The United Nations climate conference opened Monday in the Brazilian Amazon with pleas for the world to keep up the fight against global warming, even as the United States turns its back.Feeble progress toward weaning off fossil fuels and cutting planet-warming emissions have opened fault lines between countries in Belem, the hot and sticky city on the edge of the rainforest hosting the two-week COP30 summit.”It’s time to inflict a new defeat on the deniers,” Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva thundered in his opening address, which followed a traditional performance from Indigenous people in feathered headpieces.He pointedly slammed those who “spread fear, attack institutions, science, and universities.”Weighing on the talks is the absence of the United States, the world’s top oil producer and second-largest polluter.But American state and local leaders, including California Governor Gavin Newsom, are set to take the stage Tuesday to show the country isn’t entirely missing in action, highlighting their own climate policies and solidarity with global efforts.”Make no mistake, humanity is still in this fight,” said UN climate chief Simon Stiell. “We have some tough opponents, no doubt, but we also have some heavyweights on our side.” He pointed to “the brute power of market forces” beginning to tip in favor of renewables, which this year overtook coal as the world’s top energy source: “extraordinary progress that was unimaginable a decade ago.”The summit opens in the wake of destructive storms in the Caribbean and Asia and a growing fear that geopolitical tensions — from wars to trade feuds — are distracting from the fight against climate change.In a stark reminder of what’s at stake, the UN’s top climate scientist reaffirmed that a temporary breach of the 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) benchmark — the safer warming goal of the Paris Agreement — was now inevitable.Those challenges and more were compounded by logistical problems in Belem, including a dire shortage of hotel rooms.Organisers say just over 42,000 delegates have gathered, fewer than at recent editions, as sky-high accommodation costs appear to have kept many away.Lula has defended the choice of location, saying he wanted to bring the world’s attention to the Amazon’s role in combating climate change, a shift mainly driven by burning coal, oil and gas.- Tough negotiations -A tough two weeks lies ahead for diplomats meeting in a cavernous conference hall, where the din of negotiations are occasionally drowned out by tropical rainfall hammering the roof overhead.Rich nations and developing countries regularly clash at COPs over how to raise the money needed for poorer regions to adapt to climate change and shift to a low-carbon future.”Our 44 countries did not light this fire, but we are bearing its heat,” Evans Njewa, a Malawian diplomat who chairs the Least Developed Countries (LDC) bloc that represents more than one billion people, told reporters.Major oil producers such as Saudi Arabia have traditionally opposed efforts at COPs to focus on fossil fuels. At COP28 in 2023, nations historically agreed to transition away from fossil fuels for the first time.Lula has floated the idea of a “roadmap” on fossil fuels at COP30, but the proposal so far lacks details.For 30 years, the countries party to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change — adopted at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro — have met annually to strengthen the global climate regime.Those efforts culminated in the 2015 Paris Agreement, which commits the world to limiting global warming to well below 2C relative to pre-industrial levels, while striving for 1.5C.But Jim Skea, head of the UN’s expert climate science body, warned Monday it was “almost inevitable” that the world will cross the crucial warming threshold at least temporarily.The world’s failure to rein in global temperature rises is the focus of an effort by small island nations to put this on the official agenda.A Western diplomat told AFP that such nations “are ready to upend the COP” if they don’t see a stronger official response to these efforts assured at COP30.”If they don’t deliver on 1.5C, that spells our demise,” Tuvalu minister for climate affairs and environment Maina Vakafua Talia told AFP.burs-lth/ia/np/mlm

The United States will remove strong safety warnings on many hormone therapies used to alleviate menopausal symptoms, saying the risks have been exaggerated, authorities announced Monday.Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) replaces estrogen that the female body stops producing during menopause with the aim of alleviating symptoms including hot flashes, brain fog, insomnia, night sweats and joint pain.Previously used routinely, prescription and use of the therapies have plummeted worldwide since a landmark trial in the early 2000s pointed to risks associated with specific HRT formulations.Since then “black box warnings” — the strongest warning the US Food and Drug Administration can require on prescription drugs — have sounded alarm over increased HRT risks including of certain cancers, cardiovascular conditions and probable dementia.But critics have pointed to flaws with the early 2000s Women’s Health Initiative, whose trials were halted as risks appeared: namely it focused on women who were a decade-post-menopause and in their 60s, when cardiovascular risks increase regardless.Today guidance generally indicates that healthy newly menopausal or perimenopausal women — people broadly in their 40s or 50s — are among potential candidates for treatment.There also are newer, more localized or lower-dose forms of the therapies available.”We’re challenging outdated thinking and recommitting to evidence-based medicine that empowers rather than restricts,” US health chief Robert F. Kennedy Jr said in introducing the measure.Many experts had urged revisiting the black box label, which they say can scare women for whom benefits may outweigh risks.Others have voiced concern that changes shouldn’t come without a rigorous review process.”The warnings on hormone products for menopause had become outdated and it was time to update them,” said Diana Zuckerman, president of the nonprofit National Center for Health Research. But she told AFP “these products still have clear risks and the benefits are mostly for hot flashes and related symptoms of menopause, not for general health.”FDA head Marty Makary dismissed that notion of an independent review committee, saying they are “bureaucratic, long, often conflicted and very expensive.”Over the summer Makary convened a panel of experts overwhelmingly in favor of HRT, which included people with ties to pharmaceutical lobbying.Adriane Fugh-Berman, who directs a project that promotes rational prescribing at Georgetown University, told AFP that Monday’s announcement was “embarrassing” as it was ahead of any consensus and was “not how regulation should happen.”There could be benefits of HRT for some people, she told AFP, but cautioned that real risks remain, and more high-quality study is needed.But the president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, Steven Fleischman, commended the FDA’s move, saying “the updated labels will better allow patients and clinicians to engage in a shared decision-making process.”Fleischman noted it was important to distinguish between systemic estrogen products — including methods taken orally or via patches — and low-dose vaginal estrogen.”Like all medications, systemic estrogen products are not without risk, and their use should be based on an individualized conversation between patients and their clinicians,” Fleischman said.The FDA said it is not seeking to remove the boxed warning for endometrial cancer for systemic estrogen-alone products. Sarah Shealy — a nurse-midwife, who is also a certified practitioner by the nonprofit organization the Menopause Society — welcomed the shift.She told AFP she hoped it signaled “the tide is turning” in terms of treatment access as well as education.”We largely have a medical community that doesn’t have a broad knowledge or confidence in prescribing hormone therapy, and this has left women feeling gaslit,” Shealy said.

US President Donald Trump hailed his Syrian counterpart Ahmed al-Sharaa after unprecedented talks at the White House Monday, saying Sharaa’s “rough” past as a jihadist would help him rebuild the war-torn country.Sharaa, whose rebel forces ousted longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad late last year, was the first Syrian leader to visit the White House since the Middle Eastern country’s independence in 1946.But the 43-year-old’s landmark visit to the Oval Office came just days after Washington removed him from its terrorism list. Sharaa’s group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), was formerly affiliated with Al-Qaeda.Trump said he wanted Syria to become “very successful” after more than a decade of civil war and added that he believed Sharaa “can do it, I really do.””He’s a very strong leader. He comes from a very tough place, and he’s a tough guy,” Trump told reporters after the meeting, which was closed to press.”People said he’s had a rough past, we’ve all had rough pasts…And I think, frankly, if you didn’t have a rough past, you wouldn’t have a chance.”Trump said Syria was a “big part” of his plan for a wider Middle East peace plan, which the US president is hoping will prop up the fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.But he would not confirm reports that Sharaa would bring Syria into the international US-led alliance against the Islamic State (IS) group, or that it would sign any non-aggression pact with long-term foe Israel.The Syrian president’s visit capped a remarkable turnaround for a former jihadist who once had a $10 million US bounty on his head.In dramatic scenes as he left his meeting with Trump, he climbed out of his motorcade to greet crowds of supporters outside the White House, surrounded on all sides by bodyguards.- ‘Astonishing transformation’ -Syria’s presidency said on X that Sharaa and Trump discussed the bilateral relationship, “the ways to strengthen and develop it, as well as a number of regional and international issues of common interest.”It published photos of Trump standing and shaking hands with a smiling Sharaa beside the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office.Other pictures showed the Syrian leader sitting opposite Trump with top US officials including Vice President JD Vance, Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth and top US military officer Dan Caine.Since taking power, Syria’s new leaders have sought to break from their violent past and present a more moderate image to ordinary Syrians and foreign powers.Sharaa’s White House visit is “a hugely symbolic moment for the country’s new leader, who thus marks another step in his astonishing transformation from militant leader to global statesman,” said Michael Hanna, US program director at the International Crisis Group.The Syrian met Trump for the first time in Saudi Arabia during the US leader’s regional tour in May. At the time the 79-year-old Trump dubbed Sharaa, 43, as “a young, attractive guy.”Sharaa was expected to seek US funds for Syria, which faces significant challenges in rebuilding after 13 years of devastating civil war.After his arrival in Washington, Sharaa over the weekend met with IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva over possible aid.Sharaa’s jihadist past has caused controversy in some quarters but the State Department’s decision Friday to remove Sharaa from the blacklist was widely expected.The Syrian president has also been making diplomatic outreach towards Washington’s rivals. He met Russian President Vladimir Putin in October in their first meeting since the removal of Assad, a key Kremlin ally.