Ankur Desai

The Brazilian city of Belém is known as the gateway to the Amazon, a focal point of the global climate crisis. And on Wednesday and Thursday, President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva is hosting dozens of world leaders there, in advance of the COP United Nations Climate Summit, which begins officially next week.

Notably absent are the leaders of the three greatest producers of carbon emissions, China's Xi Jinping, India's Narendra Modi and Donald Trump, who says he won't even send a senior representative from the US. The proceedings began on a dire note. The UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said the world had already failed to keep global temperatures from increasing by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, a key climate goal.

Siinä on vain noin 50 maailmanliitokäyttöä tullut tähän keskusteluun, ja tärkeimmät omistajat, kuten mainitsit, tarkoittavat suurimman suurimman liikunnan emissiä. Mutta täällä on vielä monta maa. Euroopan unioni on täällä, YK on täällä, Sekir Stormer ja Prins Williams ovat täällä. Joten täällä on edelleen tärkeä lähtö, mielestäni, ihmisille, jotka ovat täällä. Ja mielestäni presidentti Dula toivoo, että hän saattaa saada tarpeeksi tukea niiden liitokäyttöjen kanssa, jotka ovat täällä, jotta voidaan tehdä jotain tärkeää huomioita asioiden liittyviä asioita metsässä.

As you mentioned with some of those leaders in attendance, what can be achieved then at this COP? I think for President Lula there's a number of things. He wants to set the tone for the COP meeting next week. This is the leaders summit and they're doing this right now to highlight the leadership, but also I suppose in terms of it's a response to the logistics, which essentially is this is a smallish town that has struggled to be able to accommodate the massive nature of the COP, and so I think they're bringing the leadership meeting forward so that they get around that particular problem.

Haluaisivat saada uuden metsäohjelman, Tropical Forest Forever-ohjelman, joka antaa ihmisille ympäri maailmaa, erityisesti Afrikassa ja Suomessa, jotta he pysyvät metsään. He haluavat, että tämä on pitkä- ja pitkä-ohjelmallinen ohjelma. Ja se on, luulen, presidentin blula, yksi näkökulma. Mutta hän haluaa varmistaa, että ihmiset, yleiset ihmiset koko maailman, jotka pysyvät metsään,

The cost of living and with energy bills really feel the connection to the climate crisis, that the prices of food have gone up because of the climate crisis, that we're seeing devastation in the Caribbean and in the Philippines because of the climate crisis. He wants to make that connection and make it clear to people that this isn't just some airy fairy talking shop, that it's actually about real things that will have a real impact on people's lives all over the world.

We always see a lot of chat about climate change in the build-up to every COP conference, but are there other initiatives or other ways of pushing climate policy forward outside of these events?

Yeah, there obviously have been, and I think one of the big questions here is what is this COP really for? Because, you know, it's ten years on since the Paris Agreement was put into place. All the arguments about that, how do we save the planet, if you like, have been put down in that particular set of rules and set of agreements. The problem is getting people to live up to what they've committed to doing, and we've seen, essentially, in the last couple of weeks, a bit of a fall-off from countries in what they're prepared to do, and I think addressing that shortfall will be the big

Matt McGrath reporting. Next, the South African government says it has received distress calls from 17 of its citizens who've got themselves caught up in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. President Cyril Ramaphosa says he's ordered an investigation in order to get to the bottom of how the men were apparently sucked into the fighting in Ukraine's war-torn Donbass region. Our correspondent Pumza Filani is in Johannesburg.

And just briefly, because this isn't the first time that South Africa or other African nations have got caught up in the conflict.

The Trump administration is facing mounting questions over the legality of its airstrikes against alleged drug boats of South and Central America. More than 60 people have been killed in the last two months. But many Democrats say the strikes are illegal, while some Republicans also want answers, causing Secretary of State Marco Rubio to brief key lawmakers in Congress on Wednesday night.

Meanwhile, a former chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, Luis Moreno Ocampo, has told the BBC the strikes would be treated under international law as crimes against humanity. The White House has rejected the claim. Here's our State Department correspondent, Tom Bateman.

Järjestelmä Järjestelmä Järjestelmä Järjestelmä

Mutta missailit ovat rauhoittamassa kohdalla. Ne ovat ilmaista, sanotaan, että useimmat demokraattiset ja jopa jotkut republikaat ovat kysyneet vaikeaa kysymystä. Joten Mr. Trump on käsittänyt suurin diplomati Marco Rubio, jotta hän antaa klasifioituksen laulajille viime vuonna.

The White House has designated several cartels as terrorist groups, arguing trafficking lethal drugs constitutes an armed attack on the United States. And it says that makes the airstrikes legal. James Reich, a Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, was in the briefing.

Luis Moreno-Campo, johon rauhoitukset ovat tärkeämpiä. Hän oli ensimmäisen puheenjohtajan keskustelussa. He eivät ole sotilaita, he eivät ole rauhoittajia. He ovat rauhoittajia, he eivät ole sotilaita. He eivät ole rauhoittajia, he eivät ole rauhoittajia. Siksi näen, että on vaikeaa vahvistaa itseäni. Mielestäni tärkein asia on ympäristöä. Se, mitä rauhoittajat voivat tehdä, on erilainen asia.

Mutta sinä sanoit, että tätä käsittelee ihmishumalaisuuteen. Se on yksi suurin osa suurimmista lakia kansainvälisessä lakissa. Mitä se tarkoittaa? Ihmishumalaisuus on järjestettävä järjestelmä yksilöllisestä väestöstä. Järjestelmät ovat yksilöllisiä.

They are criminals. We should do better investigating them, protecting them and controlling them, but not killing people. The White House said in response to that that the president had acted in line with the laws of armed conflict. They said to protect the US from cartels trying to bring poison to American shores. It called the international court a biased, unserious entity with no jurisdiction over the US.

The seas off Venezuela now brim with American military might. A region is poised and a president is pushing the bounds of the law.

A young lawyer is taking the Pakistani government to court to challenge a tax on women's period products, which increases their cost by 40%. The country classifies items like sanitary pads as luxury goods, but Mahnur Omer argues that they should be considered essential and made tax-free. She spoke to my colleague Anita Rani and began by telling us why she believes period products are taxed so steeply.