Category World News

As wind turbines on the horizon churn out clean energy, John Smyth bends to stack damp peat – the cheap, smoky fuel he has harvested for half a century.

The painstaking work of “footing turf”, as the process of drying peat for burning is known, is valued by people across rural Ireland as a source of low-cost energy that gives their homes a distinctive smell.

But peat-harvesting has also destroyed precious wildlife habitats, and converted what should be natural stores for carbon dioxide into one of Ireland’s biggest sources of planet-warming gas emissions.

As the European Union seeks to make Dublin enforce the bloc’s environmental law, peat has become a focus for opposition to policies that Smyth and others criticise as designed by wealthy urbanites with little knowledge of rural reality.

“The people that are coming up with plans to stop people from buying turf or from burning turf … They don’t know what it’s like to live in rural Ireland,” Smyth said.

He describes himself as a dinosaur obstructing people who, he says, want to destroy rural Ireland.

“That’s what we are. Dinosaurs. Tormenting them.”

When the peat has dried, Smyth keeps his annual stock in a shed and tosses the sods, one at a time, into a metal stove used for cooking. The stove also heats radiators around his home.

Turf, Smyth says, is for people who cannot afford what he labels “extravagant fuels”, such as gas or electricity.

The average Irish household energy bill is almost double, according to Ireland’s utility regulator, the 800 euros ($906) Smyth pays for turf for a year.

Smyth, nevertheless, acknowledges that digging for peat could cease, regardless of politics, as the younger generation has little interest in keeping the tradition alive.

“They don’t want to go to the bog. I don’t blame them,” Smyth said.

Peat has an ancient history. Over thousands of years, decaying plants in wetland areas formed the bogs.

In drier, lowland parts of Ireland, dome-shaped raised bogs developed as peat accumulated in former glacial lakes. In upland and coastal areas, high rainfall and poor drainage created blanket bogs over large expanses.

In the absence of coal and extensive forests, peat became an important source of fuel.

By the second half of the 20th century, hand-cutting and drying had mostly given way to industrial-scale harvesting that reduced many bogs to barren wastelands.

Ireland has lost more than 70 percent of its blanket bog and over 80 percent of its raised bogs, according to estimates published by the Irish Peatland Conservation Council and National Parks and Wildlife Service, respectively.

Following pressure from environmentalists, in the 1990s, an EU directive on habitats listed blanket bogs and raised bogs as priority habitats.

As the EU regulation added to the pressure for change, in 2015, semi-state peat harvesting firm Bord na Mona said it planned to end peat extraction and shift to renewable energy.

In 2022, the sale of peat for burning was banned.

An exception was made, however, for “turbary rights”, allowing people to dig turf for their personal use.

Added to that, weak enforcement of complex regulations meant commercial-scale harvesting has continued across the country.

The agency also said 350,000 tonnes of peat were exported, mostly for horticulture, in 2023. Data for 2024 has not yet been published.

The European Commission, which lists more than 100 Irish bogs as Special Areas of Conservation, last year referred Ireland to the European Court of Justice for failing to protect them and taking insufficient action to restore the sites.

The country also faces fines of billions of euros if it misses its 2030 carbon reduction target, according to Ireland’s fiscal watchdog and climate groups.

Degraded peatlands in Ireland emit 21.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per year, according to a 2022 United Nations report. Ireland’s transport sector, by comparison, emitted 21.4 million tonnes in 2023, government statistics show.

The Irish government says turf-cutting has ended on almost 80 percent of the raised bog special areas of conservation since 2011.

It has tasked Bord na Mona with “rewetting” the bogs, allowing natural ecosystems to recover, and eventually making the bogs once again carbon sinks.

On a typical day at Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza, Victoria Rose, a British surgeon, would wake up before dawn.

“Because the bombing would start at four,” she said, now back in London, having just wrapped up her third humanitarian mission to Gaza since Israel’s war began in October 2023.

Over almost four weeks in May, she usually operated on 12 or 13 patients per 14-hour shift, unless there was a mass casualty incident overnight, meaning even longer shifts and more patients.

By comparison, in London hospitals, she treats a maximum of three patients per day.

“It’s operating nonstop in Gaza,” she said.

Recalling some of her many patients, she treated 11-year-old Adam al-Najjar, the sole surviving child of Dr Alaa al-Najjar, whose nine other children and husband, Hamdi, also a doctor, were killed in an attack in Khan Younis last month.

She vividly remembers two brothers with lower limb injuries, Yakoob and Mohammed, who were the sole survivors of their family, and an eight-year-old girl named Aziza who was orphaned.

“She had a burn on her face and her shoulder, and somebody found her walking the streets and brought her in,” said Rose, who specialises in plastic and reconstructive surgery.

Rose and a team of medics also worked tirelessly to save the leg of a seven-year-old girl who, after an explosion, “was missing her knee … it was like looking at the back of her leg without the bone in”.

Having cleaned the area, removed dead skin and muscle, and dressed the wound, the girl returned three more times for further treatment, but ultimately, her limb was amputated.

Al Jazeera spoke with Dr Rose about the growing intensity of Israeli bombardment, the impact of malnutrition which has been exacerbated by a three-month aid blockade, deaths and gunshot wounds she saw among those who desperately tried to get rations via a new mechanism backed by the United States and Israel, and her sense of frustration that as the death toll rises and the scale of injuries is well documented, disbelief in Palestinian suffering prevails.

Al Jazeera: How did you feel entering Gaza this time around?

Victoria Rose: Definitely once we got in, the bombing was far worse than it’s ever been, and it was far, far louder, closer, more constant than it’s ever been. The drones – it was as if they were on me. They were constantly there and really loud to the point that it was difficult to have a conversation if you were outside.

Al Jazeera: What do the types of injuries you saw reveal about the current intensity of the bombing?

Rose: This time, the injuries seemed to be from the heart of an explosion. People had been blown up, and bits of them had been blown off.

Last summer, it was far more shrapnel wounds – a bomb had gone off in the vicinity, and something had been whipped up and hit them and did some damage to their bodies. Much more survivable, reconstructable-type injuries, whereas these appeared to be far more direct hits on people.

Al Jazeera: You have volunteered three times during the genocide, including in March and August last year. The death toll, now at about 55,000, continues to rise at haste. Was this the most challenging trip?

Rose: This is, without a shadow of a doubt, the worst. The volume of patients is more and the kids are more. The number of kids has gone up exponentially. They’ve doubled since the March (2024) trip – the number of children that I’ve seen.

During the first trip (in March 2024), I thought I was seeing loads of children, but this trip surpassed that.

Al Jazeera: How would you describe Nasser Hospital?

Rose: It’s a very similar scenario, very similar vibe to being in a hospital anywhere, but it’s just so packed.

It’s everybody; it’s like the whole population is in there.

(Doctors are usually) very selective with the people that we hospitalise. They’re normally older, or got cancer, or complications from diabetes or heart attacks – that’s normally who gets hospital beds in the UK. But there, it could be everybody on your road. It’s just normal people that have been blown up. Healthy people that are otherwise really fit and well, and now have been blown up.

It’s quite bizarre to hospitalise somebody that was fit yesterday and, well, now is missing an arm or part of an arm.

Al Jazeera: You were in Gaza when people desperately trying to secure food aid through the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a new mechanism backed by Israel and the US, were attacked. Many were killed. You did some media interviews at the time. What did you witness and experience?

Rose: The bulk of the victims had gunshot wounds. They were shot in the stomach, shot in the leg, shot in the arm.

After the GHF shooting, when (the victims) all came in, immediately the next journalist (I spoke to) was saying to me that “Israel has denied that they’ve shot anyone and you know, they’re saying that it’s the Palestinians shooting each other”. And then they sort of said, “Nobody’s been killed”, and I was standing in the emergency department with 30 body bags, thinking, you can’t lie like this. You just can’t.

Al Jazeera: Many in Gaza are vulnerable to starvation, and thousands of children are suffering from acute malnutrition, according to the United Nations. How does this affect patients and hospital staff?

Rose: Everybody’s lost weight. They will tell you, “I am now five or 10 kg lower in weight.”

My medical students I was there with in August, the girls are just so thin now. They’re all in their 20s, and all of them looked really as if they’d lost significant amounts of weight.

But the children are really small. They’re really skinny.

Sixty children have died at Nasser Hospital of malnutrition.

It is mainly the children that are lactose intolerant or have some other disease as well, because none of the only formula milk that’s getting in is suitable for children with lactose intolerance. Then you have children that have other diseases on top of that, which stop them from being able to take normal milk. That was quite shocking.

The trauma patients, which is who I was seeing, were also really small. No fat on them at all, quite a bit of muscle wasting. And they didn’t really heal very well. It seemed to take a lot longer this time than it did in August for wounds to heal.

There were lots of infections, a huge number of infections; with malnutrition, you get a dampening of the immune system. It’s one of the areas that’s affected the most. You can’t mount a good immune response.

On top of that, all the wounds were dirty anyway because everyone’s living in a tent and there’s no sanitation, no clean water. You’re starting in a really difficult position, and then you’ve run out of antibiotics. We only had three types of antibiotics that we could use, and none of them would have been the first-line choice if we’d have been in the UK.

Al Jazeera: How would you describe the morale among the doctors you worked with?

Rose: Really bad now. So many of them said to me, “I’d rather die than carry on.”

So many of them want a ceasefire, and I think would be prepared to do whatever it takes to get a ceasefire now.

They are at their lowest. They’ve all moved 15 times. They’ve all lost significant members of the family – these guys have lost kids. Their houses are completely destroyed. It’s really, really difficult times for them.

Al Jazeera: What are your fears for Gaza?

Rose: It’s a man-made humanitarian crisis, so it could be man-stopped, and that’s what needs to happen.

This could be turned off immediately if people put enough pressure on the right governments, the right leaders.

I think, if we don’t turn it off soon, there won’t be a Gaza and there certainly won’t be Palestinians in Gaza.

It’s very difficult to have any conversations with Palestinians about the future because they can’t really see it.

The Oklahoma City Thunder’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander learned a lesson to open the National Basketball Association (NBA) Finals.

“You can’t just throw the first punch,” Gilgeous-Alexander said after Game 2 of the NBA Finals against the visiting Indiana Pacers on Sunday night. “You’ve got to throw all the punches all night.”

Gilgeous-Alexander and the rest of the Thunder threw plenty of haymakers, helping their side to a 123-107 victory to even the series 1-1 going into Wednesday’s Game 3 in Indianapolis.

That was a departure from Game 1 last Thursday, when the Thunder led by 15 in the fourth quarter before Indiana came back to win the game 111-110 on a basket in the final second.

Gilgeous-Alexander led the way on Sunday for Oklahoma City, scoring 34 with eight assists, five rebounds and four steals, and went 11-of-12 on free throws.

There were plenty of areas of improvement from Game 1 for Thunder coach Mark Daigneault to point out after the victory.

Oklahoma City had more success turning Indiana’s turnovers into points at the other end, got better production from Chet Holmgren and Jalen Williams, had nearly double the assists after posting a season-low 13 in Game 1, and got an offensive spark off the bench from Alex Caruso and Aaron Wiggins.

Daigneault said none of those alone was the difference-maker, but all came together for a much better result for his team.

“I think we were just a little bit better in a lot of areas,” Daigneault said.

The biggest stretch of the game came in the second quarter, when the Thunder ripped off a 19-2 run fuelled by their defence and Gilgeous-Alexander’s finishes on the other end.

To that point, Oklahoma City’s defence had not forced many turnovers, and it had not taken advantage of the few it had caused.

But during that big run, Gilgeous-Alexander scored seven of Oklahoma City’s last nine points – all off Pacers’ turnovers.

Indiana quickly answered with a 10-0 run to make it 52-39, but never got closer than that 13-point deficit.

The Thunder outscored the Pacers 26-12 in the paint in the first half and, for the series, now lead 88-68 in that category.

“They’re the best team in the league at keeping the ball out of there,” Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said. “It’s a tough task.”

In Game 1, Jalen Williams and Chet Holmgren combined to shoot just 8-of-28 from the floor, with Holmgren going just 2-for-9 with six points.

Holmgren looked much more settled early on in Game 2, hitting five consecutive shots after missing his first of the game.

While Williams was not overly efficient, scoring 19 points on 5-of-14 shooting, he did go 8-for-9 at the free throw line and added five assists.

Holmgren finished with 15 points, while Caruso added 20 and Wiggins 18 off the bench.

Tyrese Haliburton, the star of Game 1 after hitting the winning shot in the final second, led the Pacers with 17 points, though 12 of those came in the final quarter with the game fairly well in hand for Oklahoma City.

Over the first two games of the series, Haliburton is a combined 3-for-9 with nine points before half-time.

“I have to figure out how to be better at the beginning of games,” Haliburton said. “Kudos to them; they are a great defensive team.”

A big part of the Thunder’s defensive success against Haliburton has been thanks to Luguentz Dort. He has spent plenty of time guarding Haliburton but was on the opposite side of the floor for Haliburton’s Game 1 winner.

Dort finished with just three points, though Caruso gave him plenty of credit for the victory.

“He knows the role he needs to play for us to win the series and pick up that trophy at the end,” Caruso said.

Myles Turner added 16 for Indiana, while Pascal Siakam scored 15 points on 3-of-11 shooting.

President Donald Trump’s order banning citizens from 12 countries from entering the United States has come into effect amid rising political tensions over his administration’s harsh anti-immigration policies.

The measure, announced by Trump last week as necessary to prevent the importation of “terrorists”, took effect on Monday. The clampdown comes amid chaotic scenes on the streets of Los Angeles as crowds of protesters battled with police and National Guard troops following a wave of arrests by immigration authorities.

The divisive order revives similar measures rolled out during Trump’s first term, as travellers from several, mostly Muslim, countries were blocked from entering the US. Many of the countries affected by the new order are afflicted by war and large-scale displacement.

No visible disruption was immediately discernible at Los Angeles International Airport in the hours after the new ban took effect, according to the Associated Press news agency.

The order applies to citizens of Afghanistan, Chad, Eritrea, Equatorial Guinea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Myanmar, the Republic of the Congo, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.

Heightened restrictions were also placed on people from Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela.

Trump said the countries subjected to the most severe restrictions were determined to harbour a “large-scale presence of terrorists”, fail to cooperate on visa security and have an inability to verify travellers’ identities. These countries were also inadequate in keeping records of criminal histories and had high rates of visa overstays in the US, according to Trump.

The new ban does not revoke visas previously issued to people from countries on the list, according to guidance issued on Friday to all US diplomatic missions.

But it remains unclear how those rules will be implemented at the ports of entry. During Trump’s first term, a similar travel ban resulted in confusion and disrupted travel.

In announcing the new restriction last week, Trump said the measure was spurred by a recent “terrorist attack” on Jewish people in the US state of Colorado.

The group had been protesting in solidarity with captives held in Gaza when they were assaulted by an Egyptian man that the White House said had overstayed his visa.

That attack, Trump said, “underscored the extreme dangers posed to our country by the entry of foreign nationals who are not properly vetted”.

He warned that new countries could be added “as threats emerge around the world”.

Egypt is not among the states affected by the ban or increased scrutiny.

Volker Turk, United Nations high commissioner for human rights, warned that “the broad and sweeping nature of the new travel ban raises concerns from the perspective of international law”.

‘Unlawful assembly’ zone

The ban comes amid protests in the city of Los Angeles against immigration raids, carried out as part of Trump’s hardline policy.

Over the weekend, Trump ordered the deployment of 2,000 members of the National Guard to Los Angeles County to quell the protests, bypassing the authority of the governor of California and sending tensions spiking.

Thousands of protesters flooded the streets in response on Sunday, blocking a major freeway and setting fire to cars.

Law enforcement responded with tear gas, rubber bullets and flashbangs in an effort to disperse the crowds.

Early on Monday, authorities declared downtown Los Angeles an “unlawful assembly” zone and ordered the area cleared.

California Governor Gavin Newsom has formally requested that the Trump administration rescind the order deploying National Guard troops to the city.

The order is believed to be the first time in 60 years that a president has deployed a state’s National Guard without the governor’s consent.

The last instance was in 1965, when President Lyndon B Johnson used troops to protect predominantly Black demonstrators during the civil rights movement in Alabama.

Thousands of protesters have clashed with authorities as they took to the streets of Los Angeles for a third night in response to United States President Donald Trump’s extraordinary deployment of the National Guard.

Sunday’s protests in Los Angeles, a sprawling city of 4 million people, were centred in several blocks of the city centre. It was the third and most intense day of demonstrations against Trump’s immigration crackdown in the region, as the arrival of about 300 National Guard troops spurred anger and fear among many residents.

The troops were deployed specifically to protect federal buildings, including the Metropolitan Detention Center where protesters concentrated.

The crowds blocked a major highway and set fire to self-driving cars. The authorities used tear gas, rubber bullets and flashbangs.

Governor Gavin Newsom requested Trump remove the National Guard in a letter, calling their deployment a “serious breach of state sovereignty”.

It was the first time in decades that a state’s National Guard was activated without a request from its governor, a significant escalation against those who have sought to hinder the administration’s mass deportation efforts.

The arrival of the National Guard followed two days of protests, which began on Friday in central Los Angeles before spreading on Saturday to Paramount, a heavily Latino city to the south, and neighbouring Compton.

Federal agents arrested immigrants in LA’s fashion district, in a Home Depot car park and at several other locations on Friday.

The next day, they were staging at a Department of Homeland Security office near another Home Depot in Paramount, which drew out protesters who suspected another raid. Federal authorities later said there was no enforcement activity at that Home Depot.

The weeklong tally of immigrant arrests in the LA area climbed above 100, federal authorities said. Many more were arrested whilst protesting, including a prominent union leader who was accused of impeding law enforcement.