MOSCOW: Russia’s FSB security service said on Thursday it had opened a criminal case against a journalist working for CNN who it said had illegally crossed the Russian border to film a report inside the Kursk region after Ukrainian cross-border incursion.
The FSB named the journalist as Nick Paton Walsh, a British citizen who works as CNN’s Chief International Security Correspondent.
It said the FSB had also opened similar cases against two Ukrainian journalists.
“Throughout this conflict our team has delivered factual, impartial reporting covering both the Ukrainian and Russian perspectives on the war. Our team was invited by the Ukrainian government, along with other international journalists, and escorted by the Ukrainian military to view territory it had recently occupied. This is protected activity in accordance with the rights afforded to journalists under the Geneva Convention and international law,” a CNN spokesperson told Reuters.
In the CNN broadcast, journalists traveled with a Ukrainian military convoy from Ukraine to Sudzha, where they encountered a nearly deserted town with a few dozen elderly residents remaining.
The FSB said in a statement that Moscow would soon issue an international arrest warrant related to the three journalists’ cases. The maximum punishment for anyone found guilty of illegally crossing the border is five years in jail, it said.
Russia summoned a senior US diplomat in Moscow earlier this week to protest over what it called the “provocative actions“ of American journalists reporting from the Kursk region.
Ukraine’s lightning incursion into Kursk, the biggest into Russia by a foreign power since World War Two, began on Aug. 6 when thousands of Ukrainian troops crossed Russia’s western border.
Russia — which is still trying to expel Ukrainian forces from Kursk — said on Thursday its troops had beaten back an attempt by a Ukrainian force to infiltrate its border in Bryansk, a different region.
Russia opens criminal case against CNN reporter for ‘illegally crossing border,’ Interfax says
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Russia opens criminal case against CNN reporter for ‘illegally crossing border,’ Interfax says
- Interfax named the journalist as Nick Paton Walsh, a British citizen
2025 among world’s three hottest years on record, WMO says
- All eight datasets confirmed that the last three years were the planet’s three hottest since records began, the WMO said
- The slight differences in the datasets’ rankings reflect their different methodologies and types of measurements
BRUSSELS: Last year was among the planet’s three warmest on record, the World Meteorological Organization said on Wednesday, as EU scientists also confirmed average temperatures have now exceeded 1.5 degrees Celsius of global warming for the longest since records began.
The WMO, which consolidates eight climate datasets from around the world, said six of them — including the European Union’s European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) and the British national weather service — had ranked 2025 as the third warmest, while two placed it as the second warmest in the 176-year record.
All eight datasets confirmed that the last three years were the planet’s three hottest since records began, the WMO said. The warmest year on record was 2024.
THREE-YEAR PERIOD ABOVE 1.5 C AVERAGE WARMING LEVEL
The slight differences in the datasets’ rankings reflect their different methodologies and types of measurements — which include satellite data and readings from weather stations.
ECMWF said 2025 also rounded out the first three-year period in which the average global temperature was 1.5 C above the pre-industrial era — the limit beyond which scientists expect global warming will unleash severe impacts, some of them irreversible.
“1.5 C is not a cliff edge. However, we know that every fraction of a degree matters, particularly for worsening extreme weather events,” said Samantha Burgess, strategic lead for climate at ECMWF.
Burgess said she expected 2026 to be among the planet’s five warmest years.
CHOICE OF HOW TO MANAGE TEMPERATURE OVERSHOOT
Governments pledged under the 2015 Paris Agreement to try to avoid exceeding 1.5 C of global warming, measured as a decades-long average temperature compared with pre-industrial temperatures.
But their failure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions means that target could now be breached before 2030 — a decade earlier than had been predicted when the Paris accord was signed in 2015, ECMWF said. “We are bound to pass it,” said Carlo Buontempo, director of the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service. “The choice we now have is how to best manage the inevitable overshoot and its consequences on societies and natural systems.”
Currently, the world’s long-term warming level is about 1.4 C above the pre-industrial era, ECMWF said. Measured on a short-term basis, average annual temperatures breached 1.5 C for the first time in 2024.
EXTREME WEATHER
Exceeding the long-term 1.5 C limit would lead to more extreme and widespread impacts, including hotter and longer heatwaves, and more powerful storms and floods. Already in 2025, wildfires in Europe produced the highest total emissions on record, while scientific studies confirmed specific weather events were made worse by climate change, including Hurricane Melissa in the Caribbean and monsoon rains in Pakistan which killed more than 1,000 people in floods.
Despite these worsening impacts, climate science is facing political pushback. US President Donald Trump, who has called climate change “the greatest con job,” last week withdrew from dozens of UN entities including the scientific Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The long-established consensus among the world’s scientists is that climate change is real, mostly caused by humans, and getting worse. Its main cause is greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas, which trap heat in the atmosphere.
