Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at divisions at COP30 surrounding fossil fuels, Israeli settler violence in the West Bank, and a massive attack on a Nigerian boarding school.
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Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at divisions at COP30 surrounding fossil fuels, Israeli settler violence in the West Bank, and a massive attack on a Nigerian boarding school.
Have tips or feedback? Hit reply with your thoughts.
No Consensus
Only a few hours remain before the two-week United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30) draws to a close. But it appears that the summit may end without a deal, as one issue continues to carve divisions among the event’s 194 delegates.
Early Friday, COP30 host Brazil unveiled an edited draft agreement that contains no mention of fossil fuels, the world’s largest contributor to global warming. The new version marks a significant break from the text’s previous iterations, which included three possible avenues for countries to reach net-zero carbon emissions.
The omission triggered fierce backlash from dozens of countries, which argued that not addressing fossil fuels undermines the urgency needed to keep global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius (about 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels, which the Paris Agreement stated in 2015 was necessary to avert the worst impacts of irreversible climate change.
“Failing to name the causes of the climate crisis is not compromise,” Panamanian negotiator Juan Carlos Monterrey Gómez said. “It is denial.”
Contention over fossil fuels highlights growing concern over the future of oil, gas, and coal. Several major oil- and gas-producing nations—such as India, Russia, and Saudi Arabia—pushed against the initial draft for its fossil fuel limitations, which would hurt these countries’ economies. The United States’ notable absence from COP30 also weakened pushes for green policies; U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly engaged in climate denialism, calling climate change the “greatest con job” and championing fossil fuels during his U.N. General Assembly speech in September.
However, other COP30 delegates maintained that a road map to reaching net zero was vital to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
“Look at the text,” European Commission climate chief Wopke Hoekstra said. “None of it is in there. No science. No global stocktake. No transitioning away. But instead, weakness.” The 27-member European Union appears prepared to block the draft deal, with Hoekstra saying, “Under no circumstances are we going to accept this.”
All 194 delegates must agree on the text to pass the deal. “This cannot be an agenda that divides us,” COP30 President André Corrêa do Lago said on Friday before kicking off another round of negotiations.
But fossil fuels are not the only issue inciting dispute. The draft also includes weakened language on tackling deforestation, despite the conference taking place in Brazil’s lower Amazon region, which faces regular deforestation threats. And although the text calls on COP30 members to triple climate financing for nations in need of help to counter climate change, the deal does not specify whether this money will come from wealthy nations or be outsourced to the private sector. This leaves countries vulnerable to climate change without strong guarantees of support.
Today’s Most Read
What We’re Following
West Bank violence. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened top security officials on Friday to discuss rising Israeli settler violence in the occupied West Bank. According to one Israeli official, the leaders discussed potential strategies to curb the attacks, with one proposal suggesting that perpetrators attend educational programs. The high-level meeting occurred just days after Israeli settlers celebrated a new illegal West Bank outpost near Bethlehem, and it comes as Israel’s Civil Administration has announced plans to expropriate large swaths of Sebastia, a major archaeological site in the territory.
Violence against Palestinians in the West Bank has surged in recent months, coinciding with the region’s harvest season; according to a U.N. report, Israeli settlers carried out at least 264 attacks on Palestinians in October, the largest monthly number since the agency began tracking incidents in 2006. This brings the total number of Israeli settler attacks since January 2025 to more than 1,400.
Several countries have imposed sanctions, entry bans, and other measures on Israeli settlers for their alleged involvement in these attacks as well as on far-right Israeli ministers for what the United Kingdom described as their “repeated incitements of violence against Palestinian communities” in the West Bank.
Rash of kidnappings. Gunmen attacked a Catholic boarding school in the western Nigerian state of Niger early Friday, kidnapping at least 52 students and faculty. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, but some analysts suspect that local gangs may be involved, as they often target educational institutions for ransom.
According to Abubakar Usman, the Niger state government secretary, the abductions occurred despite prior intelligence warning of heightened threats in the area. “Regrettably, St. Mary’s School proceeded to reopen and resume academic activities without notifying or seeking clearance from the State Government, thereby exposing pupils and the staff to avoidable risk,” Usman said.
The attack occurred just days after gunmen kidnapped 25 schoolgirls from a high school in neighboring Kebbi state on Monday; one of those students has since escaped. “We will use every instrument of the state to bring these girls home and to ensure that the perpetrators of this wickedness face the full weight of justice,” Nigerian Vice President Kashim Shettima said during a visit to Kebbi state on Wednesday.
Also this week, gunmen in the state of Kwara attacked a church, killing two people and abducting 38 worshippers; the perpetrators have demanded a ransom of 100 million naira (around $69,000) for each person taken.
The office of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu announced on Friday that he will cancel his planned trip to the G-20 leaders’ summit in South Africa this Saturday to address the recent kidnappings. Shettima will attend in his place.
“Too little, too late.” A two-volume, 750-page public inquiry concluded on Thursday that former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s decision to delay implementing a nationwide lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in around 23,000 more deaths than if it had been implemented a week earlier. “There was a toxic and chaotic culture at the center of the U.K. government during the pandemic,” inquiry chair Heather Hallett said, adding that if earlier action had been taken to prevent the virus’s spread, then lockdown could have been avoided altogether.
The blistering report accused Johnson of prioritizing government business over addressing the health crisis; at the time, the United Kingdom was working on formally departing from the European Union. Hallett also claimed that Johnson had “reinforced a culture in which the loudest voices prevailed and the views of other colleagues, particularly women, often went ignored, to the detriment of good decision-making.” The United Kingdom had one of the highest COVID-19 fatality rates in Western Europe.
Johnson announced a nationwide lockdown on March 23, 2020. However, the report found that if he had issued the lockdown just a week earlier, then the number of deaths in England during the virus’s first wave could have been cut by almost half. In July 2022, Johnson was forced from office for holding parties at Downing Street during lockdown, and during a committee hearing in 2023, the former prime minister acknowledged that he had “vastly underestimated” COVID’s risks.
Odds and Ends
Scandal rocked the European Parliament on Tuesday after an Italian cabinet member ordered an immediate investigation into an alleged unacceptable deception. The issue: “Italian-sounding” pasta sauces on sale at the body’s supermarket. “Ignoring the pancetta in carbonara … all these products represent the worst of ‘Italian sounding,’” Italian Agriculture Minister Francesco Lollobrigida wrote on Facebook. (For non-foodie readers, traditional carbonara contains guanciale, a cured meat with a higher fat content than pancetta.) Rome has long sought to combat foreign companies using Italian-sounding words and images to advertise their products.
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