famine in Gaza.”
The announcement comes as UN agencies warn Gaza faces an imminent risk of famine. More than one in three residents go days without eating, and other nutrition indicators have dropped to their worst levels since the conflict began.
The agencies also noted the difficulty of “collecting reliable data in current conditions, as Gaza’s health systems —already devastated by nearly three years of conflict— are collapsing.”
Meanwhile, Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry reported on Sunday that hospitals in the enclave recorded six deaths from hunger and malnutrition on Saturday, all of them adults.
Uribe requests freedom amid appeal of historic bribery conviction
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Israel says 136 food aid boxes airdropped into Gaza by six nations
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