Special Report: Philippine police use hospitals to hide drug killings

Plainclothes police bring the lifeless body of a man to the emergency room of Gat Andres Bonifacio Public Hospital in Tondo, Manila on June 15, 2017. (REUTERS/Dondi Tawatao)
Updated 30 June 2017
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Special Report: Philippine police use hospitals to hide drug killings

MANILA: The residents of Old Balara hid in their homes when gunfire erupted in their Manila district last September. They didn’t see the police operation that killed seven drug suspects that night.
But they witnessed the gory aftermath and it haunts them still.
That night, Herlina Alim said she watched police haul away the men’s bodies, leaving trails of blood. “They were dragged down the alley like pigs,” she said. Her neighbor Lenlen Magano said she saw three bodies, face down and motionless, piled at the end of the alley while police stood calmly by.
It was at least an hour, according to residents, before the victims were thrown into a truck and taken to hospital in what a police report said was a bid to save their lives. Old Balara’s chief, the elected head of the district, told Reuters he was perplexed. They were already dead, Allan Franza said, so why take them to hospital?
An analysis of crime data from two of Metro Manila’s five police districts and interviews with doctors, law enforcement officials and victims’ families point to one answer: Police were sending corpses to hospitals to destroy evidence at crime scenes and hide the fact that they were executing drug suspects.
Thousands of people have been killed since President Rodrigo Duterte took office on June 30 last year and declared war on what he called “the drug menace.” Among them were the seven victims from Old Balara who were declared dead on arrival at hospital.
A Reuters analysis of police reports covering the first eight months of the drug war reveals hundreds of cases like those in Old Balara. In Quezon City Police District and neighboring Manila Police District, 301 victims were taken to hospital after police drug operations. Only two survived. The rest were dead on arrival.
The data also shows a sharp increase in the number of drug suspects declared dead on arrival in these two districts each month. There were 10 cases at the start of the drug war in July 2016, representing 13 percent of police drug shooting deaths. By January 2017, the tally had risen to 51 cases or 85 percent. The totals grew along with international and domestic condemnation of Duterte’s campaign.
This increase was no coincidence, said a police commander in Manila, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity. In late 2016, he said, police began sending victims to hospitals to avoid crime scene investigations and media attention that might show they were executing drug suspects. A Reuters investigation last year found that when police opened fire in drug operations, they killed 97 percent of people they shot.
The Manila commander said police depended on emergency room doctors being too focused on the patients to care about why they were shot. The doctors “aren’t asking any questions. They only record it: DOA,” he said.
But five doctors told Reuters they were troubled by the rising number of police-related DOAs. Four said many drug suspects brought to hospital had been shot in the head and heart, sometimes at close range – precise and unsurvivable wounds that undermined police claims that suspects were injured during chaotic exchanges of gunfire.
Oscar Albayalde, Metro Manila’s police chief, said he had never heard of officers taking dead suspects to hospital to cover up crime scenes. “We will have that investigated,” he told Reuters. If that investigation showed police were “intentionally moving these dead bodies and bringing them to the hospitals just to alter the evidence, then I think we have to make them explain.”
Duterte’s office declined to expand on Albayalde’s response to Reuters’ questions.
According to police reports about the incidents, suspects shot during operations were “immediately rushed” to hospital. “The most important (thing) is the life of the person,” said Randy Llanderal, a precinct commander in Quezon City. The police reports reviewed by Reuters showed Llanderal had led or joined operations in which 13 drug suspects ended up dead on arrival.
Llanderal said all suspects were shot in self-defense during legitimate operations.
The Manila police commander, a retired senior officer and some doctors believe there is a cover up. Hospitalizing drug suspects who have been shot allows police to project a more caring image, said the Manila commander. The retired officer agreed. “It is basically a ploy to make the public believe that the police are mindful of the safety and survival of suspects,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The Manila commander said his officers were instructed to shoot at “sensitive areas.” Suspects who survived were shot again to finish them off or smothered with their own clothing, he said.
A Reuters examination of the Old Balara incident and similar operations also suggests that the purpose of hospital runs was to destroy evidence rather than save lives. Police manhandled gunshot victims and showed no urgency in getting them medical treatment, said three sets of family members and other witnesses.
Removing bodies makes it harder to work out what really happened. “You obliterate the crime scene – the evidence,” said Rizaldy Rivera, an agent at the Philippines’ National Bureau of Investigation who has investigated allegations of police brutality. Police forensic investigators at the scene, said Rivera, must carry out their work on what is effectively a “tampered crime scene.”
Scene of Crime Operatives, or SOCO units as police forensic teams are called, process crime scenes and conduct autopsies. Aurelio Trampe, the police general who oversees SOCO, said police officers haven’t been removing bodies to alter crime scenes. He said they have the discretion to disregard crime-scene investigative procedures “just as long as they could save lives.”
SOCO can still collect evidence from bodies once they reach the hospital, but doesn’t always do so. Instead, said SOCO forensic chief Reynaldo Calaoa, that task falls to a police investigator assigned to the case. That investigator often hails from the same station as the colleagues who killed the suspect.
Such practices can leave the system open to abuse, said Raquel Del Rosario Fortun, an independent forensic scientist and chair of the University of the Philippines Manila pathology department.
“They do the shooting, they do the killing — and they investigate themselves,” she said. “Impunity, that’s what’s happening.”

Cold to the touch
Old Balara is part of Quezon City, the largest of the 17 cities and municipalities that make up Metro Manila, and the most populous city in the Philippines.
Old Balara district chief Franza said police insisted his staff of volunteer security guards bring drug-war casualties from operations to the hospital – even when it was clear they were dead. Because he has assisted the police by transporting casualties, the victims’ families have accused him and his staff of complicity in the killings, he said.
In March, Franza decided he had had enough. Keep responding to police calls, he told his staff, but don’t take a body to hospital without the go-ahead from SOCO crime scene investigators. “I decided not to take action which I think is not proper,” said Franza.
The seven victims from Old Balara arrived at East Avenue Medical Center stacked in a flatbed truck and another vehicle, said Jerome Paez, an attending physician at the emergency room that night. Most had been shot in the head and many also had multiple gunshots in their chests, he said. None were breathing or had a pulse.
“All of them were cold to the touch,” said Paez, who has dealt with 21 drug suspects pronounced dead on arrival.
The victims had been refused admission earlier at Quezon City General Hospital’s emergency room, a 15-minute drive away, because they were already dead, said district chief Franza. The hospital told Reuters it had no record of receiving patients from Old Balara that night.
The Old Balara bodies were already in the morgue of East Avenue Medical Center by the time the mother of victim Elmer Gayoso arrived. She asked Reuters to withhold her name, saying she feared retribution from the police.
Gayoso had been shot through the head and the heart, she said, and the headshot had destroyed his face. She said her husband identified him by scouring his corpse for familiar childhood scars. The wounds were so grave that she didn’t believe that the police took Gayoso to the hospital to save his life.
“That was their pretense,” she said, weeping.
The killings also troubled Paez, the ER doctor. “We documented everything, just in case in the future it is needed for investigation,” he said.
Even if doctors at East Avenue Medical Center suspect a new arrival is dead, hospital protocol requires them to try to resuscitate the patient, said Paez. This is costly and wastes time at a big public hospital teeming with patients. In a recent visit by Reuters, old people wearing oxygen masks lay unmoving on gurneys. New patients arrived every few minutes.
Asked about the number of drug suspects arriving dead at hospital, the acting director of the East Avenue Medical Center, Victoria Abesamis, said: “I cannot categorically say that the police are bringing these dead bodies because they want to cover up. I think I will give them the benefit of the doubt.”

Trained shooter
Lawrence Bello and three other doctors at East Avenue Medical Center interviewed by Reuters also expressed unease about handling dead-on-arrival cases from police operations.
Bello said the police would sometimes deliver bodies that were already displaying rigor mortis, which sets in several hours after death. East Avenue would get two or three such bodies per month, he said.
Bello has dealt with 20 cases where suspects were dead on arrival following a police operation, according to Quezon City Police District data. One of them, Bello said, had a single gunshot wound. The bullet had entered below the chin and exited through the top of the head. Bello said he found the injury “quite questionable.”
Such an injury is usually associated with victims of suicide or execution, said Homer Venters of Physicians for Human Rights, a group based in New York that investigates mass atrocities. “It is very hard for that to happen when a person isn’t fully compliant,” he said. Venters didn’t examine the body that Bello referred to.
Patel Mayuga, another ER doctor at East Avenue Medical Center, has pronounced 10 victims of police shootings dead on arrival, according to Quezon City Police District data. Suspects who are dead on arrival usually have “clean shots” in the forehead or chest, suggesting the killings were intentional, said Mayuga. “If they are shot in the chest or head, there was time for the attacker to prepare,” he said.
Many other drug suspects brought to hospitals in Quezon City by police were also shot in the head and heart, often from less than a meter away, four doctors told Reuters.
One January evening, police delivered five bodies in a small jeepney bus to the state-run Novaliches District Hospital in Quezon City. The floor of the jeepney bus was puddled with the victims’ blood and excrement, recalled Lawrence Laguno, the ER doctor on duty. According to police, the victims had all pulled guns and opened fire on undercover officers during an anti-drug operation. They missed, and the police returned fire.
“All suspects were seriously injured,” said the police report. “Thereafter, wounded suspects were rushed to Novaliches District Hospital for medical treatment but pronounced dead on arrival by attending physician, Dr. Lawrence Laguno.”
Laguno told Reuters that all five men had been shot in the head and chest, with almost the same entry and exit wounds – injuries that looked to him both deliberate and impossible to survive. “It’s unusual to have the same five patients with almost the same injuries,” said the doctor. “It was a trained shooter. They knew what they were doing.”
Venters of Physicians for Human Rights said it is “incredibly rare” to sustain a tight grouping of gunshot wounds in a shootout. Venters, a medical doctor, has overseen research and investigations into extrajudicial killings. When bullets enter a body from the same direction and plane, it shows the target wasn’t moving, he said. “Either they were surprised and shot, or they were subdued and shot.”
Willie Saludares, acting chairman of the emergency room at East Avenue Medical Center, said doctors didn’t follow up on questionable cases, since how patients were killed wasn’t their concern. “I’m sorry to sound too cold, but that’s the way it is,” he said. “I am only concerned about the health of the patient. I’m not doing investigative work.”
Nor, it seemed, were others. Saludares said that state agencies that investigate police killings, such as the Commission on Human Rights or the National Bureau of Investigation, didn’t come to interview him. Saludares also said he was uncomfortable speaking freely and feared losing his job.


Chito Gascon, chairman of the Commission on Human Rights, said that if specific cases were brought to the agency’s attention, its investigators should pursue them and secure testimony from doctors. But the Commission was stretched, he added. “The CHR, given its current capacity constraints, is only able to investigate and document a fraction of all the deaths that have been reported by the media,” he said.
The National Bureau of Investigation didn’t comment.

"They were not breathing"
Police say they don’t shoot to kill and that saving lives is paramount. But 17 witnesses interviewed by Reuters say their behavior at crime scenes suggests the opposite.
In September, in a district called Nagkaisang Nayon, precinct commander Llanderal led an operation that added six dead-on-arrival cases to the Quezon City body count. According to a police report, the suspects — five men and a woman — opened fire on undercover officers posing as drug buyers. They missed, and the officers returned fire.
“When the smoke cleared,” said the report, “all suspects sustained gunshot wounds on their body. Immediately thereafter, all suspects were rushed to Novaliches District Hospital for medical treatment but (were) pronounced dead on arrival.” None of the officers were injured.
Llanderal acknowledged that removing the bodies disturbed the crime scene, but insisted the suspects were alive. “They were still moving. All of them!” he said.
Bereaved relatives and other witnesses told Reuters the bodies were taken to hospital an hour or more after the shooting, and that none of the victims showed signs of life. “They weren’t moving. They weren’t breathing,” said Feliciano Dela Cruz, the local district chief.
“It’s not possible they were alive,” said Jocelyn Ceron, 47, whose husband, Ronaldo, was among the dead. “We saw them thrown in the back of a truck.”
Ceron said Ronaldo’s body had six bullet wounds: three in the chest or torso, one in the leg, and one in each hand. Relatives said the other bodies each bore at least six gunshot wounds. Ceron showed Reuters photos of the crime scene.
Llanderal confirmed that the photos were taken by police investigators and showed the immediate aftermath of his operation. One photo shows a woman lying face down in a blood-smeared alleyway. Others show a tiny room in which five men lie slumped in pools of blood or on the floor; two guns are clearly visible.
Reuters shared the crime scene photos with Fortun, the independent forensic scientist. “Based on the pictures, they are apparently very dead,” Fortun said of the six victims.
For so many bodies to be crammed into a tiny room “doesn’t seem consistent” with police claims that the suspects were shot while fleeing during a gunbattle, she added.
Relatives of Ronaldo Ceron believe the police executed him and others in cold blood. A neighbor called Maricol Amacna said she heard one of the men begging, “Don’t kill me, sir!” The Commission on Human Rights says it is investigating the killings.
The police have dismissed allegations of wrongdoing as “useless and baseless,” and have issued commendations to Llanderal and his men for “the extraordinary courage you have displayed in the successful operation...which resulted in the neutralization” of the suspects.
Llanderal denied executing drug suspects. “In police operations, we don’t know where the bullets may hit,” he said. “Some suspects retaliate, fight us. We are only defending ourselves.”
(Additional reporting by Manuel Mogato)


Nomination of Jordanian American as US surgeon general withdrawn over credentials controversy

Updated 08 May 2025
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Nomination of Jordanian American as US surgeon general withdrawn over credentials controversy

CHICAGO: US President Donald Trump on Wednesday withdrew the nomination of Jordanian-American physician Janette Nesheiwat, a FOX TV medical contributor, to serve as the nation’s surgeon general after critics alleged she falsified parts of her medical resume.

In announcing his intention to nominate Nesheiwat in a release on Nov. 22, 2024, then President-elect Trump had said: “Dr. Nesheiwat is a double board-certified Medical Doctor with an unwavering commitment to saving and treating thousands of American lives.”

He added that she was a “proud graduate of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences” and that her “journey began with humble roots as one of five children raised by a widowed immigrant mother who worked as a nurse.”

https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/statement-president-elect-donald-j-trump-announcing-the-nomination-dr-janette-nesheiwat

The information is reflected on her website at DrJanette.net, which states: “Dr. Nesheiwat completed her medical residency at University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, UAMS.”

https://www.drjanette.net/about-1

But records published by several media houses claim that Nesheiwat actually earned her medical degree from the American University of the CaribbeanSchool of Medicine, located in St. Maarten, in the Caribbean.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-surgeon-general-nominee-dr-janette-nesheiwat-credentials/

Critics charge that Nesheiwat was never a student at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.

https://lastcampaign.substack.com/p/trumps-surgeon-general-pick-distorted

Nesheiwat, whose parents are Christian-Arab immigrants from Amman, Jordan, was to appear before the US Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions on Thursday, May 8, 2025, to testify on her nomination before being confirmed. 

But her appearance was removed from the announcement on Wednesday afternoon.

The US surgeon general oversees the US Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, an elite group of over 6,000 uniformed officers who are public health professionals. 

The USPHS mission is to protect, promote, and advance the health of the nation.

https://www.hhs.gov/surgeongeneral/index.html#:~:text=The%20Surgeon%20General%20oversees%20the,the%20health%20of%20our%20nation.

Nesheiwat came under further scrutiny after conservative activist and Trump confidant Laura Loomer posted the allegations on Monday on X.

Loomer stated that “we can’t have a pro-COVID vaccine nepo appointee who is currently embroiled in a medical malpractice case and who didn’t go to medical school in the US as the US Surgeon General.” 

“She is now being accused of lying about her credentials,” added Loomer.

https://x.com/LauraLoomer/status/1919180558355013817

On X, Loomer has described the COVID-19 vaccinations as “dangerous.” 

She added: “Vaccines Cause Autism. Even Donald Trump knows this. That’s why he has directed his new admin and his HHS secretary @RobertKennedyJr to INVESTIGATE the link between vaccines and autism.”

Nesheiwat’s sister, Julia Nesheiwat, is an American academic, business executive and former government official who served as the 10th homeland security advisor in the Trump administration from 2020 to 2021.

She also held various positions in the administrations of former presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

Janette Nesheiwat was involved in a family tragedy when she was 13 years old in 1990. 

According to published reports, Nesheiwat had been looking for a pair of scissors when she reached into a fishing box on a shelf in her father’s bedroom. 

The fishing box fell to the ground and a gun that was in it discharged, killing her sleeping father, Ziad Nesheiwat.

In her 2024 book, “Beyond the Stethoscope,” Nesheiwat said she became a doctor as a result of the tragedy.

https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Beyond-the-Stethoscope/Janette-Nesheiwat/9798888456514

Ironically, the man Nesheiwat was to succeed as surgeon general, Dr. Vivek H. Murthy, who was dismissed by Trump on April 21, had issued a public advisory in July 2024 that accidental firearm discharge deaths are “an urgent public health crisis.”

https://medicine.yale.edu/news/yale-medicine-magazine/article/vivek-murthy-dismissed-as-us-surgeon/

At the time of going to press, Nesheiwat had not responded to the news of the nomination withdrawal.


Australian jury convicts two men for murder of Indigenous teen

Updated 08 May 2025
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Australian jury convicts two men for murder of Indigenous teen

  • Some witnesses said the attackers had used racial slurs before the attack, but racism was not an alleged motive in the court proceedings
  • A fourth person charged over Turvey’s killing, Aleesha Gilmore, was cleared of both murder and manslaughter charges, court documents showed

SYDNEY: An Australian jury on Thursday found two men guilty of murdering Cassius Turvey, a 15-year-old Indigenous boy whose killing sparked nationwide anti-racism protests.
Turvey was attacked and beaten with a metal pole in October 2022 in the western city of Perth, the court heard. He died 10 days later in hospital.
Jurors convicted the two men — Jack Brearley and Brodie Palmer — of his murder, papers from the Supreme Court of Western Australia showed.
A third man, Mitchell Forth, was found guilty of manslaughter but cleared of murder.
All three men got out of a pick-up truck and chased a group of teenagers that included Turvey, Australian public broadcaster ABC said.
Brearley assaulted Turvey with a pole from a shopping trolley, the court heard.
Prosecutors said Brearley was angry because someone had smashed his car windows — though there was no suggestion Turvey was responsible, the ABC said.
Some witnesses said the attackers had used racial slurs before the attack, but racism was not an alleged motive in the court proceedings.
In the days after the killing, thousands of protesters held rallies and vigils around Australia.
At the time, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the attack was racially motivated, describing it as a “terrible tragedy.”
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people face stark inequalities compared to other Australians, with shorter life expectancies, poorer health and education, and higher incarceration rates.
A fourth person charged over Turvey’s killing, Aleesha Gilmore, was cleared of both murder and manslaughter charges, court documents showed.


India, Pakistan trade air and drone strikes as tensions spiral

Updated 19 min 43 sec ago
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India, Pakistan trade air and drone strikes as tensions spiral

  • Pakistan’s air defense system shot down an Indian drone near a naval air base in the eastern city of Lahore
  • India’s government said that 13 civilians had been killed by Pakistani fire in “ceasefire violations” along their de facto border
  • Pakistan’s Civil Aviation Authority said it has reopened Islamabad and Lahore airports

DUBAI: Tensions between India and Pakistan escalated on Thursday, with both countries reporting drone attacks, civilian casualties, and cross-border military action amid a deepening crisis along their highly militarized frontier.

India’s defense ministry said Pakistan launched an overnight aerial assault using “drones and missiles” that targeted Indian military sites. It said all the attacks were intercepted by Indian air defense systems, adding that New Delhi retaliated by destroying a Pakistani air defense system in Lahore.

“Our response was targeted and measured. It is not our intention to escalate the situation,” Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said during a press conference. “However, if there are military attacks on us, there should be no doubt that it will be met with a very, very firm response.”

In Pakistan, security officials said their air defense systems shot down an Indian drone early Thursday near a naval air base in Lahore. The military later claimed it had downed a total of 25 Indian drones across the country, including several Israeli-made Harop drones near sensitive military installations. Debris from the drones was reportedly recovered from various locations.

The aerial exchanges follow Indian strikes a day earlier in Pakistan’s Punjab province and in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, which Islamabad said killed 31 civilians, including women and children.

In response, Pakistan intensified cross-border shelling, which India said killed 13 civilians and injured 59 others in the town of Poonch. India’s army added that a soldier was also killed, bringing its total death toll to 14 since the flare-up began on Wednesday.

Amid the heightened tensions, Pakistan’s Civil Aviation Authority briefly closed airspace around Islamabad and Lahore, citing “operational reasons,” though both airports were later reopened. Karachi International Airport remains closed.

The crisis has reignited fears of further escalation between the two nuclear-armed neighbors, whose rivalry over the disputed region of Kashmir has triggered wars in the past.

Escalating Tensions
Tensions have escalated since April 22, when gunmen killed 26 people, mostly Indian Hindu tourists, in India-controlled Kashmir. India accused Pakistan of backing militants who carried out the attack, something Islamabad has denied.
Local police official Mohammad Rizwan said only that a drone was downed near Waltan airport, a small airfield in a residential area of Lahore that also contains military installations, about 25 kilometers (16 miles) east of the border with India.
Local media reported that two additional drones were shot down in other cities in Punjab province, of which Lahore is the capital.
Two security officials say a small Indian drone was taken down by Pakistan’s air defense system, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to media. It was not immediately clear whether the drone was armed.
The incident could not be independently verified, and Indian officials did not immediately comment.
India said its strikes Wednesday targeted at least nine sites in Pakistan linked to planning terrorist attacks against India.
In response, Pakistan’s air force shot down five Indian fighter jets, its military said.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif vowed overnight to avenge the killings but gave no details, raising fears of a broader conflict between the two nuclear-armed neighbors.
Across the de-facto border in Indian-controlled Kashmir, tens of thousands of people slept in shelters overnight, officials and residents said Thursday.
Indian authorities evacuated civilians from dozens of villages living close to the highly militarized Line of Control overnight while some living in border towns like Uri and Poonch left their homes on their own, three police and civil officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity in keeping with departmental regulations.


Global temperatures stuck at near-record highs in April: EU monitor

Updated 08 May 2025
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Global temperatures stuck at near-record highs in April: EU monitor

  • Burning fossil fuels largely blamed for global warming that has made extreme weather disasters more frequent and intense
  • Scientists say the current period is likely to be the warmest the Earth has been for the last 125,000 years

PARIS: Global temperatures were stuck at near-record highs in April, the EU’s climate monitor said on Thursday, extending an unprecedented heat streak and raising questions about how quickly the world might be warming.
The extraordinary heat spell was expected to subside as warmer El Niño conditions faded last year, but temperatures have stubbornly remained at record or near-record levels well into this year.
“And then comes 2025, when we should be settling back, and instead we are remaining at this accelerated step-change in warming,” said Johan Rockstrom, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.
“And we seem to be stuck there. What this is caused (by) — what is explaining it — is not entirely resolved, but it’s a very worrying sign,” he told AFP.
In its latest bulletin, the Copernicus Climate Change Service said that April was the second-hottest in its dataset, which draws on billions of measurements from satellites, ships, aircraft and weather stations.

All but one of the last 22 months exceeded 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, the warming limit enshrined in the Paris agreement, beyond which major and lasting climate and environmental changes become more likely.


Many scientists believe this target is no longer attainable and will be crossed in a matter of years.
A large study by dozens of pre-eminent climate scientists, which has not yet been peer reviewed, recently concluded that global warming reached 1.36C in 2024.
Copernicus puts the current figure at 1.39C and projects 1.5C could be reached in mid 2029 or sooner based on the warming trend over the last 30 years.
“Now it’s in four years’ time. The reality is we will exceed 1.5 degrees,” said Samantha Burgess of the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, which runs Copernicus.
“The critical thing is to then not latch onto two degrees, but to focus on 1.51,” the climate scientist told AFP.
Julien Cattiaux, a climate scientist at the French research institute CNRS, said 1.5C “would be beaten before 2030” but that was not a reason to give up.
“It’s true that the figures we’re giving are alarming: the current rate of warming is high. They say every 10th of a degree counts, but right now, they’re passing quickly,” he told AFP.
“Despite everything, we mustn’t let that hinder action.”

This photograph shows a general view of the Atacama Desert covered by flowers in Copiapo, Chile, taken on July 10, 2024. (AFP)

Scientists are unanimous that burning fossil fuels has largely driven long-term global warming that has made extreme weather disasters more frequent and intense.
But they are less certain about what else might have contributed to this persistent heat event.
Experts think changes in global cloud patterns, airborne pollution and Earth’s ability to store carbon in natural sinks like forests and oceans, could be factors also contributing to the planet overheating.
The surge pushed 2023 and then 2024 to become the hottest years on record, with 2025 tipped to be third.

Smoke pours from the exhaust pipes on a truck on November 05, 2019 in Miami, Florida. (AFP)

“The last two years... have been exceptional,” said Burgess.
“They’re still within the boundary — or the envelope — of what climate models predicted we could be in right now. But we’re at the upper end of that envelope.”
She said that “the current rate of warming has accelerated but whether that’s true over the long term, I’m not comfortable saying that,” adding that more data was needed.
Copernicus records go back to 1940 but other sources of climate data — such as ice cores, tree rings and coral skeletons — allow scientists to expand their conclusions using evidence from much further into the past.
Scientists say the current period is likely to be the warmest the Earth has been for the last 125,000 years.
 


US denounces Russian obstruction in UN sanctions on North Korea

Updated 08 May 2025
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US denounces Russian obstruction in UN sanctions on North Korea

  • US envoy charged that Russia's obstructions was its way to avoid facing reproach for using Pyongyang’s weapons in the war against Ukraine
  • Last year, Russia vetoed a Security Council resolution, ending the UN sanctions monitoring system for Pyongyang’s sanctions

NEW YORK CITY: At the United Nations Wednesday, the United States denounced Russia for “cynically obstructing” the monitoring of North Korea’s compliance with sanctions, in Moscow’s bid to avoid facing reproach for using Pyongyang’s weapons in the war against Ukraine.
Several members of the Security Council, including the US and South Korea, convened a meeting Wednesday to ensure member states are “aware of sanctions violations and evasion activity” that generates revenue for North Korea’s “unlawful” weapons of mass destruction and “ballistic missile programs despite Russia’s veto,” said interim US ambassador Dorothy Shea.
In March 2024, Russia vetoed a Security Council resolution, ending the UN sanctions monitoring system for Pyongyang’s sanctions.
Sanctions were implemented in 2006, and were strengthened several times by the Security Council, but the committee responsible for such monitoring no longer exists.
Shea alleges that since late 2023, North Korean has transferred over 24,000 containers of munitions and munitions-related material, and more than 100 ballistic missiles to Russia for use against Ukraine.
“The DPRK continues brazenly to violate the Council’s resolutions by exporting coal and iron ore to China, the proceeds of which directly fund its unlawful WMD and ballistic missile programs,” Shea said.
“It is clear from evidence presented today that Russia is cynically obstructing the Council on DPRK sanctions implementation in order to try to escape reproach for its own violations.”
South Korean Ambassador Joonkook Hwang agreed, denouncing the “illegal military cooperation between Russia and North Korea,” saying it has “severely undermined the Security Council sanctions regime on North Korea and threatens regional and global peace and security.
In May 2022, Russia and China vetoed a resolution imposing new sanctions against Pyongyang, and have advocated for easing sanctions since 2019.
The current sanctions on North Korea have no end date.