World

LONDON — Ireland, Britain and France faced travel chaos on Saturday and one person died as a winter storm battered northwest Europe with strong winds, heavy rain, snow and ice.

Hampshire Police in southern England said a man died after a tree fell onto a car on a major road near Winchester early in the day.

Police in West Yorkshire said they were probing whether a second death from a traffic accident was linked to the storm. It is understood the road was not icy at the time of the incident.

Storm Bert left at least 60,000 properties in Ireland without power, and closed roads and some ferry and train routes on both sides of the Irish Sea.

Channel ports and airports in Britain were badly affected while in France, tens of thousands remained without power after Storm Caetano on Thursday. Hundreds of passengers were stranded when trains were halted by power cuts.

Media footage showed flooding in the west of Ireland, which also caused rail closures in Northern Ireland. Snow impacted travel across Britain.

The heaviest snow hit Scotland and parts of northern and central England, with dozens of flood alerts in place.

The UK Met Office issued snow and ice warnings for those regions, saying there was a "good chance some rural communities could be cut off".

Scottish hills could see up to 40 centimetres  of snow, while winds approaching 113 kilometres per hour were recorded in Britain.

Ferry operator DFDS cancelled services on some routes until Monday, with sailings from Newhaven and Dover in southern England to Dieppe and Calais in France severely affected.

Flights were disrupted at Newcastle airport due to heavy snow, with some flights diverted to Belfast and Edinburgh.

Blackouts -

Avanti West Coast, which runs rail services between England and Scotland, advised customers not to attempt travel beyond the northern English city of Preston, as it cancelled numerous trains.

National Highways also issued a "severe weather alert", warning of "blizzard conditions" affecting Yorkshire and northeast England, with a number of road closures announced.

Met Eireann, the Irish National Meteorological Service, also issued a warning for "very strong winds and heavy rain".

The worst affected areas for power outages in Ireland were in western and northwestern counties, according to ESB Networks, which runs the country's electricity system.

"Crews and contractors are deployed and restoring power in impacted areas where it is safe to do so," it said.

In Britain, the National Grid operator said power had been restored to "many homes and businesses" but more than 4,000 properties across the country were still without electricity on Saturday -- the majority in southwest England.

Some 47,000 homes remained without power in northern France on Saturday, two days after the country was battered by Storm Caetano, power company Enedis said.

Up to 270,000 people had been cut off due to the storm but Enedis said it had 2,000 technicians working to reconnect electricity lines torn down by winds of up to 130kph.

Several hundred passengers were stranded on two trains in western France halted by power cuts.

Some 200 people on a train going from Hendaye to Bordeaux and 400 on high-speed TGV going from Hendaye to Paris spent up to nine hours in the carriages.

Junior transport minister Francois Dourovray told RTL radio that up to 1,000 passengers on different trains were affected by the power cut.

LONDON/MOSCOW — Moscow's ambassador in London said Thursday Britain was "now directly involved" in Russia's war with Ukraine, following reports Kyiv had fired UK-supplied Storm Shadow missiles onto Russian territory for the first time.

"Absolutely, Britain... is now directly involved in this war," Andrei Kelin told Sky News, adding "this firing cannot happen" without UK and NATO support.

In the interview, Kelin was asked if Russia's use of Chinese technology, Iranian drones and missiles, and the alleged deployment of North Korean soldiers meant that those countries were also directly involved in the war.

"On that subject, I can say easily that we have plenty of mercenaries from different countries that are fighting right now on the side of Ukraine," the Russian envoy replied.

British media reported on Wednesday that Ukraine had fired the Storm Shadow weapons into Russia for the first time this week after London gave it the green light for such strikes.

The UK government has refused to confirm or deny the reports, with ministers arguing that public debate around the subject only benefits Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Russia claimed earlier Thursday that its air defences had downed two of the missiles, without saying whether they had come down on Russian territory or in Russian-occupied Ukraine.

Washington has given Kyiv its permission to use long-range American missiles -- its Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) -- against military targets inside Russia, a US official told AFP earlier this week.

A senior Ukrainian official confirmed on Tuesday that its military had used the US-supplied missiles to strike inside Russian territory.

Using both the ATACMS and Storm Shadow systems to hit targets inside Russia had been a long-standing Ukrainian request.

Meanwhile, Russian lawmakers approved an almost 30 percent hike in defence spending next year, committing the country to yet more huge outlays on its military offensive against Ukraine. 

Moscow had already ramped up military spending to levels not seen since the Soviet era, pumping out missiles and drones to fire on Ukraine and paying lucrative salaries to its hundreds of thousands of frontline soldiers.

Lawmakers in the lower house State Duma voted to approve the final 

Putin said earlier this year that Moscow was already spending close to nine percent of its economy on defence and security -- the highest level since the Cold War.

That figure includes other parts of its budget that are essentially security spending but which are not classified as "national defence".

Russia has been keen to tout the budget's planned spending on social projects, while downplaying the massive military outlays.

The spending plans "ensure all social obligations, solve development tasks and respond to the challenges faced by our country," Duma Speaker and Putin ally Vyacheslav Volodin said. 

The budget now needs to be rubber-stamped by the upper house of parliament before being signed into law by Putin.

BAKU — UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Thursday warned the world's climate negotiators of the risks of failure, urging a "major push" to seal a deal in Baku. 

"Let's be frank. Many substantive differences are still remaining," Guterres told reporters as he returned to the COP29 talks. 

"We need a major push to get discussions over the finishing line," Guterres said. "Failure is not an option."

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia warned Thursday that the Arab Group would reject any UN climate deal that goes after fossil fuels.

"The Arab Group will not accept any text that targets any specific sectors, including fossil fuel," Albara Tawfiq, a Saudi official, told delegates at COP29 talks in Azerbaijan.

China joined a global rejection of a draft deal on climate finance Thursday at the COP29 summit but urged nations to bridge their differences, with one day left in the talks.

"The current text contains a lot of elements that are not satisfactory and acceptable to China. Yet we call on all parties to meet one another halfway," Xia Yingxian, a Chinese official, told delegates at the UN negotiations in Azerbaijan.

UNITED NATIONS, United States — Demographic shifts, worsening climate change and rapid technological transformation risk creating a bleak future for youth in the mid-21st century, the United Nations agency for children warned Tuesday in an annual report.

"Children are experiencing a myriad of crises, from climate shocks to online dangers, and these are set to intensify in the years to come," Catherine Russell, executive director of UNICEF, wrote in a statement marking the release of the agency's annual report.

"Decades of progress, particularly for girls, are under threat." 

This year, UNICEF uses its report to project forward to 2050 identifying three "major trends" that in addition to unpredictable conflicts pose threats to children unless policymakers make changes.

The first risk is demographic change, with the number of children expected to remain similar to current figures of 2.3 billion, but they will represent a smaller share of the larger and ageing global population of around 10 billion.

While the proportion of children will decline across all regions, their numbers will explode in some of the poorest areas, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa.

This offers the potential to boost economic growth, but only if the new young population has access to quality education, health care, and jobs, UNICEF notes.

In some developed countries, children could make up less than 10 percent of the population by 2050, raising concerns about their "visibility" and rights in societies focused on aging populations.

The second threat is climate change.

If current greenhouse gas emission trends continue, by 2050 children could face eight times more heatwaves than in 2000, three times more extreme flooding, and 1.7 times more wildfires, UNICEF projects.

New technology, particularly artificial intelligence, has the potential to power new innovation and progress but could also widen existing inequalities between rich and poor countries.

An estimated 95 percent of people in developed nations have internet access, compared to just 26 percent in the least developed, often due to a lack of electricity, connectivity, or devices.

"Failure to remove barriers for children in these countries, especially for those living in the poorest households, means letting an already disadvantaged generation fall even further behind," according to UNICEF.

Being connected also carries risks. The unchecked proliferation of new technologies poses threats to children and their personal data, making them vulnerable to online predators.

"Children of the future face many risks, but what we wanted to demonstrate is that the solutions are in the hands of todays decision-makers," Cecile Aptel, deputy director of UNICEF's research division, told AFP. 

BAKU — Twenty-five countries at the COP29 climate summit on Wednesday pledged not to build any new unabated coal-power plants, in a push to accelerate the phaseout of the highly polluting fossil fuel. 

The United Kingdom, Canada, France, Germany and major coal producer Australia were among the list of mainly wealthy developed economies to sign the voluntary pledge in Azerbaijan. 

It commits nations to submit national climate plans early next year that reflect no new unabated coal in their energy systems.

Unabated refers to coal burned without any measures to reduce its emissions, such as carbon capture and storage, technologies criticised as unproven at a large scale. 

The pledge does not compel nations to stop mining or exporting coal, which produces more planet-heating carbon emissions than oil and gas, and is a major driver of climate change.

Many of the world's biggest coal-power generators -- including China, India and the United States -- did not sign the "call to action" launched in Baku. 

EU climate envoy Wopke Hoekstra, who signed the initiative, said coal power was still growing despite a historic commitment made at last year's COP to use less fossil fuels for energy. 

"The commitment to 'transition away from fossil fuels' needs to turn into real steps on the ground," Hoekstra said. 

Britain recently became the first of the Group of Seven industrial nations to end all reliance on coal in its power generation. 

UK Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said that coal "poses one of the biggest threats" to capping global warming at levels scientists say would prevent the worst consequences of climate change. 

This pledge "sends a clear signal from countries around the world that new coal needs to end" by the next COP summit in Brazil, he added. 

The inclusion of Australia, a major coal user and exporter, was welcomed by activists at COP29 where raising money for poorer countries has been a bigger priority than efforts to cut heat-trapping emissions. 

"This has closed the door on coal. Now we need to lock it," Erin Ryan from Climate Action Network Australia told AFP in Baku.

"It's beyond time that we left it in the past, both in our energy systems and our export markets." 

Developing countries including Angola, Uganda and Ethiopia were also among the countries to sign the pledge, which was developed in collaboration with the Powering Past Coal Alliance. 

PORT SUDAN, Sudan — Sudan's army chief Abdel Fattah Al Burhan on Tuesday rejected "any foreign interference" in the country's war, a day after Russia vetoed a UN Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire.

Speaking at an economic conference in Port Sudan, Burhan dismissed "dictates aimed at forcing solutions upon us that we do not accept" and praised Russia's "supportive stance".

He said his government had "never agreed" to the draft resolution, which sought to end the war between his army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces led by his former deputy, Mohamed Hamdan Daglo.

The war, which erupted in April 2023, has killed tens of thousands and uprooted more than 11 million people, creating what the UN has called the world's largest displacement crisis.

The Security Council's draft, prepared by Britain and Sierra Leone, called on both sides to "immediately cease hostilities" and begin talks on a national ceasefire.

"This flawed decision... violated our sovereignty and failed to meet our demands," Burhan said Tuesday.

Experts say both the army and the RSF have resisted peace efforts as they seek a military advantage.

On Tuesday, Burhan said the army would not negotiate or agree to a ceasefire without a "full retreat" by the RSF.

"The end of this war lies in the complete elimination of the rebels," he said, adding that only then could civilian life resume, aid flow to all Sudanese and only and political matters be addressed.

Last month, UN experts accused both sides of using "starvation tactics" against 26 million civilians, as aid groups warned of a "historic" hunger crisis forcing families to eat leaves and insects.