CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Australia’s new government announced on Thursday it plans to prevent development of a coal mine due to the potential impact on the nearby Great Barrier Reef.
Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek said she intends to deny approval for the Central Queensland Coal Project to be excavated northwest of the Queensland state town of Rockhampton.
The minority Greens party has been pressing the center-left Labor Party government, which was elected in May, to refuse approvals of coal or gas projects, to help reduce Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions.
“Based on the information available to me at this stage, I believe that the project would be likely to have unacceptable impacts to the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, and the values of the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area and National Heritage Place,” Plibersek said in a statement.
The marine park manages the network of more than 2,500 reefs that cover 348,000 square kilometers (134,000 square miles) of seabed off the northeast Australian coast. The World Heritage Area, designated by the United Nations and Australia’s National Heritage List, includes natural, historic and Indigenous places of outstanding significance to the nation.
UNESCO, the UN cultural organization, is considering downgrading the Great Barrier Reef’s World Heritage status mainly because rising ocean temperatures are killing coral.
The mine’s proponents have 10 business days to respond to the proposed refusal before the minister makes her final decision.
The Greens welcomed the news and urged the minister to reject another 26 planned coal mines.
“Now we need an across-the-board moratorium on all new coal and gas projects,” Greens leader Adam Bandt said in a statement.
The proposed decision was announced after the House of Representatives passed a bill that would enshrine in law the government’s ambition to reduce Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions by 43% below 2005 levels by the end of the decade. The bill passed 89 votes to 55.
The previous government’s target had been a reduction of between 26%-28%, set at the Paris climate conference in 2015.
A proposed Greens’ amendment that would have acknowledged no new coal, oil or gas projects could be started if Australia were to achieve its net-zero emissions target by 2050 was defeated on Thursday.
The government is confident that the bill will be passed by the Senate next month with support from all 12 Greens senators, who would prefer a 2030 target of a 75% reduction.
The apparently doomed mine would have been an open-cut operation that extracted up to 10 million metric tons (11 million US tons) of coal a year.
WASHINGTON (AP) — US officials believe Russia is working to fabricate evidence concerning last week’s deadly strike on a prison housing prisoners of war in a separatist region of eastern Ukraine.
US intelligence officials have determined that Russia is looking to plant false evidence to make it appear that Ukrainian forces were responsible for the July 29 attack on Olenivka Prison that left 53 dead and wounded dozens more, a US official familiar with the intelligence finding told The Associated Press on Wednesday.
Separately, a Western government official, who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity, said explosive experts who have reviewed photos of the prison released by the Russians following the incident have determined that the destruction wasn’t likely caused by “a high-explosive strike from the outside” and that it was “much more likely to be incendiary and from inside the location.”
Russia has claimed that Ukraine’s military used US-supplied rocket launchers to strike the prison in Olenivka, a settlement controlled by the Moscow-backed Donetsk People’s Republic.
The Ukrainian military denied making any rocket or artillery strikes in Olenivka. The intelligence arm of the Ukrainian defense ministry claimed in a statement Wednesday to have evidence that local Kremlin-backed separatists colluded with the Russian FSB, the KGB’s main successor agency, and mercenary group Wagner to mine the barrack before “using a flammable substance, which led to the rapid spread of fire in the room.”
The US official, who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the classified intelligence — which was recently downgraded — shows that Russian officials might even plant ammunition from medium-ranged High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, as evidence that the systems provided by the US to Ukraine were used in the attack.
Russia is expected to take the action as it anticipates independent investigators and journalists eventually getting access to Olenivka, the official added.
Ukraine has effectively used HIMARS launchers, which fire medium-range rockets and can be quickly moved before Russia can target them with return fire, and have been seeking more launchers from the United States.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Thursday angrily dismissed the US officials’ claims about Russia fabricating the evidence.
“It has been absolutely proven and it’s absolutely obvious what happened in Olenivka,” Peskov said Thursday in a conference call with reporters. “Ukrainian prisoners of war were killed by the Ukrainian military. Ukraine killed its soldiers who were in captivity, and many others were wounded. There is an evidence and there is nothing to hide.”
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he is appointing a fact-finding mission in response to requests from Russia and Ukraine to investigate the killings at the prison.
Guterres told reporters he doesn’t have authority to conduct criminal investigations but does have authority to conduct fact-finding missions. I have added that the terms of reference for a mission to Ukraine are currently being prepared and will be sent to the governments of Ukraine and Russia for approval. Peskov said that Russia has invited the UN and the Red Cross to visit the site and conduct a probe.
The Ukrainian POWs at the Donetsk prison included troops captured during the fall of Mariupol. They spent months holed up with civilians at the giant Azovstal steel mill in the southern port city. Their resistance during a relentless Russian bombardment became a symbol of Ukrainian defiance against Russia’s aggression.
More than 2,400 soldiers from the Azov Regiment of the Ukrainian national guard and other military units gave up their fight and surrendered under orders from Ukraine’s military in May.
Scores of Ukrainian soldiers have been taken to prisons in Russian-controlled areas. Some have returned to Ukraine as part of prisoner exchanges with Russia, but other families have no idea whether their loved ones are still alive, or if they will ever come home.
US and UK officials, before the war and in its early stages, repeatedly went public with what they said were Russian plans to stage fake videos and events that the Kremlin would blame on Ukraine but in fact were perpetrated by Russia.
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Lederer reported from the United Nations. Associated Press writers Jill Lawless in London and Zeke Miller in Washington contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON (AP) — US officials believe Russia is working to fabricate evidence concerning last week’s deadly strike on prison housing prisoners of war in a separatist region of eastern Ukraine.
US intelligence officials have determined that Russia is looking to plant false evidence to make it appear that Ukrainian forces were responsible for the July 29 attack on Olenivka Prison that left 53 dead and wounded dozens more, a US official familiar with the intelligence finding told The Associated Press on Wednesday.
Russia has claimed that Ukraine’s military used US-supplied rocket launchers to strike the prison in Olenivka, a settlement controlled by the Moscow-backed Donetsk People’s Republic.
The Ukrainian military denied making any rocket or artillery strikes in Olenivka. The intelligence arm of the Ukrainian defense ministry claimed in a statement Wednesday to have evidence that local Kremlin-backed separatists colluded with the Russian FSB, the KGB’s main successor agency, and mercenary group Wagner to mine the barrack before “using a flammable substance, which led to the rapid spread of fire in the room.”
The official, who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the classified intelligence — which was recently downgraded — shows that Russian officials might even plant ammunition from medium-ranged High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, as evidence that the systems provided by the US to Ukraine were used in the attack.
Russia is expected to take the action as it anticipates independent investigators and journalists eventually getting access to Olenivka, the official added.
Ukraine has effectively used HIMARS launchers, which fire medium-range rockets and can be quickly moved before Russia can target them with return fire, and have been seeking more launchers from the United States.
Earlier Wednesday, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he is appointing a fact-finding mission in response to requests from Russia and Ukraine to investigate the killings at the prison.
Guterres told reporters he doesn’t have authority to conduct criminal investigations but does have authority to conduct fact-finding missions. I have added that the terms of reference for a mission to Ukraine are currently being prepared and will be sent to the governments of Ukraine and Russia for approval.
The Ukrainian POWs at the Donetsk prison included troops captured during the fall of Mariupol. They spent months holed up with civilians at the giant Azovstal steel mill in the southern port city. Their resistance during a relentless Russian bombardment became a symbol of Ukrainian defiance against Russia’s aggression.
More than 2,400 soldiers from the Azov Regiment of the Ukrainian national guard and other military units gave up their fight and surrendered under orders from Ukraine’s military in May.
Scores of Ukrainian soldiers have been taken to prisons in Russian-controlled areas. Some have returned to Ukraine as part of prisoner exchanges with Russia, but other families have no idea whether their loved ones are still alive, or if they will ever come home.
—
Lederer reported from the United Nations. Associated Press writer Zeke Miller contributed to this report.
United Nations – Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke at the United Nations Monday about what he called “a critical moment” in efforts to keep the world safe from nuclear threats.
At the opening of the 10th annual Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) conference at the UN, Blinken pointed to North Korea’s “unlawful nuclear program” and “ongoing provocations,” Iran’s “path of nuclear escalation,” and Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, which has included seizing control of Europe’s largest nuclear power plant.
“We’re deeply concerned about the fact that Russia has taken over nuclear facilities in Ukraine, particularly in Zaporizhzhia, one of the largest nuclear facilities in Europe,” Blinken said.
“There are credible reports, including in the media today, that Russia is using this plant as the equivalent of a human shield, but a nuclear shield in the sense that it’s firing on Ukrainians from around the plant and of course, the Ukrainians cannot and will not fire back lest there be a terrible accident involving a nuclear plant,” Blinken added, saying that it “is the height of irresponsibility.”
File photo of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in southeastern Ukraine, on July 9, 2019.
Dmytro Smolyenko/Future Publishing via Getty Images
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Rafael Grossi and UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres are also at United Nations headquarters in New York for the opening days of the nuclear review conference, which had been postponed since 2020, at a time when nuclear weapons threats and nuclear safety are of rising concern among world leaders.
“Today, humanity is just one misunderstanding, one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation,” the UN secretary general said.
Grossi, the international watchdog chief, pointed to the war in Ukraine as “so serious that the specter of a potential nuclear confrontation, or accident, has raised its terrifying head again.”
Grossi cautioned more specifically about Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, saying “the situation is becoming more perilous by the day.”
“It is urgent,” he said last week, since the agency has not been able to visit the site since before the conflict began five months ago. On Monday, Grossi was clear about the dangers: “While this war rages on, inaction is unconscionable.”
“If an accident occurs at Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, we will not have a natural disaster to blame — we will have only ourselves to answer to,” Grossi said, adding, “We need everyone’s support.”
Blinken told CBS News at a press encounter that “Ukraine had the confidence to give up the (nuclear) weapons that it inherited when the Soviet Union dissolved because of commitments that Russia made to respect and protect its sovereignty, its independence, its structural integrity. ”
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks to the media after attending the 10th annual review of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty at UN headquarters on August 1, 2022 in New York City.
Getty Images
“The fact that Russia has now done exactly the opposite, that it’s attacked Ukraine, unprovoked in an effort to erase that sovereignty and independence that sends a terrible message to countries around the world that are making decisions about whether or not to pursue nuclear weapons, Blinken said.
He was referring to the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, an agreement in which the United States, Russia and Britain committed “to respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine” following the collapse of the Soviet Union, and “to refrain from the threat or use of force” against it — assurances that convinced Ukraine to give up “what amounted to the world’s third largest nuclear arsenal, consisting of some 1,900 strategic nuclear warheads,” according to a Brookings analysis.
The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, established in 1968 to prevent the spread of weapons technology, sought to keep the number of nuclear states to a minimum — but keeping the nuclear genie in the bottle has been an uphill battle. Nuclear-armed states at the time were Britain, China, France and Russia (the Soviet Union at the time), and the number of nuclear weapons they hold has decreased since the peak of the Cold War. But in the years since, India, Pakistan and North Korea have developed nuclear weapons and Israel is believed to have a nuclear arsenal, though it has neither confirmed nor denied the existence of a program.
Iran is moving forward with its nuclear program since the US with drawn from the 2015 nuclear pact, but it has not yet produced a weapon. Iran’s atomic energy chief said this week that Iran has the ability to build a nuclear weapon but has no plan to do so.
The UN conference will continue throughout August and the nuclear activities of North Korea and Iran are sure to be discussed daily.
North Korea “continues to expand its unlawful nuclear program and continues its ongoing provocations against the region,” Blinken said. “As we gather today, Pyongyang is preparing to conduct its seventh nuclear test.”
The secretary general’s assessment of nuclear threats was chilling: “The risks of proliferation are growing and guardrails to prevent escalation are weakening.”
Guterres heads to Hiroshima at the end of the week, marking the anniversary of the US nuclear bombing in World War II – an event that is not lost on the speakers at the event. Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said that Russia’s indirect warning that it could use nuclear weapons in the Ukraine war has added “to worldwide concern that yet another catastrophe by nuclear weapon use is a real possibility.”
Blinken also made a point of responding to the threats China has made about the possibility of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visiting Taiwan, a self-governing island that China is determined to reunite with the mainland.
Blinken said: “The speaker will make her own decisions about whether or not to visit Taiwan. Congress is an independent co-equal branch of government — the decision is entirely the speaker’s.”
“If the speaker does decide to visit, and China tries to create some kind of crisis, or otherwise escalate tensions, that would be entirely on Beijing,” Blinken said. “We are looking for them, in the event she decides to visit, to act responsibly and not to engage in any escalation going forward.”
On Monday China’s UN Ambassador Zhang Jun said that China will defend its security and sovereignty if Pelosi visits Taiwan. He called the potential visit “provocative and serious.”
pamela falk
Pamela Falk is the CBS News correspondent covering the United Nations, and an international lawyer.
