World

BRASÍLIA — Brazil’s Supreme Court on Wednesday postponed a critical trial over Indigenous ancestral land rights as demonstrators protested in the capital. 

The case — which began in 2021 and has been called “the trial of the century” for the country’s native peoples — could remove protected status for some native lands, opening them up to agribusiness and mining.

Hundreds of Indigenous people from all over the country have camped in Brasilia this week in anticipation of the trial, which had been set to begin Wednesday.

The delay came when one of the judges asked for more time to review the case, which asks whether the government should recognise protected Indigenous lands where the current inhabitants were not living when the country’s 1988 constitution was adopted.

So far, three of 10 judges have voted on the case — one in favour of the 1988 cut-off, or against the native peoples, and two with the opposite opinion. 

Now, the court has 90 days to set a new date for the vote to proceed. 

The matter revolves around the Brazilian constitution’s protection of Indigenous lands.

The agribusiness lobby argues those protections should apply only to lands whose inhabitants were present there in 1988, when the constitution was adopted.

Indigenous rights activists argue the constitution mentions no such time limit, and that native inhabitants have often been forced from their ancestral lands.

Members from 20 different ethnic groups, along with the Minister of Indigenous Peoples Sonia Guajajara, were present at the court on Wednesday. 

The trial’s deferral is “emotionally draining” for Brazilian communities waiting for an answer, Daniel Pataxo, a leader of the Pataxo people in north-eastern Bahia state said.

“It ends up being a lack of respect for us as human beings,” the 38-year-old, who traveled to Brasilia for the trial, told AFP outside the court, where dozens of Indigenous people had gathered.

Elsewhere in Brazil, roadblocks were set up by Indigenous people in at least three different states Wednesday, authorities said. 

Last week, the lower chamber of Congress passed a bill in favour of the 1988 time limit, in a blow to leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who campaigned on protecting Indigenous rights. 

Brazil counts nearly 800 Indigenous territories, though around a third of them have yet to be officially defined, according to the National Foundation of Indigenous Peoples.

Environmentalists say protecting Indigenous reservations is one of the best ways to stop the destruction of the Amazon, a critical resource in the race to curb climate change.

KHERSON — Thousands were fleeing their homes Wednesday after the destruction of a frontline Russian-held dam in Ukraine flooded dozens of villages and parts of a nearby city, sparking fears of a humanitarian disaster.

Downstream from the breached Kakhovka dam, Ukrainian police and troops in the southern city of Kherson were bringing people out from inundated areas in inflatable boats, most clutching only a few documents and pets.

Despite the evacuations, officials said Russian forces have kept shelling the residential neighbourhoods.

Ukraine and Russia have traded blame for the dam being ripped open early Tuesday, prompting Turkey's president to propose to both nations' leaders an international probe of the breach.

The destruction has also raised fears of an environmental disaster and nuclear safety risks as it provides cooling water for Europe's largest nuclear plant.

One woman, Nataliya Korzh, 68, had swum part of the way to escape from her house.

She emerged from a rescue boat barefoot, her legs covered with scratches, her hands trembling from cold.

"All my rooms are underwater. My fridge is floating, the freezer, everything. We're used to shooting, but a natural disaster is a real nightmare. I wasn't expecting that," she told AFP.

She feared for her two dogs and cat, which she was unable to save. 

“To get to the room where the dogs were, I would have had to dive. I don’t know what’s happened to them.”

The water was waist-deep in central streets of Kherson and ground floors of buildings were submerged. 

A spokesman for Ukraine’s emergency services, Oleksandr Khorunzhyi, said that “currently there is no information about the dead or injured”.

Water levels in Kherson have risen by 5 metres, he said.

While finger-pointing continued over the dam’s destruction, Moscow accused Kyiv of blowing up a key pipeline that Russia used before the war to export ammonia and whose re-activation it has requested as part of grain deal talks.

Continued shelling 

The governor of the Kherson region, Oleksandr Prokudin, said 1,700 people had been evacuated so far and reported that ongoing shelling was endangering rescuers and locals.

Moscow-installed officials on the Russian-occupied side of the river said on Tuesday that more than 1,200 people had been evacuated.

A policeman, Sergiy, 38, was using a radio to coordinate the rescue boats.

“Today we’ve already saved 30 people, 10 pets. There was one child. We will work until we’ve brought out all the people,” he told AFP.

Washington warned there would be “likely many deaths” due to the breach of the Kakhovka dam.

Kyiv said the destruction of the dam — seized by Russia in the early hours of the war — was an attempt by Moscow to hamper its long-awaited offensive, which Ukraine’s leader stressed would not be affected.

While the United Nations warned that hundreds of thousands could be affected on both sides of the frontline. 

The governor of the Kherson region, Oleksandr Prokudin, said 1,852 houses had been flooded by early Wednesday.

“According to our forecasts, the water level will increase by one metre within the next 20 hours,” he warned.

An official in President Volodymyr Zelensky’s office, Daria Zarivna, said that in the occupied territory “the Russians simply abandoned people” and in the town of Oleshky on the opposite bank from Kherson, “many spent the night on the roofs of houses”.

‘Environmental bomb’ 

Zelensky accused Russia of detonating an “environmental bomb of mass destruction”, saying authorities expected up to 80 settlements with tens of thousands of residents to be flooded and urging the world to “react”.

“This crime carries enormous threats and will have dire consequences for people’s lives and the environment,” Zelensky said.

But the explosion would “not affect Ukraine’s ability to de-occupy its own territories”, he added.

Last October, Zelensky accused Russia of planting mines at the dam, warning that its destruction would spur a new wave of refugees into Europe.

Kyiv said 150 tonnes of engine oil had spilled into the river, and the agricultural ministry said about 10 thousand hectares of farmland on the right bank of the river would be flooded and “several times more” on the left bank.

China expressed “serious concern” over the dam destruction, while EU chief Charles Michel called it a “war crime” and NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg condemned it as “outrageous”.

Russia has said the dam was partially destroyed by “multiple strikes” from Ukrainian forces and urged the world to condemn Kyiv’s “criminal acts”.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s office said he proposed setting up an international commission to investigate the destruction of the dam in calls with Zelensky and Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

The Soviet-era dam, built in the 1950s, sits on the Dnipro River, which provides cooling water for the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant some 150 kilometres away.

The UN nuclear watchdog agency said the dam break was posing “no short-term risk” to the plant.

Separately, Moscow accused a Ukrainian “sabotage” group of blowning up a section of the Togliatti-Odesa pipeline that Russia used to export ammonia and that is part of the international talks on allowing grain exports from Ukraine amid the conflict with Russia.

Ukrainian officials have accused Russian forces of firing at the ammonia pipeline.

KHERSON — An attack on a major Russian-held dam in southern Ukraine Tuesday unleashed a torrent of water that flooded a small city, two dozen villages and sent hundreds fleeing.

Moscow and Kyiv traded blame for ripping a gaping hole in the Kakhovka dam in what Kyiv said was an attempt by Russia to hamper Ukraine's long-awaited offensive.

People in the city of Kherson, the largest population centre in the area, headed for higher ground as water, which had been held back by the dam and a hydroelectric plant, rose in the Dnipro River.

"There is shooting, now there is flooding," said Lyudmyla, who had loaded a washing machine onto a cart that was attached to an old Soviet car.

Ukraine's interior ministry said 650 people had been evacuated as of 1000 GMT and 420 more had left the area, with a total of 24 villages flooded.

Ukrainian officials said there were a total of 16,000 people living in the "critical zone" for potential flooding.

On the Russian-controlled riverbank, Vladimir Leontyev, the Moscow-installed mayor of Nova Kakhovka where the dam is located, said the city was underwater and 900 people had been evacuated.

He said 53 evacuation buses were being sent by the authorities to take people from Nova Kakhovka and two other settlements nearby to safety.

“We are organising temporary accommodation centres with hot meals,” he said.

The Kakhovka dam and its power plant were seized by Russia in the first hours of the war.

‘War crime’ 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia of blowing up the dam and said that the “world must react.”

He said Russia had carried out “an internal explosion of the structures” of the plant at 2:50am local time (2350 GMT).

Ukraine also called for a meeting of the UN Security Council and warned of a potential “ecocide” after 150 tonnes of engine oil spilled into the river as a result of the attack.

Western powers also blamed Russia for the damage to the Kakhovka dam, with EU chief Charles Michel calling it a “war crime”.

NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said the dam breach was “outrageous” and “puts thousands of civilians at risk and causes severe environmental damage”. 

Russia however said the dam was partially destroyed by “multiple strikes” coming from Ukrainian forces. 

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the destruction was the result of “deliberate sabotage by the Ukrainian side.” 

The Soviet-era dam sits on the Dnipro River, which provides cooling water for the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe.

The flooding fuelled already existing fears for the safety of the Zaporizhzhia plant, under Russian control. 

The plant is some 150 kilometres away from the damaged dam. 

Moscow and Kyiv offered conflicting versions on the safety of the facility.

The UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said its experts “are closely monitoring the situation” but that there was “no immediate nuclear safety risk at plant”.

The Russian-installed director of the plant, Yuri Chernichuk, echoed the UN agency and said that “at the moment, there is no security threat to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant”.

“The water level in the cooling pond has not changed,” he said, adding that the “situation was controlled by personnel”.

Chernichuk said the water cooling system was not in direct contact with the outside environment and could be refilled from several alternative sources.

‘Slow down’ Ukraine

But Ukraine — which in 1986 suffered the devastating Chernobyl nuclear disaster — sounded the alarm.

“The world once again finds itself on the brink of a nuclear disaster, because the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant lost its source of cooling. And this danger is now growing rapidly,” Ukrainian presidential aide Mykhaylo Podolyak said.

The Ukrainian nuclear operator, Energoatom, said the water level of the Kakhovka reservoir was “rapidly decreasing, which is an additional threat to the temporarily occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant”.

It said it was “monitoring the situation” and that currently the cooling plant’s pond water level is “sufficient for the power plant’s needs”.

News of the damage came after Russia claimed Ukraine had begun a long-expected counteroffensive.

Ukraine has called for silence about its military movements and said there would be no formal announcement of the start of the operation.

On Monday, Zelensky praised his troops for advances claimed near the devastated city of Bakhmut, while Russia said it had repelled a large-scale attack.

Ukraine said that Russia’s goal was to “create obstacles” for Kyiv’s offensive to retake territory from Moscow’s forces. 

Kyiv already accused Moscow of mining the dam as combat raged nearby in October, during the last major offensive by Ukrainian forces seeking to regain lost territory. Russia denies the claim.

Built in the 1950s, the Kakhovka dam has strategic value as it pumps water into the North Crimean Canal, which starts in southern Ukraine and crosses the entire Crimean Peninsula.

This means that any problem with the dam could cause water supply problems for Crimea, which has been under Russian control since 2014.

PARIS — The UN’s cultural agency UNESCO welcomed on Tuesday commitments from Australia to protect the Great Barrier Reef, with the government pledging 4.4 billion Australian dollars ($2.9 billion) to safeguard the natural wonder. 

The fate of the reef has been a recurrent source of tension between UNESCO and Australian authorities in recent years, with the UN agency threatening to put the world’s largest coral system on a list of “in danger” global heritage sites.

Behind-the-scenes diplomacy from Australia has averted such a move while fresh commitments from the Labour government of Anthony Albanese, made in a letter seen by AFP, drew praise from the Paris-based organisation on Tuesday. 

“UNESCO welcomes Australia’s decision to implement urgent new protection measures to safeguard the Great Barrier Reef recommended by UNESCO,” UNESCO said in a statement sent to AFP.

Australian Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek announced on Monday that gillnets — vertical nets that can be up to kilometre long — are to be phased out by 2027 in a bid to conserve fish populations and prevent the deaths of turtles and dolphins.

In a letter sent to UNESCO chief Audrey Azoulay last week, Plibersek also pledged “combined investment of 4.4 billion Australian dollars” ($2.9 billion) from the state Queensland and federal governments to protect the reef.

“Our governments are pleased to further commit substantial actions to secure the future of the Reef,” Plibersek wrote on May 25.

Albanese’s centre-left government, which ended nearly a decade of conservative rule in May last year, has implemented a series of ambitious policies to protect the environment and commit Australia to more demanding climate change targets. 

In February, it blocked a planned coal mine around 10 kilometres from the reef and last year it scrapped funding for two dams, including one called the Hells Gates project in Queensland. 

There has been a “radical change” in approach under Albanese compared with his rightwing predecessor Scott Morrison, one UNESCO diplomat told AFP on condition of anonymity.

“The reaction from the conservative Australian government was unusually strong,” he added. “It wasn’t possible to have a dialogue with them. We had a position based on scientific observation and they made it all about diplomacy.”

UNESCO power 

The Great Barrier Reef is one of Australia’s premier tourist drawcards.

A decision by UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee to put it on the “in-danger” list was seen as a potentially embarrassing PR blow that would risk putting off international visitors.

UNESCO began a monitoring mission there in March 2022 to assess the impact of pollution, fishing, climate change and coral-bleaching that are seen as imperilling one of the world’s most complex ecosystems.

“For many years, UNESCO has not ceased alerting the world to the risk of this site losing its universal value forever,” Azoulay said in the statement on Tuesday. 

Australian commitments include the creation of “no fishing” zones for around a third of the reef by 2025, a “considerable” reduction in agricultural and industrial pollution, as well as a reduction in the country’s carbon emissions. 

UNESCO runs a list of sites with World Heritage status around the world, a prestigious title that countries compete to bestow on their most famous natural and man-made locations.

A listing can help boost tourism — but it comes with obligations to protect the site.

The port city of Liverpool in northwest England lost its World Heritage status for its docks in 2021 after UNESCO experts concluded that new real estate developments in the city had taken too much of a toll on its historical fabric.

Other places seen as “in danger” include the historic centre of Austrian capital Vienna, villages in war-wracked Syria, as well as a host of national parks and nature reserves from Indonesia to the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Australia is one of the world’s biggest raw material and gas producers, while its carbon dioxide emissions per person are among the highest in the world at 15.3 tonnes, surpassing United States levels, World Bank figures show.

NEW DELHI — The United States and India agreed a roadmap for military industrial cooperation on Monday, as New Delhi seeks to reduce its reliance on key arms supplier Russia in the face of tensions with China.

"We established an ambitious new roadmap for defence industrial cooperation, which will fast track high priority co-development and co-production projects," US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin said as he wrapped up an overnight visit to New Delhi.

But analysts warned that such pledges needed to be backed up by concrete action. 

Moscow and New Delhi have been allies for decades, with Russia by far India's biggest arms supplier.

Now India — which has not condemned Russia for its invasion of Ukraine — is looking to diversify, both by broadening its sources of imports and ramping up domestic production.

Western countries, including the United States and France, are negotiating multibillion-dollar contracts, and diplomats say India is placing a high priority on technology transfer as part of any deal. 

The agreement will fast-track technology cooperation and co-production in areas including air combat and land mobility systems, the "undersea domain", and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, the US Defense Department said.

The initiative "aims to change the paradigm for cooperation between US and Indian defence sectors", it said, and "could provide India access to cutting-edge technologies and support India's defence modernisation plans".

India has displaced China as the world's most populous country this year, and relations between the Asian giants have been strained since a deadly high-altitude border clash in June 2020.

At the same time, Washington and Beijing are engaged in fierce competition on diplomatic, military, technological and economic fronts.

‘Bullying and coercion’ 

But India is walking a diplomatic tightrope: Uniquely, it is a member of both the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, which includes Russia and China, and the Quad, set up with the United States, Japan, and Australia to counter Beijing’s growing assertiveness.

As well as arms, India also imports oil from Russia, increasing its purchases since the Ukraine war began.

Analysts said they would wait to see whether the US-India roadmap was anything more than rhetoric.

Expectations that Austin would talk about transferring engine technology to India and an armed Predator drone deal had gone unfulfilled, said Indian defence analyst Rahul Bedi.

“We’ve heard this many times before from respective defence secretaries, as well as the Indian side,” he told AFP.

“But unless something concrete emerges I remain sceptical. The right path [of India-US relations] has to be backed with firm contracts and firm assurances.”

Austin, speaking to reporters after meeting his counterpart Rajnath Singh, said boosting partnerships with India came against a backdrop of “bullying and coercion” from China, as well as Russian “aggression against Ukraine”.

India’s defence ministry said discussions had a “particular focus on identifying ways to strengthen industrial cooperation” with Washington, including the “co-development of new technologies and co-production of existing and new systems”. 

Austin’s visit comes ahead of a trip by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Washington this month.

Austin is on a tour of Asia that previously took him to Japan and Singapore, part of a push to help counter China and an increasingly bellicose North Korea.

The United States is “committed to collaborating closely with India in support of our shared vision for a free and open Indo-Pacific”, Austin said.

But he added that Washington was “absolutely not trying to establish a NATO” equivalent in the region.

MAROPENG, South Africa — Palaeontologists in South Africa said on Monday they have found the oldest known burial site in the world, containing remains of a small-brained distant relative of humans previously thought incapable of complex behaviour.

Led by renowned palaeoanthropologist Lee Berger, researchers said they discovered several specimens of Homo naledi — a tree-climbing, Stone Age hominid — buried about 30 metres underground in a cave system within the Cradle of Humankind, a UNESCO world heritage site near Johannesburg.

"These are the most ancient interments yet recorded in the hominin record, earlier than evidence of Homo sapiens interments by at least 100,000 years," the scientists wrote in a series of yet to be peer reviewed and preprint papers to be published in eLife.

The findings challenge the current understanding of human evolution, as it is normally held that the development of bigger brains allowed for the performing of complex, "meaning-making" activities such as burying the dead.

The oldest burials previously unearthed, found in the Middle East and Africa, contained the remains of Homo sapiens — and were around 100,000 years old.

Those found in South Africa by Berger, whose previous announcements have been controversial, and his fellow researchers, date back to at least 200,000BC.

Critically, they also belong to Homo naledi, a primitive species at the crossroads between apes and modern humans, which had brains about the size of oranges and stood about 1.5 metres tall.

With curved fingers and toes, tool-wielding hands and feet made for walking, the species discovered by Berger had already upended the notion that our evolutionary path was a straight line.

Homo naledi is named after the "Rising Star" cave system where the first bones were found in 2013.

The oval-shaped interments at the centre of the new studies were also found there during excavations started in 2018.

The holes, which researchers say evidence suggests were deliberately dug and then filled in to cover the bodies, contain at least five individuals.

"These discoveries show that mortuary practices were not limited to H. sapiens or other hominins with large brain sizes," the researchers said.

The burial site is not the only sign that Homo naledi was capable of complex emotional and cognitive behaviour, they added.

Engravings forming geometrical shapes, including a "rough hashtag figure", were also found on the apparently purposely smoothed surfaces of a cave pillar nearby.

"That would mean not only are humans not unique in the development of symbolic practices, but may not have even invented such behaviours," Berger told AFP in an interview.

Such statements are likely to ruffle some feathers in the world of palaeontology, where the 57-year-old has previously faced accusations of lacking scientific rigour and rushing to conclusions.

Many balked when in 2015 Berger, whose earlier discoveries won support from National Geographic, first aired the idea that Homo naledi was capable of more than the size of its head suggested.

"That was too much for scientists to take at that time. We think it's all tied up with this big brain," he said.

"We're about to tell the world that's not true."

While requiring further analysis, the discoveries "alter our understandings of human evolution", the researchers wrote.

"Burial, meaning-making, even 'art' could have a much more complicated, dynamic, non-human history than we previously thought," said Agustin Fuentes, a professor of anthropology at Princeton University, who co-authored the studies.

Carol Ward, an anthropologist at the University of Missouri not involved in the research, said that "these findings, if confirmed, would be of considerable potential importance".

"I look forward to learning how the disposition of remains precludes other possible explanations than intentional burial, and to seeing the results once they have been vetted by peer review," she told AFP.

Ward also pointed out that the paper acknowledged that it could not rule out that markings on the walls could have been made by later hominins.

LUXEMBOURG — The Court of Justice of the European Union on Monday ruled that a controversial Polish judicial reform from 2019, which notably concerns disciplinary procedures for judges, violates EU law.

"Rule of law: the Polish justice reform of December 2019 infringes EU law" because it undermines the independence and impartiality of judges, the Luxembourg-based court said in its verdict.

Brussels immediately lauded the ruling, saying the judgement "settles the matter for good".

"Today is an important day for the restoration of an independent justice in Poland," EU justice commissioner Didier Reynders said.

"After today's decision, the law on the judiciary will need to be adapted accordingly... I urge the Polish authorities to comply fully with the judgement," he added.

Polish Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro rejected the verdict, claiming it "was not written by judges but politicians because it constitutes a clear violation of European treaties".

"The European Union's top court is corrupt... Verdicts are written on hunting trips and during banquets drenched in alcohol," he said

He did not provide additional details beyond claiming that "European media outlets had revealed the giant [corruption] scandal" a couple of years ago.

Ziobro, who is also the EU member's prosecutor general, is the leader of the ultra-conservative Sovereign Poland Party, which is a junior coalition partner of the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) Party.

Poland's governing conservatives have been at loggerheads with Brussels since coming to power in 2015 over claims that Warsaw fails to fully uphold EU laws particularly with regards to the judiciary.

In 2021, the Luxembourg court hit Poland with a fine of one million euros per day for refusing to suspend its contested Supreme Court disciplinary chamber.

The fines now total more than 550 million euros ($590 million).

The court said on Monday that the daily fines would now stop but that Poland would have to pay whatever amount was still due.