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Indonesia's Ruang volcano erupted on Tuesday, spewing lava as lightning flashes lit up its crater, prompting authorities to raise the alert status and evacuate more than 12,000 people living on a nearby island. The Center for Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation (PVMBG) had warned the residents of Tagulandang island that a tsunami could be triggered by volcanic material collapsing into the ocean.

The warning, issued on Tuesday morning, remained in placed as of the afternoon. The agency raised the alert status of Ruang to the highest level following the early morning eruption, urging residents not to go near the volcano.

Indonesia's disaster mitigation agency (BNPB) said that all 843 residents living in Ruang island, where the volcano is located, have been moved to Manado, the capital of North Sulawesi province. Residents of Tagulandang island are being relocated to Siau island to the north.

Mike Leigh, the veteran director of “Vera Drake,” “Another Year” and “Happy-Go-Lucky,” will be honored at Malta’s Mediterrane Film Festival with its Career Achievement Golden Bee Award.

Leigh will also host a masterclass at the festival, the second edition of which is taking place June 22 to 30 in Malta’s capital city of Valletta. The director, who has earned seven Oscar nominations and won the Cannes Film Festival Palme d’Or for 1993’s “Naked,” will be in conversation with Adrian Wootton, chief executive of Film London and the British Film Commission.

In a future where state-sanctioned euthanasia is the answer to climate change, four furious siblings have two hours to decide which one will die.

Excerpt:

“Humane” pulls a comparable bait-and-switch. The film’s premise is that climate changed has metastasized, to the point that none of the earth’s population has enough food, water, or resources. An emergency decree by the UN has dictated that every country will have one year to meet its population-reduction goal, which is to cull 20 percent of its people. In the unnamed country where the film is set (but it was shot in Canada, looks like Canada, and feels like Canada, so let’s call it Canada), citizens are invited to “enlist” — that is, to volunteer for euthanasia. If they do so, giving up their lives for the greater good, the government will pay them $250,000 tax free. In other words, they can die and help set up their families. “Humane” was written by Michael Sparaga, and one of the things that’s savvy about it is the way the film plays, almost subliminally, off the current mood of economic desperation. (Instead of just being horrified, we’re supposed to hear the terms of enlistment and think, “Not a bad deal.”)

A review of research on carbon dioxide removal reveals a lack of evidence on its costs, impacts and benefits in Africa and South America.

A review of research on carbon dioxide removal (CDR), carried out by a team from the Grantham Institute – Climate Change and the Environment at Imperial College London, the Humboldt University of Berlin and the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change, reveals a lack of evidence on its impacts and benefits in Africa and South America, where many CDR schemes are planned.

CDR covers a broad swathe of methods to remove carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere, including reforestation, the manipulation of farmland to improve the carbon absorption of soils, and more technological techniques like carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS).

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says CDR is required to achieve global and national targets on greenhouse gas reductions, and CDR schemes are a key component of models used by policymakers to make decisions about climate change mitigation.

This study shows, however, that while research on CDR and its impacts has risen dramatically in recent years, the vast majority has so far focused on Europe and Asia, or on the global picture.

Via @CelloMomOnCars

Interesting #humaninterest story about #Zimbabwean who becomes a successful #goat farmer after 15 years nursing in the UK: https://www.pindula.co.zw/2024/04/24/zimbabwean-man-abandons-uk-job-to-venture-into-goat-farming/

#worldwithoutus

Sudan had the world’s largest number of people facing extreme food shortages in 2023 as conflict and displacement drove food insecurity globally, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). The war between rival generals meant Sudan accounted for two-thirds of the additional 13.5 million people needing urgent help last year, while conflict also plunged Gaza into the world’s most severe food crisis with its entire population facing high levels of food insecurity.

Globally, more than 281 million people in 59 countries faced high levels of acute food insecurity according to the Global Report on Food Crises, published today, with economic crises and extreme weather also contributing.

Despite the scale of Sudan’s hunger crisis, with 20.3 million in the country facing acute food insecurity, the FAO warned of underfunding. Rein Paulsen, its emergencies director, said it was crucial to get more financing for emergency agriculture to ensure Sudanese farmers can produce food during the upcoming planting season.

Fears Israel is influencing location of dock away from the north, where famine threat is most severe. A giant floating dock is nearing completion in the eastern Mediterranean from where it will be pushed towards the Gaza shore, but there is growing uncertainty over how useful the US project will be in containing a famine.

There are concerns in the humanitarian community that Israel has co-opted the pier plan, which Joe Biden touted as a way to bring about a “massive” increase in aid to Gaza, with one aid official saying the project was in danger of becoming a “smokescreen” for the planned invasion of Rafah.

The dock has been built off US naval vessels and is expected to be in position by early May. According to several aid officials, the current plan is to anchor it not off northern Gaza, where the threat of famine is most severe, but at a point halfway up the strip where the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have a stronghold.

That would mean that food aid brought in via the dock would still have to pass through an IDF checkpoint at the Netzarim corridor, a military road that bisects the strip, and which has been a choke-point stopping humanitarian deliveries reaching the north.

Some UN and other humanitarian officials fear that the aid will be diverted south to camps set up for the more than 1 million people now sheltering in Rafah. The IDF wants them to move out so that it can conduct an offensive against Hamas units in Gaza’s southernmost city.

Such an offensive would inevitably mean the temporary closure of Rafah and Kerem Shalom crossings in southern Gaza, so the US-made floating dock would serve as a substitute, while at the same time diverting pressure on Israel to open northern crossing points to substantial aid traffic.

“One of the key arguments for having a dock was to put it further north so that suppliers could come in more directly to the north,” a UN official said, adding that what was actually being proposed looked more like a “smokescreen to enable the Israelis to invade Rafah”.

Armenia agreed to return four villages that have been under its occupation for three decades to Azerbaijan. It agreed during the eighth meeting of border demarcation commissions, chaired by Azerbaijani Deputy Prime Minister Shahin Mustafayev and Armenian Deputy Prime Minister Mher Grigoryan, gathering along the countries' frontier.

According to a written statement by Azerbaijan, the commissions reached an agreement on certain issues during the meeting, including determining the border along Azerbaijan's Gazakh province in line with the border that existed when the Soviet Union collapsed.

The line will pass through the villages of Baghanis (Armenia)-Baghanis Ayrum (Azerbaijan), Voskepar (Armenia)-Aşağı Eskipara (Azerbaijan), Kirants (Armenia)-Heyrimli (Azerbaijan) and Berkaber (Armenia)-Kızılhacılı (Azerbaijan).

Even as the beloved Japanese animation house theoretically winds down, Studio Ghibli is flying high. Hot off the heels of that Oscar win for The Boy And The Heron, the accolades just keep coming – the studio is being recognised at the Cannes Film Festival next month, set to receive an honorary Palme d’or at the 77th rendition of the festival, acknowledging its profound impact on our screens with 24 films across four decades.

Honorary Palme d’or awards are typically reserved for individuals – with George Lucas also set to join the ranks at this year’s festival – so this marks the first time that a group is receiving the honour. “With Ghibli, Japanese animation stands as one of the great adventures of cinephilia, between tradition and modernity,” notes Cannes’ Iris Knobloch and Thierry Frémaux. The award marks yet another positive turn for Ghibli, after The Boy And The Heron sailed to nearly $175 million at the worldwide box office and took home a little gold man to boot.

In the last few years it is likely that PepsiCo has been using in its production palm oil from deforested land claimed by the Shipibo-Konibo people in eastern Peru, a new investigation has found.

Palm oil from Peru enters PepsiCo’s supply chain via a consortium that shares storage facilities with Ocho Sur, the second largest palm oil producer in the country which has been associated with deforestation and violation of Indigenous peoples’ rights. In the last three years, further deforestation occurred within the company’s land, the investigation found.

Some of the forest loss on company-run oil palm plantations occurred on land claimed by the Santa Clara de Uchunya community of Shipibo-Konibo Indigenous people.

PepsiCo manufactures at least 15 products containing Peruvian palm oil that could be linked to deforestation. The company has pledged to make 100% of its palm oil supply deforestation-free by the end of 2022 and for its operation to be net zero by 2040.

Indigenous peoples and local communities are reporting a series of tangible and nuanced impacts of climate change, according to a new study. The study collected 1,661 firsthand reports of change in sites across all inhabited continents and aggregated the reports into 369 indicators of climate change impacts, including changes in precipitation, plant cultivation and marine ecosystems.

Existing measures to track climate change impacts are barely able to relate to the diverse and complex ways in which local people experience and observe environmental changes, according to the authors. For instance, instrumental measurements might capture changes in rainfall patterns but miss crucial relationships between climate change awareness, sensitivity and vulnerability.

This research constitutes the largest global effort by Indigenous peoples and local communities to compile and categorize local observations of climate change and its impacts.

Fleeing from war, the experience of Romani people in Germany differs from that of other Ukrainians. They often encounter racism instead of help. More than 1.1 million people have fled to Germany as a result of the war in Ukraine — including an estimated several thousand Romani refugees, members of Europe's largest minority. While members of mainstream Ukrainian society received a warm and unbureaucratic welcome as refugees, most Romani people have experienced a very different Germany: highly bureaucratic, unhelpful, suspicious, derogatory, and racist.

This is the conclusion reached by the Reporting and Information Center on Antiziganism (MIA) in its monitoring report "Antiziganism against Ukrainian Romani refugees in Germany." Antiziganism is a form of racism that is directed against Romani people or against people who are perceived as such.

Romani families fleeing the war in Ukraine are entitled to the same assistance in Germany as other Ukrainians. "But this welcoming culture is simply not there for Romani people," MIA managing director Guillermo Ruiz told DW: "We have seen from day one how Ukrainian Romani people have been discriminated against in all forms." MIA has received around 220 such reports.