Category: 2. World

David Lochridge

PA Media

Supplied via Reuters / AFP

David Lochridge

‘They beat us down’

US President Donald Trump declined to take a position on whether the United States would support a full Israeli reoccupation of the Gaza Strip while emphasizing ongoing American-led humanitarian efforts in the enclave.

“As far as the rest of it, I really can’t say. That’s going to be pretty much up to Israel,” Trump told reporters Tuesday when asked whether he would support Israel reoccupying all of Gaza.

Israeli media reported that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has decided, with US backing, to push ahead with a full-scale reoccupation of Gaza, targeting areas believed to hold Israeli captives.

The US is “there now trying to get people fed,” Trump said, adding the country gave $60 million to supply food for the people of Gaza.

“I know Israel is going to help us with that in terms of distribution…We also have the Arab states (which) are going to help us with that, in terms of the money and possibly distribution. So that’s what I’m focused on,” he said.

Israeli officials said Netanyahu will convene a meeting of political and military leaders Tuesday to discuss “options” for Gaza after the collapse of indirect ceasefire talks with the Palestinian group Hamas.

The Israeli army, rejecting international calls for a ceasefire, has pursued a brutal offensive on Gaza since Oct. 7, 2023, killing more than 61,000 Palestinians, almost half of them women and children.

Israel’s military campaign has devastated the enclave and brought it to the verge of famine.

Last November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war on the enclave.

The mayor of Hiroshima has led calls for the world’s most powerful countries to abandon nuclear deterrence, at a ceremony to mark 80 years since the city was destroyed by an American atomic bomb.

As residents, survivors and representatives from 120 countries gathered at the city’s peace memorial park on Wednesday morning, Kazumi Matsui warned that the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East had contributed to a growing acceptance of nuclear weapons.

“These developments flagrantly disregard the lessons the international community should have learned from the tragedies of history,” he said in his peace declaration, against the backdrop of the A-bomb dome – one of the few buildings that survived the attack eight decades ago.

“They threaten to topple the peace-building frameworks so many have worked so hard to construct,” he added, before urging younger people to recognise that acceptance of the nuclear option could cause “utterly inhumane” consequences for their future.

Despite the global turmoil, he said, “we, the people, must never give up. Instead, we must work even harder to build civil society consensus that nuclear weapons must be abolished for a genuinely peaceful world.”

As applause rang out, white doves were released into the sky, while an eternal “flame of peace” burned in front of a cenotaph dedicated to victims of the world’s first nuclear attack.

The ceremony is seen as the last opportunity for significant numbers of ageing hibakusha – survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – to pass on first-hand warnings of the horror of nuclear warfare.

Just under 100,000 survivors are still alive, according to recent data from the health ministry, with an average age of just over 86.

On Wednesday, the names and other personal details of more than 4,940 registered survivors who have died in the past year were added to a registry kept inside the cenotaph, bringing the number of deaths attributed to the Hiroshima bombing to almost 350,000.

In his peace declaration, Matsui recalled how one woman had begged for water as fires raged through the city after the Enola Gay, a US B-29 bomber, dropped a 15-kiloton uranium bomb on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945, killing an estimated 140,000 people by the end of the year.

“Decades later, a woman who heard that plea still regretted not giving the young woman water,” he said. “ She told herself that fighting for the elimination of nuclear weapons was the best she could do for those who died.”

Three days after the devastation in Hiroshima, the US dropped a plutonium bomb on the city of Nagasaki, killing 74,000 people. While the debate continues over whether the attacks were morally and militarily justified, many Americans continue to believe they forced Japan’s surrender on 15 August.

Nihon Hidankyo, a nationwide network of A-bomb survivors that last year won the Nobel peace prize, said humanity was in a race against time to challenge the US and Russia – which together possess 90% of the world’s 12,000-plus nuclear warheads – and other nuclear states.

“We don’t have much time left, while we face a greater nuclear threat than ever,” it said in a statement. “Our biggest challenge now is to change nuclear weapons states … even just a little.”

At 8.15am, the exact time the bomb detonated, Hiroshima observed a moment of silence. Many attendees lowered their heads and closed their eyes, some clasping their hands together in prayer.

The advanced age of the survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs has become a defining theme of the anniversary.

Yoshie Yokoyama, 96, a wheelchair user who visited the park early in the morning with her grandson, told reporters her parents and grandparents had died as a result of the Hiroshima attack.

“My grandfather died soon after the bombing, while my father and mother both died after developing cancer,” she said. “My parents-in-law also died, so my husband couldn’t see them again when he came back from battlefields after the war. People are still suffering.”

Russia apparently did not send an official to Wednesday’s ceremony, but its ally, Belarus, attended for the first time in four years. Taiwanese and Palestinian representatives were there for the first time, Japanese media reports said.

Successive Japanese governments have faced criticism for refusing to ratify a 2021 treaty to ban the possession and use of nuclear weapons. Dozens of countries have signed the treaty, but they do not include any of the recognised nuclear powers or countries, including Japan, that are dependent on the US nuclear umbrella.

After laying a wreath in front of the cenotaph, the prime minister, Shigeru Ishiba, did not mention the treaty but said it was Japan’s “mission” as the only country to have been attacked by nuclear weapons to lead global efforts towards disarmament.

The UN secretary general, António Guterres, said in a statement that “the very weapons that brought such devastation to Hiroshima and Nagasaki are once again being treated as tools of coercion”. Guterres added, however, that Nihon Hidankyo’s Nobel prize was cause for hope, adding that “countries must draw strength from the resilience of Hiroshima and from the wisdom of the hibakusha”.

UMERKOT, Pakistan: Villagers hush when Pakistani folk musician Sham Bhai starts singing about climate change, her clear voice rising above the simple squat dwellings.

“We are the people of the south. The winds seem to be blowing from the north. The winds seem cold and warm. My heart is burned from seeing the collapsed houses in the rain. Oh, beloved, come home soon.”

Sham is from Sindh, the Pakistani province worst-hit three years ago by climate-worsened deluges that affected tens of millions of people nationwide and washed away homes, farmland and infrastructure.

She has toured a dozen villages in Sindh during the past two years, teaching people about climate adaptation and resilience through song, a useful medium for sharing information in places where literacy is low and Internet is scarce.

“When we give a message through song, it is easy to communicate to people because they understand it,” the 18-year-old singer told The Associated Press. She was performing in Umerkot district, singing in her native tongue and official provincial language, Sindhi, which is more likely to be spoken and understood in places like Umerkot than the official and national language of Pakistan, Urdu.

Sindh recorded more than 1,000 rain-related deaths in a few months in 2022. The damage remains visible. Broken roads and flattened houses that residents never rebuilt. Floods submerged swathes of Sham’s district, Tando Allahyar. News footage showed people wading through waist-deep water.

“The meaning of the song is that poor people’s homes built on mud are not strong,” Sham explains. “Women and children face hardship during the rains because they are vulnerable in the absence of men who go away to work. The women of the house call on their men to return because the weather is so bad.”

Poverty and illiteracy deepen people’s vulnerability.

Alternating patches of parched and lush farmland flank the road to Umerkot. Dry and wet spells buffet the province, and local farmers have to adapt. They now focus on winter crops rather than summer ones because the rain is more predictable in the colder months.

“The monsoon season used to come on time, but now it starts late,” farmer Ghulam Mustafa Mahar said. “Sometimes there is no rain. All patterns are off-course due to climate change for the last five years.”

He and others have switched from crops to livestock to survive.

There is little infrastructure away from the center of the district. Children get excited seeing sedans crunch through the dust.

The area is mostly poor and very hot.

Sindh’s literacy rate falls to 38 percent in rural areas. Sham said singing informs those who can’t learn about climate change because they can’t read.

Mindful of their audience, the three singers warm people up with popular tunes to catch their attention before launching into mournful tunes about the wind and rain, their lyrics inspired by writers and poets from Sindh.

“People are acting on our advice; they are planting trees and making their houses strong to face climate change,” said Sham.

“Women and children suffer a lot during bad conditions, which damage their homes.”

Women and girls of all ages can be seen working outdoors in Sindh, tending to crops or livestock. They gather food and water, along with wood for fuel. They are predominantly restricted to this type of work and other domestic chores because of gender norms and inequalities. When extreme weather strikes, they are often the first to suffer. One villager said when heavy rain battered homes in 2022, it crushed and killed whoever was inside, including children.

One woman is rapping for climate justice

People in rural areas have no idea what climate change is, said Urooj Fatima, an activist from the city of Jhuddo. Her stage name is Sindhi Chhokri, and she is known locally for campaigning on issues such as women’s rights.

But she has turned her attention to raising awareness about climate change since flooding devastated her village in 2022 and again in 2024.

“We can engage a lot of audiences through rap. If we go to a village and gather a community, there are a maximum of 50. But everyone listens to songs. Through rap, we can reach out to hundreds of thousands of people through our voice and our message.”

She said hip-hop isn’t common in Pakistan, but the genre resonates because of its tradition as an expression of life, hardship and struggle.

She has yet to finish her latest climate change rap, but wrote one in response to the 2022 flooding in neighboring Balochistan, the country’s poorest and least developed province, because she felt it wasn’t getting enough attention. She performed it at festivals in Pakistan and promoted it across her social media accounts. Officials at the time said more help was needed from the central government for people to rebuild their lives.

“There are potholes on the road; the roads are ruined,” raps Urooj. “I am telling the truth. Will your anger rain down on me? Where was the Balochistan government when the floods came? My pen thirsts for justice. Now they’ve succeeded, these thieving rulers. This isn’t a rap song, this is a revolution.”

She and her sister Khanzadi campaign on the ground and social media, protesting, visiting villages, and planting thousands of trees. She wants the Sindh government to take climate change awareness seriously by providing information and education to those who need it the most, people living in rural areas.

“This happens every year,” said Urooj, referring to the floods. “Climate change affects a person’s whole life. Their whole life becomes a disaster.”

She cites the disproportionate and specific impact of climate change on women and girls, the problems they experience with displacement, education, hygiene, and nutrition, attributing these to entrenched gender discrimination.

“For women, there are no opportunities or facilities. And then, if a flood comes from above, they face more difficulties.”

She elicits controversy in rural areas. Half the feedback she receives is negative. She is undeterred from speaking out on social taboos and injustice.

“Rap is a powerful platform. If our rap reaches just a few people, then this is a very good achievement. We will not let our voices be suppressed. We will always raise our voices high.”

A so-called “cloudburst” has been identified as a potential cause of a river of sludge that swamped a village in northwest India, killing at least four people and leaving 100 more missing.

The Indian Meteorological Department said on Wednesday that over the previous 24 hours extreme rainfall of 210 mm or more had been recorded in parts of northwest India, including the state of Uttarakhand where the disaster happened. Uttarakhand state chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami said the area had been hit by a “cloudburst” before the deluge of water and debris swamped the village at Dharali.

So what is a cloudburst?

Meteorologists in India define a cloudburst as an event over a concentrated area of 30sqkm or less with rain falling at a rate of 100mm or more per hour. But there are complex processes that can go into these events.

“They usually happen in mountainous regions during monsoons,” said Ruchit Kulkarni, an Indian meteorologist studying extreme rainfall at the University of Melbourne.

He said in the Himalayan foothills, moisture that often comes from the Arabian Sea to the west is swept up by mountains in a process known as orographic lift.

This forms towering cumulonimbus clouds that can sustain large rain droplets.

“So we have this moist airflow being lifted up and the cloud gets bigger and bigger and with no chance to have rainfall, it becomes so heavy that at a point, it starts bursting,” said Kulkarni.

Other factors, such as a bursting of a glacier or glacier lake, could also be behind the flood.

A cloudburst was implicated in one of the nation’s deadliest flood events in June 2013 at Kedarnath, also in Uttarakhand, when according to a UN report more than 6,000 people died.

One study into the Kedarnath floods found more than half of the rainfall was likely linked to increases in greenhouse gases and aerosol particles in the atmosphere.

Studies have found an increase in extreme rainfall events in India in recent decades as global temperatures have risen.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been performing a tricky balancing act – maintaining close partnerships with US President Donald Trump and Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin while insisting his country is a neutral party in the Russia-Ukraine war, to the dismay of Western nations who have sanctioned Moscow.

But now, it seems, Trump has lost his patience – demanding that Modi finally pick a side, and using India’s continued purchases of cheap Russian oil as leverage in his trade war.

The conundrum pits Trump and Modi, two nationalist leaders who have often described their friendship in warm terms, increasingly against each other.

On Monday, Trump vowed in an interview with CNBC to “substantially” raise tariffs on India “over the next 24 hours” because it’s still buying Russian oil. It’s not clear what the new tariff rate would be – or why he is now taking issue with something India has done for years. But the fresh threat comes after he had already announced a minimum 25% tariff on goods coming from India last week.

“Also, they have always bought a vast majority of their military equipment from Russia, and are Russia’s largest buyer of ENERGY, along with China, at a time when everyone wants Russia to STOP THE KILLING IN UKRAINE — ALL THINGS NOT GOOD!” Trump wrote on Truth Social last week.

But for Modi, it’s not so simple. While many other countries have scrambled to strike trade deals with the Trump administration, India – the world’s fourth largest economy – has pushed back defiantly, saying it is being unfairly targeted and calling the measure “unjustified.”

The US and Europe, it pointed out, still trade with Russia on other products such as fertilizers and chemicals.

Here’s what you need to know about why India is reluctant to stop buying Russian oil.

India has long been reliant on Russia for crude oil to support its booming economy and growing population, now at more than 1.4 billion people.

The world’s most populous nation is already the third biggest consumer of oil globally, and with India’s consumption rate still growing rapidly, it is expected to surpass China by 2030, according to Reuters.

India’s transformation into an economic superpower has uplifted millions of households – which in turn have bought more cars and motorcycles, driving up the demand for gasoline.

Russian crude oil accounts for 36% of India’s overall imports, making Moscow the country’s top supplier, according to Muyu Xu, a senior oil analyst at trade intelligence firm Kpler, who cited figures for the first six months of this year.

After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, European nations largely stopped buying Russian oil. It now flows primarily into Asia – with China, India and Turkey among Russia’s big clients and is a vital revenue stream for Moscow.

Delhi is buying Russian oil at a heavy discount, “which otherwise would not have been given by the traditional oil and gas suppliers,” said Amitabh Singh, associate professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University’s (JNU) Centre for Russian and Central Asian Studies.

He added that India’s continuing purchases were “a purely economic or commercial decision” – something Indian authorities have also argued, but which has been met with derision and anger from Ukraine and its supporters.

While India has diversified its oil sources over the years, cutting out Russian oil entirely would leave a gaping hole that’s hard to replace.

India imports 80% of its oil needs, and its domestic oil production isn’t enough to make up the difference. OPEC, the coalition of the world’s top oil producers, may have “some spare capacity, but it’s difficult to ask them to pump 3.4 million barrels overnight,” said Xu when she spoke to CNN in July, referring to Russia’s daily seaborne exports.

Its choices have also been limited by other US actions – India was forced to stop buying oil from Iran and Venezuela after Trump imposed sanctions and threatened tariffs against countries that bought from those places.

Before it halted its purchases, India had been one of Iran’s biggest clients, buying up to 480,000 barrels per day, according to Reuters.

“We have our hands tied at the back,” said Singh. “There is very limited space in which the Indian oil economy or market can operate.”

For now, he added, it’s unlikely Delhi will bow to Trump’s demands. Modi’s administration will continue navigating trade talks with the US and explore the “traditional route” of Middle Eastern oil while it works to wean itself off Russian crude – but this it “cannot do overnight,” said Singh.

Russia’s oil also feeds India’s economy, which plays a key role in the global oil trade. India argues that its purchases from Russia have kept global oil prices lower, as it’s not competing with Western nations for Middle Eastern oil.

When the Ukraine-Russia war kicked off during the Biden administration, “everyone knew that India is buying oil from Russia,” said Singh – but added that Western nations had tolerated it “because they knew that if India is not buying oil from Russia, then inflation will go up.”

If India switches to importing oil from somewhere else at a higher cost, American consumers will likely feel the hit, too. Some of the Russian crude oil sent to India is then refined and exported back out to other countries – because sanctions on Moscow don’t include products refined outside Russia.

It’s a loophole that has benefited both India’s economy and other recipient nations. In 2023, India exported $86.28 billion in refined oil products, making it the world’s second-biggest exporter of petroleum products, according to the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR).

Some of the biggest buyers of these refined products, made from Russian crude oil, include Europe, the US, and the UK, according to the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA). The independent organization has urged G7 nations to close this loophole, arguing it would disincentivize third countries – like India – to import Russian crude.

Historic partnership and juggling ties

India and Russia’s partnership goes beyond just oil and stretches back decades – another reason it’s not so easy to dismantle.

India was officially nonaligned during the Cold War between the US and the USSR. However, India began to lean towards the Soviet Union in the 1970s when the US began providing military and financial assistance to India’s neighbor and longtime rival Pakistan. This was when Russia started providing arms to India.

In recent years, India has drawn closer to Washington, and ramped up arms purchases from America and its allies, including France and Israel.

Still, India remains the top recipient of Russian arms, according to SIPRI. And Modi remains friendly with Putin – even paying a controversial visit to Moscow last year, with the Russian president greeting his counterpart with a hug and personally driving him around.

Trump and Modi, too, have previously hailed their friendship, with Trump declaring at a 2019 rally that India had “never had a better friend as President than President Donald Trump.”

Singh, the professor, said it was expected the friendship “would continue” when Trump arrived at the White House for his second term. But things have soured this time around; India isn’t happy with Trump claiming credit for a ceasefire in the latest India-Pakistan conflict, or with his accusations that their oil purchases are helping “prop up a Russian war machine,” he said.

Trump has lashed out too, increasingly frustrated at his inability to end the Ukraine-Russia war – something he’d promised to do on his first day in office. “I don’t care what India does with Russia,” Trump wrote in an irate post on Truth Social last week. “They can take their dead economies down together, for all I care.”