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To support Panama’s climate action, adaptation, resilience, and mitigation policies, the OPEC Fund is providing a $120 million loan. “Panama Support Programme for the National Climate Change Policy” aims to mitigate, contain, and reverse the effects of climate change, supporting Panama’s long-term climate change commitments. With an additional US$320 million sovereign loan, CAF – Development Bank of Latin America is supporting the project with the OPEC Fund. Panama is a carbon neutral country that contributes almost no emissions to global warming, but is highly vulnerable to its effects. There have been significant losses caused by natural disasters and extreme weather…

The Coast Guard reported that a Hong Kong-registered cargo ship carrying 22 crew members sank off the southern island of Jeju on Wednesday. Fourteen crew members were rescued, while a search is underway for the others. At 3:07 a.m., fourteen Chinese and eight Myanmarese crew members were on board the Jin Tian, a 6,551-ton wood-carrying vessel, when it broadcast a distress signal in international waters 148.2 kilometers southeast of the city of Seogwipo on Jeju, according to the Coast Guard, Yonhap reported. When Coast Guard personnel arrived at the scene, the ship was completely submerged. It was reported that 14…

As a result of the heavy snowfall that blanketed much of Japan on Wednesday, traffic was snarled, hundreds of flights were cancelled, and train travel was disrupted. A person has been confirmed dead as a result of the heavy snowfall. According to Reuters, an unusually cold front and the presence of extreme low pressure systems have caused snow to fall and strong winds to blow across Japan since Tuesday. There was particularly heavy snowfall on the western side of the nation facing the Sea of Japan, with the city of Maniwa in western Japan receiving a record 93 cm (36…

A “major breakdown” of the national grid caused nationwide power outages in Pakistan on Monday morning, affecting factories, hospitals, and schools. A voltage fluctuation in the grid between Jamshoro and Dadu in southern Sindh province caused the breakdown at 7:34 am (0234 GMT), power minister Khurrum Dastagir said. In response to voltage fluctuations, the systems were shut down one by one. This is not a major crisis, Dastagir told Geo TV. Pakistan’s capital Islamabad, the eastern city of Lahore and the northern city of Peshawar were all reported to have power outages, reported Reuters. An employee at Peshawar’s Lady Reading…

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron emphasized that they wanted to see rapid and concrete progress in the EU enlargement process. This was in a guest article for the German broadsheet Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. “At the same time, we must ensure that an enlarged European Union remains capable of action, with more efficient institutions and faster decision-making processes, particularly by extending qualified majority voting in the council,” the two leaders wrote, according to Deutsche Press Agency (dpa). A specific reference was being made to the Western Balkan countries, the majority of which are currently undergoing a long…

Lebanon has been stripped of its UN General Assembly voting rights, according to its state-owned National News Agency (NNA). In a letter on Thursday, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said Lebanon, Venezuela, South Sudan, Gabon, Dominica and Equatorial Guinea will lose their right to vote for not meeting minimum contributions. According to Article 19 of the UN Charter, members with arrears equal to or exceeding their contributions for the previous two years lose their voting rights. The General Assembly can also decide “if failure to pay is due to circumstances beyond the Member’s control,” in which case voting rights won’t…

The Mae Klong river dockyard in Muang district, in Thailand was damaged by an oil tanker explosion Tuesday morning, leaving eight workers missing. Police were notified of the explosion aboard the tanker Smooth Sea 22 at approximately 9:17 a.m. local time, according to the Bangkok Post. It is believed that the tanker, which has a capacity of 6,500 deadweight tonnes, was being maintained at Ruammitr Dockyard in Tambon Laem Yai at the time of the accident. The vehicle’s tank was empty. Over a radius of several kilometres, the explosion was heard and felt. There were shattered glass window panes in…

Thunderstorms and one tornado struck central Alabama on Thursday, killing at least six people. In a statement to Reuters, an Autauga County Sheriff’s spokeswoman confirmed that six people had died in the storm. “In the storms that ravaged our state, six Alabamans died. My prayers reach out to their families and communities. Our people are accustomed to devastating weather, but they remain resilient. In a tweet, Gov. Kay Ivey said, “We’ll get through it and be stronger for it.” Flying debris hurled by the tornado killed at least four people, said Autauga County Coroner Buster Barber. No further information was…

According to reports in the French media, a number of people were injured in a stabbing incident at a Paris train station before police “rapidly neutralized” the attacker. Media reports citing unnamed police sources state that police fired upon the attacker, who had a knife and injured several people, early Wednesday morning, according to the Associated Press. According to Paris police, the incident at the Gare du Nord station is now over. However, no further details are available at this time. In his tweet, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin also states that a number of people were injured at the station.…

New research suggests that even at 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming above preindustrial levels, the Earth will lose nearly half of its glaciers. The shrinking Lewis glacier on Mount Kenya in August. Nearly half of the world’s glaciers outside of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets will melt by the century’s end. This is even if the world meets its most ambitious global warming targets. The study, published Thursday in the journal Science, finds that even with just 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming above preindustrial levels, as many as 104,000 of the world’s more than 215,000 mountain…