SKOPJE, Macedonia: Defense Secretary Jim Mattis on Monday condemned Russia’s efforts to use its money and influence to build opposition to an upcoming vote that could pave the way for Macedonia to join NATO, a move Moscow opposes.
Mattis told reporters traveling with him to Skopje that there is “no doubt” that Moscow has been funding pro-Russian groups to defeat the referendum on a name change later this month.
“They have transferred money, and they’re also conducting broader influence campaigns,” Mattis said. “We ought to leave the Macedonian people to make up their own minds.”
Macedonians will vote Sept. 30 on whether to approve the name North Macedonia in an effort to placate Greece, which has for years blocked Macedonia’s path to NATO and the European Union. But any progress toward NATO membership by the Balkan nation is strongly opposed by Russia, which doesn’t want the alliance to expand to areas formerly under Moscow’s influence.
Mattis, speaking after a meeting with Prime Minister Zoran Zaev, made no mention of Russia but announced that the US plans to expand its cybersecurity cooperation with Macedonia “to thwart malicious cyber activity that threatens our democracies.”
Zaev predicted that Macedonians will vote in favor of the name change and thus the move into NATO.
“There is no other alternative for the Republic of Macedonia than the integration into NATO and the EU,” he said.
Macedonia’s main conservative opposition VMRO-DPMNE party repeated its position that “the agreement with Greece is the worst deal signed in the Macedonia’s history.”
A pro-Russian small oppositional party, Unique Macedonia, strongly criticized Mattis’ remarks on Moscow’s efforts to use money to influence the opposition to defeat the referendum.
Mattis is the latest in a string of international leaders visiting Macedonia to voice support for the referendum, and he’s the most senior US official to visit. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, German chancellor Angela Merkel and Austrian chancellor Sebastian Kurz have visited and made public endorsements of the name change, saying it’s critical in order for the country to join NATO after years of waiting.
Mattis said he and other NATO allies “say right up front in open press what we think.”
“We’re not passing money to people behind the scenes,” he said. “We’re not putting together parties that we control or try to control.”
Russia has already been called out for trying to influence the vote. In July, Greece expelled two Russian diplomats accused of supplying funds to protest groups opposing the name change deal. Russia denounced the expulsions as unjustified.
Greece, a member of NATO, has for years vetoed attempts by Macedonia to join NATO, complaining about the country’s name since Yugoslavia broke up in the early 1990s. Greece argues the name implies a territorial claim against the northern Greek region of Macedonia and its ancient heritage.
NATO leaders in July formally invited Macedonia to begin membership talks on the condition it wouldn’t become effective until the name change was implemented.
But there’s widespread concern about Russian impact on the vote.
“There is this influence campaign to try to buy off people and try to support pro-Russian organizations,” said Laura Cooper, the US deputy assistant defense secretary for Russia and the region.
She said she couldn’t give specifics about the payoffs but said the US is aware of financial support Moscow has given to pro-Russian people and groups working to undermine the referendum.
Evelyn Farkas, an expert on the region who is a fellow with the Atlantic Council and a former Defense Department adviser, said Mattis’ visit to the tiny nation could help sow support for the name change.
“I think Mattis could make or break this thing by delivering a strong message to the opposition, which has been grudgingly quiet, that they need to come out in full-throated support, because they’re not going to get another chance later,” Farkas said. “He can tell them this is their last chance.”
According to Cooper, the US has given Macedonia about $5 million in security assistance annually since 1991, and the total US aid since then has been about $750 million.
Mattis also met with Macedonia President Gjorge Ivanov and Defense Minister Radmila Sekerinska.
Ivanov, in a statement, said Macedonia’s “strategic interest and the highest goal remains accession” to NATO and the European Union, which he said would contribute to prosperity for the region.
The referendum vote is non-binding, and polls indicate Macedonians will likely back the deal. But even if the turnout is below the required 50 percent, if most of the people vote “yes” it will give parliament and the government a mandate to proceed.
The agreement with Greece was signed in June and requires changes to the Macedonian Constitution. The final step for NATO admission is ratification by Greece’s parliament, which would vote only after Macedonia completes all necessary procedures.
Mattis condemns Russian influence-peddling in Macedonia
Mattis condemns Russian influence-peddling in Macedonia
- Mattis told reporters that there is no doubt that Moscow has been funding pro-Russian groups
- Any progress toward NATO membership by the Balkan nation is strongly opposed by Russia
Warning signs on climate flashing bright red: top scientists
- “The next three or four decades is pretty much the timeline over which we expect a peak in warming to happen”
PARIS: From carbon pollution to sea-level rise to global heating, the pace and level of key climate change indicators are all in uncharted territory, more than 60 top scientists warned Thursday.
Greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels and deforestation hit a new high in 2024 and averaged, over the last decade, a record 53.6 billion tons per year — that is 100,000 tons per minute — of CO2 or its equivalent in other gases, they reported in a peer-reviewed update.
Earth’s surface temperature last year breached 1.5 degrees Celsius for the first time, and the additional CO2 humanity can emit with a two-thirds chance of staying under that threshold long-term — our 1.5C “carbon budget” — will be exhausted in a couple of years, they calculated.
Investment in clean energy outpaced investment in oil, gas and coal last year two-to-one, but fossil fuels account for more than 80 percent of global energy consumption, and growth in renewables still lags behind new demand.
Included in the 2015 Paris climate treaty as an aspirational goal, the 1.5C limit has since been validated by science as necessary for avoiding a catastrophically climate-addled world.
The hard cap on warming to which nearly 200 nations agreed was “well below” two degrees, commonly interpreted to mean 1.7C to 1.8C.
“We are already in crunch time for these higher levels of warming,” co-author Joeri Rogelj, a professor of climate science and policy at Imperial College London, told journalists in a briefing.
“The next three or four decades is pretty much the timeline over which we expect a peak in warming to happen.”
No less alarming than record heat and carbon emissions is the gathering pace at which these and other climate indicators are shifting, according to the study, published in Earth System Science Data.
Human-induced warming increased over the last decade at a rate “unprecedented in the instrumental record,” and well above the 2010-2019 average registered in the UN’s most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, in 2021.
The new findings — led by the same scientists using essentially the same methods — are intended as an authoritative albeit unofficial update of the benchmark IPCC reports underpinning global climate diplomacy.
They should be taken as a reality check by policymakers, the authors suggested.
“I tend to be an optimistic person,” said lead author Piers Forster, head of the University of Leed’s Priestley Center for Climate Futures.
“But if you look at this year’s update, things are all moving in the wrong direction.”
The rate at which sea levels have shot up in recent years is also alarming, the scientists said.
After creeping up, on average, well under two millimeters per year from 1901 to 2018, global oceans have risen 4.3 mm annually since 2019.
An increase in the ocean watermark of 23 centimeters — the width of a letter-sized sheet of paper — over the last 125 years has been enough to imperil many small island states and hugely amplify the destructive power of storm surges worldwide.
An additional 20 centimeters of sea level rise by 2050 would cause one trillion dollars in flood damage annually in the world’s 136 largest coastal cities, earlier research has shown.
Another indicator underlying all the changes in the climate system is Earth’s so-called energy imbalance, the difference between the amount of solar energy entering the atmosphere and the smaller amount leaving it.
So far, 91 percent of human-caused warming has been absorbed by oceans, sparing life on land.
But the planet’s energy imbalance has nearly doubled in the last 20 years, and scientists do not know how long oceans will continue to massively soak up this excess heat.
Dire future climate impacts worse than what the world has already experienced are already baked in over the next decade or two.
But beyond that, the future is in our hands, the scientists made clear.
“We will rapidly reach a level of global warming of 1.5C, but what happens next depends on the choices which will be made,” said co-author and former IPCC co-chair Valerie Masson-Delmotte.
The Paris Agreement’s 1.5C target allows for the possibility of ratcheting down global temperatures below that threshold before century’s end.
Ahead of a critical year-end climate summit in Brazil, international cooperation has been weakened by the US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement.
President Donald Trump’s dismantling of domestic climate policies means the United States is likely to fall short on its emissions reduction targets, and could sap the resolve of other countries to deepen their own pledges, experts say.
Congo and Rwanda sign preliminary peace agreement in Washington
- Accord included conditional integration of non-state armed groups, says US State Department
- Congo has accused Rwanda of backing M23 rebels in the east of the country
DAKAR, Senegal: Representatives from Congo and Rwanda have signed the text of a peace agreement between the two countries in Washington, according to a joint press release from the nations and the US State Department on Wednesday.
Congo has accused Rwanda of backing M23 rebels in the east of the country. UN experts says the rebels are supported by about 4,000 troops from the neighboring nation.
The decades-long conflict escalated in January, when the M23 rebels advanced and seized the strategic Congolese city of Goma, followed by the town of Bukavu in February.
“The Agreement includes provisions on respect for territorial integrity and a prohibition of hostilities; disengagement, disarmament, and conditional integration of non-state armed groups,” said the statement posted to the State Department’s website.
The agreement signed included a commitment to respecting territorial integrity and the conditional integration of non-state armed groups. Both sides also committed to a ministerial-level meeting next week and invited the leaders of both countries to attend.
This is not the first time peace talks have been held. Talks hosted by Qatar in April fell apart.
Corneille Nangaa, leader of the Congo River Alliance, a coalition of rebel groups, told The Associated Press in April that international sanctions and Congo’s proposed minerals deal with the United States in search of peace would not stop the fighting.
M23 is one of about 100 armed groups that have been vying for a foothold in mineral-rich eastern Congo near the border with Rwanda. The conflict has created one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises and has displaced more than 7 million people.
US safety board wants warnings on Boeing 737 MAX engines over smoke entering cockpit
- The NTSB wants the Federal Aviation Administration to ensure that operators inform flight crews of airplanes equipped with the affected engines
WASHINGTON: The National Transportation Safety Board issued an urgent safety recommendation Wednesday to address the possibility of smoke entering the cockpit or cabin of Boeing 737 MAX airplanes equipped with CFM International LEAP-1B engines.
The NTSB also recommended evaluating the potential for the same issue with LEAP-1A and LEAP-1C engines, which are used on some Airbus A320neo variants and COMAC’s Chinese-made C919 jets.
The recommendation comes after two incidents involving Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 MAX jets that experienced bird strikes in 2023. The NTSB wants the Federal Aviation Administration to ensure that operators inform flight crews of airplanes equipped with the affected engines.
Southwest said it is reviewing the recommendations and that it has mitigation procedures currently in place. Southwest notified its flight crews about the effects of certain bird strikes following two events that occurred in 2023, reiterating the importance of following established safety procedures.
CFM, the world’s largest engine maker by units sold, is co-owned by GE Aerospace and Safran.
The NTSB said it was “critical to ensure that pilots who fly airplanes equipped with CFM International LEAP-1B engines are fully aware of the potential for smoke in the cockpit if the load reduction device is activated during a critical phase of flight (takeoff or landing).”
The FAA and Boeing both said they agreed with the NTSB recommendations, and the planemaker alerted operators that smoke could enter the flight deck following the activation of the Load Reduction Device (LRD) in the engines, as a result of a bird strike.
“We advised operators to evaluate their procedures and crew training to ensure they address this potential issue,” the FAA said. “When the engine manufacturer develops a permanent mitigation, we will require operators to implement it within an appropriate timeframe.”
Boeing said that CFM and Boeing “have been working on a software design update.” The NTSB wants the update to be required on all 737 MAX planes once completed.
GE, Airbus and COMAC did not immediately respond to requests for comment
The NTSB asked the European Union Aviation Safety Agency and the Civil Aviation Administration of China to determine if other variants of the CFM LEAP engine are also susceptible to smoke in the cabin or cockpit when an LRD activates. EASA did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
In November, the FAA said it would not require immediate action after convening a review board to consider concerns about Boeing 737 MAX engines after two bird strike incidents involving the CFM LEAP-1B.
The FAA had been considering recommendations for new takeoff procedures to close the airflow to one or both engines to address the potential impact of a bird strike and prevent smoke from entering the cockpit.
In 2024, the NTSB opened an investigation into the Southwest left engine bird strike and subsequent smoke in cockpit event that occurred near New Orleans in December 2023.
The other incident occurred in a Southwest March 2023 flight that had departed Havana and in which a bird strike led to smoke filling the passenger cabin.
In February 2024, Boeing published a bulletin to inform flight crews of potential flight deck and cabin effects associated with severe engine damage.
Malaysia trade ministry probing reports of Chinese firm’s use of Nvidia AI chips
- WSJ earlier reported that a Chinese group is seeking to build AI models in Malaysian data centers containing servers using Nvidia chips
KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia’s trade ministry is verifying media reports that a Chinese company in the country is using servers equipped with Nvidia and artificial intelligence chips for large language models training, it said on Wednesday.
The ministry “is still in the process of verifying the matter with relevant agencies if any domestic law or regulation has been breached,” it said in a statement.
The Wall Street Journal had earlier reported that Chinese engineers had flown into Malaysia in early March carrying suitcases filled with hard drives.
It said they sought to build AI models in Malaysian data centers containing servers using Nvidia chips.
The Biden administration had put in place curbs on the export of sophisticated AI chips. Malaysia was in a second tier of countries subject to restrictions, with caps on the number of chips that it could receive.
The Trump administration has since scrapped the curbs, but it has issued guidance reminding US companies that if they have knowledge that an AI chip used in Chinese AI model training will be used for a weapon of mass destruction then a license may be required.
Regime change in Tehran? Putin says Iran is consolidating around its leaders
- “We see that today in Iran, with all the complexity of the internal political processes taking place there...that there is a consolidation of society around the country’s political leadership,” Putin says
ST PETERSBURG, Russia: Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that Iranian society was consolidating around the Islamic Republic’s leadership when asked by Reuters if he agreed with Israeli statements about possible regime change in Tehran.
Putin was speaking as Trump kept the world guessing whether the US would join Israel’s bombardment of Iranian nuclear and missile sites and as residents of Iran’s capital streamed out of the city on the sixth day of the air assault.
Putin said all sides should look for ways to end hostilities in a way that ensured both Iran’s right to peaceful nuclear power and Israel’s right to the unconditional security of the Jewish state.
Asked about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s remarks that regime change in Iran could be the result of Israel’s military attacks and US President Donald Trump’s demand for Iran’s unconditional surrender, Putin said that one should always look at whether or not the main aim was being achieved before starting something.
“We see that today in Iran, with all the complexity of the internal political processes taking place there...that there is a consolidation of society around the country’s political leadership,” Putin told senior news agency editors in the northern Russian city of St. Petersburg.
Putin said he had personally been in touch with Trump and with Netanyahu, and that he had conveyed Moscow’s ideas on resolving the conflict.
He said Iran’s underground uranium enrichment facilities were still intact.
“These underground factories, they exist, nothing has happened to them,” Putin said, adding that all sides should seek a resolution that ensured the interests of both Iran and Israel.
“It seems to me that it would be right for everyone to look for ways to end hostilities and find ways for all parties to this conflict to come to an agreement with each other,” Putin said. “In my opinion, in general, such a solution can be found.”
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Wednesday
that Moscow was telling the United States not to strike Iran because it would radically destabilize the Middle East.
A spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry also warned that Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclar facilities risked triggering a nuclear catastrophe.
