World
Biden, Trump to make final appeals ahead of crucial midterms
An election year that unfolded against the backdrop of economic turmoil, the elimination of federal abortion rights and broad concerns about the future of democracy is concluding with a final full day of campaigning in which leaders of both parties will issue urgent appeals to their supporters.
President Joe Biden is holding a Monday evening rally in Maryland, where Democrats have one of their best opportunities to reclaim a Republican-held governor's seat. The appearance is in line with Biden's late-campaign strategy of sticking largely to Democratic strongholds rather than stumping in more competitive territory, where control of Congress may ultimately be decided.
His predecessor, former President Donald Trump, will hold his final rally of the campaign in Ohio. As he readies another run for the White House, Ohio holds special meaning for the former president because it was one of the first places where he was able to prove his enduring power among Republican voters. His backing of JD Vance was crucial in helping the author and venture capitalist — and onetime Trump critic — secure the GOP's nomination for a Senate seat.
Read more: Biden slams GOP, Trump warns of 'tyranny' ahead of midterms
With more than 41 million ballots already cast, Monday's focus will be ensuring that supporters either meet early voting deadlines or make plans to show up in person on Tuesday. The results will have a powerful impact on the final two years of Biden's presidency, shaping policy on everything from government spending to military support for Ukraine.
In the first national election since the violent Jan. 6 insurrection, the final days of the campaign focused on fundamental questions about the nation's political values.
Campaigning in New York for Gov. Kathy Hochul on Sunday, Biden said Republicans were willing to condone last year’s mob attack at the Capitol and that, after the recent assault of Paul Pelosi, husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, some in that party made “light of it” or were “making excuses.”
“There’s never been a time in my career where we’ve glorified violence based on a political preference,” the president said.
Meanwhile, a Sunday evening Trump rally in Miami, a reference to Nancy Pelosi prompted changes of “Lock her up!" — a stark reminder of the nation's deep divide.
Trump was campaigning for Florida Sen. Marco Rubio's reelection, but also focused on his own political future. After telling a crowd in Iowa last week that he's “very, very, very probably” going to run for president again, he again teased the possibility on Sunday and encouraged supporters to watch his Ohio rally.
“I will probably have to do it again, but stay tuned,” Trump said, teasing the Monday event. “We have a big, big rally. Stay tuned for tomorrow night.”
Read more: Amidst recession fears, Biden has to convince Americans job gains mean better days ahead
Not attending the Miami event was Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, who is running for reelection against Democrat Charlie Crist and is widely considered Trump’s most formidable challenger if he also were to get into the White House race.
DeSantis held his own, separate events Sunday in other parts of the state where he stuck to the centerpieces of his reelection campaign, including railing against COVID-19 vaccine mandates. The governor’s counter political programing avoided antagonizing Trump — meaning it didn’t deliver the dueling 2024 events that could be in his and Trump’s near future.
Trump said Sunday that Florida would “reelect Ron DeSantis as your governor.” But he was more confrontational during a Pennsylvania rally on Saturday, referring to Florida’s governor as “Ron DeSanctimonious.”
It’s a rivalry that’s been simmering for more than a year as DeSantis has taken increasingly bold steps to boost his national profile and build a deep fundraising network — even as Trump remains unquestionably the party's most popular leader.
For national Democrats, meanwhile, the focus is on their narrow control of the House and Senate, which could evaporate after Tuesday.
Voters may rebuke the party controlling the White House and Congress amid surging inflation, concerns about crime and pessimism about the direction of the country. History suggests the party in power will suffer significant losses in the midterms.
Biden has made the case that the nation's very democracy is on the ballot and the first lady went to Texas on Sunday to sound a similar alarm.
“So much is at stake in this election,” Jill Biden said in Houston. “We must speak up on justice and democracy.”
Traveling in Chicago Vice President Kamala Harris said, “These attacks on our democracy will not only directly impact the people around our country, but arguably around the world.”
Trump has long falsely claimed he lost the 2020 election only because Democrats cheated and has even begun raising the possibility of election fraud this year. Federal intelligence agencies are warning of the possibility of political violence from far-right extremists.
Ronna McDaniel, the Republican National Committee chairwoman, said Democrats were “inflation deniers,” trying to deflect the other side’s branding of her party as anti-democracy for rejecting the results of 2020’s free and fair presidential election simply because Trump lost it.
“If we win back the House and the Senate, it’s the American people saying to Joe Biden, we want you to work on behalf of us and we want you to work across the aisle to solve the problems that we are dealing with,” McDaniel told CNN.
Missile tests practiced to attack South, US: North Korea
North Korea’s military said Monday its recent barrage of missile tests were practices to attack its rivals’ air bases and warplanes and paralyze their operation command systems, showing Pyongyang’s resolve to counter provocative U.S.-South Korean military drills “more thoroughly and mercilessly.”
North Korea fired dozens of missiles and flew warplanes last week, triggering evacuation alerts in some South Korean and Japanese areas, in response to massive U.S.-South Korean air force drills that the North views as an invasion rehearsal.
U.S. and South Korean officials strongly condemned the North’s missile launches, saying their drills were defensive in nature.
“The recent corresponding military operations by the Korean People’s Army are a clear answer of (North Korea) that the more persistently the enemies’ provocative military moves continue, the more thoroughly and mercilessly the KPA will counter them,” the General Staff of the Korean People’s Army said in a statement carried by state media.
Read more: North Korea continues its bombardment of missiles with a potential ICBM
It said its weapons tests involved ballistic missiles loaded with dispersion warheads and underground infiltration warheads meant to launch strikes on enemy air bases; ground-to-air missiles designed to “annihilate” enemy aircraft at different altitudes and distances; and strategic cruise missiles.
The North’s military said it carried out an important test of a ballistic missile with a special functional warhead missioned with “paralyzing the operation command system of the enemy.” It said it also launched super-large, multiple-launch missiles and tactical ballistic missiles.
It didn’t specifically mention a reported launch Thursday of an intercontinental ballistic missile aimed at hitting the U.S. mainland. Almost all other North’s missiles launched last week were likely short-range, many of them nuclear-capable weapons. They place key military targets in South Korea, including U.S. military bases there in striking range.
“The KPA General Staff once again clarifies that it will continue to correspond with all the anti-(North Korea) war drills of the enemy with the sustained, resolute and overwhelming practical military measures,” it said.
This year’s “Vigilant Storm” air force drills between the United States and South Korea were the largest-ever for the annual fall maneuvers. The drills involved 240 warplanes including advanced F-35 fighter jets from both countries. The allies were initially supposed to run the drills for five days ending on Friday, but extended the training by another day in reaction to the North’s missile tests.
On Saturday, the final day of the air force exercises, the United States flew two B-1B supersonic bombers over South Korea in a display of strength against North Korea, the aircraft’s first such flyover since December 2017.
Read more: N Korea fires 23 missiles, prompting air raid alert in South
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the participation of the B-1Bs in the joint drills demonstrated the allies’ readiness to “sternly respond” to North Korean provocations and the U.S. commitment to defend its ally with the full range of its military capabilities, including nuclear.
Even before the “Vigilant Storm” drills, North Korea test-launched a slew of missiles in what it called simulated nuclear attacks on U.S. and South Korean targets in protests of its rivals’ other sets of military exercises that involved a U.S. aircraft for the first time in five years.
Some experts say North Korea likely aims to use the U.S.-South Korean military drills as a chance to modernize its nuclear arsenal and increase its leverage to wrest greater concessions from the United States in future dealings.
U.S. and South Korean militaries have been expanding their regular military drills since the May inauguration of conservative South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, who has promised to take a tougher stance on North Korean provocations. Some of the allies’ drills had been previously downsized or canceled to support now-stalled diplomacy on North Korea’s nuclear program and cope with the COVID-19 pandemic.
March on Pakistani capital to resume Tuesday, says ex-PM Imran Khan
Former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan said Sunday that a protest march toward the capital, which was suspended after he was wounded by a gunshot in an apparent attempt on his life, will resume Tuesday.
Sitting in a wheelchair, his right leg bandaged and elevated, Khan spoke from the Shaukat Khanum hospital, where he was admitted Thursday after he received bullet wounds in his right leg.
Khan repeated his demand for an investigation into the shooting and the resignation of three powerful personalities in the government and the military whom he alleges were involved in staging the attack on him.
Read more: ‘Because I fell, one of the shooters thought I’d died, and left’: Imran Khan
Khan's march on the capital was suspended in Wazirabad, a district in eastern Punjab province, after a gunman opened fire, wounding him and killing one of his supporters. Thirteen others were hurt. He said the march would pick up again from Wazirabad.
Khan was ousted from office in April in a no-confidence vote in parliament. He organized a march on Islamabad to pressure Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif's government to hold early elections but Sharif says elections will take place as scheduled, in 2023. Khan led an initial protest march in May but it ended when supporters clashed with police in the capital.
Khan’s protest march, which started Oct. 28, was peaceful until Thursday’s attack. The shooting has raised concerns about growing political instability in Pakistan, which has a history of political violence and assassinations.
Khan said the march, to be resumed Tuesday, will take 10 to 15 days to reach Rawalpindi, where convoys from other parts of the country are expected to join the rally. He said he will keep in touch with the main march participants through a media link and will eventually lead the “sea of people’” toward Islamabad.
Read more: Imran Khan accuses Pak army of recreating 1971-like situation
Khan accused Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif, Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah Khan and army Gen. Faisal Naseer of working with the Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan's spy agency, to orchestrate the shooting. The minister and the former premier are not related.
Khan offered no evidence for his allegations, which were rejected by Sharif’s government and the military spokesman said the allegations were not true.
Khan was discharged from the hospital later Sunday and moved to his ancestral home in Lahore.
Biden slams GOP, Trump warns of 'tyranny' ahead of midterms
President Joe Biden pilloried Republicans up and down ballots across the nation as election deniers who reveled in political violence, while his predecessor, Donald Trump, urged voters to oppose “growing left-wing tyranny" on the final Sunday before midterm elections that could reshape Washington's balance of power.
Wrapping up a five-state, four-day campaign swing with an evening rally at Sarah Lawrence College in Yonkers, New York, Biden championed Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul. She's locked in a tight race with Rep. Lee Zeldin, who is looking to become the state's first GOP governor since George Pataki left office in 2006.
The president said hundreds of Republican candidates for state, federal and local office are "election deniers, who say that I did not win the election, even though hundreds of attempts to challenge that have all failed, even in Republican courts.”
Biden said that for the deniers, “There are only two outcomes for any election: either they win or they were cheated.”
Biden said Republicans were willing to condone last year's insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and that, after the recent attack on Paul Pelosi, husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, some in that party made “light of it” or were “making excuses.”
“There's never been a time in my career where we've glorified violence based on a political preference," the president said.
Read more: Amidst recession fears, Biden has to convince Americans job gains mean better days ahead
More than 39 million people have voted early in Tuesday's races, which will decide control of Congress and key governorships — the first national election since a mob overran the Capitol. Earlier Sunday, as Trump addressed supporters in Miami, a reference to the House speaker prompted chants of “Lock her up!" — a stark reminder of just how far apart each side is.
Trump is hoping that a strong GOP showing on Election Day will generate momentum for the 2024 run that he is expected to launch this month.
“I will probably have to do it again, but stay tuned,” Trump said, teasing an event he has with Republican Senate candidate in Ohio, JD Vance, for Monday. "We have a big, big rally. Stay tuned for tomorrow night.”
Trump also told the crowd that "every free and loving American needs to understand that the time to stand up to this growing left-wing tyranny is right now,” while calling on his supporters to reject the “radical left-wing maniacs” and adding that Hispanics would show up strong for GOP candidates.
Sen. Marco Rubio joined Trump at the rally as he seeks reelection. Not attending the Miami event was Florida's Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, who is running for reelection against Democrat Charlie Crist and is widely considered Trump’s most formidable challenger if he also were to get into the White House race.
Instead, DeSantis held his own, separate events Sunday in another part of the state where he stuck to the centerpieces of his reelection campaign, including railing against COVID-19 vaccine mandates and “wokeness” in schools and other parts of society. The governor's counter political programing avoided antagonizing Trump — meaning it didn't deliver the dueling 2024 events that could be in his and Trump's near future.
Trump said Sunday that Florida would “reelect Ron DeSantis as your governor.” But he was more confrontational during a Pennsylvania rally on Saturday night, referring to Florida's governor as “Ron DeSanctimonious.”
It's a rivalry that's been simmering for more than a year as DeSantis has taken increasingly bold steps to boost his national profile and build a deep fundraising network.
Trump remains the most popular figure in the Republican Party. Still, many of his supporters are eager for the prospect that DeSantis might run, seeing him as a natural successor to Trump, without the former president's considerable political negatives.
Read more: G-20 summit could put Biden in the same room with Putin and MBS
For national Democrats, meanwhile, the focus is on the fate of their narrow control of the House and Senate, which could evaporate after Tuesday.
New York Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, head of the Democrats’ House campaign arm, is in a tough contest for his seat. But he insisted Sunday that Democrats are “going to do better than people think on Tuesday,” adding that his party is “not perfect” but “we are responsible adults who believe in this democracy.”
“I think this race is razor-close and I think everybody who cares about the extremism in this ‘MAGA’ movement — the racism, the antisemitism, the violence — needs to get out and vote and that’s not just Democrats, it’s independents and fair-minded Republicans,” Maloney told NBC’s “Meet the Press,” referring to former President Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan.
Voters may rebuke the party controlling the White House and Congress amid surging inflation, concerns about crime and pessimism about the direction of the country. History suggests the party in power will suffer significant losses in the midterms.
On a weekend that also featured Democratic rallies by former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, first lady Jill Biden attended church services while campaigning in Houston on Sunday. Like her husband and his presidential predecessors, she argued that democracy itself was on the ballot.
"So much is at stake in this election," she said. "We must speak up on justice and democracy.”
Traveling in Chicago Vice President Kamala Harris struck a similar tone, saying, “These attacks on our democracy will not only directly impact the people around our country, but arguably around the world.”
Trump has long falsely claimed he lost the 2020 election only because Democrats cheated and has even begun raising the possibility of election fraud this year. Federal intelligence agencies are warning of the possibility of political violence from far-right extremists.
Ronna McDaniel, the Republican National Committee chairwoman, said Democrats were “inflation deniers,” trying to deflect the other side's branding of her party as anti-democracy for rejecting the results of 2020's free and fair presidential election simply because Trump lost it.
“If we win back the House and the Senate, it’s the American people saying to Joe Biden, we want you to work on behalf of us and we want you to work across the aisle to solve the problems that we are dealing with," McDaniel told CNN's “State of the Union."
Lee Saunders, president of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, the nation’s largest union of public employees, has been traveling the country rallying for Democrats. He said, “It’s going to be hard, it’s going to be tough, but we aren’t giving up hope."
“Clearly people are concerned about the economy," Saunders said. But he added that voters also are “concerned about the freedoms being taken away from them, whether you’re talking about voting rights or whether your talking about a women’s right to choose.”
Kyiv prepares for worst winter with no heat, water or power
The mayor of Kyiv, Ukraine's capital, is warning residents that they must prepare for the worst this winter if Russia keeps striking the country's energy infrastructure — and that means having no electricity, water or heat in the freezing cold cannot be ruled out.
“We are doing everything to avoid this. But let’s be frank, our enemies are doing everything for the city to be without heat, without electricity, without water supply, in general, so we all die. And the future of the country and the future of each of us depends on how prepared we are for different situations," Mayor Vitali Klitschko told state media.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address to the nation Sunday that about 4.5 million people were without electricity. He called on Ukrainians to endure the hardships and “we must get through this winter and be even stronger in the spring than now.”
Read more: Russia rejoins key deal on wartime Ukrainian grain exports
Russia has focused on striking Ukraine's energy infrastructure over the last month, causing power shortages and rolling outages across the country. Kyiv was having hourly rotating blackouts Sunday in parts of the city and the surrounding region.
Rolling blackouts also were planned in the Chernihiv, Cherkasy, Zhytomyr, Sumy, Kharkiv and Poltava regions, Ukraine’s state-owned energy operator, Ukrenergo, said.
Kyiv plans to deploy about 1,000 heating points, but it's unclear if that would be enough for a city of 3 million people.
As Russia intensifies its attacks on the capital, Ukrainian forces are pushing forward in the south. Residents of Ukraine's Russian-occupied city of Kherson received warning messages on their phones urging them to evacuate as soon as possible, Ukraine's military said Sunday. Russian soldiers warned civilians that Ukraine's army was preparing for a massive attack and told people to leave for the city's right bank immediately.
Russian forces are preparing for a Ukrainian counteroffensive to seize back the southern city of Kherson, which was captured during the early days of the invasion. In September, Russia illegally annexed Kherson as well as three other regions and subsequently declared martial law in the four provinces.
The Kremlin-installed administration in Kherson already has moved tens of thousands of civilians out of the city.
Russia has been “occupying and evacuating” Kherson simultaneously, trying to convince Ukrainians that they're leaving when in fact they're digging in, Nataliya Humenyuk, a spokeswoman for Ukraine's Southern Forces, told state television.
“There are defense units that have dug in there quite powerfully, a certain amount of equipment has been left, firing positions have been set up,” she said.
Read more: As winter approaches, Ukraine struggles with power outage
Russian forces are also digging in in a fiercely contested region in the east, worsening the already tough conditions for residents and the defending Ukrainian army following Moscow's illegal annexation and declaration of martial law in Donetsk province.
The attacks have almost completely destroyed the power plants that serve the city of Bakhmut and the nearby town of Soledar, said Pavlo Kyrylenko, the region's Ukrainian governor, said. Shelling killed one civilian and wounded three, he reported late Saturday.
“The destruction is daily, if not hourly,” Kyrylenko told state television.
Moscow-backed separatists have controlled part of Donetsk for nearly eight years before Russia invaded Ukraine in late February. Protecting the separatists' self-proclaimed republic there was one of Russian President Vladimir Putin's justifications for the invasion, and his troops have spent months trying to capture the entire province.
Between Saturday and Sunday, Russia's launched four missiles and 19 airstrikes hitting more than 35 villages in nine regions, from Chernihiv and Kharkiv in the northeast to Kherson and Mykolaiv in the south, according to Zelenskyy's office. The strikes killed two people and wounded six.
In the Donetsk city of Bakhmut, 15,000 remaining residents were living under daily shelling and without water or power, according to local media. The city has been under attack for months, but the bombardment picked up after Russian forces experienced setbacks during Ukrainian counteroffensives in the Kharkiv and Kherson regions.
The front line is now on Bakhmut's outskirts, where mercenaries from the Wagner Group, a shadowy Russian military company, are reported to be leading the charge.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of the group who has typically remained under the radar, is taking a more visible role in the war. In a statement Sunday he announced the funding and creation of “militia training centers” in Russia’s Belgorod and Kursk regions in the southwest, saying that locals were best placed to “fight against sabotage” on Russian soil. The training centers are in addition to a military technology center the group said it was opening in St. Petersburg.
In Kharkiv, officials were working to identify bodies found in mass graves after the Russians withdrew, Dmytro Chubenko, a spokesperson for the regional prosecutor's office, told local media.
DNA samples have been collected from 450 bodies discovered in a mass grave in the city of Izium, but the samples need to be matched with relatives and so far only 80 people have participated, he said.
In one sliver of good news, the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant was reconnected to Ukraine’s power grid, local media reported Sunday. Europe’s largest nuclear plant needs electricity to maintain vital cooling systems, but it had been running on emergency diesel generators since Russian shelling severed its outside connections.
How Qatar's wealth brought the World Cup to the Middle East
Qatar is home to some 2.9 million people, but only a small fraction — around one in 10 — are Qatari citizens. They enjoy massive wealth and benefits fueled by Qatar’s shared control of one of the world’s largest reserves of natural gas.
The tiny country on the eastern tip of the Arabian Peninsula juts out into the Persian Gulf. There lies the North Field, the world’s largest underwater gas field, which Qatar shares with Iran. The gas field holds approximately 10% of the world’s known natural gas reserves.
Oil and gas have made the 50-year-old country fantastically wealthy and influential. In a matter of decades, Qatar’s roughly 300,000 citizens have been pulled from the hard livelihood of fishing and pearl diving.
Read more: Rights groups fear for workers as Qatar World Cup spotlight dims
The country is now an international transit hub with a profitable national airline, a force behind the influential Al Jazeera news network and is paying for the expansion of the largest U.S. military base in the Mideast.
Here’s a look at Qatar’s economy and how this tiny country was able to spend so much to host the FIFA World Cup:
QATAR’S ECONOMIC STRENGTH
For most of its existence, the tribes of Qatar relied on pearl diving and fishing for survival. Like other parts of the Gulf, it was a harsh and bare existence. The discovery of oil and gas in the mid-20th century changed life in the Arabian Peninsula forever.
While much of the world grapples with recession and inflation, Qatar and other Gulf Arab energy producers are reaping the benefits of high energy prices. The International Monetary Fund expects Qatar’s economy to grow by about 3.4% this year.
Despite a massive spending spree to prepare for the World Cup, the country still earned more than it spent last year, giving it a cushy surplus that is continuing into 2022. Qatar’s riches are likely to grow as it expands capacity to be able to export more natural gas by 2025.
Its sovereign wealth fund, the Qatar Investment Authority, manages and invests the country’s financial reserves.
QATAR’S WORLD CUP SPENDING
Qatar has spent some $200 billion on infrastructure and other development projects since winning the bid to host the five-week long World Cup, according to official statements and a report from Deloitte.
Around $6.5 billion of that was spent on building eight stadiums for the tournament, including the Al Janoub stadium designed by the late acclaimed architect Zaha Hadid.
Billions were also spent to build a metro line, new airport, roads and other infrastructure ahead of the matches.
The London-based research firm Capital Economics said ticket sales suggest that around 1.5 million tourists will visit Qatar for the World Cup. If each visitor stayed for 10 days and spent $500 a day, spending per visitor would amount to $5,000, the research firm said. That could amount to a $7.5 billion boost to Qatar’s economy this year. However, some fans may fly in just for the matches while staying in nearby Dubai and elsewhere.
Read more: Qatar's World Cup stadiums won't turn into white elephants
QATAR’S LAVISH BENEFITS
Like other rich petro-states in the Gulf, Qatar is not a democracy. Decisions are made by the ruling Al Thani family and its chose advisors. Citizens have little say in their country’s major policy decisions.
The government, however, provides citizens with vast perks that have helped to ensure continued loyalty and support. Qatari citizens enjoy tax-free incomes, high-paying government jobs, free health care, free higher education, financial support for newlyweds, housing support, generous subsidies that cover utility bills and plush retirement benefits.
The country’s citizens rely on laborers from other countries to fill jobs in the service sector, such as drivers and nannies, and to do the tough construction work that built modern-day Qatar.
QATAR’S MIGRANT LABOR FORCE
The country has faced intense scrutiny for its labor laws and treatment of hundreds of thousands of migrant workers, mostly from India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal and other South Asian countries. These men live in shared rooms on labor camps and work throughout the long summer months, with just a few hours of midday respite. They often go years without seeing their families back home.
The work is often dangerous, with Amnesty International saying dozens may have died from apparent heat stroke.
Rights groups have credited Qatar with improving its labor laws, such as by adopting a minimum monthly wage of around $275 in 2020, and for dismantling the “kafala” system that had prevented workers from changing jobs or leaving the country without the consent of their employers.
Human Rights Watch, however has urged Qatar to improve compensation for migrant workers who suffered injury, death and wage theft while working on World Cup-related projects.
Monarch butterflies return to Mexico on annual migration
The first monarch butterflies have appeared in the mountaintop forests of central Mexico where they spend the winter, Mexico’s Environment Department said Saturday.
The first butterflies have been seen exploring the mountaintop reserves in th states of Mexico and Michoacan, apparently trying to decide where to settle this year.
The monarchs have shown up a few days late this year. Normally they arrive for the Day of the Dead observances on Nov. 1 and Nov. 2. Mountainside communities long associated the orange-and-black butterflies with the returning souls of the dead.
The department said the butterflies were seen around their three largest traditional wintering grounds — Sierra Chincua, El Rosario and Cerro Pelón in Michoacan state.
The main group of butterflies is expected to arrive in the coming weeks, depending on weather conditions, the department said in a statement.
Read: Mexico questions police over disappeared butterfly activist
It is too early to say how big this year’s annual migration from the United States and Canada will be. Those counts are usually made in January, when the butterflies have settled into clumps on the boughs of fir and pine trees.
The annual butterfly count doesn’t calculate the individual number of butterflies, but rather the number of acres they cover when they clump together.
Last year, 35% more monarch butterflies arrived compared to the previous season. The rise may reflect the butterflies’ ability to adapt to more extreme bouts of heat or drought by varying the date when they leave Mexico.
Each year, generally in March, the monarchs migrate back to the United States and Canada.
Drought, severe weather and loss of habitat north of the border — especially of the milkweed where the monarchs lay their eggs — as well as pesticide and herbicide use and climate change all pose threats to the species’ migration. Illegal logging and loss of tree cover due to disease, drought and storms plague the reserves in Mexico.
Read: Butterfly on a bomb range: Endangered Species Act at work
This year, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature added the migrating monarch butterfly to its “red list” of threatened species and categorized it as “endangered” — two steps from extinct.
The group estimates the population of monarch butterflies in North America has declined between 22% and 72% over 10 years, depending on the measurement method.
The monarchs’ migration is the longest of any insect species known to science.
After wintering in Mexico, the butterflies fly north, breeding multiple generations along the way for thousands of miles. The offspring that reach southern Canada begin the trip back to Mexico at the end of summer.
COP27 climate talks begin as world grapples with multiple crises
Envoys from around the globe gathered Sunday in the Egyptian seaside resort of Sharm el-Sheikh for talks on tackling climate change amid a multitude of competing crises, including the war in Ukraine, high inflation, food shortages and an energy crunch.
Negotiators spent a frantic two days ahead of the meeting discussing whether to formally consider the issue of loss and damage, or reparations, to vulnerable nations suffering from climate change. The issue, which has weighed on the talks for years, was agreed just hours before the meeting officially opened.
In an opening speech, the head of the U.N.’s panel of climate scientist highlighted the urgency of cutting greenhouse gas emissions and adapting to the effects of global warming.
“This is a once in a generation opportunity to save our planet and our livelihoods,” said Hoesung Lee, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The outgoing chair of the talks, British official Alok Sharma, said countries had made considerable progress at their last meeting in Glasgow, including on setting more ambitious targets for cutting emissions, finalizing the rules of the 2015 Paris agreement and pledging to begin phasing out the use of coal — the most heavily polluting fossil fuel.
“We kept 1.5 degrees (2.7 Fahrenheit) alive,” he said, referring to the most ambitious goal of the Paris pact, to keep temperature increase since pre-industrial times under that threshold.
Read: Health must be at the centre in COP27 climate change negotiations: WHO
Yet now those efforts were being “buffeted by global headwinds,” he warned.
“(Russian President Vladimir) Putin’s brutal and illegal war in Ukraine has precipitated multiple global crisis, energy and food insecurity, inflationary pressures and spiraling debt,” said Sharma. “These crises have compounded existing climate vulnerabilities and the scarring effects of the pandemic.”
However even the most optimistic scenarios assuming countries do everything they have pledged put the world on course for 1.7 C of warming (3.1 F), he warned.
“As challenging as our current moment is, inaction is myopic and can only defer climate catastrophe,” said Sharma. “We must find the ability to focus on more than one thing at once.”
“How many more wake up calls does the world to world leaders actually need,” he said, citing recent devastating floods in Pakistan and Nigeria, and historic droughts in Europe, the United States and China.
His successor, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, said his office would “spare no effort” to achieve the goals of the Paris accord.
President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi wrote on Twitter that Egypt, as host country, was seeking to move from the “pledges phase to the implantation phase with concrete measures on the ground.”
The U.N.’s top climate official also appealed to countries both to engage constructively in the negotiations and take the necessary action back home.
“Here in Sharm el-Sheikh, we have a duty to speed up our international efforts to turn words into action,” he said, adding that “every corner of human activity must align with our Paris commitment and pursue our efforts to limit temperature rise to 1.5 degrees.”
More than 40,000 participants have been registered for this year’s talks, reflecting the sense of urgency as major weather events around the world impact many people and cost billions of dollars in repairs. Egypt said over 120 world leaders will attend, many of them speaking at a high-level event on Nov. 7-8, while U.S. President Joe Biden was expected to arrive later in the week.
But many top figures including China’s President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India were not planning to come, casting doubt on whether the talks in Egypt could result in any major deals to cut emissions without two of the world’s biggest polluters.
Read: Is it too late to prevent climate change?
Rights groups criticized Egypt on Sunday for restricting protests and stepping up surveillance during the summit.
New York-based Human Rights Watch, citing Egyptian media, said authorities had also arrested dozens of people for calling for protests.
“It is becoming clear that Egypt’s government has no intention of easing its abusive security measures and allowing for free speech and assembly,” Adam Coogle, the group’s deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa, said in a statement.
Human Rights Watch said it had had joined about 1,400 groups from around the world urging Egypt to lift the restrictions on civil society groups.
Alaa Abdel-Fattah, a prominent imprisoned pro-democracy activist from Egypt, escalated his hunger strike Sunday in the first day of the COP27, according to his family. Abdel-Fattah’s aunt, award-winning novelist Ahdaf Soueif, said he went into a “full hunger strike,” and stopped drinking water at 10 a.m. local time. Concerned that he could die without water, she was calling for authorities to release him in response to local and international calls.
6 killed in Syria's shelling of tent settlement, monitors say
Syrian government forces shelled tent settlements housing families displaced by the country’s conflict in the rebel-held northwest early Sunday, killing at least six people and wounding dozens, opposition war monitors and first responders said.
The shelling is the latest violation of a truce reached between Russia and Turkey in March 2020 that ended a Russian-backed government offensive on Idlib province that is the last major rebel-held stronghold in Syria.
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The truce has been repeatedly violated over the past two years killing and wounding scores of people.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor, reported that government forces fired about 30 rockets toward rebel-held areas, including the Maram camp Sunday morning killing six and wounding 25. It said the dead included two children and one woman.
The tent settlement is just northwest of the provincial capital of Idlib.
Rebel factions responded by targeting government positions with artillery and missiles in the area of Saraqib, east of Idlib, and the al-Ghab plain, the observatory reported.
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The opposition’s Syrian Civil Defense, also known as White Helmets, reported that six people were killed, including two children and a woman, and 75 injured in shelling targeting at least six camps west of the capital.
The pro-government Sham FM radio station said Syrian government forces shelled positions of the al-Qaida-linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group, the most powerful militant group in Idlib. It said Syrian and Russian warplanes also attacked the areas.
Syria’s conflict broke out in March 2011 and has since killed hundreds of thousands of people, displaced half the country’s pre-war population of 23 million and left large parts of Syria destroyed.
Small plane crashes into Tanzania's Lake Victoria, 19 dead
A small passenger plane crashed Sunday morning into Lake Victoria on approach to an airport in Tanzania, and the country’s prime minister says 19 people on board were killed.
Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa gave the new death toll, up from three. Earlier, local authorities said 26 of those on the Precision Air flight from the coastal city of Dar es Salaam were rescued and taken to a hospital. It was not clear if any of those who were rescued died at the hospital.
Photos showed the plane, which was headed to Bukoba Airport, mostly submerged in the lake. Precision Air is a Tanzanian airline company.
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“We have managed to save quite a number of people,” Kagera province police commander William Mwampaghale told journalists.