Nov 19(Jowhar)-Golaha Aqalka Sare ee Baarlamaanka Federaalka Soomaaliya ayaa maanta ansixiyay xubnaha Guddiga Xuquuqul Insaanka Qaranka, kadib cod loo qaaday kulankii ay yeesheen mudanayaasha Aqalka Sare.
EU climate chief: COP30 draft agreement brings progress and setbacks
Under the Amazon Sky: COP30, Compromise and the Politics of Tomorrow
Belém sits where the Amazon unfurls into the Atlantic — a city built on waterways, markets and the pulsing, humid breath of the rainforest. I arrived at dawn to find diplomats in dark suits navigating the same wooden sidewalks where vendors hawk steaming bowls of tacacá and carts sell glistening açaí. The air here seems to demand another kind of conversation: one that remembers trees and tides, not just emissions statistics and bullet points.
And yet, amid the color and clamour, the two-week COP30 summit has become a tightly wound theatre of international bargaining. Brazil, the host, has moved with surprising boldness. Its negotiators announced a two-stage negotiating gambit — an early package on items previously thought too contentious for the agenda, and a second sweep to tidy up remaining disputes by the end of the week. It is a daring approach, and it has set the whole summit buzzing.
What’s on the table
At the heart of the talks are the things that have been thorny for years: how rich countries will finance the global energy transition, whether and how the world will phase out fossil fuels, and how to close the yawning gap between pledges and what scientists say is needed to avoid catastrophic warming.
“We are not here to reopen deals that only muddle progress,” said one senior European negotiator, leaning on a balcony above the port. “But we are also realistic: timelines and trust matter. People on the front lines of climate change don’t have the luxury of patience.”
The draft text released by the presidency reads like an anatomy of compromise. It offers three divergent tracks on fossil fuels: an optional workshop on low-carbon solutions; a ministerial roundtable to chart pathways out of dependency on oil and gas; or, in another corner, the choice to leave the text blank. The very presence of those options shows how far the parties remain from consensus — and how much symbolic weight the term “phaseout” still carries.
Money, promises, and the politics of finance
Finance is the Gordian knot. Wealthy nations still hover around a long-broken promise to mobilise $100 billion a year for climate action in developing countries — a benchmark first set in 2009. That shortfall has become a litmus test of trust, especially for small island states and low-lying nations that face existential threats from sea-level rise.
“You cannot ask us to stop burning fossil fuels when you have not yet fulfilled the financial commitments that make that possible,” said Ana Tutu, a negotiator from a Pacific island state, with an urgency that made the room hush. “This is survival, not charity.”
From the European side, Wopke Hoekstra, the bloc’s climate chief, has been firm. “We are not reopening last year’s hard-won compromises on finance,” he said in an exchange on the margins. “And we will not be lured into a phony conversation about trade measures that distracts from delivering real money and real projects on the ground.”
As the world faces a warming pathway that, under current policies, still trends well above 1.5C, the politics of finance is more than accounting. It’s a question of capability, credibility and moral authority.
Voices from the riverbank
Outside the conference halls, Belém’s markets and riverfront tell stories that echo the negotiations — and often contradict them. A mango seller with sun-creased hands scoffed when I asked whether the summit felt relevant to everyday life. “They talk about ‘loss and damage.’ We already live that,” she said, pointing toward the waterline where newer houses stand on stilts. “We need promises that help us rebuild before the next tide.”
At the Ver-o-Peso market, an elderly fisher named João spoke of changes he’s observed over decades: “Rain comes wrong now. The river doesn’t behave like before.” His voice carried the precise, unquantifiable knowledge that rarely makes it into negotiating rooms but that scientists increasingly corroborate.
And yet there is cautious optimism. “If we leave Belem with a clear process — not platitudes — then this summit will have served its purpose,” said Dr. Laila Mendes, an environmental economist. “What matters is that finance aligns with technical support and technology transfer. Money without capacity building is like a net with holes.”
The broader context
Globally, the science is not patient. Atmospheric CO2 concentrations have now passed 420 parts per million, and the most recent UN assessments have warned that current policies are on track for warming well above 2C by the end of the century unless action deepens quickly. Fossil fuel combustion still accounts for roughly 80–85% of global CO2 emissions, and the 15 largest emitters together contribute the majority of greenhouse gases — with China, the United States, India and the EU alone responsible for a sizable share.
Those numbers land in a geopolitical arena where some oil-producing states push back against language that could be read as a binding commitment to reduce fossil fuel production. Their resistance illustrates a deeper truth: climate policy is not just about science or morality, it’s also about livelihoods, geopolitics and national budgets.
Can Belem produce a deal? And should it?
There is a peculiar alchemy to hosting a climate summit on Amazonian soil. The symbolism is potent — the world’s lungs watching the world’s powers negotiate. Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and UN Secretary-General António Guterres have signalled they want to use the platform to “strengthen climate governance and multilateralism.” But summits follow the messy logic of politics: midnight sessions, last-minute brackets, and negotiators who get better at compromise the longer they stay awake.
“They’ve boxed all the lightning rod issues in one room,” one observer told me, describing the scene backstage. “And every time a discussion gains momentum, someone else steers it away by bringing up something else. It’s a choreography as much as it is diplomacy.”
That choreography raises a pointed question for readers far from the Amazon: what do you expect from global summits? Is the symbolic value of bringing leaders to a place like Belém enough if the text that leaves is a careful, watered-down mosaic of options? Or do you want bold, legally binding commitments even if they risk pushing some parties away?
Where we go from here
By design, COP30 must translate high drama into practical outcomes: clearer roadmaps for fossil-fuel transition, transparent finance commitments that rebuild trust, and mechanisms to close the emissions gap. Whether Belem will produce that translation remains to be seen. What is already apparent is that the summit is forcing a conversation where words like “phaseout” and “finance” are not abstract—they are livelihoods, budgets, and futures.
And if nothing else, the meeting shows the human texture of climate politics: the vendor who needs resilient housing, the negotiator balancing domestic pressure, the scientist pointing at a chart, the young activist chanting outside. All of them are a reminder that the climate crisis is at once a global problem and an intimate story of place.
So when the delegates reconvene tonight under the same low sky that muffles the sound of cargo boats and market calls, listen for the river. It may remind them — as it reminded me — that the path forward must be anchored in reality, and that delaying action has a cost we are already starting to pay.
Madaxweynaha South Sudan oo shaqada ka eryay 4 wasiir iyo taliyaha booliska
Nov 19(Jowhar)-Madaxweynaha Koonfurta Suudaan, Salva Kiir ayaa xilka ka qaaday afar wasiir, guddoomiye gobol, iyo taliyaha booliska, isaga oo sidoo kale magacaabay madaxweyne ku xigeen.
13 killed in Israeli strike on Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon
Nightfall over Ain al-Helweh: smoke, sirens and a question that will not leave the air
When the sky over Sidon went dark, the sounds that broke the night were not the usual call to prayer or the rhythmic lapping of Mediterranean waves. They were the siren wails of ambulances, the staccato commands of men trying to clear a path, the dull boom of a strike, and then, a silence so heavy you could hear the shuffle of feet through the dust.
That silence was broken by the news: Lebanon’s health ministry said at least 13 people were killed when an Israeli strike hit Ain al-Helweh, the largest Palestinian refugee camp in the country, on a crowded evening. More were wounded, the ministry added, as ambulances ferried the injured to nearby hospitals and firefighters wrestled with flames licking the lower floors of a damaged building.
“We ran out into the street. We saw smoke, we heard the shots to clear the ambulances,” said a woman who has lived in the camp for decades. “My neighbor’s son—he was in the field, with the young boys—now he’s gone. We are hundreds of families like this.” Her voice trembled; the sound carried the weary resignation of a community that has known displacement as a constant companion.
The competing narratives: claims, denials, and a video
Within hours, familiar lines of assertion and rebuttal were drawn. The Israeli military announced it had struck what it called a Hamas training compound in Ain al-Helweh, saying it had “struck terrorists who operated in a Hamas training compound in the Ain al-Helweh area in southern Lebanon” and that it was “operating against Hamas’s establishment in Lebanon.”
Hamas pushed back forcefully. “There are no military installations in the Palestinian camps in Lebanon,” the movement said, calling Israel’s account “pure fabrications and lies.” In its own claim, Hamas said those hit were “a group of young boys” on an open sports field frequented by camp youth.
The Israeli military released footage it said showed the strike; observers in the area reported a building on fire and firefighters working to control the blaze. But an AFP correspondent who reached the scene said they did not immediately see damage to the Khalid bin al-Walid mosque reportedly near the strike, even as state-run media said a car in a parking lot near the mosque was hit and the mosque and a centre bearing the same name were also struck.
“When the rockets fall, we do not have time to decide who is who,” an aid worker in Sidon told me. “We only have time to pull people out and get them to the hospital.” Her voice was pragmatic, tired. “We are triage, but we need protection to do our work.”
Inside Ain al-Helweh: a densely woven life
Ain al-Helweh is not a stat on a map. It is a dense tapestry of narrow lanes, market stalls, and homes that have folded generations into a handful of streets. It is also a place where youth play football on concrete lots, where mosques mark the rhythm of the day, where neighbors share bread and burdens.
Ask anyone who has lived there and they’ll tell you the same thing: camps are cramped and porous. Tents and low-rise concrete blocks press into each other. Water lines and power cables snake along, often patched together by the residents themselves. The social networks are tight; news travels faster than any headline.
“We hear everything. We see everything,” said a teacher whose classroom sits above a small shop that sells mint tea and cigarettes. “When a strike happens you feel it in your bones. You think: is this the beginning of something worse? Will the children sleep tonight?”
Ceasefires and the fragility of calm
This strike occurred against the backdrop of a fragile regional calm. A ceasefire agreed last November sought to stem more than a year of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah—an escalation that at one point included two months of open war. But despite that truce, strikes attributed to Israel have continued inside Lebanon, targeting what Tel Aviv describes as Hezbollah or, at times, Hamas operatives.
For many residents, these periodic strikes underscore a simple truth: ceasefires can pause large-scale warfare, but they do not erase the flashpoints that can ignite violence. “A day without shells is not peace,” an older man in the camp said, folding himself around a cigarette. “It is a postponement.”
What the numbers tell—and what they don’t
The immediate tally is stark: at least 13 dead and “a number of others wounded,” according to the Lebanese health ministry. Ambulances were still transporting wounded to hospitals as reports came in. Numbers tell part of the story but give no sense of the depth of loss—of a father who will not come home, of a classroom with fewer voices, of parents who must explain the unexplainable to small children.
Beyond the night’s toll, there are other figures to keep in mind: camps like Ain al-Helweh shelter tens of thousands of Palestinians who have lived in Lebanon for generations, often without full citizenship and with limited access to services. Humanitarian agencies have long warned that a blow to such densely populated areas can produce outsized humanitarian consequences.
Voices from the margins—what people said
“We hear claims from every side,” said a local doctor, rubbing her eyes after hours in a crowded emergency room. “We don’t ask the names when they come through the door. We patch them up. But every time the rhetoric grows louder, the line between a military target and a schoolyard gets blurred.”
A municipal official in Sidon, speaking on condition of anonymity for safety, said: “Nobody in the city wants to see escalation. But the strikes here are reminders of how precarious the whole situation is. When you have non-state actors and refugees packed into camps, even a single strike can send shockwaves.”
Wider ripples: what this means for the region
Beyond the immediate tragedy is a larger, gnawing question: how do protracted conflicts and the presence of armed groups within or near civilian areas change the calculus of safety? The debate over whether militant groups use refugee camps as bases has been a long-standing and bitter one; for residents, the cost is borne by families and neighborhoods, not by strategic analysts.
And what of international law and humanitarian protections? The targeting of crowded civilian spaces raises questions about proportionality and precautions—questions that, in the aftermath of strikes, find their way to statements and inquiries, but too rarely to swift, preventative action.
What can readers take away?
What do these nightly headlines ask of us, as afar citizens of a connected world? They ask for attention beyond outrage cycles. They ask us to notice how displacement compounds vulnerability, how ceasefires can paper over simmering conflicts, and how fragmentation—political as much as physical—makes finding long-term solutions harder.
They also ask us to imagine the human scale: a child who will remember the night not for the politics but for the smell of smoke and the ache of loss. Would you want your city to be a place where children can play without fear? Do you believe there’s a political path that secures both safety and dignity for people who have spent generations in limbo?
A familiar night, an uncertain morning
By dawn, the ash had settled into the cracked alleys of Ain al-Helweh. People swept soot from doorways. The mosque’s prayer schedule continued, because ritual is a kind of defiance against shock. The injured were listed, transferred, counted; the bereaved began their slow, private reckonings.
And the questions remained, lingering like the smoke: who was targeted, who was hit, and what will be the next flashpoint? For the people of Ain al-Helweh, and for the wider region that watches and waits, answers matter. But so does another truth: beyond claims and counterclaims are lives that demand protection—not as collateral in a geopolitical argument, but as human beings whose nights and mornings are worth more than headlines.
Wasiirka Arrimaha Dibadda Soomaaliya oo shir caalami ah uga qeyb galay Rome
Nov 19(Jowhar)-Wasiirka Arrimaha Dibadda iyo Iskaashiga Caalamiga, Mudane Cabdisalaan Cabdi Cali, ayaa maanta ka qeybgalay shirkii ugu horeeyay ee heer caalami ah ee ” Italophony” oo lagu qabtay Villa Madama ee magaalada Rome.
U.S. delegation visits Kyiv to revive stalled peace talks
A Quiet Arrival, A Loud War: Two U.S. Army Leaders Touch Down in Kyiv
The dawn was still soft over Kyiv, the city stitched together by trams and fountains and a stubborn sense of routine, when two figures stepped off a plane and into a story that will not leave them: Army Secretary Dan Driscoll and Army Chief of Staff General Randy George. Their arrival — unannounced, low-key, purposeful — felt like a secret chapter dropped into a public book.
“We heard helicopters before we saw the convoy,” said Olena Mykolaivna, who runs a small bakery near the presidential quarter. “People here have been waiting for signposts — any sign that something might change, one way or another.” Her voice carried that mixture of hope and weariness you hear in Kyiv now: a city that keeps making soup even as air-raid sirens sometimes intrude on the rhythm.
Why They Came: Military Channels, Diplomatic Hopes
The two senior U.S. Army officers are reported to have met President Volodymyr Zelensky, top commanders and lawmakers, according to people familiar with the planning. The purpose — as much a practical military check as a diplomatic probe — was to map battlefield needs and, quietly, to explore ways to breathe life back into stalled negotiations with Moscow.
Sources close to planning told several media outlets that the visit is part of a broader push by the Trump administration to test ceasefire concepts and diplomatic ideas directly with both Kyiv and, later, Moscow. The Wall Street Journal has reported that Secretary Driscoll may later meet Russian officials — an unusual pivot that underscores a willingness to use military actors as interlocutors where traditional diplomacy has faltered.
“Sometimes the language of generals lands differently,” said Dr. Hana Korolenko, a Kyiv-based analyst who has watched the conflict since 2022. “There’s a certain bluntness in military-to-military talks, and in a conflict that now approaches its fourth year, activists of every stripe are trying new grammar to end the bloodshed.”
Politics at Home, Consequences Abroad
Since Mr. Trump took office in January, trips by senior U.S. figures to Kyiv have become rarer, with many contacts shifted to third countries or held by video. That makes this in-person visit all the more striking — a signal that, at least for now, Washington is willing to mix its diplomatic formula.
“We need to explore every channel,” a U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told reporters. “The President has tasked his team to think creatively and to test ideas with Kyiv and Moscow. Military officials can sometimes move in spaces of credibility that civilian envoys cannot.”
But those explorations carry risks. Trust is frayed. Many in Europe and in Kyiv worry that any speedy settlement could cement Russian control over territory seized since 2014. “You cannot build lasting peace by freezing injustice,” warned Professor Marta Sosnovska, an international law scholar. “Any ceasefire that leaves occupation in place will sow future wars.”
On the Ground in Kharkiv: Nightfall and Aftermath
While generals discussed strategy in Kyiv, in Kharkiv — Ukraine’s second-largest city and an industrial heartland close to the Russian border — the war’s human toll was less abstract. Overnight missile strikes wounded at least 32 people, including children, officials said. Eleven drones struck urban districts, sparking fires in a nine-storey residential building, damaging cars, garages and a supermarket.
“We were asleep. The ceiling shook,” recounted 34-year-old Viktor, whose apartment window was shattered by blast waves. “My daughter woke up screaming. We ran downstairs with a blanket. That’s what people do now — run, check, help.”
Emergency services reported evacuating 48 people from smoke-filled entrances — three of them children. Regional authorities named two of the wounded girls as 9 and 13 years old. Images from the scene showed neighbors forming human chains to carry mattresses, and volunteers at makeshift stations handing out hot tea and bandages.
Moscow’s intensified missile and drone campaign has been particularly focused on energy infrastructure this autumn; in October, analysts and Ukrainian officials described the heaviest bombardment of gas facilities since the February 2022 invasion. The aim is clear and chilling: to complicate life through winter, when heating and electricity become existential concerns.
Poland Scrambles Jets — and Nearby Worries Rise
The strikes also reverberated beyond Ukraine’s borders. Polish and allied aircraft were deployed early in the morning to safeguard Polish airspace after Russian strikes came close to the border near Poland. For a NATO nation that shares both a long border and a history with Ukraine, such incidents revive old anxieties about how a regional war can draw in neighbors.
“We are watching with deep concern,” said an Eastern European diplomat in Warsaw. “A war that keeps spreading missiles and drones near NATO territory cannot be contained by silence.”
Between Hope and Unease: What Will a ‘Ceasefire’ Mean?
President Trump has repeatedly promised to bring the war to a rapid close and has instructed advisers to test ceasefire ideas with Kyiv and Moscow. That determination to seek a quick settlement appeals to those exhausted by years of attrition and to global markets uneasy about sustained disruption.
Yet there are tensions: Ukrainian leaders have repeatedly signaled they will not accept deals that leave Russian forces in control of occupied land. Western capitals worry that a hurried deal could enshrine a new status quo that hardens into permanent loss.
“Can a ceasefire be negotiated without asking the people who live under occupation what they want?” asked Lina Petrenko, a volunteer coordinator in a small town near the front. “Peace cannot be a tidy paragraph if it means someone stays in your home.”
What This Moment Tells Us — And What We Must Ask
There is an old saying in journalism: report the event; tell the story. The Driscoll-George visit is both: a discrete action in a wider diplomatic push, and a narrative knot that ties frontline suffering to high-stakes decision-making. It asks us to consider uncomfortable questions about how wars end, who gets to negotiate, and how communities survive the wait.
Will military intermediaries unlock compromise where diplomats failed? Or will secrecy breed suspicion, making any deal harder to implement? As Kyiv prepares for a presidential trip to Turkey to revive talks with Russia, those questions will only sharpen.
One thing seems certain: the human ledger continues to increase. The war that began in February 2022 has stretched into its fourth year; every raid on infrastructure chills more homes, every attack on cities like Kharkiv adds names to lists of the wounded. Behind the headlines are bakeries, tram lines, volunteer kitchens, and children whose lives will be shaped by decisions taken in rooms far from the rubble.
“We are tired, but not finished,” said a frontline medic in a voice that folded anger and resolve into one. “We want peace. We want it to be fair.”
What would you want to see in that peace? Justice? A ceasefire that limits bloodshed now? Or a longer road toward a settlement that restores territory and rights? As the diplomats, soldiers and leaders plot their next moves, the rest of the world must ask: what kind of peace are we willing to pay for — and what are we willing to accept?
Trump backs Saudi crown prince amid Khashoggi murder controversy
A Red Carpet, a Flyover — and a Ghost at the Banquet
On a crisp Washington afternoon, the South Lawn of the White House looked like a scene from statecraft: mounted cavalry, a cannon salute, fighter jets carving white lines across a pale sky. Photographers clicked, flags snapped, and for a few choreographed moments the world was invited to admire the pageantry.
But next to that spectacle sat a darker story that refuses to be dressed in ceremonial regalia: the unresolved killing of Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul in October 2018. It cast long, stern shadows across the manicured grass.
“They rolled out the red carpet for a man haunted by questions that have never truly been answered,” said Michael O’Connor, a former State Department human-rights officer who watched the arrival from the sidewalk. “Power has a way of rewriting the margins of accountability.”
One Man’s Defense, Another’s Verdict
Inside the Oval Office, the scene grew even more surreal. President Donald Trump sat side-by-side with Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince who has been central to the Khashoggi scandal. In a blunt departure from previously public U.S. intelligence assessments, the president declared the crown prince “didn’t know” about the killing — a line delivered with the finality of a closing bracket.
“Things happened, but he knew nothing about it, and we can leave it at that,” Mr. Trump told reporters, while the crown prince, his expression measured, called Khashoggi’s death “painful” and insisted the kingdom had conducted the right investigations.
That exchange stitched together two competing stories: a presidential defense spoken with decisive immediacy, and a more complicated institutional record. U.S. intelligence agencies concluded after the 2018 killing that Saudi operatives acted on orders that could be traced back to the highest levels of the Saudi government. The CIA’s 2018 assessment — and subsequent reporting by multiple outlets — attributed the operation to Saudi command structures, findings that have been seized on by human-rights groups and foreign governments alike.
Voices on the Lawn
Outside the gates, reactions were as varied as the crowd. “I’m not surprised,” said Laila Ahmed, a Saudi student who’s been studying in Washington for three years. “There’s a sense that money and strategic partnerships make everything negotiable. But that doesn’t make injustice any less visible.”
At the edge of the demonstration a veteran who served in the Middle East, Dale Winters, shook his head. “We can’t ignore strategic alliances. But we also can’t pretend to be a moral beacon if accountability becomes optional,” he said.
The Price of Power: Deals, Defense, and Diplomacy
What played out in public was more than ceremony and cross-purposes. Economic and security threads ran through the encounter: the crown prince pledged — once again — to increase Saudi investment in the United States, raising a figure that President Trump touted as reaching $1 trillion, up from earlier promises. Concrete timetables and verifiable pipelines were absent, as they often are with headline-grabbing commitments.
The two leaders also discussed a defense agreement and the possibility of Saudi acquisition of advanced U.S. fighter jets — including references to the F-35 — though no sale was finalized in the room and Congress often scrutinizes such transfers with deep skepticism.
“These conversations are never just about planes or purchase orders,” explained Dr. Sara Mahmoud, a Middle East analyst at an international policy institute. “They’re about influence: energy markets, counterterrorism cooperation, regional balances of power, and the optics of partnerships. When leaders choose to move past a human-rights crisis toward commerce, that choice has reverberations.”
Numbers Behind the Headlines
- Jamal Khashoggi was killed at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on 2 October 2018.
- In 2018, U.S. intelligence agencies produced assessments linking the killing to Saudi operatives and raising questions about senior-level knowledge.
- Saudi Arabia remains one of the world’s top oil exporters and a central player in global energy markets — the geopolitics of oil still shape diplomatic relations.
- Saudi government pledges to invest in international projects have periodically featured headline figures—$600 billion, $1 trillion—though exact accounts and delivery schedules are often opaque.
Public Relations, Reformation, and the Reality of Reform
Mohammed bin Salman has sold himself abroad as a reformer. On the home front he has championed an economic blueprint known as Vision 2030, aimed at diversifying Saudi Arabia’s oil-dependent economy, lifting restrictions on women’s social freedoms, and attracting investment. Those changes have been real in many respects, reshaping cinemas, concerts, and the social calendar.
Yet alongside those welcome reforms, critics point to an expanded crackdown on dissent — arrests of activists, journalists, and perceived dissidents — that calls into question the extent and cost of the crown prince’s modernization project. Human-rights organizations have described the Khashoggi case as emblematic of a broader pattern of repression.
“There’s an inherent contradiction in packaging social liberalization with political repression,” said Noor Al-Harith, a human-rights lawyer who has represented Saudi activists in exile. “If you lift the social curtain but seal the mouths of those who would critique your policies, what you’ve built is not reform: it’s a façade.”
What Are We Willing to Trade for Stability?
As the last of the formalities wound down — a lunch in the Cabinet Room, a black-tie dinner under chandeliers — the questions the day posed remained stubbornly unanswered. Are economic promises sufficient recompense for unresolved questions about a journalist’s death? Will strategic alignments outweigh calls for accountability when national interests collide with moral imperatives?
Readers might ask themselves: when a government that exports oil and buys arms is also accused of silencing critics, how should democracies respond? Is isolation a useful tool, or does engagement offer a better path to change?
“No country is a single story,” Dr. Mahmoud told me. “Saudi Arabia is both a partner and a state under scrutiny. The dilemma for democracies is balancing pragmatic interests with the values they purport to champion.”
Looking Ahead
Whether this visit marks a new normal — where strategic and economic ties trump public censure — or a temporary pause in the long arc of scrutiny, depends on forthcoming actions: investigations that satisfy international standards, transparent accounting of commitments, and an earnest reckoning with how dissent is treated.
In Washington, beneath the jet roar and the polite clinking of cutlery, the question hung in the air: can a state truly reform while its critics are silenced? Can partnerships survive the tension between realpolitik and accountability?
Maybe you have an answer. Maybe you don’t. But as the presidential portraits in the hallway watched, the world was reminded that democracy and diplomacy are messy, human endeavors — full of ceremonies, compromises, and ghosts that will not, and should not, be politely escorted away.
Asbestos scare forces school closures across Australia and New Zealand
A handful of sand, a community shaken: what the asbestos scare in school sandpits tells us about safety, global trade and childhood
On a bright autumn morning, the sandpits that usually echo with the muffled clatter of plastic buckets and the high, concentrated silence of kids building imaginary worlds sat cordoned off. In towns from Wellington to suburbs outside Sydney, teachers taped yellow warning signs across wooden frames and parents hovered like uneasy sentinels. The culprit? Decorative play sand—sold in tubs, imported from China—now suspected of containing chrysotile asbestos.
It sounds almost too small to matter: grains of sand meant for crafts and sandboxes. Yet within days the ripple became a wave. New Zealand authorities reported some 40 schools and daycare centres temporarily closed as staff tracked down potentially contaminated batches. Across the Tasman, more than 70 schools shut their doors while checks were carried out.
Close up: what officials found, and why it matters
WorkSafe New Zealand announced laboratory tests that identified chrysotile asbestos in batches of the decorative sand. Chrysotile—often called white asbestos—has been widely used historically for its heat-resistant properties but is now linked to serious lung disease when fibres are inhaled over time. The presence of asbestos in a product marketed to children sent alarm bells through classrooms, kindergarten play areas and dining-room tables.
“The fear here isn’t theoretical,” said Dr. Aroha Te Rangi, a Christchurch-based occupational health specialist. “Even though short, incidental exposure is unlikely to cause immediate illness, asbestos exposure accumulates. The worry is that fibres could be present in environments where children play, parents craft, and people are less likely to wear masks or take precautions.”
Australia’s product safety regulator has been more measured, noting that current tests have not detected breathable, or respirable, asbestos fibres in quantities that would immediately endanger health. “The release of respirable fibres is unlikely unless the sand is crushed or pulverised,” a regulator spokesperson said, explaining the science of how asbestos becomes airborne and dangerous.
Voices from the sandpit
For parents, the abstract becomes personal quickly. “My daughter comes home with sand behind her ears every single day,” said Naomi Patel, a mother at one Auckland pre-school now closed for deep cleaning. “You picture the worst. You feel betrayed that something labeled safe was in the hands of our children.”
Teachers, too, have spoken about the logistical and emotional challenges. “It’s not just about closing a room or replacing a bag of sand,” said Tom Ngatai, a primary school deputy principal in Dunedin. “We had lesson plans around sensory play, social learning in the sandpit—those routines are part of how children learn to share, to problem-solve. Pulling that rug away affects more than play.”
At a weekend markets in suburban Melbourne, stallholder Mei Li, who sells craft kits, described the supply chain tensions. “Suppliers in China are small manufacturers,” she said. “We buy in bulk to keep prices low. Now shops are checking barcodes, chasing batch numbers—people are panicked because the supply chain is so opaque.”
Supply chains under the microscope
This incident is as much about global trade as it is health. The decorative sand in question is a manufactured, packaged product that entered a web of distributors and small retailers across Australia and New Zealand. Cheap, colorful, and marketed to parents and craft-lovers, such products have boomed with the rise of online marketplaces and a DIY culture that prizes quick, aesthetic solutions.
“This is a snapshot of a broader modern dilemma,” observed Dr. Lena Hofmann, a supply-chain analyst. “As consumption fragments and sourcing becomes global, regulatory oversight struggles to keep pace. A small failure at one manufacturing site can ripple through hundreds of shops and thousands of households.”
Beijing’s foreign ministry, asked about the matter, said it had “noted the relevant reports”. Australian regulators said local businesses were communicating with their suppliers to resolve issues—a reminder that certification and traceability matter more than ever.
Practical steps for parents and schools
For now, health and education authorities recommend caution rather than panic. If you suspect your school or child-care centre has used the implicated sand, isolate it, do not crush or sweep it, and contact your local education authority or workplace safety regulator for testing and guidance.
- Do not attempt to vacuum or dry-sweep contaminated sand—this can send fibres airborne.
- Wear a high-quality mask (P2/N95) and use wet-cleaning methods if advised to handle small amounts.
- Follow local recall notices and check batch numbers or product codes if you have tubs of decorative sand at home.
Health professionals caution that short-term, incidental exposure is unlikely to produce immediate illness. Still, asbestos is a long-game toxin: mesothelioma and other asbestos-related diseases often show up decades after exposure. Globally, asbestos exposure is estimated to contribute to tens of thousands of deaths annually, a sobering reminder that dangerous industrial materials can have a slow, devastating footprint.
Why this matters beyond a closed classroom
There’s something elemental about sand—childhood, beaches, the primal joy of shaping a mound into a castle. That makes this contamination feel especially invasive. When items intended for play become potential hazards, it triggers broader public questions about consent, safety and responsibility in a globalised market.
Policy matters, too. Governments and regulators will be pushed to up the ante on testing, import controls and supply-chain transparency. Consumers may demand clearer labeling and easier access to batch information. Retailers will need to show due diligence, and small businesses will face pressure to verify suppliers’ claims.
But there’s another, quieter toll: trust. “When a place that’s supposed to be safe is suddenly uncertain, that’s a wound to the fabric of daily life,” said community organiser Mariam Khatri. “It’s not just about replacing sand; it’s about repairing confidence.”
Questions to take home
As you read this, consider: how much confidence do we want to place in global supply chains for the objects we entrust to children? What balance should regulators strike between facilitating trade and enforcing safety? And how do communities heal after a disruption that, at first glance, seems so small?
For parents, teachers and school administrators, the immediate work is clear: follow official guidance, replace suspect products, communicate transparently with families, and use this scare as a lesson in vigilance. For policymakers and consumers, the challenge is systemic: building a marketplace where safety goes hand in hand with convenience, where a tub of sand isn’t a roll of the dice.
In the meantime, playgrounds will reopen, sandboxes will be refilled, and children—resilient as ever—will return to their castles. The test will be whether the adults around them have learned anything from the dust.
BBC World Service announces more journalism to come from Africa as part of global changes
Nov 18 (Jowhar)-BBC World Service has announced a series of programme changes as part of a commitment to move more programmes and services closer to the audiences and communities they serve.
Zelensky to visit Turkey aiming to revive peace negotiations
On the Edge of Negotiation: A Visit to Turkey, the Human Calculus of Prisoner Swaps, and the Growing Cold of War
There is a kind of exhausted hope that accompanies any announcement of peace talks in this war—a brittle, tentative thing that flares up in living rooms and hospital wards and fades when shells fall. When President Volodymyr Zelensky said he would travel to Turkey “tomorrow” to try to reinvigorate negotiations and restore prisoner-of-war exchanges, the words landed like a bell in rooms both near and far: an invitation to believe and a reminder of how easily belief can be broken.
Imagine Istanbul’s Bosphorus breeze carrying the smell of roasted chestnuts and the distant murmur of traffic—this is the city that hosted earlier direct talks between Russian and Ukrainian delegations earlier this year, talks that produced few concrete breakthroughs beyond the deeply human work of releasing prisoners and returning bodies. The memory of those corridors of diplomacy now collides with the front lines: a teenager killed in Kharkiv, power stations damaged in Donetsk, and people waking up to fewer lights and more fear.
A mission with familiar echoes
“We are preparing to reinvigorate negotiations, and we have developed solutions that we will propose to our partners,” Mr. Zelensky posted on social media, with a tone that mixed urgency and weary determination. He added the mission was also about “restoring POW exchanges and bringing our prisoners of war home”—a phrase that sounds simple and is anything but.
Prisoner swaps, more than ceasefires or troop movements, have been where this conflict’s fragile humanity has been visible. Between May and July, the Istanbul talks produced primarily swaps and repatriations of the fallen. The last documented exchange took place in early October, when Russia and Ukraine each handed over 185 prisoners. Behind that number are families who wait, seasons of birthdays missed, and the slow, bureaucratic work of identifying bodies.
“Those exchanges are not a diplomatic side-show,” said a Kyiv negotiator who asked not to be named. “They are lifelines. They are the only points our people can hang onto as being clearly human in a situation that otherwise treats everyone as strategic chess pieces.”
The battlefield—that daily counterpoint
No talk of diplomacy is complete without its counterpoint: the explosions, the bodies, the flickering lights in winter. In the Kharkiv region this month, a 17-year-old girl wounded in a missile strike on Berestyn died in hospital, Kharkiv governor Oleg Synegubov said on Telegram. He added that the attack wounded at least nine others, including a 16-year-old boy, and that emergency crews were on the scene.
Elsewhere, drone strikes have ignited fires in Dnipro and battered residential areas and public services. Just yesterday, aerial strikes killed five people and destroyed a kindergarten in eastern Ukraine. Frontline towns like Balakliya have seen residential neighborhoods shattered. And in the Russian-controlled parts of Donetsk, local officials reported that Ukrainian drone strikes had damaged thermal power stations, leaving hundreds of thousands without electricity.
“We wake up to the sound of drones and the sound of generators,” said Hanna, a schoolteacher in Kharkiv who delivered classes over a patched-together internet connection. “My students ask if the lights will work for their evening homework. How do you answer a child that question and make them feel safe?”
Winter, infrastructure and a strategy of attrition
There is a deliberate logic to targeting energy and water infrastructure as temperatures drop. Cold weather attributes urgency to repair, impacts civilian life directly, and chips away at morale and logistics. Ukraine has responded by stepping up long-range strikes against Russian-controlled infrastructure, a tit-for-tat campaign meant to erode Moscow’s ability to sustain front-line operations.
Russia’s Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said Moscow is “open to negotiation processes” to resolve the war, blaming Kyiv and Europe for what he called a freeze in talks. Kyiv, on the other hand, argues that Russian demands—pressuring Kyiv to cede territory—are tantamount to capitulation and therefore unacceptable.
“For a negotiation to be real,” a retired diplomat in Ankara told me over strong Turkish tea, “both sides must come with parameters that allow for political compromise. You cannot begin from maximalist positions and call it talks.”
Why Turkey? Why now?
Turkey has carved a role for itself as an intermediary in this conflict—balancing Ankara’s own strategic relations with Moscow and Kyiv while presenting itself as a venue where talks can feel neutral. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has hosted delegations before; his government’s ability to convene parties who otherwise refuse to sit together has become a quiet foreign policy asset.
For Zelensky, the trip is also a stage in a larger European tour aimed at shoring up military supplies and international backing for Ukraine’s battered energy grid and its armed forces, which have been depleted after months of intense fighting. He was due to meet Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and had earlier signed an accord with France that, according to Kyiv, would allow Ukraine access to up to 100 fighter jets and other hardware, including drones—a deal that signals how Western military support is evolving.
What’s at stake—and what the public rarely sees
Beyond diplomats and soldiers there are the everyday stakes: children who go to school in shifts because classrooms are damaged; farmers who cannot sow or harvest because of restricted access to fields; hospitals running on generators. Millions of people have been displaced since the full-scale invasion began in 2022; UN agencies have estimated that millions more are living with the daily insecurity of disrupted services and energy shortages.
Prisoner exchanges, then, take on added weight. They are the human punctuation points in a war otherwise written in artillery and spreadsheets—evidence that even amid strategic stalemates, humanitarian bridges can be built.
“We measure progress not by headlines about tanks,” said Dr. Leila Markovic, a humanitarian specialist who has worked in Ukraine. “We measure progress by whether an elderly man can get his medication on time, whether a mother can bring her child to school without fear. Exchanges, the return of bodies, these are the things that restore dignity.”
Questions for the reader—and a reminder of the stakes
So where does this leave us? Can talks convened in a city that straddles continents change the tide of a conflict that has remade maps, lives, and economies? Will prisoner swaps open the door to broader concessions? Or are they, as some fear, merely a human balm for a much larger and continuing violence?
What role do neutral venues and intermediary states play in a world where alliances are shifting? And how should ordinary citizens—those of us reading far from the front—hold our leaders to account when diplomacy is touted, but the artillery keeps speaking?
When Zelensky lands in Turkey, he brings with him not only proposals but an urgent plea: to keep human exchanges alive, to use diplomacy to reduce suffering, and to remind the world that in the calculus of war the human line always matters. Whether the partners across the table will respond in kind is the question that will shape the coming winter—for prisoners, for families, and for the fragile hope that a conversation can still, slowly, change the course of a war.
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