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some thought that Russia, currently holding the presidency of the security council, would block Guterres, as Moscow had said it wanted an eastern European in the top UN job.

Guterres’s margin of victory was decisive. He won 13 votes in his support and two abstentions, with no one voting against him. The second-place candidate, the Slovak Miroslav Lajčák, had seven votes in support and six against him – two of them vetoes from permanent council members.

The security council on Thursday will decide whether to have a formal vote or, if the two abstentions change their mind, to simply pass a resolution nominating Guterres by acclamation. That nomination would go to the UN general assembly which would either vote or, more likely, confirm the candidacy by acclamation.

As the UN’s refugee chief, Guterres persistently appealed to the conscience of the international community over the worst refugee crisis since the second world war, and he vowed to carry on being a spokesman for the downtrodden if he became UN secretary general.

The fact that he was promising to be an activist on humanitarian causes also makes Guterres victory surprising, as both Russia and China in particular have been resistant to outspoken activists in top UN posts

Also there was widespread sentiment this year that it was time for a woman to run the organisation for the first time in its 71-year history and there were several strong female candidates in the contest.

In the final ballot, the highest-placed woman candidate, the head of Unesco, Irina Bokova, finished fourth. Another female candidate for the job, Costa Rican diplomat Christiana Figueres described the result as “bittersweet”.

The contest to replace Ban as secretary general began in April with public hearings in the UN general assembly, the first time candidates for the job had had to make their pitch in public. The new transparency was a result of a groundswell of pressure from civil society activists, in the 1 For 7 Billion movement.

“We’re going to do it in a way that’s very deliberate,” White House domestic climate adviser Gina McCarthy told reporters Monday in a call organized by the World Resources Institute. The administration wants to transition to a cleaner economy with good-paying occupations in communities that have been hit hardest by unemployment and underinvestment, she said. “It’s intended to meet the moment we are in.”

“We are way off track,” Guterres said. “This must be the year for action — the make-it-or-break-it year.”

China, the largest greenhouse gas polluter, has said it plans to reach peak emissions by 2030 and effectively erase its carbon footprint by 2060, though the details remain uncertain

despite myriad diplomatic tensions between the two countries, the United States and China vowed Saturday to jointly combat climate change “with the seriousness and urgency that it demands.”

The world remains nowhere near meeting the central Paris aim of limiting Earth’s warming to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) compared with preindustrial levels — or ideally, remaining closer to 1.5 Celsius. Failure to hit those targets, scientists have warned, will result in a cascade of costly and devastating effects.

“We are on the verge of the abyss,” U.N. Secretary General António Guterres said Monday

To craft the new pledge in the administration’s first 100 days, White House officials scrambled staffers at agencies across the government to look for funding, programs and policies that could help curb emissions in the years ahead. Agency by agency, sector by sector, federal officials tallied up the math in an effort to make Biden’s pledge credible.

The International Energy Agency this week projected that global carbon dioxide emissions are set to rise by 1.5 billion tons in 2021 — the second-largest increase in history — as the world comes out of the pandemic-induced downturn

But other major emitters, including China, India and Russia, have yet to spell out how exactly they intend to help put the world on a more sustainable trajectory.

In the United States, the power sector represents one of the best opportunities to cut greenhouse gas emissions. On Friday, a collection of 13 utilities, including Exelon, National Grid and PSEG, urged Biden to pursue a range of policies “to enable deep decarbonization of the power sector, including a clean electricity standard that ensures the power sector, as a whole, reduces its carbon emissions by 80 percent below 2005 levels by 2030.”

The Interior Department and the Environmental Protection Agency, meanwhile, are already laying the groundwork to curb methane emissions from oil and natural gas drilling, in part by reviving Obama administration standards reversed under Trump

the EPA is moving ahead to phase down the production and importation of hydrofluorocarbons — which are widely used as refrigerants and in air conditioning — by 85 percent over the next 15 years, as mandated by Congress.

Environmental activists, Democratic lawmakers, foreign leaders and hundreds of private companies, including Apple and Walmart, have implored the White House to make the boldest climate pledge possible.

Advocacy groups and academics have published detailed analyses, demonstrating ways they say the nation could cut at least half its emissions by the end of the decade.

“This is a dire warning that the economic recovery from the Covid crisis is currently anything but sustainable for our climate,”

to reach the 50 percent target, the administration will have to make some difficult-to-guarantee assumptions about the future. For instance, that new regulations aimed at curbing emissions won’t be reversed by a future administration or the courts — even though Trump furiously dismantled key Obama-era climate policies.

some Republicans have insisted that the far-reaching changes needed to cut greenhouse gas pollution so fast could harm an already struggling economy, particularly in communities that still depend on the fossil fuel industry.

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (W.Va.), the top-ranking Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, has argued that Biden’s aggressive climate actions could kill thousands of jobs in her state. On the Senate floor last month, she called the notion that new policies could quickly replace lost jobs in coal and other fossil fuels with ones in renewable energy “a fantasy world that does not exist.”

Persuading other key nations to bolster the promises they made in Paris remains critical if the world is to meet its collective goal of slowing Earth’s warming. The targets set by countries such as China, India, Russia and Brazil could dramatically affect whether the world can reach the goals set almost six years ago.

“The international community will have the opportunity to see that Biden is good for his word,” said Rachel Kyte, dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. “A lot of diplomacy is about momentum and building momentum.”

"The pandemic is a crisis unlike any we have ever seen. But it is also the kind of crisis that we will see in different forms again and again. Covid-19 is not only a wake-up call, it is a dress rehearsal for the world of challenges to come."

Human rights advocates are urging world leaders to keep the focus on protecting civilians, even as the conversation shifts to U.S. airstrikes in Syria.

U.S. should do more to assist in resettling Syrians. Global funding is also far short of what the United Nations says is necessary to meet the humanitarian needs of the refugee population.

The UN’s general assembly can step in where the security council has failed, and is currently considering a resolution to uphold the organisation’s central role in fighting the pandemic and to ensure that “there is no place for any form of discrimination, racism and xenophobia in the response to the pandemic”.

But some diplomats voiced concern that if the security council becomes less visible at the height of the pandemic, it will lose its centrality as an arena in which the world’s most powerful governments are held to account.

Leaders from around the globe began adding their signatures to a treaty that bans nuclear weapons, although the world’s nine nuclear-armed countries declined to sign it and denounced it as dangerously naïve.

The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, as it is officially known, will enter into legal force 90 days after being ratified by 50 countries.

a historic first.

“The treaty is an important step toward the universally held goal of a world free of nuclear weapons,” Secretary General António Guterres, who supported the negotiations, said at the ceremony held in the Trusteeship Council chamber.

The United States and the other nuclear-armed states urged other countries not to sign it.

In a statement issued before the signing ceremony, NATO denounced the treaty, saying it “disregards the realities of the increasingly challenging security environment.”

The treaty would outlaw the use, threat of use, testing, development, production, possession, transfer and stationing in a different country of nuclear weapons.

The Houthis’ inclusion on the department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations means that fighters within the relatively decentralized movement will be cut off from financial support and other material resources that are routed through U.S. banks or other American institutions.

But the Houthis’ main patron is Iran, which continues to send support despite being hobbled by severe U.S. economic sanctions

Experts said it would chill humanitarian efforts to donate food and medicine to Houthi-controlled areas in northern and western Yemen

The United Nations estimates that about 80 percent of Yemenis depend on food assistance, and nearly half of all children suffer stunted growth because of malnutrition.

“I urge all those with influence to act urgently on these issues to stave off catastrophe, and I also request that everyone avoids taking any action that could make the already dire situation even worse,” Mr. Guterres said then.

The United States accuses the Houthi rebels of being proxy fighters for Iran

In October, the rebels released two American hostages and the remains of a third in a prisoner swap that also allowed about 240 Houthis to return to Yemen from Oman.

Beyond the looming famine, the terrorist designation could also seal the fate of an immense rusting oil tanker moored off Yemen’s western coast.

“If we do not want to cause Yemen to lose an entire generation,” Mr. Ralby said, “we need to back off this designation.”

Yemen is already facing what UNICEF calls the largest humanitarian crisis in the world, with around 80% of the population—more than 24 million people—needing food and other aid.

United Nations Secretary General António Guterres warned that Yemen was "in imminent danger of the worst famine the world has seen for decades." He added, "In the absence of immediate action, millions of lives may be lost."

If the Trump administration goes ahead with designating the Houthi rebels as terrorists, the UN and many international humanitarian groups likely would stop delivering aid to Houthi-held territory in Yemen for fear of running afoul of the United States

By March 2015, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, two of Washington's closest allies in the Arab world, intervened in the war with massive air strikes and a blockade of Houthi-controlled areas.

Since taking office in 2017, Trump has repeatedly claimed that he wants to end US involvement in foreign wars, especially in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Trump and his advisers blamed the war on Iran and its support for the Houthis, ignoring war crimes by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which could implicate US officials who continued to sell weapons to the two allies.

Despite international criticism and growing evidence of war crimes, Trump continued to support Saudi Arabia's crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, who is a major proponent of the Yemen war. In 2019, Trump used his veto power four times to prevent Congress from ending weapons sales to Saudi Arabia and its allies.

Designating the Houthis as a terrorist organization is likely to make the group more intransigent and to drive it closer to Iran.

Because of constraints imposed by the Houthis on humanitarian work, Washington has already cut nearly half of its assistance to Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen this year. In 2019, US aid amounted to more than $700 million.

The UN also decreased its food rations to millions of Yemenis because of reduced aid from the US and other donors. If the terrorism designation is finalized, Washington would immediately stop its remaining aid to Houthi-controlled parts of Yemen.

A terrorist designation would also have a ripple effect beyond hampering the work of UN and humanitarian groups: it would dissuade insurance, commercial shipping and trade firms from operating in Yemen because they would be afraid of violating US laws.

As a result, it would become far more difficult and expensive to ship crucial supplies into Yemen, which is almost entirely reliant on imported food. The threat of sanctions or US prosecution could also devastate shipments of medical aid and other supplies intended to shore up a healthcare system that has been devastated by years of war and, more recently, the coronavirus pandemic.

It's also unlikely to be a top priority of the new administration, which could be worried about being portrayed as "soft" on terrorism.

The full scope of suffering in Yemen has gone partly unnoticed because of an unreliable death toll.

Now, much of the country is facing poverty and starvation: In December, the World Food Program (WFP) found that 98 percent of Afghans aren’t getting enough to eat, and Guterres warned this month that “we are in a race against time to help the Afghan people.”

In the aftermath of the US withdrawal, many Afghans working as interpreters, aid workers, prosecutors, professors, and journalists suddenly lost their positions and their incomes, and many have been forced into hiding, further hampering their ability to provide even the most basic necessities — blankets, food, fuel, and medicine — for their families.

Many of Afghanistan’s current problems are intimately connected to the US withdrawal from the country last year, and the Taliban’s ensuing takeover of the central government. Since then, US sanctions and an abrupt end to international aid have wrecked Afghanistan’s economy and sent it spiraling into crisis.

The US and the UN have made some concessions to allow humanitarian aid to operate outside the auspices of the Taliban; the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) granted some licenses to aid groups to operate in Afghanistan without running afoul of of financial restrictions on certain individuals and institutions in the country.

“Sanctions are intended to have a chilling effect, in that sanctions will always go beyond the face of the text,”

So far, however, no policy shift has been forthcoming. As of earlier this month, the US has pledged an additional $308 million in humanitarian aid to Afghanistan, but the Afghan central bank reserves remain frozen.

And while Afghanistan’s current crisis isn’t wholly caused by external factors — even without sanctions by the US and its allies, the Taliban’s inability to manage the bureaucracy of government would have created issues, as would the pandemic and a severe drought that began in June last year — US actions do play a substantial role.

The chilling effect of sanctions is keeping businesses and banks from actually engaging with the economy. As House Democrats pointed out in their letter last month, relatively simple steps — like issuing letters to international businesses assuring them that they are not violating US sanctions — could help alleviate the crisis and shore up the Afghan private sector, but Treasury has yet to do so.

In the meantime, however, the Taliban will hold talks this coming week with Western nations, including Norway, Britain, the US, Italy, France, and Germany, about humanitarian aid. The talks should not be seen as a legitimization of Taliban rule, Norwegian Foreign Minister Anniken Huitfeldt stressed to AFP on Friday, “but we must talk to the de facto authorities in the country. We cannot allow the political situation to lead to an even worse humanitarian disaster.”

“The attacks by Hamas didn’t happen in a vacuum,” said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, citing the 56-year Israeli occupation. Both sides are responsible, added former president Barack Obama, urging us to “take in the whole truth” of the conflict.

This is not a political conflict, we remind the world, but an outbreak of evil. Just like ISIS, we note, recalling the terrible devastation caused by the necessary American assault in Mosul and Raqqa. 

No, we patiently explain, the massacre was not in response to anything Israel does but to what Israel is

yes, the suffering of innocent Gazans deserves the world’s urgent humanitarian attention, but not at the expense of moral clarity about the justness of this war.

Yes, many Jews readily acknowledge, Israel bears its share of the blame for this hundred-year conflict. So do Palestinian leaders, who rejected every peace offer ever put on the table. 

What may well be the most horrific massacre of our time, outdoing even the atrocities of ISIS, has resulted in the unprecedented popularity of the Palestinian cause.

increasingly, we sense that we are talking to ourselves. The post-religious West, which substitutes the ideological rhetoric of academia for a genuine language for evil, doesn’t understand the old Jewish language we are speaking.

No, Israel is not a paragon of virtue. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis have spent this last year protesting every week against the anti-democratic Netanyahu government

To leave a genocidal regime on our border would be a betrayal of the founding ethos of Israel as a safe refuge for the Jewish people. It would be the beginning of our unraveling.

Over and over we repeat what we’d assumed was self-evident: One side seeks to maximize civilian casualties, the other side to minimize them.

Harnevo mocked Cosgrave for tweeting, on the day of the massacre, a chart comparing the number of Palestinians and Israelis killed over the last 15 years. “You see Paddy, what happened on October 7 was not another data point on your f*king charts. It was something else, unbearable.” 

there are moments when we must risk going alone. We know that the longer the fighting in Gaza lasts, even our friends will begin to pressure us to relent. We must resist that pressure and not fear the consequences. 

During the Second Intifada, when the IDF fought suicide bombers in Palestinian towns and villages, an exasperated Kofi Anan, then secretary-general of the UN, demanded: “Can the whole world be wrong and only Israel is right?” Israelis unhesitatingly replied: Absolutely.

Speaking at the gravesite, Yonadav’s brother called on the government to resist world pressure and persevere. He invoked Israel’s first prime minister: “David Ben-Gurion said that it doesn’t matter what the gentiles say, only what the Jews do.”

Israelis across the political spectrum agree that the regime of Oct. 7 must be destroyed. Like Ben-Gurion, we are willing to pay the bitter price of being alone.

But using them would mean cutting a deal with a brutal leader closely allied with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, underscoring the painful moral and political decisions that now confront Western leaders as they scramble to avert a global food crisis.

The Lithuania route appears to be the most promising for getting food quickly to areas like the Middle East and Africa that need it the most, even if it is also a long shot.

“This is a decision that politicians need to take not me,” Mr. Latakas, the Klaipeda port director, said. “It is up to them to decide what is most important.”

Western nations like the United States, as well as Ukraine, oppose lifting sanctions imposed on Russia over its invasion but have not ruled out a deal with Belarus.

The war has halted those shipments, leaving around 25 million tons of grain, according to U.N. estimates, from last year’s harvest stranded in silos and at risk of rotting if it is not moved soon. A further 50 million tons is expected to be harvested in coming months. The grain elevators in Ukraine that have not been damaged or destroyed by shelling are quickly filling up. Soon, there will be no room left to store the incoming harvest.

Ukraine’s foreign minister, said severe bottlenecks meant that the existing routes through Poland and Romania “can provide only limited alleviation of the food crisis” given the volumes that need to be moved.

Warning of an approaching “hurricane of hunger,” the head of the United Nations, António Guterres, has sought to negotiate a deal under which Ukrainian grain would be transported out of the country by ship or train, and in exchange Russia and Belarus would sell fertilizer products to the global market without the threat of sanctions.

That means that Western governments and Ukraine are left to try out a range of possible solutions fraught with problems. Test runs of trains carrying grain from Ukraine through Poland to Lithuania, for example, have taken three weeks because of different track gauges in neighboring countries, requiring cargos to be loaded and unloaded multiples times.

Turkey has proposed using its ships to transport grain from Odesa, which, in addition to getting Ukraine to demine the port, would require an agreement from Russia not to hinder vessels.

But faced with the considerable challenges of executing such a plan, the best option for getting large quantities of Ukrainian grain to hungry people is probably by rail through Belarus to Klaipeda and other Baltic ports in Latvia and Estonia.That “won’t solve everything, but it would significantly alleviate the situation,”

Ukraine is opposed to any easing of sanctions against Russia but, increasingly desperate to move grain trapped by the war, is more open to the idea of a temporary easing of sanctions against Belarusian potash.

Roman Slaston, the head of Ukraine’s main agricultural lobby, said one challenge was that many rail connections through Belarus had been blown up by Belarusian railway employees sympathetic to the Ukrainian cause.

“Given that the Russian Army is still in Belarus, who is going to pay to repair that now?” Mr. Slaston asked. “This is like some kind of madness.”

We don’t grow food to store it,” he said. “People in Africa won’t be fed by our grain sitting in bags in our fields.”