It was a tense moment. A group of about 50 people from the Munduruku, an Indigenous people in the Amazon basin, had blocked the entrance to the Cop30 venue in protest, causing long lines of delegates to snake down access roads, simmering in the morning heat. The Munduruku, unhappy about the ruination of their forest and rivers by industry and their lack of voice at Cop30, demanded to speak to Lula da Silva, Brazil's president.
Papua New Guinea has voiced frustration after Australia ditched a bid to co-host next year's UN climate talks with its Pacific island neighbours. We are all not happy. And disappointed it's ended up like this, foreign minister Justin Tkatchenko told Agence France-Presse after Australia ceded hosting rights to Turkey. Australia had been pushing to host Cop31 next year alongside south Pacific nations which are increasingly threatened by rising seas and climate-fuelled disasters.
Billie Eilish may be soft-spoken, but she doesn't shy away from speaking her mind. On Wednesday evening in New York City, the Grammy-winning artist accepted the Music Innovator Award at WSJ Magazine 's Innovator Awards ceremony - andtook the opportunity to ruffle rich people's feathers during her acceptance speech. "We're in a time right now where the world is really, really bad and really dark and people need empathy and help more than, kind of, ever, especially in our country,"
The Lebanese-American designer, writer and advocate's entire oeuvre - from her research to her art - is rooted in the belief that everything is political. Having been displaced from Lebanon to Canada as a child, a survivor of war and a refugee, this is something she experienced first hand at a young age. An enormous truism whittled down to three words, 'Everything is Political'; at once a tagline - and the title of Semaan's digital and print publication ( EIP ).
