World

DES MOINES, United States — Plunging temperatures, whipping wind and buckets of snow derailed the final stretch of caucus campaigning in the US state of Iowa on Friday as Republican presidential hopefuls delivered their last pitches to voters.

Forecasters warned of “fairly intense blizzard conditions” throughout much of the Midwestern state, as the National Weather Service (NWS) said gusts of 80 to 89 kilometres per hour, paired with blowing snow, could reduce visibility. The extreme weather was making life difficult for White House hopefuls Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley, who both cancelled events just days before Monday’s caucus in Iowa — the first vote of the 2024 White House race.

“We want everyone to be safe,” DeSantis told reporters in the state capital Des Moines.

The wind was howling very strongly in the city, where the temperature had fallen to -14 ºC.

The storm will be followed by an “Arctic outbreak” of “bitter cold,” according to the NWS, which warned of “dangerously cold wind chill” falling as low as -43 ºC in Iowa and across the region over the weekend.

Another two or more inches of snow was also predicted for the state, for a total of up to 25.5 centimetres in some areas, creating whiteout conditions. 

Dozens of cars and trucks were seen overturned in Des Moines, and the Iowa State Patrol said on social media they had performed 436 “motorist assists” Friday before 10:00 pm.

“Treacherous driving is expected to continue through the rest of today and into tonight,” the state’s local NWS posted on social media. “Travel is highly discouraged!”

In an update, it said blizzard conditions would continue into Saturday “followed by dangerous cold and wind chills through the weekend & early next week”.

The weather raised serious concerns over caucus turnout as Haley and DeSantis seek to overtake former president Donald Trump, who is leading polls for the Republican presidential nomination by a wide margin nationally and in Iowa. 

“We’re going to get people to the polls on caucus night” regardless of the weather, the state’s Republican Governor Kim Reynolds promised.

Former UN ambassador and South Carolina governor Haley moved all of Friday’s events online, even as she had implored Iowans to not let the weather stop them from showing up on Monday. 

“I’ll brave anything we need to,” DeSantis told reporters standing outside in the snow.

“We want to win, we’re here to get every vote we can,” said the 45-year-old hoping to face President Joe Biden in the general election later this year. 

But Trump, who pledged to his supporters that he’d make it to Iowa ahead of the vote despite the weather, is counting on a resounding win in the state to help him quickly bag the nomination as his four criminal indictments loom.

“It’s going to be a little bit of a trek. Nobody knows how exactly we’re going to get there, but we’re going to figure it out,” Trump said in a video posted to his Truth Social platform.

“We wouldn’t miss it for anything,” he added.

Flights carrying thousands of reporters and political observers to Iowa were cancelled or rerouted to neighbouring states, also facing fallout from the massive storm.

More than 2,000 flights were cancelled across the country, including more than 400 at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, according to flightaware.com. 

By Friday evening, the lights were back on for most customers in Illinois, where local media reported that more than 100,000 had lost power earlier in the day as wind and snow pummelled the state. 

Further west, the NWS said Montana and the Dakotas could see temperatures as low as -45 ºC.

“These extreme apparent temperatures will pose a risk of frostbite on exposed skin and hypothermia,” the agency warned.

The winter weather was also threatening key football games over the weekend, as the NFL enters its post-season.

While Missouri’s Kansas City Chiefs are more accustomed to the cold predicted for Saturday’s game, the opposing Miami Dolphins are used to the balmy weather of Florida.

The western United States was also expected to get hit with snow, as a storm system collides with freezing Arctic air.

Forecasters said there could be considerable accumulation over parts of Oregon, Idaho and Utah, while sleet and freezing rain were expected Friday and Saturday in the south and northeast. 

The storms come on the heels of severe cold weather that slammed much of the United States earlier in the week, causing several deaths and knocking out power to hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses.

WOKING, United Kingdom — Wrongly convicted due to bugs in the UK Post Office’s computer system, Seema Misra was sent to prison while two months pregnant. 

Had she had not been expecting her second child,  Misra told AFP that she would have ended her own life “for sure”.

Misra, now aged 48, took over the post office in West Byfleet, a village southwest of London, in 2005.

Her very first day ended with her system registering an £80 ($102) deficit, a seemingly trivial problem that soon turned into a nightmare, she explained from her home in Woking. 

At first she tried to reassure herself that tallying up “is never penny to penny” .

But deep down she thought: “Why wouldn’t it be penny to penny? Money goes in money, goes out, it should be all balanced up.” 

The following week, her accounts showed a £200 deficit, which instantly doubled to £400 after she carried out instructions given to her by an adviser on a telephone helpline. 

The deficits grew over time, but the Post Office turned a deaf ear, blaming Misra’s accounting.

Following an audit, an investigation and prosecution for theft, Misra was found culpable for a black hole of nearly £75,000. 

Misra pleaded guilty to falsifying accounts, having put her signature on inaccurate balance sheets, and pleaded not guilty to theft. 

Childbirth with electronic tag

But all along the real culprit was “Horizon”, the accounting software developed by Japanese IT giant Fujitsu. 

Around 900 postal workers were convicted in total in what British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak this week called “one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in our nation’s history”.

Until her court case, Misra said she was “confident that I will get justice, it will be all fine.”

But on November 10, 2010 — her eldest child’s 10th birthday — a judge sentenced her to 15 months in prison.

Misra fainted on hearing her punishment, coming around in hospital before being taken to jail. 

“If I hadn’t been pregnant I would have killed myself, that’s for sure,” she recalled.

At least four suicides have been recorded among those caught up in the scandal. 

She served four months behind bars, and then spent four months having to wear an electronic bracelet, even while giving birth. 

“I was thinking... the midwife would be thinking what kind of mother I’m going to be,” she said, fearing that she might end up back in prison if she broke her curfew.

“All those kind of things were going on in my mind while I was giving birth.”

She was forced to borrow from relatives for years, sell her business at a loss and a London flat she had bought to rent out was confiscated. 

Her family suffered “mentally” and “financially” as Misra could no longer find work because of her conviction.

“We couldn’t enjoy the family moments together, all the special days were ruined,” she said. 

The family’s “dignity, our confidence” was another victim of the scandal, and “you can’t put any price tag on that”, she added.

Misra’s conviction was finally overturned in 2021, along with those of around 40 of her colleagues.

She thought about returning to India, but decided not as she still harboured the hope of a better life for her family.

Misra is still understandably “very angry” at the Post Office, which she said “could have stopped it a while ago”, but instead “hid the evidence and made innocent people suffer”.

She wants to see those responsible “behind bars” and have their property confiscated, with their bonuses used to compensate victims.

While welcoming this week’s announcement of a new law to exonerate and compensate wrongly convicted postal workers, she stresses that the government must now make this promise a reality quickly. 

But beyond, “We need to set the right example to the world that we are developed country, that the system works here. We should feel safe.”

WARSAW — Polish President Andrzej Duda on Thursday said he would pardon two populist ex-lawmakers who were arrested at his residence.

Police on Tuesday detained prominent Law and Justice (PiS) politicians Mariusz Kaminski and Maciej Wasik at the presidential palace, where they sought refuge after being sentenced for overstepping their authority.

Originally convicted in 2015, Kaminski and Wasik lost an appeal in December, after which the appeals court ordered their arrest.

After a meeting with the men’s wives, Duda said he would “launch the pardon procedure” at their request, calling the detained PiS politicians “political prisoners”.

The high-profile case is the latest instance to pit Poland’s new pro-EU government against the populist PiS Party, which lost power in an election last year.

Both sides have traded accusations of alleged rule of law violations as the verdict issued last month highlighted judicial chaos in the country.

Duda, closely allied with PiS, had already granted a pardon to both men in 2015, but the decision was annulled by the supreme court as it was taken before the appeals court had its final say on the matter.

But on Thursday, delivering a statement alongside the wives of Kaminski and Wasik, Duda said he would ask the Prosecutor General to release the men from jail.

“I had said I would make every effort so that these men are free again, as soon as possible, so that they would be free people and not political prisoners,” Duda said.

On Wednesday, both Kaminski and Wasik launched a hunger strike while in detention.

“We saw the president as a last resort. We’re hoping to see our husbands back home today,” Romualda Wasik, Maciej Wasik’s wife said after Duda’s announcement.

Kaminski was found guilty along with his then deputy Wasik at the CBA anti-corruption agency of masterminding a fake graft case to discredit a high-level politician.

WASHINGTON — Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis were limbering up on Wednesday for the final debate before voting begins in the Republican presidential primary, as they seek to pitch themselves as the best alternative to runaway front-runner Donald Trump.

The head-to-head showdown comes five days before the pivotal first nominating contest in Iowa, considered crucial for winnowing the field and giving those left standing a springboard for the rest of the contest.

Trump has a commanding lead despite the multiple legal challenges he faces, but has skipped the televised debates, concluding that he has nothing to gain by taking prime-time hits from lower-polling rivals.

None of the other challengers met the qualification standards, leaving the stage for Haley and DeSantis to vie one-on-one for the Hawkeye State’s undecided voters.

Haley hit out at Trump ahead of the event at Drake University, in Iowa capital Des Moines, for declining to face his opponents.

“With only three candidates qualifying, it’s time for Donald Trump to show up. As the debate stage continues to shrink, it’s getting harder for Donald Trump to hide,” she said in a statement.

The ex-president will be encouraged by new Suffolk University/USA TODAY polling showing 51 per cent of Republicans don’t plan to watch, reflecting the low stakes that many voters see in the “undercard” contest.

According to the RealClearPolitics polling average, Trump leads the field in Iowa at 52.3 per cent, with Haley and DeSantis in a margin-of-error tussle at 16.3 and 16 per cent respectively.

The national picture is similar, although Trump’s lead is even larger -- a daunting 51.5 percentage points.

Much of the campaign activity in Iowa has been overshadowed in the final week by the legal woes facing Trump, who has sought to use the precincts of courthouses across the country to dominate TV coverage and rally support.

He ducked out of campaigning on Tuesday for a hearing in Washington, where he faces charges over an alleged conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election, and he is due back in court on Thursday for his civil fraud case in New York.

Lost ground

DeSantis, the governor of Florida, was praised for his strongest performance in the fourth debate in Alabama last month, but his campaign has never lived up to the initial hype.

The conservative hard-liner is seeking to regain ground lost to Haley and his path to the nomination depends on a strong showing in Iowa.

DeSantis has also criticised Trump for refusing to participate in the debates, telling reporters the ex-president is dodging his duty to answer questions over his policies and record.

“He parachutes in for [a]30, 45-minute, hourspeech and then justleaves, rather than listening to Iowans, answering questions anddoing, I think, what ittakes to win,” he said ata recent event in Elkader, Iowa.

Haley is looking to outperform expectations in Iowa and ride into a one-on-one match-up with Trump in her preferred state, New Hampshire, where independents are allowed to vote and could give her campaign a significant boost.

She has had a few recent missteps on the campaign trail, failing to identify slavery as the cause of the Civil War and facing criticism for her suggestion that New Hampshire voters would “correct” whatever happens in Iowa.

But the stumbles appear not to have arrested her late surge in polling, endorsements and fundraising, prompting Trump and his allies — who ignored her for much of 2023 — to ramp up attacks.

Trump, who often arranges “counterprogramming” to draw attention away from the debates, announced that he will take part in a Fox News town hall event elsewhere in Des Moines as DeSantis and Haley are onstage.

CNN is due to host another debate on January 21 in New Hampshire, two days ahead of the Granite State’s nominating contest

TOKYO — Japan has tightened its air traffic control protocols after a fiery collision at Tokyo’s main airport in which five people died but hundreds escaped to safety, the government said on Wednesday.

The emergency safety measures were announced by the transport ministry after a Japan Airlines passenger jet crashed into a coast guard aircraft on a runway at Haneda Airport on January 2.

All 379 passengers and crew on the airliner were swiftly evacuated, but five of the six crew died on the smaller plane, which was heading to deliver supplies to an earthquake-hit region.

Under the new requirements in place nationwide, a staff member must constantly watch a monitoring system that alerts control towers when runway incursions take place.

And to prevent misunderstandings, controllers must not tell planes what number in line they are for take-off, the ministry said in statements uploaded to its website.

“One of my biggest missions is to restore confidence in aviation as public transport,” Transport Minister Tetsuo Saito said on Tuesday.

The ministry will set up an expert panel to investigate further ways to improve safety, with their recommendations to be announced this week.

A transcript of communications released by the ministry last week suggested that the JAL plane was cleared to land, but the coast guard plane was instructed to halt before the runway.

Controllers told the coast guard plane that it was “No.1”, meaning next in line for take-off.

But the coast guard pilot — the only survivor — has reportedly said he believed he had clearance to move onto the runway, where his plane stood for around 40 seconds before the crash.

The charred wreckage of both planes were cleared from the tarmac at Haneda, and flight operations have returned to normal, with extra staff working at the airport’s control tower since Saturday.

A dedicated staff member has also been watching the warning system at Haneda since the weekend.

“Control centre staff have to monitor various things and can’t simply stare at the warning system,” a transport ministry official in charge of aviation affairs explained to AFP.

In the decade to 2023, at least 23 “serious incidents” that risked a runway collision were reported by the Japan Transport Safety Board, according to the Asahi newspaper.

In five of the cases, mistakes in air traffic control were suspected as a cause, the newspaper said.

PARIS — The year of 2023 was the hottest on record, with the increase in Earth's surface temperature nearly crossing the critical threshold of 1.5oC, EU climate monitors said on Tuesday.

Climate change intensified heatwaves, droughts and wildfires across the planet, and pushed the global thermometer 1.48oC above the preindustrial benchmark, the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) reported.

"It is also the first year with all days over one degree warmer than the pre-industrial period," said Samantha Burgess, deputy head of the C3S.

"Temperatures during 2023 likely exceed those of any period in at least the last 100,000 years."

Nearly half the year exceeded the 1.5oC limit, beyond which climate impacts are more likely to become self-reinforcing and catastrophic, according to scientists.

But even if Earth's average surface temperature breaches 1.5oC in 2024, as some scientists predict, it does not mean the world has failed to meet the Paris Agreement target of capping global warming under that threshold.

That would occur only after several successive years above the 1.5oC benchmark, and even then the 2015 treaty allows for the possibility of reducing Earth’s temperature after a period of “overshoot”.

2023 saw massive fires in Canada, extreme droughts in the Horn of Africa or the Middle East, unprecedented summer heatwaves in Europe, the United States and China, along with record winter warmth in Australia and South America.

“Such events will continue to get worse until we transition away from fossil fuels and reach net-zero emissions,” said University of Reading climate change professor Ed Hawkins, who did not contribute to the report.

“We will continue to suffer the consequences of our inactions today for generations.”

The Copernicus findings come one month after a climate agreement was reached at COP28 in Dubai calling for the gradual transition away from fossil fuels, the main cause of climate warming.

“We desperately need to rapidly cut fossil fuel use and reach net-zero to preserve the liveable climate that we all depend on,” said John Marsham, atmospheric science professor at the University of Leeds.

The year saw another ominous record: Two days in November 2023 exceeded the preindustrial benchmark by more than two degrees Celsius.

Copernicus predicted that the 12-month period ending in January or February 2024 would “exceed 1.5oC above the pre-industrial level”.

Oceans in overdrive 

Reliable weather records date back to 1850, but older proxy data for climate change — from tree rings, ice cores and sediment — show that 2023 temperatures “exceed those of any period in at least the last 100,000 years”, Burgess said.

Records were broken on every continent. In Europe, 2023 was the second-warmest year on record, at 0.17°C cooler than 2020.

2023 saw the beginning of a naturally occurring El Nino weather phenomenon, which warms waters in the southern Pacific and stokes hotter weather beyond.

The phenomenon is expected to reach its peak in 2024, and is linked to the eight consecutive months of record heat from June to December.

Ocean temperatures globally were also “persistently and unusually high”, with many seasonal records broken since April.

Soaring CO2 and methane 

These unprecedented ocean temperatures caused marine heatwaves devastating to aquatic life and boosted the intensity of storms.

Oceans absorb more than 90 per cent of excess heat caused by human activity, and play a major role in regulating Earth’s climate.

Rising temperatures have also accelerated the melting of ice shelves — frozen ridges that help prevent massive glaciers in Greenland and West Antarctica from slipping into the ocean and raising sea levels.

Antarctic sea ice hit record-low levels in 2023.

“The extremes we have observed over the last few months provide a dramatic testimony of how far we now are from the climate in which our civilisation developed,” said Carlo Buontempo, C3S director.

In 2023, carbon dioxide and methane concentrations reached record levels of 419 parts per million, and 1,902 parts per billion, respectively.

Methane is the second largest contributor to global warming after CO2, and is responsible for around 30 per cent of the rise in global temperatures since the industrial revolution, according to the United Nations Environment Programme.

PARIS — French leader Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday picked Gabriel Attal as prime minister in a bid to give new momentum to his presidency, with the 34-year-old becoming France's youngest head of government.

Macron late Monday accepted the resignation of Elisabeth Borne, 62, who served less than two years in office, ahead of a widely expected Cabinet reshuffle that seeks to breathe new life into his mandate which has three years to go.

"The president of the republic appointed Mr Gabriel Attal prime minister, and tasked him with forming a government," a presidential statement said.

The appointment was revealed much later than expected amid reports Attal's rise had caused friction within the government.

But the leader of Macron's Renaissance Party in parliament Sylvain Maillard congratulated Attal on X saying "I am sure that you will be able to faithfully carry out our project and embody the values that are ours."

The reshuffle comes ahead of the Olympic Games in Paris and European parliament elections this summer where Macron's centrist forces risk defeat at the hands of the far-right under Marine Le Pen.

'Fragile as ever' 

Commentators see the reshuffle as essential to relaunch Macron's centrist presidency for its last three years and prevent him becoming a "lame duck" leader after a series of crises.

Since he defeated the far- right to win a second term in 2022, Macron has faced protests over unpopular pension reforms, the loss of his overall majority in parliamentary elections and controversy over immigration legislation.

While Macron cannot run again in 2027 presidential elections, relaunching his government is seen as crucial to help prevent Le Pen becoming president.

The conservative daily Le Figaro said Borne was leaving a political situation "that remains as fragile as ever.

"Changing a face at the top doesn't change the overall picture," the newspaper said, adding Borne's successor is facing "an overwhelming pile of political emergencies" including the task to unite a fragmented nation.

Borne’s resignation letter to Macron, a copy of which was seen by AFP, hinted that she would have preferred to stay in her job.

“While I must present the resignation of my government, I wanted to tell you how passionate I was about this mission,” she wrote.

Macron thanked Borne, only the second woman to lead the French government, for “work in the service of our nation that has been exemplary every day”.

Under the French system, the president sets general policies and the prime minister is responsible for day-to-day government management, meaning the latter often pays the price when an administration runs into turbulence.

European Parliament elections in June will pose a major test, with Macron’s Renaissance Party risking embarrassment at the hands of Le Pen’s National Rally.

Attal is a more political figure than the technocratic Borne.

Other key posts are also subject to uncertainty, in particular that of Darmanin, 41, a right-winger said to covet the post of foreign minister held by Catherine Colonna.

Macron likes “keeping all options open until the last moment”, a source close to the Elysee said.

The new head of government is the fourth prime minister since 2017 under Macron, who is accused by critics of micro-managing and centralising power in the Elysee.