The fire broke out on Tuesday evening on the seventh floor of the old building where the victims were accommodated

International News via Reuters:

A fire at a retirement home in the city of Tuzla in northeastern Bosnia claimed a 12th victim on Thursday, after an 84-year-old woman succumbed to injuries, the Tuzla hospital said. 

The fire broke out on Tuesday evening on the seventh floor of the old building where the victims were accommodated. Ten people died during the night and 30 others were treated in the hospital, of whom two have since died. Out of 14 patients who were still being treated in the hospital, two were in a critical condition, the officials said.

Autopsy examinations showed that all the victims, six men and six women, died from suffocation after breathing carbon monoxide, the Tuzla prosecutor’s office said in a statement.

An investigation was completed on Thursday but prosecutors were still waiting for reports from police, power and fire experts to determine the cause, the office said. 

A day of mourning for the dead in the Tuzla retirement home was declared in the Bosniak-Croat Federation, one of Bosnia’s two autonomous entities, and in neighbouring Montenegro.

Reporting by Daria Sito-Sucic; Editing by Alex Richardson

The Rapid Support Forces’ capture of al-Fashir, the Sudanese army’s last holdout in Darfur, marked a milestone in the African country’s more than two-and-a-half-year civil war

International News via Reuters:

The U.N. Human Rights Council will hold an emergency session on the situation in al-Fashir, Sudan, following grave concerns about mass killings during the fall of the city to paramilitary forces, a U.N. diplomatic note showed on Thursday.

The Rapid Support Forces’ capture of al-Fashir, the Sudanese army’s last holdout in Darfur, marked a milestone in the African country’s more than two-and-a-half-year civil war, giving the paramilitary group de facto control of more than a quarter of the territory.

The group has since agreed to a proposal for a humanitarian ceasefire, it said on Thursday.

Over 50 states supported the motion led by Britain, Ireland, Germany, the Netherlands and Norway including the required one-third of current voting members, the document showed.

The session will take place on Nov. 14, it said.

Hundreds of civilians and unarmed fighters may have been killed during the city’s fall, the U.N.’s human rights office has said.

Sudan, which has previously opposed international scrutiny of rights abuses there, is still considering its position on the event, its ambassador to the U.N. Hassan Hamid Hassan told reporters this week.

Reporting by Emma Farge and Olivia Le Poidevin; Editing by Madeline Chambers

Scientists have confirmed the world is set to cross the 1.5 C warming threshold around 2030, risking extreme warming with irreversible consequences

International News via Reuters:

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres tore into nations for their failure to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, as Brazil hosted world leaders for a summit ahead of the COP30 climate conference in the rainforest city of Belem.

Scientists have confirmed the world is set to cross the 1.5 C warming threshold around 2030, risking extreme warming with irreversible consequences.

“Too many corporations are making record profits from climate devastation, with billions spent on lobbying, deceiving the public and obstructing progress,” Guterres said in his speech. “Too many leaders remain captive to these entrenched interests.”

Countries are spending about $1 trillion each year in subsidizing fossil fuels.

Leaders have two clear options, Guterres said: “We can choose to lead – or be led to ruin.”

‘ALARMING STREAK’ OF RECORD HEAT

The COP30 conference marks three decades since global climate negotiations began. In that time, countries have curbed the projected climb in emissions somewhat, but not enough to prevent what scientists consider extreme global warming in the next few decades.

The World Meteorological Organization announced this year would likely be the second- or third-warmest on record, with the temperature average through August being 1.42 C above the preindustrial average, after record heat in 2023 and 2024.

“The alarming streak of exceptional temperatures continues,” WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo said with the report’s release.

Outside of the conference venue – still under construction ahead of next week’s summit start – a small group of indigenous people marched in a circle while singing and urging protection of the world’s forests and their people.

A flotilla bringing indigenous leaders and activists down rivers of the Amazon Basin to the conference was delayed and would not arrive until next week.

During the leaders’ summit on Thursday and Friday, about 150 heads of state, subnational leaders and international organizations were due to deliver speeches that would be televised across the world.

Missing from the lineup are the leaders of four of the world’s five most-polluting economies – China, the United States, India and Russia – with only the leader of the European Union showing up.

The U.S. administration has opted to send no one to the talks, unlike the others. Instead, top U.S. officials were in Greece alongside fossil fuel giant Exxon Mobil (XOM.N) on Thursday as it signed a new deal to explore offshore for natural gas.

Some said the absence of the United States from COP30 may free countries to discuss action without any one player dominating the outcome.

“Without the U.S. present, we can actually see a real multilateral conversation happening,” said Pedro Abramovay, vice president of programs at Open Society Foundations and a former justice minister under President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

‘NEW SPACE FOR MULTILATERALISM’

Lula planned to hold bilateral meetings on Thursday with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, after meeting one-on-one on Wednesday with the Chinese vice premier and leaders from Finland and the European Union.

“In a moment in which a lot of people are kind of claiming the death of multilateralism, I think there is a new space for a multilateralism that is not built in a top-down way from powerful countries towards poor countries,” Abramovay said.

Brazil is hoping the World Leaders Summit will deliver at least $10 billion of its overall target of $125 billion for its newly launched Tropical Forest Forever Facility, estimating that would be enough to start generating funds for conservation.

China, Norway and Germany were expected to announce contributions in Belem, after Brazil offered the first investment and Indonesia matched that pledge.

But the United Kingdom, which helped to frame the way the fund works, delivered an early disappointment on Wednesday, disclosing that it would be offering no cash.

Reporting by Valerie Volcovici, Lisandra Paraguassu and William James in Belem; Additional reporting by Brad Haynes in Belem and Emma Farge in Geneva; Writing by Katy Daigle; Editing by Leslie Adler and Janet Lawrence

U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agent Charles Exum shot U.S. citizen Marimar Martinez, who was warning others about immigration enforcement agents

International News via Reuters:

A federal agent who shot a Chicago woman multiple times after he said she struck his vehicle with her own bragged about his shooting skills in text messages with other agents, according to records presented Wednesday at a hearing in the case against the woman.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agent Charles Exum shot U.S. citizen Marimar Martinez, who was warning others about immigration enforcement agents in Chicago’s Brighton Park neighborhood, five times on October 4, after their cars collided. 

Martinez said the federal agent’s vehicle rammed her car.

Federal prosecutors said the shooting was an act of self-defense.

Martinez was indicted on October 10, along with another man, Anthony Ian Santos Ruiz, on federal charges of impeding a federal officer with a deadly weapon – Martinez’s car. Both were released on bond and attended Wednesday’s hearing. 

Records presented at the hearing showed that in a group Signal chat with other agents, which Exum described as a support group, he wrote in part: “I fired 5 rounds and she had 7 holes. Put that in your book boys.”

In a message to another recipient, Exum sent a news article about the event followed by the message: “Read it. 5 shots, 7 holes.”

When Christopher Parente, an attorney for Martinez, asked Exum what he meant by those messages, he responded: “I’m a firearms instructor and I take pride in my shooting skills.”

QUESTIONS OVER REPAIRS TO AGENT’S VEHICLE

Exum testified about driving his vehicle to Maine after the incident, where repairs were made by a CBP mechanic before the defendants could examine the vehicle. 

In a response to Martinez’s motion for a hearing regarding destruction of evidence, the government said that after the shooting the FBI took photos of Exum’s vehicle, a government-issued Chevy Tahoe, and paint samples of the damaged areas at the FBI’s Chicago office. It was then released back to Exum that evening without any special instructions or restrictions, according to prosecutors. 

Exum said he drove the Tahoe over 1,000 miles (600 km) back to Calais, Maine, where he is assigned to a Customs and Border Protection station, from October 8 to 10, parking it at a CBP facility there. He said he later found out that repairs, including buffing out “black marks,” were made to the vehicle.  

The government presented an exhibit of an email from Exum’s supervisor Kevin Kellenberger, stating that he had approved the repairs. 

But in a cross-examination, Parente noted that documentation from an FBI interview with Exum contradicted that version of events, with Exum telling agents he had asked for the repairs. 

When asked about the disparity between the FBI’s account and his own, Exum said the agent who interviewed him had “made a mistake.” 

Lawyers for Martinez and Ruiz questioned Exum on Wednesday about whether his experience at the agency should have indicated to him the possible value of the vehicle as evidence and the need to preserve it. 

Exum responded that because the vehicle was released to him by the FBI, he believed it was no longer necessary to preserve it as evidence.

After the collision and shooting on October 4, a crowd of protesters gathered around the scene on the southwest side of Chicago, and agents responded by deploying tear gas.

The incident came amid an ongoing immigration enforcement surge in the Chicago area directed by the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump that began in September and the administration termed “Operation Midway Blitz.”

Reporting by Renee Hickman in Chicago; Editing by Emily Schmall and Michael Perry