Host country Brazil brokered an agreement on the agenda for the two-week summit in the Amazon city of Belem

International News via Reuters:

The COP30 climate summit opened on Monday with the U.N. climate chief urging countries to cooperate with one another rather than battling over priorities.

Host country Brazil brokered an agreement on the agenda for the two-week summit in the Amazon city of Belem, fending off attempts from developing-country negotiating blocs to shoehorn contentious issues like climate finance and carbon taxes into the talks.

It was unclear whether countries would aim to negotiate a final agreement for the end of the event – a hard sell in a year of fractious global politics and U.S. efforts to obstruct a transition away from fossil fuels.

Some including Brazil have suggested that countries focus on smaller efforts that do not need consensus, after years of COP summits making lofty promises only to leave many unfulfilled.

“In this arena of COP30, your job here is not to fight one another – your job here is to fight this climate crisis, together,” U.N. Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell told delegates from more than 190 countries attending. 

He said three decades of U.N. climate talks had helped to bend the curve in projected warming downward, “because of what was agreed in halls like this, with governments legislating, and markets responding. But I am not sugar-coating it. We have so much more work to do.”

Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva warned against interests trying to obscure the dangers of climate change.

“They attack the institutions, the science, the universities,” he said. “It’s time to impose another defeat to denialists.”

The world’s biggest historical emitter of greenhouse gases – the United States – opted to skip the summit while the U.S. President Donald Trump falsely asserts that climate change is a hoax. 

California Governor Gavin Newsom and New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham were expected in Belem on Tuesday.

“What the hell is going on here?” Newsom said about the U.S. government’s absence from the talks, addressing a global investors summit held on Monday in Sao Paulo. 

“We’re in Brazil, one of our great trading partners, one of the world’s great democracies. I mean hell, home to all the rare earth metals we need. This is the country we should be engaging with instead of giving the middle finger with 50% tariffs,” Newsom said, referring to duties imposed by the Trump administration.

Germany said European countries would push for commitments to rein in fossil fuel use – a goal promoted by Lula.

“We will advocate for something strong,” German Vice Minister Jochen Flasbarth told Reuters. “We don’t want to go the same way of President Trump and accuse others of being wrong. We want to listen.”

WARNING SIGNS

Countries were joined by Indigenous leaders, who arrived on Sunday by boat after traveling some 3,000 km (1,864 miles) from the Andes. They are demanding more say in how their territories are managed as climate change escalates and industries such as mining, logging and oil drilling push deeper into forests.

“We want to make sure that they don’t keep promising, that they will start protecting, because we as Indigenous people are the ones who suffer from these impacts of climate change,” said Pablo Inuma Flores, an Indigenous leader from Peru.

Scientists at dozens of universities and international science institutions sounded an alarm over the world’s thawing glaciers, ice sheets, and other frozen spaces.

“The cryosphere is destabilizing at an alarming pace,” the groups said in a letter to COP30 published on Monday. “Geopolitical tensions or short-term national interests must not overshadow COP30. Climate change is the defining security and stability challenge of our time.”

In an interview on Sunday, COP30 President Andre Correa do Lago noted the rise of China’s importance in the talks.

“Emerging countries are appearing in this COP with a different role. China is coming with solutions for everyone,” do Lago told Reuters and other media – adding that inexpensive green technologies from China were now leading the energy transition worldwide.

“You start complaining that China is moving the GDP all over the world,” he said. “That is great for climate.”

Reporting by Valerie Volcovic and Katy Daigle in Belem, Brazil; Editing by Kim Coghill and Nia Williams

The exact cause of the blast is being investigated, said the police spokesperson, Sanjay Tyagi

International News via Reuters:

At least eight people were killed on Monday in a car explosion near the historic Red Fort in a densely populated area of the Indian capital Delhi, a police spokesperson said, a rare blast in the heavily guarded city of more than 30 million people.

The exact cause of the blast is being investigated, said the police spokesperson, Sanjay Tyagi. However, India’s financial capital of Mumbai as well as its most populous state of Uttar Pradesh, which borders Delhi, went on high security alert after the blast, local media reported.

At least 20 people were injured in the explosion, TV channels reported, as ambulances raced to the scene.

‘BLAST IN SLOW-MOVING VEHICLE’

Mangled bodies and the wreckage of several cars could be seen on a congested street near a metro station in the old quarter of Delhi, as police poured into the area to secure it and push back gathering crowds.

Delhi Police Commissioner Satish Golcha said the blast had occurred minutes before 7 p.m. (1330 GMT).

“A slow-moving vehicle stopped at a red light. An explosion happened in that vehicle, and due to the explosion, nearby vehicles were also damaged,” he told reporters.

Federal and state investigative agencies are at the site and federal Home Minister Amit Shah has been briefed about the incident, Golcha added.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed his condolences to those who had lost loved ones.

“May the injured recover at the earliest. Those affected are being assisted by authorities,” Modi posted on X, adding that he had reviewed the situation with Shah and other officials.

At least six vehicles and three auto-rickshaws caught fire, Delhi’s deputy fire chief said later, adding that the flames had been doused by firefighting teams.

‘INTENSE EXPLOSION’

“I was at the metro station, going down the stairs, when I heard an explosion. I turned around and saw a fire. People started running helter-skelter,” Suman Mishra, whose husband owns a hotel in a nearby area, told Reuters.

Wali Ur Rehman said he was sitting at his shop when he heard a loud explosion. “I fell from the impact of the explosion, it was that intense,” he told news agency ANI, in which Reuters has a minority stake.

About 30 to 40 ambulances were near the site of the blast and the entire area was cordoned off after the fire was put out, a Reuters witness said, adding that he could see remains of mangled cars and crowds milling around.

The Red Fort, known locally as Lal Qila, is a sprawling, 17th-century Mughal-era edifice melding Persian and Indian architectural styles, and is visited by tourists throughout the year.

The prime minister addresses the nation from the fort’s ramparts every year on August 15, India’s independence day.

Delhi was the target of blasts during the 1980s and 1990s, with public places such as bus stations and crowded market areas hit in attacks blamed on Islamist militants or on separatists from the northern Sikh state of Punjab.

About a dozen people were killed in a briefcase explosion outside the Delhi High Court in 2011 – the last such major incident in the city.

Reporting by Shilpa Jamkhandikar, Shivam Patel, Akanksha Singh and Adnan Abidi; Writing by YP RajeshEditing by Toby Chopra, Mark Heinrich and Gareth Jones

The changes proposed by the European Commission are part of a drive to simplify a slew of laws adopted in recent years on technology, environmental and financial issues

International News via Reuters:

Privacy activists say proposed changes to Europe’s landmark privacy law, including making it easier for Big Tech to harvest Europeans’ personal data for AI training, would flout EU case law and gut the legislation.

The changes proposed by the European Commission are part of a drive to simplify a slew of laws adopted in recent years on technology, environmental and financial issues which have in turn faced pushback from companies and the U.S. government.

EU antitrust chief Henna Virkkunen will present the Digital Omnibus, in effect proposals to cut red tape and overlapping legislation such as the General Data Protection Regulation, the Artificial Intelligence Act, the e-Privacy Directive and the Data Act, on November 19.

According to the plans, Google, Meta Platforms, OpenAI and other tech companies may be allowed to use Europeans’ personal data to train their AI models based on legitimate interest.

In addition, companies may be exempted from the ban on processing special categories of personal data “in order not to disproportionately hinder the development and operation of AI and taking into account the capabilities of the controller to identify and remove special categories of personal data”.

“The draft Digital Omnibus proposes countless changes to many different articles of the GDPR. In combination this amounts to a death by a thousand cuts,” Austrian privacy group noyb said in a statement.

Noyb is known for filing complaints against American companies such as Apple, Alphabet and Meta that have triggered several investigations and resulted in billions of dollars in fines.

“This would be a massive downgrading of Europeans’ privacy 10 years after the GDPR was adopted,” noyb’s Max Schrems said.

European Digital Rights, an association of civil and human rights organisations across Europe, slammed a proposal to merge the ePrivacy Directive, known as the cookie law that resulted in the proliferation of cookie consent pop-ups, into the GDPR.

“These proposals would change how the EU protects what happens inside your phone, computer and connected devices,” EDRi policy advisor Itxaso Dominguez de Olazabal wrote in a LinkedIn post.

“That means access to your device could rely on legitimate interest or broad exemptions like security, fraud detection or audience measurement,” she said.

The proposals would need to be thrashed out with EU countries and European Parliament in the coming months before they can be implemented.

Reporting by Foo Yun CheeEditing by Alexandra Hudson

More than a million people were evacuated before Fung-wong hit land on Sunday, unleashing fierce howling winds, heavy rain and storm swells on the most populous island of Luzon

International News via Reuters:

One of the year’s most powerful storms in the Philippines, Super Typhoon Fung-wong has killed four people, authorities said on Monday, as they began assessing damage after its fury abated, though no reports of major destruction have flowed in yet.

More than a million people were evacuated before Fung-wong hit land on Sunday, unleashing fierce howling winds, heavy rain and storm swells on the most populous island of Luzon that left some sleepless through the night.

“We could not sleep because of the winds hitting our metal sheets and tree branches falling,” said Romeo Mariano, who sheltered with his grandmother in their home in the province of Isabela. 

“When we got out to check our home, we saw the damage.”

Early indications suggest the tally of dead will be “minimal”, however, civil defence senior official Raffy Alejandro told a media briefing.

A mudslide buried a house to kill two children in the northern town of Kayapa in the province of Nueva Vizcaya, regional civil defence official Alvin Ayson said by telephone.

They followed two deaths from drowning and fallen debris.

FOUR TOWNS ISOLATED IN PROVINCE WHERE STORM MADE LANDFALL

Landslides also isolated at least four towns in the province of Aurora, where Fung-wong made landfall, Alejandro added. 

Forecast to shift northeast to Taiwan, Fung-wong was packing winds on Monday whose speeds had dropped to between 120 kph and 150 kph (75 mph to 93 mph), but remained a typhoon, whose outer bands could dump rain in coastal areas and trigger storm surges.

The storm is the 21st this year in the Philippines, coming after Typhoon Kalmaegi killed 224 last week, with five dead in Vietnam.

The back-to-back storms came as officials of more than 190 countries gathered in Brazil for Monday’s opening of the COP30 climate summit.

Scientists have said rising sea temperatures pack more energy into tropical cyclones, making them more intense and boosting rainfall.

Fung-wong is forecast to hit Taiwan’s densely populated west coast on Wednesday, though its heaviest rain is expected along the mountainous east coast, where 18 people died in September in flooding unleashed by an earlier typhoon. 

The government has already ordered evacuations in the town of Guangfu, the scene of those deadly floods.

Reporting by Adrian Portugal and Eloisa Lopez; Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in Taipei; Writing by Mikhail Flores and Karen Lema; Editing by John Mair and Clarence Fernandez

Only five of those named in the criminal complaint were arrested that day and none were senior leaders of the notorious Comando Vermelho gang

International News via Reuters:

The governor of Rio de Janeiro has touted the deadliest police raid in Brazilian history as a success, but none of the 117 people killed by police were among the 69 suspects named by prosecutors in the complaint providing the basis for the raid.

Only five of those named in the criminal complaint were arrested that day and none were senior leaders of the notorious Comando Vermelho gang, according to a Reuters review of the full police report on the operation shared with the Brazilian Supreme Court.

The raid, known as Operation Containment, left 121 people dead, including four police officers and two teenagers, and 99 suspects were taken into custody.

The raid also failed to arrest or kill senior figures in the Comando Vermelho gang that investigators say is headquartered in the neighborhoods the police raided. The main leader of the gang, Edgar Alves de Andrade, known as Doca, remains at large. 

One mid-level gang leader was detained without a shot fired, according to the police report, reviewed exclusively by Reuters.

The findings challenge the official account of the raid, carried out in two densely-populated working-class neighborhoods known as favelas on the north side of the state capital. After the operation, local residents lined up dozens of dead bodies in the streets.

The raid, which came a week before world leaders began arriving for the United Nations climate summit COP30, has pitted leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who called it disastrous, against conservatives who say it is a model to fight organized crime.

While Lula’s administration has backed police operations aimed at disrupting organized crime financing, rivals on the right like Rio Governor Claudio Castro argue for aggressive raids to seize weapons and arrest or kill gang members, despite the high human cost. 

Rio’s public safety secretary, Victor dos Santos, who oversees the police, confirmed to Reuters that the government’s goal in the raid was to arrest the men who had been charged. But, he added, “it wasn’t very easy to look for 69 people among the 280,000” who live in the favelas that were targeted by the raid.

Although 19 of the men killed had no prior criminal record, according to documents in the investigation, Santos said he was 100% certain that they were criminals.

He argued that the number of people killed and arrested showed that “the picture is a lot worse than what the investigation showed.” He said other raids are planned for the coming months in the favelas of Rio.

Still, the initial results of the raid fueled criticism from the families of the victims, as well as human rights advocates, that police killed indiscriminately instead of pursuing clear objectives based on long-running investigations into the Comando Vermelho gang, one of the largest and most violent in Brazil. 

The police “detain them, execute them and it’s all good, because they know there is no law here,” said Samuel Peçanha, whose 14-year-old son Michel was killed during the raid. “In Brazil, that’s normal.” 

Though Peçanha said his son Michel, one of the teenagers, was part of the gang, he still had hopes of convincing him to take a different path. 

“He was still a child,” he said. “Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get him out.”  

‘I JUST WANT THIS TO END’ 

Taua Brito, 36, said she had been waiting in anguish for hours for a response from her 20-year-old son, Wellington, when she decided to leave her home and go looking for him.  

Wellington, a member of the local gang, told her he had been hiding in the forested hills above their favela as police raided the neighborhood. In one of his last messages to her, reviewed by Reuters, he said he planned to clear his name: “I just want this all to end already.” 

She hiked into the woods in the middle of the night using her cellphone to light the path. “I must have seen some 50 bodies,” she said. “I found my son at around 1:30 a.m.”  

Wellington, his mother said, was shot in the head, she said, and stabbed in the arm. 

Brito was among the many mothers and other residents who ventured into the hills overnight and came back with dozens of bodies they later lined up in a busy street where locals shop and children play soccer.  

The body of 19-year-old Yago Ravel was headless, according to public records and a video reviewed by Reuters.

Others had stab wounds, residents say. 

Santos, the public safety secretary, said the gruesome injuries were likely inflicted by members of the gang, adding that preliminary analysis showed the decapitated man was already dead when his head was cut off.  

“It’s likely criminals themselves did it to create this barbaric scene,” said Santos. “Forensics will tell.” 

Police say that residents have compromised the crime scene, making it difficult to investigate what happened in the forested hills behind the favela. No forensics team was called to analyze the scene later, Santos said.

Beatriz Nolasco, Yago Ravel’s aunt, said she had no faith that the family will ever find out what happened to her nephew.

“We will never be able to accept how he was killed, with his head torn off and placed on a tree,” she said. 

Brazil recorded 44,127 intentional violent deaths in 2024, down 5.4% from the previous year, according to the Brazilian Forum on Public Safety. In 2024, 6,243 people were killed by police, an average of 17 deaths per day.

Santos argued the raid involving 2,500 police officers “showed that the state holds the monopoly on the use of force.”

Critics say it will not curb the gang violence that has plagued the city of Rio for decades. 

“For a moment, you disassemble an armed group, a movement linked to drug trafficking, but it doesn’t end,” said Pedro Carriello, a public defender assisting family members of those killed. “What remains are the losses of the families.” 

Though a nationwide survey by AtlasIntel published on Friday showed 55% of Brazilians backed the police operation, family members of the victims said the police did not do their job. 

“The police had the right to arrest my son,” said Brito, Wellington’s mother. “But not to kill him.” 

Reporting by Ricardo Brito in Brasilia and Luciana Magalhaes and Fabio Teixeira in Rio de Janeiro, Rodrigo Viga Gaier contributed reporting from Rio de Janeiro; Writing by Manuela Andreoni; Editing by Brad Haynes and Michael Learmonth

Dolphins are rare visitors to the UNESCO World Heritage city’s lagoon, though two were spotted in March 2021 during COVID-19 restrictions that had reduced boat activity

International News via Reuters:

A wild dolphin, nicknamed “Mimmo” by the local press, has become a regular visitor in the waters off Venice’s St. Mark’s Square, captivating tourists but raising concerns about its safety amid heavy marine traffic.

Dolphins are rare visitors to the UNESCO World Heritage city’s lagoon, though two were spotted in March 2021 during COVID-19 restrictions that had reduced boat activity.

Mimmo, believed to have entered the lagoon in late June, has been dodging the water buses, taxis, and gondolas in the busy St. Mark’s Basin area since last month, according to marine biologist Luca Mizzan, head of Venice’s Natural History Museum.

Unusually, the dolphin remains near St. Mark’s even when it has fed and appears unfazed by the noise of the boats and crowds, Mizzan told RAI public television.

Experts are concerned that Mimmo could get injured by a boat propeller and are monitoring its movements, but are uncertain how to encourage the dolphin to leave the area, he said.

The approach of winter, which normally drives away fish, may make the lagoon less attractive for Mimmo and encourage it to return to the open sea, Mizzan said, adding there was no way to force it away.

“This animal seems really sure of what it wants to do… It is perfectly capable of going out to sea, but even if we were to escort it, it could come back within a couple of hours.”

Reporting by Alvise ArmelliniEditing by Gareth Jones

Tim Davie, who has led the British Broadcasting Corporation since 2020, defended the organisation, saying its journalism was seen as the gold standard around the world

International News via Reuters:

The BBC’s boss and its head of news quit on Sunday following accusations of bias at the British broadcaster, including in the way it edited a speech by U.S. President Donald Trump.

The publicly funded BBC had been under mounting pressure after an internal report by a former standards adviser, which cited failings in its coverage of the Israel-Hamas war, transgender issues and a speech made by Trump, was leaked to the Daily Telegraph newspaper.

Trump welcomed the departures, criticising the two as “very dishonest people” after the BBC’s flagship Panorama programme edited two parts of one of his speeches together so he appeared to be encouraging the Capitol Hill riot of January 2021.

RESPECTED OVERSEAS, QUESTIONED OVER NEWS JUDGMENT 

Tim Davie, who has led the British Broadcasting Corporation since 2020, defended the organisation, saying its journalism was seen as the gold standard around the world. But he said mistakes had been made and he had to take ultimate responsibility.

Deborah Turness, the CEO of BBC News, also resigned. In an email to staff she said: “I want to be absolutely clear recent allegations that BBC News is institutionally biased are wrong.”

Widely respected around the world, the BBC still tops polls in Britain on the most trusted news brand and has huge reach in the country, providing news, entertainment and sport.

But the corporation, which is funded by a licence fee paid by all television-watching households, comes under intense scrutiny from some newspapers and critics on social media, which object to its funding model and perceived liberal stance.

It has in recent years been accused of failing to maintain its commitment to impartial news by critics on both sides of the political divide, struggling to navigate the fractious political and cultural environment.

The leaked internal report said BBC Arabic had shown anti-Israel bias in its reporting of the war in Gaza and that an effort to cover a group campaigning for single-sex spaces had been suppressed by a small group of staff who saw it as hostile to the transgender community.

The report was written by Michael Prescott, a former political editor of the Sunday Times, who was an independent adviser to the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines and Standards Board for three years before he left in June.

He compiled a dossier for the BBC’s board after he said bosses had “repeatedly failed” to tackle what he described as multiple examples of an institutional bias.

BBC HAS STRUGGLED WITH MULTIPLE SCANDALS

In recent years the BBC has struggled to contain multiple scandals.

In 2023 Gary Lineker, at the time its most highly paid sports presenter, was suspended for criticising the government’s immigration policy. That briefly led to many sports staff walking off the job in solidarity.

It was condemned for showing punk-rap duo Bob Vylan chanting against the Israeli military at this summer’s Glastonbury music festival, and it pulled a documentary about Gaza earlier this year because it featured the son of a deputy minister in the Hamas-run government.

In the Panorama documentary broadcast last year, Trump was shown telling his supporters that “we’re going to walk down to the Capitol” and that they would “fight like hell”, a comment he made in a different part of his speech.

He had actually said his supporters would “cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women”.

Trump, in a social media post on Sunday, accused the two executives of having tried to influence a U.S. presidential election.

“On top of everything else, they are from a Foreign Country, one that many consider our Number One Ally. What a terrible thing for Democracy!” he said.

DAVIE DEFENDS BBC, NEWS BOSS DENIES BIAS CLAIMS

British culture minister Lisa Nandy thanked Davie for his work as director general. A person familiar with the situation said Davie’s decision had left the BBC board stunned and he would stay on for the next few months while a replacement was found. 

Davie defended the corporation, saying it should be championed not weaponised due to its role in helping to build a healthy society and thriving creative sector.

But he said it was not perfect and he had made his decision after “reflecting on the very intense personal and professional demands of managing this role over many years in these febrile times”.

The BBC, which has to negotiate a new charter with the government in 2027 to guarantee its finances, had been slow to respond to the recent run of negative headlines, and the BBC’s media editor, Katie Razzall, said a dispute between the corporation’s board and leaders of news had held up an official response for days.

The chairman, Samir Shah, is now expected to apologise to lawmakers for the furore on Monday.

Reporting by Andrew MacAskill, Paul Sandle, Kate Holton and Michael Holden; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne and Alex Richardson