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Serhii before going on a mission. His unit was tasked with holding the trenches on the eastern front line on the outskirts of Bakhmut.Courtesy SerhiiCNN — 

Ukrainian soldier Serhii sits on his hospital bed in a public clinic in central Ukraine. There are small pieces of shrapnel embedded in his legs that the doctors can’t retrieve. Despite the pain, he says he is feeling good.

“I can’t believe that now I’m in the hospital, not in the trench. I did not think I would survive,” says the 36-year-old.

Serhii is an infantryman in the 80th Air Assault Galician Brigade. He joined the army soon after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, leaving Finland where he had been living and working as a handyman for the previous 10 years to enlist. In a nod to his past, he was given the call sign “Fin.”

A month ago, on October 27, he and his unit were assigned a mission – to hold the trenches on the eastern front line on the outskirts of Bakhmut. That mission was supposed to last three days but stretched into two weeks after the unit became pinned down by enemy fire. For some of the men it would be the last mission they ever saw.

The unit had been under constant shelling for several days when a mortar exploded near to the dugout containing Serhii and two other men, cutting the group off just as they were about to move position.

“We were all wounded. I was wounded in both legs and immediately touched them to check whether they were still there,” Serhii recalled.

Serhii, who had worked as a handyman for 10 years, became an infantryman in the 80th Air Assault Galician Brigade.Courtesy Serhii

The other two soldiers had broken legs and jaws. One of them was so shocked that he asked to kill himself, so the others took his weapon away. When the evacuation team arrived, Serhii insisted they take the other men first and that he would wait for the next opportunity.

But that opportunity never came. Whenever other units arrived, constant Russian bombardment kept them pinned down and unable to reach Serhii.

Multiple evacuation teams would try to reach Serhii over the next two weeks, but none could get through and some died trying.

“We were under constant enemy fire. The enemy seemed to be looking for our weaknesses or testing our endurance,” he recalled.

With Serhii confined to his trench, his commander used a drone to drop off essentials to him such as water, painkillers, chocolate bars, and even cigarettes.

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“The water was a big problem because, first, the drone could not pick up big bottles of water. So the drone dropped small bottles wrapped in paper and tape, but not every bottle could survive (the fall) and they often broke. Water was leaking out. I appreciated every sip of water,” Serhii said.

At the same time, Russian drones were targeting the dugout with more sinister payloads, one of them dropping a grenade right next to Serhii, who by this point had been joined by another Ukrainian soldier who had become cut off.

“It exploded near the other soldier’s back and half a meter from me, near my feet. We were wounded but lucky to survive. It was possible to evacuate only one critically injured soldier. So at that moment I realized I was alone.”

Serhii lived for 10 years in Finland, earning himself the call-sign ‘Fin.’Courtesy Serhii

Surrounded

For the next three days Serhii hid in his dugout surrounded by the enemy. Each hour Russian troops came closer and closer to his position. He could hear their voices and knew their plan.

Believing that he would not survive, Serhii contacted his commander on the radio and whispered to him the coordinates of the enemy – essentially calling in artillery strikes on his very own position.

Thanks to Serhii, Ukrainian artillery conducted several accurate strikes, but more Russian soldiers continued to take up positions around him.

“I was surrounded by enemies,” Serhii explained. “When they couldn’t hear me, I whispered the coordinates again on the radio and our artillery fired at them.”

Ukraine behind train fire in eastern Russia, source claims

At one point, Serhii thought his time was up when a Russian soldier climbed into his dugout. The soldier asked Serhii where he was from and the Ukrainian replied in Russian that he had a concussion and asked for water. The Russian soldier did not give him water but crawled out of the trench, apparently still unaware Serhii was Ukrainian.

“I still can’t understand how he didn’t realize I was from the Ukrainian armed forces. I was wearing a Ukrainian uniform. My pants were in pixels. Yes, they were dirty. But it was obvious that the boots were Ukrainian,” Serhii recalled.

With all efforts to evacuate Serhii exhausted, his commander eventually told him the only way out was to crawl and pray.

“I had to crawl through the dugout where Russians were. Holding the radio in my left hand on my knees, I started crawling. I came across a tripwire with a grenade on it. I could hear the commander on the radio correcting me, but I could not contact him myself. The battery was almost dead. The commander shouted at me that I should move. So, finally I got to the Ukrainian positions, ‘Fin, keep moving,’ they kept telling me.”

Serhii, 36, https://roketgubuk.com during an interview with CNN.CNN

Serhii has now been recovering for more than two weeks. Sitting in the warm hospital ward, he remembers how he licked rainwater from his trench and would dream about every sip.

Telling his story to CNN, Serhii sees nothing heroic in his actions.

“You should see what our guys are doing on the front line. How they fight, evacuate, and rescue their dudes. Our guys are paying a very high price. They pay with their blood. All I want is to do is go fishing with my dudes, drink some beers and sit in silence”.

Sunak fired Braverman (right) and brought back Cameron (left) to the Cabinet, in a remarkable reshuffle.Getty ImagesLondonCNN — 

Britain’s beleaguered Prime Minister Rishi Sunak carried out a dramatic Cabinet reshuffle on Monday, firing his divisive home secretary and bringing back former premier David Cameron to the heart of government after a seven-year absence from politics.

The hardline Home Secretary Suella Braverman was fired early on Monday morning, after making inflammatory comments about the policing of pro-Palestinian protests in central London over the weekend. Her tenure was wrought with scandals and divisive remarks, which had long caused fractures in Sunak’s government.

Sunak then announced he was bringing Cameron back to frontline politics as foreign secretary, in a stunning move that has few parallels in recent British political history.

Cameron served as prime minister from 2010 to 2016, resigning after Britain voted to leave the European Union in a referendum that he had called.

His premiership set the course of 13 years of Conservative rule, but the self-inflicted chaos of the Brexit referendum and its aftermath threw his party into years of instability from which it is still struggling to emerge.

Downing Street confirmed that James Cleverly, formerly the foreign secretary, will take over from Braverman, a shift that made space for Cameron’s remarkable return to Cabinet.

Braverman had served as Sunak’s interior minister throughout his tenure in Downing Street, but her confrontational rhetoric towards migrants, protesters, the police and even the homeless had caused rifts in the government and sparked speculation that she was plotting a future leadership bid.

‘A Trump tribute act’: Meet Suella Braverman, the commander-in-chief of Britain’s culture wars

She most recently courted criticism by accusing London’s police force of applying “double standards” in the way they manage protests, in an op-ed in the Times of London newspaper condemning a pro-Palestinian march that Downing Street said had not been cleared by Sunak.

On Saturday, far-right counter-protesters clashed with police in central London after Braverman called the pro-Palestinian demonstration a “hate march,” stoking tensions around a rally taking place on Remembrance Sunday.

Braverman’s comments on policing and her severe criticism of Saturday’s pro-Palestinian rally were criticized by figures across the political spectrum.

“You have a chance of inflaming both sides when you make such divisive remarks,” Neil Basu, the former head of counter-terrorism policing in the UK, told the BBC on Monday morning. “Making comments that are potentially divisive is a very dangerous thing to do… no home secretary we’ve served under would have done the same thing.”

Her departure from government comes as Sunak’s party remains deeply unpopular among voters, with polls suggesting the Conservatives are drifting towards a potentially catastrophic electoral defeat next year.

Sunak has apparently gambled that bringing Cameron back into the fold would project a stability that has been missing from Westminster for some time. But it risks deepening a view among large swathes of the public that the party has run out of ideas.

Cameron resigned as an MP shortly after leaving Downing Street, meaning that King Charles was required to rapidly approve his ascension to the House of Lords on Monday in order for him to become a minister.

In recent decades, the move can only be compared to Alec Douglas-Home – prime minister for a year from 1963 – who returned as foreign secretary in 1970 under Edward Heath’s government.

The arrangement has led to questions over how Britain’s new foreign secretary will be held to account; it is virtually unheard of in modern politics for a very senior minister to sit in the Lords, and not in the Commons, where MPs operate.

“I know it’s not usual for a prime minister to come back in this way but I believe in public service,” Cameron told broadcasters in his first interview after taking the role.

Cameron makes stunning comeback

Cameron wrote on Monday that he “gladly accepted” Sunak’s offer to become foreign secretary, but acknowledged criticisms he has made of the Prime Minister — such as when Sunak scrapped a long-awaited and expensive high speed rail project that Cameron had championed.

“Though I may have disagreed with some individual decisions, it is clear to me that Rishi Sunak is a strong and capable Prime Minister, who is showing exemplary leadership at a difficult time,” Cameron said.

His return to Cabinet is a staggering twist in an influential political career that had seemingly and abruptly ended seven years ago.

Cameron returned the Conservative Party to government in 2010 in a coalition with the centrist Liberal Democrats, having repaired the Tories’ then-broken image as an out-of-touch and antiquated political group.

Cameron outside Downing Street on Monday.Carl Court/Getty Images

He melded liberal social policies — pushing his party to approve the legalization of same-sex marriage — with austere economics, drastically cutting back the budgets of Britain’s public services and reducing the size of the state.

But Cameron stepped down after unsuccessfully campaigning to remain in the EU.

His appointment as foreign secretary suggests that the Tories’ experiment with populism — which first flourished during the Brexit campaign and captured the heart of the party during the tenures of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss — has been ditched in the run-up to next year’s general election.

Barely a month ago Sunak addressed the Conservative Party membership at their annual conference, describing himself as the change candidate and directly attacking aspects of his own party’s past 13 years in office. He signaled that he was ready to lean into culture war politics on trans rights and climate change.

Now, two of his three most senior Cabinet posts are filled with moderate veterans of 21st century Conservatism — in Cameron and Jeremy Hunt, the Chancellor.

Cameron was ardently opposed to Brexit; despite calling the 2016 referendum to appease right-wingers in his party, he campaigned against the split from the EU and told The Times in 2019 that some people “will never forgive me” for holding the vote.

Unlike Braverman, neither Cleverly nor Cameron are likely to go off script and lash out at the police or protesters. It would be hard to imagine, for example, either man advocating for the UK to leave the European Convention on Human Rights so it can more easily send refugees to Rwanda –- a key Braverman policy that courts have been blocking for months.

But Braverman’s influence is unlikely to disappear. Sunak has made a powerful enemy of Braverman and handed ammunition to critics who will see today as confirmation of something they’d already suspected: that the Prime Minister is a centrist sellout who is more comfortable surrounded by other centrist Conservatives than pushing populism.

Braverman dismissed after string of controversies

Braverman has long been a controversial figure within the Conservative Party. She has attempted to excite the group’s right-wing grassroots with populist messaging, and become the face of Britain’s hardline stance against asylum-seekers and illegal immigrants, but her rhetoric and controversy-ridden tenure in government has appalled many moderate members of the party.

Days before her comments on Saturday’s protest deepened discord between her office and the police, she claimed in a post on the social media platform X that rough sleepers were “living on the streets as a lifestyle choice,” and advocated a policy to stop homeless people accessing tents.

Sunak had insisted as recently as Thursday that he had confidence in Braverman. But his spokesperson said Monday that there were “issues around language” that emerged over the course of their working relationship, as well as “differences of style.”

“It’s right that we can move forward now and focus on what matters to people,” his spokesperson said.

Sunak is understood to have spoken with Braverman over the phone on Monday morning after taking the decision to fire her.

But her dismissal sets up a potential power battle at the top of the ruling party, pitching Britain towards yet another spell of political infighting and instability.

While a leadership challenge against Sunak would be a dramatic risk for a party that has already cycled through five prime ministers in seven years, there is a growing murmur of discontent in its ranks at Sunak’s inability to reverse the Conservatives’ fortunes.

Alternatively, Braverman may be eyeing a run for leadership after the impending general election, expected late next year, should the Conservatives lose power to the buoyant opposition Labour Party.

But even in that scenario, Braverman will be expected to use the coming months to position herself as a radical alternative to Sunak – a pitch that could complicate the prime minister’s electoral campaign in the new year.

Turmoil in UK government after key minister slams police ahead of pro-Palestinian march on Armistice Day

Monday marks the second time in just over a year that Braverman has been sacked as home secretary. She served in the post for six weeks during Liz Truss’s shambolic premiership last year, before resigning for breaching ministerial rules by using a private email address.

But she was back in the same position just days later; her https://merujaksore.com resignation sparked Truss’s downfall, and her successor Sunak speedily reinstated her after seizing power.

Under Sunak, Braverman spearheaded a heavily publicised push to clamp down on small boat crossings made by asylum-seekers. The government’s flagship illegal migration bill, approved by MPs earlier this year, would essentially hand the government the right to deport anyone arriving illegally in the United Kingdom.

She is an equally furious culture warrior, borrowing rhetoric from the American right when lambasting “woke” culture, transgender rights and climate protesters.

Her frequent headline-snatching remarks have given ammunition to the government’s critics. Last week, after Sunak’s government unveiled its plan for the new session of Parliament, opposition leader Keir Starmer told Sunak in the House of Commons to “think very carefully about what she is committing your government to do.”

“Without a serious home secretary, there can be no serious government and he cannot be a serious prime minister,” Starmer said.

CNN’s Luke McGee, Catherine Nicholls and Niamh Kennedy contributed reporting

Former US President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump pose with Chinese leader Xi Jinping and his wife Peng Liyuan upon their arrival at the Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, on April 6, 2017.

Editor’s Note: Sign up for CNN’s Meanwhile in China newsletter which explores what you need to know about the country’s rise and how it impacts the world.Hong KongCNN — 

When Xi Jinping last set foot in the United States, former-President Donald Trump welcomed the Chinese leader to his palm-tree-lined home at Mar-a-Lago. In the glow of warm candlelight, the two leaders bonded over the “most beautiful piece of chocolate cake” and a popular Chinese folk song serenaded by Trump’s grandchildren.

Touting the “great chemistry” between them, Trump lavished praises on Xi after their first personal meeting and predicted that “lots of very potentially bad problems will be going away.”

More than six years after that honeymoon summit in the Florida resort, the US is preparing to host the Chinese leader again – this time in a much less intimate setting and with the world’s two largest economies looking more like a distrustful couple on the verge of divorce.

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Xi, who is set to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in San Franscisco and meet with US President Joe Biden on the sidelines, will find himself arriving in an America that has significantly hardened its view against him. Being tough on China has become a rare point of convergence in the increasingly polarized politics of his host country.

And these hard feelings are mutual. In Beijing, those officials who have long suspected America’s intentions and resented its influence now feel vindicated in their belief that the US is out to contain and suppress China.

Much has happened in between Xi’s two visits: a bruising trade war, a global pandemic and a raging war in Europe – each dealing deep blows to the US-China relationship as it deteriorated to its worst in decades.

What started as a Trump-era fight over trade quickly spilled over into other areas, from technology, national security and geopolitics to visions for the global order – competitions that have only intensified under the Biden administration.

Relations plunged to a new low last August, when Beijing cut off major communication channels with Washington in retaliation for a high-level US visit to Taiwan. Attempts to restore dialogue were derailed this February by an alleged Chinese surveillance balloon shot down over US airspace.

The US has since spent months seeking to engage its biggest strategic rival, including dispatching four cabinet-level officials to Beijing over a busy summer in the Chinese capital.

Beijing has played it cool. When Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi finally reciprocated with a visit to Washington DC last month – seen as a hopeful sign for the Xi-Biden summit, he warned Americans that “the ‘road to San Francisco’ will not be a smooth one.”

In addition to the bumpy journey to get there, the setting of the meeting is also telling.

Xi is arriving in the US this week along with nearly two dozen world leaders for the APEC summit, an event that is much more formal and business-like than the get-to-know-you meeting at Trump’s private residence in 2017.

Back then, the Mar-a-Lago summit was aimed at building a personal relationship, said Yun Sun, director of the China program at the Stimson Center think tank in Washington.

“The (US-China) relationship was not tanked, yet,” Sun said. “When he visited, the Chinese were still hoping (for) leadership diplomacy and that they could potentially have a very good relationship.”

Xi and Biden had already known each other for more than a decade and spent dozens of hours together across the US and China before Biden became President. The two met for the first time as state leaders last year in Bali, Indonesia, on the sidelines of the G20 summit.

China’s late paramount leader Deng Xiaoping (left), donning a cowboy hat, applauds at a Houston rodeo during a visit to the United States in 1979.Wally McNamee/Corbis/Getty Images

Diplomacy with personal touch

Diplomacy with a personal touch has been a central feature in visits by Chinese leaders to the US.

When diplomatic relations were restored in 1979, US President Jimmy Carter invited China’s paramount leader Deng Xiaoping on a groundbreaking trip to America – and the two leaders established a personal rapport.

In his personal diary, Carter described Deng as “smart, tough, intelligent, frank, courageous, personable, self-assured, friendly,” calling his visit “one of the delightful experiences of my Presidency.”

During that trip, the Chinese Communist leader famously donned a 10-gallon cowboy hat at a Texas rodeo in front of a cheering crowd – a moment that captured the imagination of the American public.

Deng’s successor Jiang Zemin, known for his larger-than-life personality and many musical talents, often surprised his American hosts by bursting into impromptu songs and dances.

On his maiden visit to the US in 1997 – the first by a Chinese leader after the Tiananmen Square massacre, Jiang softened the edges of his image by singing Peking opera at a gala banquet in California and playing the ukulele at a dinner in Hawaii.

Five years later, President George W. Bush invited Jiang to his ranch in Texas before the two attended the APEC summit in Mexico.

That personal approach was at work again when Xi met President Barack Obama for the first time in 2013, months after he took the helm of China.

At Sunnylands, a lush Californian desert retreat, the two leaders chatted and smiled as they strolled along a manicured lawn and over a small bridge. In fitting with the informal setting, they left their ties and suit jackets behind. At the end of that summit, Obama declared the visit “terrific.”

That friendly stroll at Sunnylands also inspired the famous meme comparing Xi to Winnie the Pooh, after pictures juxtaposing Xi and Obama with the honey-loving bear and his tiger friend Tigger went viral on Chinese social media. As a result, Winnie the Pooh has become an unlikely target of censorship in China.

Sun, the expert at the Stimson Center, said this type of personal diplomacy between top leaders was regarded as very important in shaping and consolidating bilateral ties.

“But I think we have passed that stage now. I can hardly imagine that Biden invites Xi Jinping to his private residence,” she said.

“San Francisco will be very business. And it will be very official.”

Former US President Barack Obama and Chinese leader Xi Jinping chat as they take a walk at the Annenberg Retreat at Sunnylands in Rancho Mirage, California, on June 8, 2013.Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images

Disillusionment grows

A few years into Xi’s presidency, https://katasungokong.com American officials began to realize that they could not always count on the Chinese leader’s promises made during personal diplomacy.

A major sore point was a 2015 promise by Xi during a US state visit that he would not “pursue militarization” of the South China Sea, a vow that stood in stark contrast to what then happened.

“Those four years of the Obama administration really had tremendous damage on American confidence about what China’s behavior looks like under Xi,” Sun said.

It was notable that Xi’s visit to Mar-a-Lago came within three months of Trump’s inauguration. 
 
“(Xi) wanted to establish a good relationship with Trump at an early stage to keep that momentum,” said Suisheng Zhao, director of the Center for China-US Cooperation at the University of Denver.

“But Trump is a totally different animal.”

Within months Trump was accusing China of doing “NOTHING” to thwart North Korea’s quest for nuclear weapons and soon after that the trade war began.

“Now, we’re at a place where both sides have had a lot of damage on their trust in each other, and both sides are discovering that our national interests fundamentally do not align,” Sun said.

Xi Jinping, then 31 years old, poses for photos in front of the Golden Gate Bridge as he visits San Francisco in 1985.Xinhua/Newscom

Iowa farms, Golden Gate portrait

This week’s visit will be Xi’s fifth trip to America as China’s top leader, and the tenth US trip in his life.

Xi first came to the US at age 31 in 1985, in what is believed to be his first trip outside China. Back then, the fresh-faced, little-known official was serving as the party boss of an impoverished county in central Henan province.

He led a five-men agricultural delegation to learn about crop and livestock practices in Iowa, where he visited farms, picnicked on a cruise on the Mississippi River and stayed with an American family.

As part of the trip, Xi also made a stop in San Fransisco and posed for a photo in front of the iconic Golden Gate Bridge.

In the ensuing decades, Xi visited the US four more times before he took power in late 2012.

Before bilateral relations took a sharp turn for the worse, Chinese official propaganda often paraded those visits as an example of the deep, long-standing friendship between the US and China.

Experts say it’s hard to know whether or how Xi’s early visits to the US might have impacted his views of America.

Zhao, the scholar at University of Denver, said Xi’s personal experience is likely to have a very superficial impact. “That might have affected his thinking if he was (an ordinary person and) not the strongman leader he is today,” he said.

Sun said while Xi has tried to strike the image as a great power statesman, he is “primarily a domestic politician.”

“I don’t know if Xi Jinping’s earlier visits of the United States had a major impact on his foreign policy. I think his foreign policy style is decided by his domestic political style, which is: I’m the Emperor and I decided it all.”

CNN’s Simone McCarthy contributed reporting.

The serotine bat may be the first mammal known to mate without using penetration.Alona Shulenko

Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more.CNN — 

Bats have long been the odd ones out among mammals.

They are the only creatures in this branch of the animal kingdom capable of powered flight. Now researchers say they have discovered another unique trait, with video revealing that the serotine bat may be the first mammal known to mate without using penetration.

Also known by the scientific name Eptesicus serotinus, serotine bats mate by touching their genitals together. The male bat uses its penis more like an arm to move a protective membrane away from the female bat’s vulva, according to a study published Monday in the journal Current Biology.

Bats have “incredible” reproductive biology that has been difficult to study given the nocturnal and secretive nature of many bat species, said study coauthor Nicolas Fasel, a bat specialist at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland.

“Most of the time you’ll see their backs on the wall, and you don’t see what’s really happening in front,” he said.

Bats use the same techniques as death metal singers to vocalize, study finds

However, thanks to the efforts of a Dutch bat enthusiast who set up 18 video cameras in a church in the Netherlands that was home to a roosting colony of serotine bats, Fasel and his colleagues were able to analyze 93 mating events in detail. Video of an additional four mating events involving the same species came from collaborators at a bat rescue and rehabilitation center in Ukraine.

“You can really see the copulation and see that the penis is not going inside,” Fasel said.

The footage showed that half of the recorded mating episodes lasted less than 53 minutes, while on one occasion a pair of bats stayed together in a copulative embrace for more than 12 hours. The behavior is similar to a “cloacal kiss,” a way of mating used by many birds.

What Fasel and his colleagues observed on the videos may solve a long-standing puzzle about the reproductive biology of this species of bat, and others in the same family.

The information on bat mating behavior could help with efforts to come up with a way to artificially inseminate endangered bat species.Olivier Glaizot

Mismatched genitalia

The male bat’s penis is around seven times longer than its female counterpart’s vagina, and it has a heart-shaped head that is seven times wider than the vaginal opening. These are features that appear to make penetrative sex difficult, if not impossible, Fasel noted.

Teri Orr, an assistant professor and specialist in bat reproductive systems at New Mexico State University, said she was initially “astonished” to see that males may be using their genitalia as a “copulatory arm” and “maybe transferring sperm much as birds do.” Orr was not involved with the study.

“Bats use their uropatagia (tail membranes) in many unique ways such as fishing nets, to catch pups during birth and so forth and thus they are useful in many ways but perhaps an impediment during mating,” Orr said.

How zoology got female animals all wrong

“I agree that the male of this species may use his genitalia to navigate the female’s tail but there are some key things to be sorted out,” she added via email. “For one: how is the sperm transferred exactly and for another what is the female doing in this pair?”

The behavior of the serotine bat reported in the paper is “bizarre and unique” if true, said Alan Dixson, a biology professor at the Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand and the author of the 2021 book “Mammalian Sexuality: The Act of Mating and the Evolution of Reproduction.” However, in his view, the researchers hadn’t provided sufficient evidence to support their unusual claim, added Dixson, who also was not a part of the study.

‘Open question’

Study coauthor Susanne Holtze, https://elementlagu.com a senior scientist at the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Berlin, acknowledged that they had not been able to definitively prove the transfer of sperm from male to female bats and said that will be a focus of future research.

“It’s a bit of an open question how their semen really gets into the female reproductive tract. It might be that there’s kind of suction involved. We cannot fully answer this mechanism,” she said.

Holtze, who specializes in assisted reproduction in animals, said that the information they uncovered during the study would help with her work to come up with a way to artificially inseminate bats.

“There are more than 1,000 species of bats, and many of them are also endangered, she said. “So far, no sufficient strategy for assisted reproduction has been established.”

Orr, the bat specialist at New Mexico State University, said the study would inform her lab’s work on bat reproduction and whether the unusual reproductive behavior has any implications for understanding human infertility.

“Bats do a lot of extreme things during reproduction from storing sperm to extending the duration of a pregnancy,” she explained.

There are few bat biologists, and most tend to focus on the more obvious yet still fascinating aspects of bat biology such as flight and echolocation, “rather than what the bats are doing ‘behind closed doors,’” Orr said.

Russia’s Supreme Court ruled to ban the “international LGBT movement” for “extremism” on Thursday.Natalia Kolesnikova/AFP/Getty ImagesCNN — 

Russia’s Supreme Court has declared what it called the “international LGBTQ movement” an extremist organization and banned all activities associated with it in the country.

The landmark ruling on Thursday is set to further erode the rights of Russia’s LGBTQ community, who have faced an intensifying crackdown in recent years, as President Vladimir Putin seeks to shore up his image as defender of traditional moral values against the liberal West.

Russia’s highest court found in favour of a motion filed by the Ministry of Justice which claimed the LGBTQ community risked “inciting social and religious discord”, in violation of Russia’s Law on Countering Extremism, according to a statement from the UN condemning the decision.

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While there is no legally recognized LGBTQ community in Russia under the country’s discriminatory anti-gay law, Thursday’s ruling states: “The claims are to be satisfied: to recognize the international LGBT movement as an extremist organization and to prohibit its activities in Russia,” according to state news agency RIA Novosti.

The four-hour hearing was held behind closed doors with only the Justice Ministry present for the proceedings and materials classified. RIA Novosti reports the decision is effective immediately.

LGBT activists take part in a protest against amendments to Russia’s Constitution on July 15, 2020.Shamil Zhumatov/Reuters/File

Two weeks ago, the Justice Ministry said on its official website it had initiated legal proceedings to designate the ‘international LGBT social movement’ as an extremist organization and seek its prohibition in Russia.

The ministry did not elaborate on what it meant by the “movement.”

In the statement Thursday, the UN said it “deplores” the ruling and warned that it could leave “members, employees and people engaging with such organisations” at risk of criminal charges and imprisonment.

Under Russian legislation, an organisation designated as extremist faces immediate dissolution, and its leaders face charges of up to 10 years in prison, according to the UN Human Rights Chief.

“This decision exposes human rights defenders and anyone standing up for the human rights of LGBT people to being labelled as ’extremist’ – a term that has serious social and criminal ramifications in Russia,” the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said.

Homosexuality was decriminalized in Russia in 1993, but homophobia and discrimination is still rife.

In recent years, the Kremlin has https://tawkapinew.com introduced or expanded on a raft of anti-LGBTQ laws, a conservative shift that has intensified following the invasion of Ukraine. Presidential elections are due next year, with Putin widely expected to extend his rule.

In July this year, Russia passed a law banning doctors from conducting gender reassignment surgeries, except in cases related to treating congenital physiological anomalies, in children.

In December 2022, Putin signed into law a bill that expanded a ban on so-called LGBTQ “propaganda” in Russia, making it illegal for anyone to promote same-sex relationships or suggest that non-heterosexual orientations are “normal.”

The package of amendments signed by Putin included heavier penalties for anyone promoting “non-traditional sexual relations and/or preferences,” as well as gender transition.

The new law was an extension of legislation introduced in 2013, which banned the dissemination of LGBTQ-related information to minors.

Australia players celebrate after winning the Cricket World Cup final.Rafiq Maqbool/APCNN — 

Australia won a record-extending sixth men’s Cricket World Cup on Sunday, defying the odds and a partisan home crowd in Ahmedabad, to defeat host nation India by six wickets.

India fell just short of fulfilling its country’s expectations after it had dominated much of this tournament, cruising to 10 consecutive wins and ratcheting up the pressure in this cricket-obsessed nation that has waited 12 years for another one-day trophy.

But its near impregnable batting line-up faltered in the face of Australia’s savvy bowling while Travis Head’s spectacular 137 off 120 balls anchored Australia’s run chase as it cantered towards victory and another World Cup trophy.

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The host nation had won the last three World Cups. With India occupying the No. 1 spot in the world rankings, it was widely expected that pattern would continue, particularly at the 132,000-seat Narendra Modi Stadium.

India players lost to Australia by six wickets.Aijaz Rahi/AP

India enjoyed a lightning fast start, scoring 80 runs in the first powerplay, equaling the record for a men’s World Cup final. Captain Rohit Sharma in particular produced metaphorical and literal fireworks that exploded above the stadium when he hit an enormous six into the stands.

But Rohit fell shortly thereafter, out to a brilliant Head catch as Glenn Maxwell’s bowling induced a leading edge. Shreyas Iyer was out soon after that, stunning the Indian crowd and recalibrating the game.

The run rate slowed as the pressure built, and Virat Kohli and KL Rahul sought to patiently rebuild India’s innings. But as soon as it seemed the pressure was waning when Rahul hit a boundary for the first time in 16 overs, Kohli was out for 54, chopping on to his stumps after a delivery from Australia captain Pat Cummins.

Cummins rotated his bowlers frequently, preventing India’s batsmen from settling into a rhythm, and after Kohli’s dismissal, no partnership really formed to contribute a big score.

Rahul battled to 66 off 107 balls, and the tail added some crucial runs to haul India to a respectable total but it always seemed like a difficult one to defend.

Marnus Labuschagne scored https://beritaberitaterbaru.com 58 for Australia.Robert Cianflone/Getty Images

All the momentum had shifted to Australia, and that initially carried into the batting. David Warner and Head put on 15 runs in the first over before Warner got out in the second over to Mohammed Shami, giving India a sliver of hope.

Mitchell Marsh and Steve Smith fell shortly afterwards to leave Australia 47-3 and suddenly it was India with the momentum. Every play and miss provoked deafening cheers from the crowd, willing India to take another wicket and press home its advantage.

But an outstanding Head, who was named player of the match, and Marnus Labuschagne, who scored 58, built a partnership that tore the game away from India.

Head’s innings ended prematurely when he holed out two runs shy of victory leaving Maxwell to come on and hit the winning runs, prompting wild celebrations among the Australians.

A vote talks to ‘Yes’ voting campaigners at a polling center at Brisbane State High School on October 14, 2023.Bradley Kanaris/Getty ImagesBrisbane, AustraliaCNN — 

Most polls have closed in an Australian referendum that will set the tone of relations with the country’s First Nations people for decades to come.

Counting was underway Saturday in several eastern states and territories, with very early results pointing to a possible defeat for the proposal, according to the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC).

Voters were asked to approve an amendment to the constitution to recognize Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders and to create a body – the Voice to Parliament – of Indigenous people to advise the government on matters that affect them.

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Prime Minister Anthony Albanese had called it a “simple proposition,” but months of debate revealed a complex mix of hostility and apathy toward the proposal.

To pass, the Voice needed a majority Yes vote nationwide and in at least four of six states – a feat only accomplished in eight of the past 44 referendums since the first was held in 1906.

The last referendum to pass was in 1977, before the arrival of the internet in Australia, and well before the rise of social media that has helped polarize debate and supercharge the spread of misinformation around this vote.

On Thursday – two days before polls closed – a YouGov survey of more than 1,500 prospective voters, gave the No camp a commanding lead of 18 points – 56% to 38% with the remainder undecided– a pattern roughly reflected in several other polls. Voting is compulsory in Australia, so turnout was expected to be high.

A No campaign worker hands out leaflets outside an early voting center on October 4, in Ballina, Australia.James D. Morgan/Getty Images

For ‘love of country’

A record 17.6 million people were expected to cast a vote, and the result was expected within hours of polls closing on Saturday.

The prime minister had approached the campaign as a personal mission, and this week he returned to Uluru, the huge rock formation in the country’s center, where Indigenous leaders agreed in 2017 to reach out for constitutional recognition.

Sitting in the dirt holding hands with Indigenous women, his eyes welled with tears as they sang a traditional song.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese sits with Indigenous leaders in the Uluru Kata Tjuta National Park in central Australia on October 10, 2023.Stringer/AFP/Getty Images

Explaining the emotional moment to reporters later, Albanese said: “To be able to sit in this red dirt, there was a sense of how big Australia is, our culture, and the incredible privilege.”

Albanese has pitched this vote as an expression of love.

“This is a campaign about love for our fellow Australians, and about respect,” Albanese said. “But it’s also about love of ourselves, whether we have the courage to love what Australia is. It isn’t something that began when a few ships came in 1788. This is Australia, that fullness and richness of our history.”

In the final days of the campaign, Yes campaigners reiterated the message, releasing statements urging people to “choose love over spin” and sending text messages that spoke of the need to win “hearts and minds.”

Indigenous leader Noel Pearson, one of the architects of the calls for constitutional change, said in a speech to the National Press Club in September that the largest motivation for voting Yes was the “love of country.”

“It is not the love of each other that joins us, it is our mutual love of country … we don’t need mutual affection to succeed in this referendum,” said Pearson.

Amar Singh, Noel Pearson and Rachel Perkins join Yes supporters and local residents during an event in Sydney on October 7, 2023.Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images

No love for Yes campaign

However, a leading No https://documentsemua.com campaigner mocked Pearson’s speech, accusing the Yes campaign of promoting empty slogans.

“The Yes campaign, it’s the vibe. Everything’s love. Like they’ve … had a few joints,” Nyunggai Warren Mundine said to laughs from the audience at a No event in Brisbane on the same day as Pearson’s address.

“We are about real solutions, accountability, all the billions of dollars that got spent, we want outcomes,” said Mundine, a member of the Bundjalung, Gumbaynggirr and Yuin people and leader of the Recognise a Better Way campaign group.

The Voice was conceived to get better outcomes for the most disadvantaged Indigenous Australians among 800,000 people – or about 3.8% of Australia’s total population of 26 million.

Of 19 targets aimed to “Close the Gap” between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, some statistics are worsening, including the standard of development for children when they start school, the number of children in out-of-home care, and the rates of adult imprisonment and suicide.

Albanese said if the referendum failed he would respect the democratic vote of the nation and wouldn’t legislate a Voice to Parliament.

“I don’t believe that it would be appropriate to then go and say, ‘oh, well, you’ve had your say, but we’re going to legislate anyway,’” he told the told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Insiders program on Sunday.

And there would be no change in the constitution or policy governing Indigenous affairs.

Mundine told his audience in late September that the No campaign would be seeking better outcomes through greater economic participation and accountability.

An Australian community built on racial segregation looks to the future, with or without a Voice

“When we get up in the morning on the 15th of October, after we’ve defeated this Voice, we’re going to make those people accountable,” Mundine said.

“We’re going to make those kids get to school. We’re going to make people get into jobs and run businesses and invest in their communities. And we’re going make their communities safe … and make sure those family and community values are back there,” he said, without explaining how that would be done.

“No more virtue signaling. No more dividing us,” he continued. “We’re all going to put our shoulder to the wheel and we’re going to make all these politicians and all these people do the job and make sure they spend our money properly.”

People protest during a march against the government contract with Canadian mining company First Quantum and its subsidiary Minera Panama in Panama City on November 3, 2023.Roberto Cisneros/AFP/Getty ImagesCNN — 

Anti-mining protests that have roiled Panama for the last two weeks turned deadly on Tuesday when a man allegedly shot and killed two demonstrators, according to police.

A chilling video posted by bystanders on X, formerly known as Twitter, showed a disheveled elderly man apparently frustrated with the logjam trying to force the protestors to remove a barrier blocking the Pan American highway about 50 miles south of the capital, before pulling out a pistol and opening fire. Panama’s National Police later said they arrested the suspected gunman at the scene of the shooting.

The unusual scene of violence is the latest flashpoint in some of the largest protests to hit the Central American nation since Panamanians flooded the streets en masse to demonstrate against the dictatorship of Manuel Noriega in the 1980s.

For weeks, tens of thousands of protestors have vented their fury at a controversial mining contract given to Minera Panama, the local subsidiary of a Canadian mining company, to extract copper, a key component in electric car batteries.

The contract allows Canada’s First Quantum Minerals to restart an open-pit copper mine surrounded by rain forest for the next 20 years, with the possibility of extending for another 20 years.

Environmentalists say the mine could contaminate drinking water and devastate tracts of the 32,000 acres the company negotiated use of, in exchange for yearly payments of $375 million.

Panama’s government has promised, however, that the mine will bring thousands of jobs in addition to the badly needed revenue. First Quantum Minerals did not respond to CNN’s request for comment on the protests.

Teachers march to protest the deaths of two people during a demonstration against the government’s contract with Canadian mining company First Quantum and its subsidiary Minera Panama in Panama City on November 8, 2023.Roberto Cisneros/AFP/Getty Images

A march against the government contract with Canadian mining company First Quantum and its subsidiary Minera Panama in Panama City on November 3, 2023.Roberto Cisneros/AFP/Getty Images

‘Panamanians are suffering’

Opposition to the mine has united environmentalists, https://itusiapalagi.com/ indigenous groups and teachers’ and construction unions who see allegations of backroom dealings between the government and the mining company as further evidence of widespread official corruption.

The protestors accuse the government of selling off the nation’s natural resources at the same moment many Panamanians have been hit with the costs of rising inflation and are feeling the impacts of climate change.

“Panamanians are suffering from lack of water, suffering from droughts, principally in the central provinces, animals that die, harvests that don’t happen,” environmental activist Martita Cornejo told CNN en Español.

“The government did not guage the opposition from Panamanian society to a mining contract.”

But former US ambassador to Panama John Feeley said while much of the outrage is real, the new contract announcement has also presented an opportunity for some groups to try to force their own concessions and win sweetheart deals from the government.

“This is the horrible thing about Panama: Even when you protest corruption, you are probably facilitating it as well,” he said.

Weeks of road blocks set up by protesters have shut down the country, preventing farmers from bringing crops to market and sequestering Panamanians in their homes. According to Panama’s association of company executives, the standstill inflicts $80 million in daily losses to local businesses. Celebrations to mark Panama’s independence from Colombia in 1903 were also widely cancelled last week.

Panama’s President Laurentino Cortizo has defended the mining deal after its announcement on October 20, saying the agreement would create jobs and revenue for Panama.

The mine had provided a rare economic bright spot for Panama where tourism has been slow to recover from the pandemic and the drought has reduced traffic though the Panama Canal, which is expected to a cause a drop of revenue of $200 million in 2024.

“We made the right decision, not the easiest one,” Cortizo said. “After a difficult and complicated negotiation for more than two years, a contract was agreed in 2023 between the company Minera Panama and the Panamanian State, which guarantees much better terms and conditions for the country.”

But as the protests have dragged on, Panama’s government has offered concessions that have done little to deflate the crisis: Last week, congress passed a moratorium on all future metal mining and Cortizo called for a nationwide referendum in December on the controversial project.

In 2017, Panama’s Supreme Court declared another contract to operate the copper mine as unconstitutional, forcing the mining company and government to renegotiate the deal.

Opponents now say they are hopeful that an announcement by Panama’s Supreme Court this week that it is examining the legality of the contract could once again kill the deal.

Whatever the resolution to the crisis, it may be too late to repair the damage done to Panama’s reputation in the region as a rare bastion of political and economic stability.

President of Mexico Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on November 20, 2022, in Mexico City.Manuel Velasquez/Getty ImagesMexico CityCNN — 

Last month, as the Biden administration scrambled to manage the latest wave of migrants overwhelming the US southern border, top US immigration authorities crossed into Mexico for an emergency meeting.

Seated around a Ciudad Juárez conference room, the officials and their Mexican counterparts drafted a 15-point plan to help defuse the flashpoint – most of it a checklist of actions for the Mexican government. Notably, according to a readout from Mexico’s federal immigration agency, Mexico agreed to carry out more costly deportations of the migrants gathering on their side of the border – a move that some believed would dissuade disorderly crossings.

The measures, which also specified Mexican efforts to clamp down on the crush of migrants riding north on railcars, are the latest in a series of policy shifts in Mexico that have alleviated, if slightly, the massive political headache in Washington caused perennially by migration. Analysts in both countries see a pragmatic bargain: as Mexico increasingly carries the weight of US immigration strategy, the Biden administration has granted rare leeway to the country’s divisive but popular leader.

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“Mexico has real leverage in the relationship with the US. And right now that leverage is around migration,” said Andrew Selee, the president of the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute.

Members of the Mexican National Guard stand on the border between Mexico and Guatemala to prevent the crossing of migrant caravans on October 21, 2022.Stringer/AFP/Getty Images

Sharing nearly 2,000 miles of land border and a history of important economic exchange, Mexico and the US have long held intertwined immigration policies that adapted as international migration patterns shifted. When George W. Bush made his first trip out of the US as president in 2001, it was to the ranch of Vicente Fox, the Mexican leader, to discuss a new era of cooperation on border issues, like trade, drugs, and the northward flow of Mexicans, who at that time comprised the bulk of undocumented border-crossers.

But as spiraling violence and desperate economic conditions fueled years of mass migration out of Central America and the Caribbean to the US, overpowering the country’s legal intake system, the stretch of Mexican territory in between became a critical “buffer state,” said Maureen Meyer of the Washington Office on Latin America.

“The Mexico southern border pretty much was the US southern border,” Meyer said.

At least 10 Cuban migrants die after truck overturns in Mexico, officials say

Under pressure from several US administrations, Mexico has repeatedly sent resources to its border with Guatemala over the past 10 years to formalize migration routes and detained record numbers of migrants at newly installed checkpoints as they made their way north.

At the helm of Mexico’s latest immigration coordination with the US has been President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a leftist leader who in 2018 campaigned on resistance to doing the US’s “dirty work” on migration. His political calculus has changed swiftly since then.

Crossing ‘another line’ in immigration enforcement

Under the threat of crippling tariffs from then-President Donald Trump, López Obrador agreed in 2019 to allow asylum applicants to wait out their claims inside Mexico under the “Remain in Mexico” policy, roiling activists who said it forced migrants into dangerous living conditions.

During the pandemic, when the US employed a public health measure known as Title 42 to turn around many asylum seekers at the border, López Obrador agreed to receive many of the migrants, reversing a long-standing position in the country and straining the resources of Mexico’s own border cities. In May, as the US ended the use of Title 42, López Obrador continued to allow the returns on “humanitarian grounds.”

“I think these more recent steps really do cross another line because it is not just stopping people from coming to the United States, which has been the more enforcer role,” Meyer said.

“It is actually allowing people deported from the United States to either stay in Mexico, or in this case now, actually maybe actively returning them back to their home countries for the United States,” she said.

Unlawful border crossings hit high for the year with over 200,000 apprehensions in September

Details on the deportation plan announced last month have been limited. In a news conference from Washington on Friday, Mexican Foreign Secretary Alicia Bárcena said that Mexican authorities were carrying out six flights each week to return migrants to Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. Bárcena added that officials were “exploring” the possibility of expanding the returns to Ecuador, Venezuela, and Colombia.

It was unclear where the deportation flights were taking place and when they had begun. It also couldn’t be learned if the migrants being returned had already been deported from the US or if they had pending asylum claims. Stakeholders in Mexico told CNN last week that there had not appeared to be any significant change in the pace of repatriation flights in the country’s north.

A spokeswoman for Mexico’s federal immigration agency declined to provide more details on the deportations.

But the announcement may already have had the effect of discouraging migrants from crossing to the US without the appointment required to seek an asylum claim. In the weekend that followed the meeting, the number of migrants encountered by border authorities entering the US near El Paso, Texas, fell by about 30%, CNN has reported.

Last Wednesday, López Obrador also announced that he was planning a summit with officials from several Latin American and Caribbean countries “whose populations are migrating” to be held in the coming days. Mexico also last month agreed to urge countries like Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba — which have limited diplomatic relations with the US — to take back their citizens deported at the border.

“What we are looking for is to reach an agreement to confront the migration phenomenon by addressing the causes,” López Obrador said at a news conference. “We have to align ourselves.”

An uptick in shuttle diplomacy

The recent cooperation between the two countries has come with a busy schedule of shuttle diplomacy. Last week, Bárcena held meetings in Washington with Senate leaders and Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, Biden’s homeland security advisor. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is expected to travel to Mexico this week along with other cabinet secretaries and meet with López Obrador.

For Mexican negotiators, the country’s increased responsibilities have often been conditioned on a US commitment to grow the ways that migrants can enter the country legally, like through temporary work visas and a recently expanded humanitarian parole program that the Biden administration says has allowed tens of thousands of Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans who meet certain conditions, including a local sponsor in the US, to fly into the country and secure work authorization.

In the country of ‘machismo,’ a woman will be the next president

Last month, ahead of the announcement around Mexican deportations, Mexico’s foreign minister told Bloomberg in an interview that the US and Mexico were nearing an agreement with the United Nations to pre-screen tens of thousands of migrants in Mexico for entry into the US under the parole programs. The US has opened similar processing centers in Colombia, Costa Rica, and Guatemala.

A United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees spokesperson told CNN that the organization is “regularly in contact with US and Mexican authorities including on how we can provide support to possible future initiatives.”

“Politically for the Mexican government, they can’t do enhanced enforcement without showing that they are also fighting for the well-being of migrants and for legal opportunities, because it is a country with a history of migration to the United States,” Selee said.

A free hand for Lopez Obrador?

Still, some analysts see a more cynical incentive behind the cooperation, https://bagaimanacaraya.com arguing that the Biden administration has largely turned a blind eye to elements of López Obrador’s agenda that would have typically drawn rebuke.

“López Obrador very quickly understood that if he gave into Biden’s request for support he would have significant political capital to ensure that US pressure on a number of either bilateral issues or domestic Mexican policy issues would be constrained,” said Arturo Sarukhán, a former Mexican ambassador to Washington who has been a critic of the current administration.

Detractors point to democratic backsliding in a number of López Obrador’s positions: an attempted reform of the country’s independent election authority, frequent criticism of the judiciary and the press, and the capitulation of state powers on policing and transportation to the military.

The election reform, which was passed earlier this year but later blocked by the Mexican Supreme Court, diminished the country’s independent election authority, cutting its workforce across the country and limiting its autonomy ahead of a presidential vote next year.

Tens of thousands of Mexicans marched on the capital against the policy in the largest opposition protest of López Obrador’s presidency. Critics decried it as a dangerous erosion of democratic institutions.

But in Washington, the Biden administration was unusually muted. In a statement following the February protests, Ned Price, a senior adviser to Blinken, described “a great debate on electoral reforms on the independence of electoral and judicial institutions that illustrates Mexico’s vibrant democracy.”

“We respect Mexico’s sovereignty. We believe that a well-resourced, independent electoral system and respect for judicial independence support healthy democracy,” Price said.

If Mexico had less leverage in its relationship with the US, “I think that you’d see greater public pressure from the State Department, from the White House, on the slippery slope of democratic erosion that we’re seeing in Mexico,” Sarukhán said.

“I think the United States should be invested in Mexico’s democratic strength because if not, what you’ll have in Washington sooner or later is someone asking the question, ‘Who lost Mexico and why?’” he added.

Stranded boats and floating buildings at Lake Puraquequara on October 6.Michael Dantas/AFP/Getty ImagesCNN — 

A floating village now lies stranded on a lakebed in Brazil’s Amazon as severe drought leaves communities struggling to access food, fresh water and fuel.

Dramatically receding water levels in Lake Puraquequara, east of Manaus, the capital of the state of Amazonas, have left boats and floating buildings marooned in the mud.

It is the latest example of the devastating impacts of heat and drought on this part of Brazil – earlier this month more than a hundred river dolphins washed ashore dead as water temperatures soared – and authorities say the situation is set to get worse.

Lake Puraquequara is part of the Rio Negro river system, which has been near record-low since the end of September, according to the state’s civil defense authority. “Declining water levels are having a profound impact,” a spokesperson for the authority told CNN.

Some residents have resorted to digging wells in the cracked lakebed in an attempt to reach water.

“Our shops have no customers. We are isolated, boats cannot enter or leave the lake,” local resident Isaac Rodrigues told Reuters. “We’re going to be here until God sends us water.”

Ivalmir Silva digs a well to obtain water at Lake Puraquequara in Manaus, Amazonas State, Brazil, on October 6, 2023.Michael Dantas/AFP/Getty Images

The severe drought extends across the state. Forty-two municipalities of the 62 in the state were in an emergency situation with more than 300,000 people affected, the civil defense authority told CNN Monday.

And the situation is expected to get worse. Around 500,000 people and 50 municipalities are likely to be affected over the next several weeks, “since we are still predicting a few months with reduced rain levels,” the spokesperson for the state authority said.

In late September, Amazonas Gov. Wilson Lima declared a state of emergency and announced a package of assistance measures, including providing food to those most affected by the drought.

“There are many people already having difficulty accessing food, food security, drinking water and other important inputs,” he said in a statement at the time.

Boats and houseboats stranded on Lake Puraquequara in Manaus, Brazil, October 6, 2023.Bruno Kelly/Reuters

The drought is also devastating wildlife in the state’s rivers.

Scientists believe the unusual deaths of more than 100 dolphins in Lake Tefé, west of Manaus, at the beginning of October may be linked to the searingly high water temperatures.

“It’s still early to determine the cause of this extreme event but according to our experts, it is certainly connected to the drought period and high temperatures in Lake Tefé, in which some points are exceeding 39 degrees Celsius (102 degrees Fahrenheit),” the institute said in comments carried by CNN affiliate CNN Brasil.

Lake Puraquequara in Manaus, Amazonas State, Brazil, on October 6, 2023. The drought has dried up the rivers and made it difficult to travel between cities in the state of Amazonas.Michael Dantas/AFP/Getty Images

Stranded boats on Puraquequara https://gimanalagiyakan.com Lake, October 6, 2023.Bruno Kelly/Reuters

It is currently the dry season in the Amazon, but the drought has been exacerbated by El Niño, a natural climate pattern that originates in the tropical Pacific Ocean and affects weather around the world.

Underlying El Niño is the long-term trend of global warming that is leading to more frequent and more severe extreme weather events, like drought and heat.

Swaths of South America, including Brazil, have been gripped by severe and deadly heat as the region moves from winter into spring.

This heat in August and September – during which Brazil experienced temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) – was made at least 100 times more likely by the human-caused climate crisis, according to a study published Tuesday by the World Weather Attribution initiative.