One of the world's biggest solar plants will become fully operational this year in the oil-rich United Arab Emirates, months before it hosts UN climate talks, a partner company said Tuesday.
The UAE, a major oil exporter, is spending billions to develop enough renewable energy to cover half of its needs by 2050, and is targeting net-zero domestic carbon emissions by that year.
An Iranian court has handed jail sentences of over 10 years each to a young couple who danced in front of one of Tehran's main landmarks, activists said on Tuesday.
Astiyazh Haghighi and her fiance Amir Mohammad Ahmadi, both in their early 20s, had been arrested in early November after a video went viral of them dancing romantically in front of the capital's Azadi Tower.
Haghighi did not wear a headscarf in defiance of the Islamic republic's strict rules for women, while women are also not allowed to dance in public in Iran, let alone with a man.
Black buffaloes wade through the waters of Iraq's Mesopotamian marshes, leisurely chewing on reeds. After years of drought, winter rains have brought some respite to herders and livestock in the famous wetlands.
Listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the marshes were parched and dusty last summer by drought in the climate-stressed country and by reduced flow from the Tigris and Euphrates rivers due to dams built upstream in Turkey and Iran.
Turkey's opposition vowed on Monday to undo President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's two-decade legacy of Islamic-rooted rule and expand democratic freedoms if they take power in crucial May 14 elections.
The six parties united against Erdogan also pledged to decide on February 13 on a joint candidate in the presidential vote -- widely seen as Turkey's most consequential in generations.
The opposition's 2,300-point programme aims to roll back many of the powers Erdogan has wrested from parliament and ministries in the latter years of his tumultuous rule.
The fight against global warming should not be at the expense of economic growth, the United Arab Emirates' oil chief who will lead this year's UN climate talks said on Monday.
Sultan Al Jaber, the UAE' special envoy for climate change and CEO of oil giant ADNOC, said the energy transition needed to make the planet "wealthier and healthier".
"We need to hold back the global rise in temperatures to 1.5 degrees (Celsius), without slowing economic growth," he told a graduation ceremony at the Mohamed Bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence.
Israeli troops killed a Palestinian driver in the occupied West Bank Monday, officials on both sides said, with the army saying the car had hit a soldier's leg before speeding off.
Nassim Naif Salman Abu Fouda, 26, died from "a bullet wound to the head fired by the occupation (Israeli) soldiers in Hebron this morning," the Palestinian health ministry said.
The Israeli army said that soldiers had "identified a suspicious vehicle" and "asked the driver to stop the vehicle in order to inspect it".
All countries remain "dangerously unprepared" for the next pandemic, the Red Cross warned on Monday, saying future health crises could also collide with increasingly likely climate-related disasters.
Despite three "brutal" years of the Covid-19 pandemic, strong preparedness systems are "severely lacking", the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) said.
The world's largest humanitarian network said building trust, equity and local action networks were vital to get ready for the next crisis.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken expressed sorrow Tuesday for "innocent" Palestinians killed in months of spiralling violence in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, warning the Palestinian people faced "a shrinking horizon of hope".
Urging both sides to prevent further bloodshed, Washington's top diplomat held talks with Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas in the West Bank city of Ramallah on the final stop of his Middle East tour, following meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and cabinet ministers.
Formula One is never more than a chicane away from an unseemly spat as last week's surfacing of tensions between the sport's custodians the FIA and its owners Liberty Media demonstrated
F1 is basking in a resurgence of popularity, fuelled by the exploits of its leading actors Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen, adrenaline-sapping wheel-to-wheel racing, and an expanding fanbase driven in part by the success of Netflix's fly-on-the-pitlane-wall series "Drive To Survive".
Israeli environmental groups slammed a government move Sunday to scrap a tax on single-use tableware that aimed to reduce pollution from disposable plastic products.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's month-old government abolished the tax, arguing it had fuelled Israel's cost-of-living crisis and impacted especially ultra-Orthodox communities.
The decision was labelled "shameful" by environmental group Zalul which works to protect Israel's seas and rivers from threats including pollution with garbage and harmful microplastics.
