US Sends Warships as Tensions Mount Over Possible Venezuela Conflict

November 12, 2025

US deploys warships amid fears of Venezuela conflict — The USS Gerald R Ford's deployment was ordered nearly three weeks ago to help counter drug trafficking in the region

The Shadow of a Giant: A Carrier Cuts Across Caribbean Skies

The morning the carrier slid into view, fishermen in La Guaira pointed toward the horizon as if toward a new weather front—only this was iron and radar, not clouds.

“You could feel it before you saw it,” said Jorge Morales, 47, who has been hauling nets off Venezuela’s central coast for three decades. “The tide changes, the birds scatter, and then these planes start humming like a storm.”

That storm is the USS Gerald R. Ford, the world’s largest aircraft carrier, now operating inside the area of responsibility of the U.S. Naval Forces Southern Command, the Washington command announced. The deployment—ordered nearly three weeks ago—arrived in the Caribbean amid a broader U.S. campaign the administration calls an offensive against drug trafficking in the region.

What’s in the water and in the air

The air over Puerto Rico has reported F‑35s flying missions. Six U.S. Navy vessels are reported in Caribbean waters. The carrier itself is a walking, floating city of aircraft, sailors, and logistics—an unmistakable symbol of maritime power.

Carrier: USS Gerald R. Ford (largest in the U.S. fleet)
Air assets: F‑35s deployed to Puerto Rico
Surface forces: Multiple U.S. Navy ships in the Caribbean

“Our aim is to strengthen detection and disruption of illicit actors who threaten the safety and prosperity of the Western Hemisphere,” a U.S. defense official told reporters, invoking the familiar language of homeland security and interdiction.

Caracas Responds: Marches, Missiles, and Militias

In Caracas, the response was immediate and theatrical. State television beamed images of generals and governors speaking beside rows of troop carriers; the defense ministry announced a “massive deployment” of land, sea, air, river and missile forces, alongside civilian militias, to confront what it called “imperial threats.”

President Nicolás Maduro—whose recent elections are dismissed by Washington and many other states as illegitimate—has framed the arrival of U.S. forces as the opening act of a regime‑change play. “They are fabricating a war,” said one government spokesperson on state television, channeling a broader sense of siege that has been central to the Maduro government’s political narrative.

Analysts are skeptical about Venezuela’s ability to stand off militarily with the U.S. “This isn’t a fair fight,” said María Velásquez, a Caracas‑based security analyst. “Venezuela has strong political resolve and dense defensive rhetoric, but in hardware and logistics they are at a disadvantage.”

Voices from the coast

At a fish market beside the port of La Guaira, a vendor named Carmen Rojas wept quietly while packaging catch. “I don’t want to hear about missiles,” she said. “We want to sell fish, send our kids to school. This is not our war.”

In a riverside town upriver from the Colombian border, farmers have begun keeping watch at night—less out of fear of insurgents than out of worry that their harvests will be caught between interdiction operations and illicit trafficking routes. “We’re small people,” said one farmer who asked not to be named. “But our lives get tangled up in the decisions others make.”

Attack Claims, Legal Questions

Since early September, U.S. forces have reportedly attacked at least 20 vessels in international waters, killing at least 76 people, according to U.S. figures cited by officials. The administration has argued that it is engaged in an “armed conflict” with narcotics cartels—a framing that has significant legal implications.

Human rights experts and some international observers caution that attacks on vessels without transparent investigation risk becoming extrajudicial killings. “Even if the targets are traffickers, the rules of engagement and the evidentiary burden remain,” said Daniel Ortega, an international human rights lawyer based in Bogotá. “Killing on the open sea without due process raises very serious questions.”

Alliances Strained: Moscow, London, and the Wider Stage

Venezuela’s backing from Russia adds another telos to the story. Moscow publicly denounced what it called illegal and “unacceptable” strikes, with the foreign ministry blasting what it described as lawless behavior cloaked in the pretext of fighting drugs. The rhetoric was sharp, predictable—and dangerous in its potential to widen diplomatic fault lines.

Meanwhile, reports surfaced that the United Kingdom had paused certain intelligence sharing with the U.S. about suspected drug‑smuggling vessels, a sign that even close allies worry about the legal and moral calculus of these operations. A Downing Street spokesman refused to comment on operational details but reminded reporters that decisions on U.S. operations are for the U.S. to explain to its partners.

How Did We Get Here? And Where Could This Go?

This is not merely a Caribbean drama about ships and jets. It is the collision of long‑running trends: the militarization of drug policy, the use of force beyond national borders, and the re‑emergence of geopolitical competition in Latin America. For Washington, the narrative is simple—stop drugs before they reach American shores. For Caracas, the story is the same colonial script replayed: outside powers meddling in sovereign affairs.

But what about the people who live between those lines? The fishermen, market sellers, and farmers who do not sign up to geopolitical chess games—yet whose lives are the first to be altered—offer an inconvenient perspective: most want stability, not spectacle.

“We hear the planes, we hear the engines, and we think about our sons and daughters,” Morales said. “Politicians play at war. We pay for it.”

Questions to Hold in Mind

When a state deploys its most visible instrument of power into a region, what safeguards should limit how and when force is used? How do we weigh the costs of unilateral strikes in international waters against the plain harms of trafficking and corruption? And finally, in a world where rival powers rush to express solidarity with small states, how do ordinary citizens reclaim the right to peace?

These are not merely academic questions. They are living ones, shaped by the rhythms of coastal markets and the gossip of schoolyards, as much as by the language of war rooms.

Looking Ahead

The deployment of the Gerald R. Ford and the accompanying assets will test not just U.S. strategy, but regional diplomacy, legal norms, and the endurance of fragile societies caught in the crossfire. For now, the carrier’s wake is a double image: a promise to some of protection, and a threat to others of escalation.

“Power is a loud instrument,” said Velásquez. “But loud instruments are not always the ones that fix underlying problems. Until we ask the deeper questions about demand, governance, and justice, we’ll keep seeing the same cycles—only louder.”

As night fell on the Caribbean, fishermen folded their nets, and the carrier’s silhouette remained a dark, slow presence on the horizon: an omen, a deterrent, and for many, an unmistakable sign that the game has changed—whether they asked for it or not.

Thailand Suspends Ceasefire Enforcement Along Border with Cambodia

hanad

November 11, 2025

Thailand halts implementation of ceasefire with Cambodia — Cambodian teams work to detect and clear landmines along the Cambodia Thailand border in Banteay Ampil, Cambodia, in July

On a knife’s edge: How landmines and politics unraveled a fragile peace on the Thai–Cambodian border

The border air smelled of diesel and wet earth, the kind of scent you notice when there’s been more than rain — when tanks have churned the soil and villages have been swept by artillery. For a week after an enhanced ceasefire was signed in a regional summit room with big names and diplomatic fanfare, people here let themselves imagine quiet mornings again: children returning to schools, farmers ploughing paddy fields, markets humming with mangoes and gossip.

Now that fragile hope is on ice. Bangkok has announced it will pause implementation of the new ceasefire measures and delay the return of 18 Cambodian prisoners of war who had been in Thai custody. The decision, framed by officials as a response to a landmine blast that wounded four Thai soldiers yesterday, is the latest twist in a conflict that has already cost at least 48 lives and displaced some 300,000 people, according to humanitarian tallies compiled during the fighting this summer.

When symbolism outpaces trust

When governments first put pen to paper at a summit in Malaysia — in a ceremony even the US president attended — the moment was meant to stitch a wound opened by five days of heavy clashes last July. Leaders hoped that a formal “enhanced” ceasefire, which called for withdrawing troops, pulling back heavy weapons and repatriating detained combatants, would create breathing room.

“The agreement was never just ink on paper for families here,” said a woman in a roadside stall who gave her name as Som. “We wanted to buy rice without watching for mortars. We wanted to send our children to school without fear. Suddenly, it’s like the ground itself is conspiring against us.”

For diplomats, the ceasefire had performative power. For soldiers, it required meticulous coordination and, most of all, mutual trust — something that erodes when the fields themselves are booby-trapped.

Four soldiers injured, a history of buried danger

Bangkok’s defence minister announced the halt, saying the government would not proceed with the prisoner handover or further steps until Cambodia clarifies its position. He declined to say whether troops would be massed again along the boundary line — a silence that speaks its own language.

“We don’t know if this was the result of new mines or old ones disturbed by movement,” said a Thai military officer, speaking on condition of anonymity. “What we do know is that men were seriously hurt. When your soldiers get blown up, it changes the calculus overnight.”

Cambodia’s defence ministry swiftly denied laying any fresh mines and urged Thai forces to avoid patrolling long-abandoned minefields. The exchange of accusations is familiar; it’s a recurring refrain in boundary disputes worldwide where mine belts can outlive generations.

Lives stuck between maps and memory

Walk into any border town and you hear the echo of dislocation: a grandmother sorting photos, her fingers tracing the faces of grandchildren she no longer sleeps in the same room with; a teenager skipping school to help his father check fence lines for suspicious objects; a market vendor who tells you business is down 70% since July because people are afraid to come to the border.

“We don’t know who owns the land anymore,” said Dara, a 42-year-old farmer whose rice paddies skirt the contested area. “Maps change with a pen. Memories do not. If there are mines, they will keep killing for years.”

The human cost of unexploded ordnance is global and stubborn. Even where active conflict stops, mines and improvised explosive devices linger, maiming civilians, thwarting agriculture, and complicating humanitarian return efforts. Here, every field must be approached as a ledger where past conflict keeps writing bills on top of bills.

What’s at stake beyond the trenches

This confrontation is not simply about a strip of land. It is an intersection of national pride, political calculation, and the practical politics of border management. External actors — from regional blocks like ASEAN to powerful partners who pressed their own agenda at the summit — have tried to mediate. The United States, whose presence at the signing ceremony elevated the moment, will expect explanations.

“When outside powers step into local disputes, they can speed things up, but they often cannot manufacture trust,” said Dr. Lina Monteiro, an analyst of Southeast Asian security. “A signed agreement is a start, but for durable peace you need verification on the ground, de-mining, and—most importantly—local actors who believe the deal is in their interest.”

Thailand’s foreign minister said his government will explain the decision to both the United States and Malaysia, which chairs ASEAN and has been helping shepherd the truce. “What they (Cambodia) have said is not sufficient,” he told reporters, underscoring that words at a summit must be matched by deeds on the soil.

Roadblocks to reconciliation — and a path forward

The halt raises practical questions. Will troops be redeployed? Will a pause harden into renewed confrontation? And crucially, how will communities cope while political leaders negotiate at capital-level tables?

There are modest, immediate measures that could help dampen tensions and protect civilians:

Joint de-mining missions, potentially overseen or supported by neutral international agencies, to clear old minefields.
Transparent, step-by-step verification of troop withdrawals with local monitors and civil society observers.
Humanitarian corridors and rapid assistance for displaced families, tied to safeguards that prevent military exploitation of aid routes.

“If we want this not to repeat, we need people who can stand between the soldiers and the villagers,” said an aid worker who has spent years coordinating relief at borders in the region. “That means small, practical things that build confidence: marking cleared lanes, joint patrols for a limited period, and a clear, fast mechanism for investigating incidents.”

A longer shadow: mines, memory, and peacebuilding

There is also a deeper conversation to be had about what peace looks like after bombs and barbed wire. Landmines do not discriminate between combatant and child; they become a long-term drag on economic recovery, health, and education. When a farmer cannot plant his land, his family migrates. When a child cannot go to school, a generation’s potential shrinks.

“You can sign away artillery, but you cannot sign away suspicion,” Som, the market woman, said. “You clear the mines, you build a school, and then maybe — maybe — we will start to trust again.”

Questions to sit with as you read

As you follow this story from afar, consider: How much weight should outside powers carry when mediating local conflicts? What responsibilities do national leaders owe to civilians trapped between rival armies? And how do we, as a global community, prioritize removing the lethal legacies of past wars so that new ones do not begin where old ones ended?

For now, the fields along the Thai–Cambodian border remain a liminal zone — neither war nor peace, a place where the ground keeps its own secrets and where the next step could be a return to normality or a step on a device that reopens scars. Watching the diplomats and the generals, one feels that the most consequential work will not happen under chandeliers in capital cities but in muddy paddies, where people live and hope and, sometimes, wait for the day they can safely plant again.

Ethiopia to Host UN COP32 Climate Summit, Africa Group Announces

hanad

November 11, 2025

Ethiopia set to host UN's COP32 summit - Africa Group — Ethiopia is set to host the UN's COP32 climate summit in 2027

A continent’s summit: Ethiopia prepares to host COP32 — and the world is listening

There is a certain gravity to the news that Ethiopia is poised to host the United Nations climate summit, COP32, in 2027. It is not merely a line on a calendar. It is Addis Ababa, a city that once hosted pan-African dreams and now may host one of the most consequential climate gatherings of our decade — a stage where countries that have historically been sidelined by emissions debates will be able to press their own stories, demands and urgencies.

“The AGN has endorsed Ethiopia,” Richard Muyungi, chair of the Africa Group of Negotiators, announced in Belém, Brazil, where COP30 is currently underway. The endorsement, while informal for now, is expected to be ratified by all nations before the conference closes on 21 November — a procedural step that is likely to be a formality, but one that still carries symbolic weight.

Why Ethiopia? Why now?

Ethiopia is more than geography; it is history. Home to the African Union headquarters, the city of Addis Ababa is a diplomatic crossroads. Its highland air carries the smells of coffee roasting in street stalls, and the rhythm of the city — taxis, coffee ceremonies, market sellers calling out prices — gives the summit room a human pulse rarely felt in Geneva conference centers.

“Hosting COP here would put African voices in the very rooms where the rules are written,” said a climate policy expert working with civil society groups in Addis. “It will change the optics — and hopefully the politics — of who gets heard.”

There is a pragmatic logic to the choice as well. Africa contributes only a small fraction of global greenhouse gas emissions — roughly 3–4% by most estimates — yet it faces some of the most acute and immediate climate impacts: from chronic drought in the Horn of Africa and the Sahel to devastating floods in parts of East and West Africa, as well as sea-level rise threatening coastal cities.

A COP on African soil can shine a brighter spotlight on adaptation, loss and damage, and the stubborn gap between finance pledged and finance delivered. Remember the $100 billion climate finance pledge? It has been a headline figure for years but remains a sore point between richer and poorer nations.

Voices from the streets of Addis — local color and expectations

Walk through a neighborhood near Merkato, one of Africa’s largest open-air markets, and you’ll hear the city’s expectations in the voice of everyday people.

“When the world comes here, they will see our children, our farms, our rivers,” said Amina Bekele, who sells incense and coffee by the roadside. “We do not want speeches. We want help when the rains stop, when the soil cracks, when the harvest fails.”

Across town, a young Addis-based organizer, Elias Tadesse, spoke with a mixture of pride and urgency. “Hosting COP is a call — an invitation to face the imbalances. We hope our farmers, pastoralists and urban poor are not an afterthought in the negotiations.”

And there are cultural threads that would make a conference here different. Delegates could be offered a slow morning coffee ceremony — a ritual of hospitality and conversation — that forces people to sit, to listen, to exchange. That symbolic gesture could humanize complex talks about emissions, finance and timelines.

The unfinished business: COP31 and a looming deadlock

If the path to COP32 is smoothing out, the road to COP31 is kinked. Australia has put forward Adelaide as its bid to host next year’s conference, while Turkey has pressed for Antalya. The two countries belong to the same UN regional bloc — “Western Europe and Other States” — and UN procedures require consensus within the bloc. At present, neither side is ready to concede.

Negotiators in Belém are still working to break the impasse. If they cannot reach a decision, the fallback would be to hold COP31 at the UN Climate Change headquarters in Bonn, Germany. That default scenario — a congress convened in a familiar, less symbolic location — would be unprecedented in the modern history of climate summits and could signal a worrying inability to find consensual ground even on logistics.

“Deadlocks over host cities might sound procedural, but they reveal deeper geopolitical tensions,” said a veteran diplomat who has worked several COPs. “If the system can’t agree on where to meet, how can it hope to agree on the thornier questions — finance, loss and damage, or emissions pathways?”

Why the site matters

Location is not neutral. Which city hosts matters for access, for representation, and for narrative. A summit in Ethiopia would be a powerful statement about centering the Global South in climate decision-making: giving African ministers a shorter flight, enabling more community voices to attend, and forcing negotiators to confront realities of climate impacts they may otherwise see only in slide decks.

On the other hand, logistical challenges are real: costs of travel for officials and activists, the need for secure and accessible venues, and the capacity to host thousands of delegates and observers in a city where infrastructure is being tested by rapid urban growth.

Big themes: equity, finance, and the climate justice question

At its heart, COP32 in Ethiopia would not be a ceremonial novelty. It could be a pivot point for conversations that have long frustrated negotiators: Who pays for adaptation? Who compensates for lost livelihoods? How is “fair share” of emissions cuts calculated, especially when industrialized nations built their wealth on centuries of high carbon output?

“Africa did not build the carbon economy, yet she pays some of the highest bills,” said a climate justice advocate in Nairobi. “Hosting the COP here is about asking richer countries to meet their obligations — morally, politically and financially.”

Whatever the outcome in Belém this week, the conversations around host cities illuminate a larger truth: climate diplomacy is not only about science and targets. It is about trust, representation and who gets to set the terms of the deal.

Looking forward — questions to sit with

Will a COP in Ethiopia change the calculus in the room? Can a venue in Africa amplify demands for adaptation finance and faster action on loss and damage? Or will the same entrenched power dynamics simply shift their setting?

When you picture global climate action, do you imagine a neutral, technocratic space — or a room shaped by whose voices are in it? Hosting decisions matter because the venue influences who is visible, who is heard, and what stories make it into the final text.

As delegates return to the negotiating tables in Belém this week, and as communities in Addis start preparing for what could be an unforgettable international moment, one question lingers: will the world use a COP on African soil as an opportunity to move from tired promises to tangible change?

Fact: Africa produces roughly 3–4% of global greenhouse gas emissions while shouldering disproportionately severe climate impacts.
Fact: The $100 billion annual climate finance pledge remains a central demand in global talks, with persistent gaps between promise and delivery.
Fact: UN climate talks rotate by regional blocs; host-country selection requires consensus and can be a flashpoint for geopolitical tension.

There is a paradox in the air: a city famous for hospitality may soon host a summit where the world will argue about who bears the costs of a warming planet. If COP32 comes to Ethiopia, it will be a test — not just of diplomatic skill, but of global willingness to listen when those most affected finally have the microphone.

Typhoon prompts mass evacuations across Taiwan; fatalities climb

hanad

November 11, 2025

Typhoon forces evacuations in Taiwan as death toll rises — People shield from the rain and the wind as Typhoon Fung-wong approaches in Taiwan

When the Mountains Spill: Typhoon Fung-wong and the Quiet Violence of Rain

There is a particular hush that comes after a storm has passed: a velvet quiet punctuated by the distant whine of a chainsaw, the metallic clank of a backhoe, and the murmur of people reconciling with what the wind and water have taken. That hush has settled over villages in the Philippines and towns along Taiwan’s eastern coast in the wake of Typhoon Fung-wong — a storm that arrived angry, fast, and astonishingly wet.

On the battered island of Catanduanes, where coconut palms once lined roads like sentries, the first responders dug through ankle-deep mud, shovels flashing in the weary light. “We woke up to the sound of the mountains moving,” said one farmer, rubbing at his hands. “You can’t fight a landslide with hands alone.”

Human cost and the slow arithmetic of recovery

Philippine authorities now tally 18 confirmed deaths from Fung-wong — most of them the victims of landslides high in the Cordillera mountain chain — with two people missing and dozens injured. The storm displaced some 1.4 million people across the archipelago, turning low-slung dwellings into islands and filling village plazas with temporary shelters and the plastic flutter of tarpaulins.

“The greatest challenge for us right now is the restoration of lifelines — road clearing, restoration of power and communication lines — but we are working on it,” said Rafaelito Alejandro, deputy administrator of the national civil defence, speaking from a briefing. His tone was bureaucratic but exhausted; the tasks he described are the kind that measure months of slow, patient work in every disaster zone.

In the north, the Cagayan basin — one of the Philippines’ largest river systems — betrayed the people who live along its banks. A flash flood in nearby Apayao swelled the Chico River and then the Cagayan itself. Tuguegarao, a city of roughly 170,000 people about 30 kilometres from the river’s overflow, was left half-buried in water. More than 5,000 residents were evacuated before the worst of it, but many returned to soggy streets and ruined rice paddies.

Taiwan braces, evacuates, and waits

Across the Luzon Strait, Taiwan readied itself. Officials issued a land warning and moved 3,337 people out of harm’s way in four counties and cities, including Guangfu — the same town where flooding killed 18 people in Hualien just last September.

President Lai Ching-te took to social media with advice that was plain and stark: do not go into the mountains, stay away from the coast, and avoid beaches and other dangerous locations. Schools and government offices were closed in Hualien and neighbouring Yilan counties. In towns where the northeast monsoon met Fung-wong’s outer bands, meters of rainfall were forecast — up to 400 millimetres (nearly 16 inches) in 24 hours in some places.

Despite the alarm, Taiwan’s tech heartland remained largely unscathed: the northern city of Hsinchu — home to TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker — was not in the storm’s direct path. But that very fact underscores a global unease: in our interconnected world, a typhoon in one ocean basin can have supply-chain reverberations elsewhere, even as it decimates communities in another.

The mechanics of disaster — and what’s changing

Rescuers in the Philippines have been using backhoes and chainsaws to claw through mud and tree trunks, freeing villages that were cut off when slopes let go. In coastal towns like Tuao in Cagayan province, the image that lingers is of residents carrying what they can: a child, a chest of clothes, a small radio. One woman I spoke with in a temporary shelter said, “We brought only what fit in our arms. The rest was for the sea.”

Scientists say storms like Fung-wong are not acting in a vacuum. Warmer oceans and a thicker, moister atmosphere — signatures of human-driven climate change — are making tropical cyclones more prone to rapid intensification and heavier rainfall. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and regional studies have warned that while the total number of tropical cyclones may not dramatically increase, the proportion of the most intense storms and the volume of rain they carry are on the rise.

“We’re seeing a higher frequency of sudden strength changes in storms,” said Dr. Mei-Ling Chen, a climate scientist at National Taiwan University. “When sea-surface temperatures are above normal, storms can feed like a wildfire on petrol — and the immediate consequence is more water dumped where people live.”

Local color, local pain

Traveling from Tuguegarao to the foothills, the landscape changes: terraced rice paddies, banana groves slumped under rain, and corrugated roofs patched with tarpaulin. The smell is of wet earth and diesel. On the ferry to Catanduanes, fishermen mopped decks and checked nets, their faces lined by salt and wind. “We fish when the sea calms,” one deckhand told me. “We cannot fish if the boats are gone.”

In small barangays — Philippine villages where community life is woven tight — the old women who organize the local kitchens became instant coordinators of charity, doling out bowls of rice, cups of coffee, and the kind of steady encouragement that does not make headlines but keeps people upright.

What recovery will look like — and why it matters to all of us

Officials warn that even “early recovery” will take weeks. On Catanduanes, broken water systems could take up to 20 days to fix; power and communication outages will complicate logistics and slow the arrival of outside aid. The arithmetic of rebuilding — roads, schools, irrigation channels — is heavy on time and money.

But there is another arithmetic here, one that adds up community memory, indigenous knowledge, and adaptation. In the Cordilleras, decades of terrace farming and local warning signs saved lives where modern infrastructure failed. In Taiwan, early evacuation orders and a relatively robust disaster-response apparatus will limit loss of life if people heed the calls to stay safe.

So what does this mean for a global audience watching satellite images and scrolling through news feeds? It means that climate vulnerability is neither abstract nor distant. It shows how the accumulation of heat in the world’s oceans translates into immediate human consequences: landslides in the Philippines, flooded towns in Taiwan, lost livelihoods, and months of recovery.

It also asks hard questions about investment priorities. Are we putting enough into resilient infrastructure in the places that need it most? Are international aid and local governance aligned to move faster, not just in the chaotic hours after a storm, but in the slow work of making communities more flood- and storm-resistant?

“We will rebuild,” said a barangay captain in a makeshift shelter, folding his hands as if to steady himself. “It is the only thing we know how to do.”

As Fung-wong pushes back out to sea and the rescue crews keep searching for missing people, the aftermath will be a test of patience, solidarity, and political will. Will richer countries and tech-dependent economies recognize that the safety of their supply chains, and the lives of fishermen and farmers, are bound together in one climate-stressed world?

When the last tarp is replaced and the roads are swept clean, the real work begins: redesigning coasts, bolstering mountain slope management, investing in early-warning networks, and listening to the people who know the land by touch and memory. Until then, the chainsaws will hum, the backhoes will dig, and communities will, as they always have, carry one another through the rain.

Lula urges end to climate denialism as COP30 gets underway

hanad

November 11, 2025

Lula urges 'defeat' of climate deniers as COP30 opens — Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva criticised those who 'spread fear'

Under the Canopy: COP30 Begins in Belém as the World Argues Over the Future

Belém is heat and humidity and the scent of grilled fish rising from the markets. It is a city where the rainforest breathes just beyond the last row of concrete, where mornings begin with chorus frogs and evenings with sudden tropical downpours that turn the streets glossy and reflective. It is here, on the edge of the Amazon, that the global climate debate has been dropped like a stone into a still pond—sending out concentric ripples of urgency, anger, hope and, yes, stubborn denial.

The UN climate summit, COP30, opened in this sultry northern Brazilian city with a colorful Indigenous ceremony—feathered headdresses, ceremonial songs, hands pressed together in traditional greeting—followed by a speech that landed like thunder from President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. He did not mince words. “The Amazon is not a backdrop for speeches; it is the heart of the climate crisis and the lungs of the world,” he said, calling out those who dismiss science and discredit institutions. The message was as much theatrical as it was political: this summit would be both a showcase and a battleground.

Absence, Presence, Contradiction

Yet the circus and the seriousness exist side by side with a striking absence. The United States—the world’s largest oil producer and still the second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases—arrived without a full federal delegation at the ministerial level. Instead, governors, mayors and state officials have flown in to fill some of the gaps. California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, was among those taking the podium, saying, “You cannot write the story of the climate era without us—subnational governments are showing what is possible.” He pledged cross-border partnerships and investments in clean energy technology, a reminder that climate action is multilayered if not always coordinated.

That partial absence matters. COPs are where fragile agreements are forged; where finance for adaptation is hammered out; where legal language is debated until midnight. When a heavyweight nation is not present at the top table, it changes negotiation dynamics and raises questions about political will. “We don’t need theatrical attendance, we need commitments,” said Dr. Amina Kante, a climate policy researcher from Senegal. “Presence without policy is symbolic. Policy without presence is maybe worse.”

The Science Cannot Be Negotiated

Inside the cavernous conference halls—where translators’ booths glow red, where negotiators huddle around laptops and coffee-stained documents—the science feels immediate and unambiguous. The UN’s top climate scientists have warned that a temporary crossing of the 1.5°C threshold is now likely, a milestone that previously seemed avoidable only with deep and immediate emissions cuts. That warning is not apocalyptic poetry; it is a straightforward reading of trends. Sea levels are rising, hurricanes and storms are gaining intensity, and communities that have contributed least to the problem are already paying the costs.

“Small island states are not asking for dramatic language for the sake of drama,” said Maina Vakafua Talia, speaking for Tuvalu in impassioned tones. “This is survival language. If we stumble at 1.5°C, many of our islands may become uninhabitable within decades. We need action, not platitudes.”

Numbers That Haunt

Organizers report just over 42,000 delegates—scientists, politicians, campaigners and journalists—packed into Belém for two weeks. That is fewer than some recent COPs; the reason seems plain. Sky-high accommodation prices and limited hotel rooms in the city have kept many would-be participants away. For a negotiation that requires face-to-face bargaining, that shortage is not merely inconvenient; it’s an impediment to equitable participation.

Meanwhile, market shifts are threading an unlikely optimism through some corridors. Renewables have surged in capacity across the globe and, in recent reporting, overtook coal in electricity generation—a milestone industry analysts had long viewed as improbable so quickly. “The market is moving,” Simon Stiell, the UN climate chief, said. “Technology, investor appetite and policy incentives are aligning, and that is a hopeful thing.”

Where Money Meets Morality

But the conference quickly returns to the knottier business of money. How do rich countries finance adaptation in poorer ones? Who pays for loss and damage when storms wipe out livelihoods? These are not academic questions for delegations from Malawi, Bangladesh, or the Pacific islands; they’re existential. “Our 44 countries did not light this fire, but we are bearing its heat,” said Evans Njewa, chair of the Least Developed Countries bloc. “We expect reparative finance, not moral speeches.”

At the same time, oil-rich states continue to wield significant power. Fossil fuel producers have traditionally resisted explicit language on phasing out oil and gas. A tentative breakthrough at COP28 nudged the global conversation toward a “transition away from fossil fuels” for the first time, but the phrase remains porous—open to interpretation, and therefore vulnerable to backpedaling.

The Human Texture

Walk the perimeter of the conference and you will find more than negotiators. There’s a woman from the riverside quarters selling açaí bowls who pauses to ask what the talks will mean for her flooded neighborhood. There’s a youth activist from Manaus, chanting outside the venue: “We are the forest, we must be heard.” An elder leader from an Indigenous group quietly tells a reporter that protecting the Amazon isn’t only about carbon math; it’s about the stories and medicines that will vanish if the trees go.

“They speak of carbon, but who speaks of our rivers?” she says, with a look that marries weariness and defiance. “We have sat with this forest for generations.”

So What Now?

Belém will be wet—both from the sky and from heated debate. Negotiators will work long into the nights, sometimes with the steady percussion of tropical rain acting like a metronome. The outcome will likely be a patchwork: some progress, some compromise, and, inevitably, some unresolved tensions that will carry forward to the next summit.

But for a moment, for two weeks, the world’s attention is focused where it can do the most good: on a place that literally helps breathe for the planet. The stakes are intimate and global at once. How will we balance national interests against collective survival? How will markets, law, technology and morality align to reduce the worst harms of warming?

What do you, reading this from a city far from Belém, think should happen next? Is it realistic to expect a global consensus when geopolitics pulls in so many directions, or is local action—cities, states, communities—where real change will be born? The rainforest would probably answer simply: act now, with respect for those who live closest to the land.

Belém will wet its streets. Diplomats will file out exhausted and hopeful. And the forest will wait, patient as ever but not indefinitely. The question for us is whether that waiting will be rewarded with the decisive action the planet needs—or whether we will leave another summit with eloquence but insufficient consequence.

Philippine typhoon kills five, displaces over one million residents

hanad

November 11, 2025

5 dead, a million displaced in Philippines after typhoon — A couple wade through a flooded street at a flood-prone area in Bulacan

A nation swept by water: Typhoon Fung-wong’s merciless trail

By the time the storm moved on, the Philippines looked like a watercolor left in the rain: colors blurred, edges gone. Whole villages — rows of tin roofs, banana groves, and narrow dirt alleys — lay submerged. Power lines sagged like tired vines. For millions, the day after felt less like recovery and more like the quiet before another reckoning.

Typhoon Fung-wong carved a path across nearly the entire archipelago, slamming into the eastern coast as a “super typhoon” and leaving behind a scoreboard of suffering: at least five lives lost, more than a million people displaced, and more than 1.4 million evacuated at the storm’s peak. It arrived only days after Typhoon Kalmaegi battered central islands, a grim double blow that has stretched rescue teams, charities, and the patience of communities almost beyond breaking.

From Tuguegarao’s inundated streets to Catanduanes’ roaring seas

In the far north, in Cagayan province, the Chico River finally gave way after relentless rains. “We received reports around six in the morning… that some people were already on their roofs,” said Rueli Rapsing, the provincial rescue chief, describing frantic early-morning calls to evacuation centers. He and his team managed to pull many to safety, but video verified by news agencies showed some families still clinging to rooftops, waiting for boats that were hours away.

Mark Lamer, 24, from Tuao town in Cagayan, spoke with the bluntness of someone who has watched the horizon change overnight: “We didn’t think the water would reach us. It had never risen this high previously. This is the strongest typhoon I have ever experienced.” His town, and nearby Tuguegarao — recorded as being underwater after the Cagayan River overflowed — illustrate how quickly normalcy can be taken from a place.

Further south, Catanduanes island took a battering from the ocean itself. “The waves started roaring around 7:00 am. When the waves hit the seawall, it felt like the ground was shaking,” said Edson Casarino, 33, describing a scene where streets turned into rivers and saltwater surged into homes. In Bicol, tractors that usually plow rice paddies sat half-submerged; coconut trees, which often define the silhouette of the region, bent under the wind’s force.

Loss in quiet corners

Not all the casualties were dramatic, public scenes. Sometimes the dead were a family that slept through an advancing mudslide. Civil defense officer Alvin Ayson said five-year-old twins were killed as their home was swept away in the night, and an elderly man died scarcely an hour later in a separate landslide. These are the quieter horrors: rain-saturated soil, a hillside surrendering, and a household wiped out while the rest of the world watches footage of flooding on its screen.

Evacuations, interrupted lives, and the slow work of cleaning up

More than 5,000 people in some areas were evacuated before rivers reached critical levels; in Tuguegarao, tens of thousands fled as the Cagayan river rose at reported rates of about 0.3 meters per hour. Schools and government offices shut their doors across Luzon, including in Manila, where residents woke to sopping streets and a familiar, exhausted communal effort to mop, sweep, and salvage what can be salvaged.

“You learn to move fast here,” said a volunteer with a local disaster relief crew who asked not to be named. “But speed only gets you so far against this kind of water. We need boats, dry provisions, medicine. We need more hands and more time to coordinate.” Aid convoys, local NGOs, and the military have been working in tandem, but logistics are a nightmare when roads are broken and bridges washed away.

What the numbers tell us — and what they don’t

Statistics are blunt instruments but they do map part of the story: more than 1 million displaced, 1.4 million evacuated, rainfall forecasts for Taiwan of up to 350 millimeters in 24 hours as Fung-wong heads north, and the wretched tally of human loss from a sequence of storms that has already killed hundreds in previous weeks. President Ferdinand Marcos has extended a “state of national calamity” declared during the onslaught of Typhoon Kalmaegi to a full year — a signal that recovery won’t be quick.

Yet numbers can’t tell you the small, human details: the woman in Tuguegarao who refused to leave without her pet carabao, the fish vendor in Samar watching years of nets and plywood huts washed away for the second straight storm season, the schoolteacher in Catanduanes who is now running classes out of a makeshift tent while the classroom waits under a foot of mud.

Climate change: a hand in every storm

Scientists have been clear: a warming planet reshapes storms. Warmer oceans feed typhoons with more energy; a warmer atmosphere can hold roughly 7% more moisture for every degree Celsius of warming, bringing heavier downpours. Global average temperature has risen about 1.1–1.2°C above pre-industrial levels, which is already changing the character of tropical cyclones. Higher sea levels — roughly 20 centimeters globally since the late 19th century — mean storm surges start from a higher base, pushing the waterline deeper into homes and fields.

“We are not seeing simply more storms; we are seeing different storms,” said a climate scientist who has worked with evacuation planning in Southeast Asia. “They intensify faster and dump more rain over smaller areas, which increases flooding risk. That shifts what communities need from disaster response — earlier warnings, stronger infrastructure, and a rethink of where and how people live.”

Local resilience and the long shadow of inequality

The Philippines has a long language of weather: alarm bells, bells for harvest, boats hauling in early, and people reading the sky as both warning and guide. But resilience is uneven. Island communities with concrete seawalls and reinforced houses fare better than inland barrios living in makeshift housing on steep slopes; fisherfolk with insurance are not the norm; many whose livelihoods depend on daily wages have nowhere to go but back to work — or to debt.

“After the water goes, it’s not just the house you rebuild. It’s the rice field, the livelihood, the kids’ schooling,” said an elder from a small barangay. “When the storms come one after the other, you can’t keep borrowing hope.”

Looking up: what comes next?

How do we hold both the immediate pain and the bigger picture? How do nations prepare for weather that is becoming more unpredictable? There are clear strands of action: investment in resilient infrastructure, better early-warning systems, planned relocation out of the most dangerous floodplains, and financial safety nets for the vulnerable. But there is also a need for global cooperation — for wealthy nations to expedite climate finance and for multilateral bodies to help island states build durable defences.

For now, Filipinos sweep, salvage, and comfort. They tap into community networks that have sustained them through storms for generations. They queue for relief packs, share motorboats, and sleep in school gymnasiums by the hundreds. And when the rain clears, they will measure loss, mourn, and start the slow labor of rebuilding — again.

Ask yourself: if ordinary lives can be overturned overnight by water and wind, what are we doing today to protect them tomorrow? What will it take to make sure a village’s roof is the only thing drenched, and not the whole story of a family’s life?

In the meantime, the Philippines — a country whose coastlines and communities are as beautiful as they are vulnerable — braces for the next chapter, hopeful that the lessons of this storm will guide both immediate relief and long-term change.

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