Video shows Israeli drones launching intense airstrikes in southern Lebanon on Thursday. At least one person was killed in the town of Toura. Israel said it was targeting Hezbollah sites despite a ceasefire agreed to with the group last year.
A United States judge in Texas has approved the Department of Justice’s request to dismiss a criminal case against Boeing despite his objections to the decision.
On Thursday, Judge Reed O’Connor of the US District Court in Fort Worth dismissed the case, which will allow the plane maker to avoid prosecution over charges related to two deadly 737 MAX crashes: the 2018 Lion Air crash in Indonesia and the 2019 Ethiopian Airlines crash.
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O’Connor said he disagreed with the Justice Department’s argument that ending the case served the public interest, noting that he lacked the authority to overrule it.
The government argued Boeing has improved, and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is providing enhanced oversight. Boeing and the government argued O’Connor had no choice but to dismiss the case.
He said the deal with the aerospace giant “fails to secure the necessary accountability to ensure the safety of the flying public”.
In September, O’Connor held a three-hour hearing to consider objections to the deal, questioning the government’s decision to drop a requirement that Boeing face oversight from an independent monitor for three years and instead hire a compliance consultant.
O’Connor said the government’s position is “Boeing committed crimes sufficient to justify prosecution, failed to remedy its fraudulent behaviour on its own during the [deferred prosecution agreement], which justified a guilty plea and the imposition of an independent monitor, but now Boeing will remedy that dangerous culture by retaining a consultant of its own choosing”.
The DOJ first criminally charged Boeing for the crashes in January 2021, but also agreed to deferred prosecution in the case.
The plane maker was charged with one count of conspiracy to defraud the US. Courts found that Boeing deceived the FAA about what is called the manoeuvring characteristics augmentation system, which affects flight control systems on the aircraft.
“Boeing’s employees chose the path of profit over candor by concealing material information from the FAA concerning the operation of its 737 Max airplane and engaging in an effort to cover up their deception,” acting Assistant Attorney General David P Burns of the DOJ’s criminal division said in a statement at the time.
O’Connor said in 2023 that “Boeing’s crime may properly be considered the deadliest corporate crime in US history”.
Under the non-prosecution deal, Boeing agreed to pay an additional $444.5m into a crash victims’ fund to be divided evenly per victim of the two fatal 737 MAX crashes, on top of a new $243.6m fine and more than $455m to strengthen the company’s compliance, safety, and quality programmes.
This year is set to be among the hottest on record, sinking the world even deeper into the climate crisis and threatening “irreversible damage,” the United Nations says in a new report.
Years 2023, 2024 and 2025 are set to be the hottest years ever recorded, with this year on track to be the second or third hottest ever in 176 years of record keeping, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said in the report released on Thursday in advance of next week’s COP30 UN climate summit in Brazil.
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The UN report offered some stark observations, including warnings that concentrations of greenhouse gases have grown to new record highs, locking in more heat for the future, while the past 11 years, 2015 to 2025, will individually have been the 11 warmest years.
Together, these developments make “it clear that it will be virtually impossible to limit global warming to 1.5C [2.7F] in the next few years,” WMO chief Celeste Saulo said in a statement, referring to the 2015 Paris climate accords.
The legally binding pact limiting greenhouse gas emissions aimed to provide the world a roadmap for breaking away from fossil fuels that have powered the global economy since the Industrial Revolution and looked to limit global warming to well below 2C (3.6F) above pre-industrial levels, and to 1.5C if possible.
But the world has fallen short of its Paris obligations, with the WMO now saying limiting global heating to the goals of the 2015 agreement is virtually impossible.
“This unprecedented streak of high temperatures, combined with last year’s record increase in greenhouse gas levels, makes it clear that it will be virtually impossible to limit global warming to 1.5C in the next few years without temporarily overshooting this target,” Saulo said. “But the science is equally clear that it’s still entirely possible and essential to bring temperatures back down to 1.5C by the end of the century.”
In the report, the WMO said the mean near-surface temperature — about 2 metres (6 feet) above the ground — during the first eight months of this year stood at 1.42C (2.5F) above the pre-industrial average.
At the same time, concentrations of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and ocean heat content continued to rise this year, up from 2024’s already record levels.
In its annual report on Tuesday, the UN Environment Programme also confirmed that emissions of greenhouse gases increased by a further 2.3 percent last year, an increase driven by India, followed by China, Russia and Indonesia.
UN chief Antonio Guterres called the inability to limit the rise in global temperatures a “moral failure” on Thursday at the opening of a leaders’ summit in Brazil before COP30.
“Each year above 1.5 degrees will hammer economies, deepen inequalities and inflict irreversible damage. We must act now, at great speed and scale, to make the overshoot as small, as short, and as safe as possible – and bring temperatures back below 1.5C before the end of the century,” Guterres said.
The WMO said the impact of temperature rises can be seen in the Arctic sea ice extent, which, after the winter freeze this year, was the lowest ever recorded.
The Antarctic sea ice extent, meanwhile, tracked well below average throughout the year, it said.
The UN agency also highlighted numerous weather and climate-related extreme events during the first eight months of 2025, from devastating flooding to brutal heat and wildfires, with “cascading impacts on lives, livelihoods and food systems”.
In this context, the WMO hailed “significant advances” in multi-hazard early warning systems, which it stressed were “more crucial than ever”.
Since 2015, it said, the number of countries reporting such systems had more than doubled, from 56 to 119.
It hailed in particular progress among the world’s least developed countries and small island developing states, which showed a 5 percent rise in access in the past year alone.
However, it lamented that 40 percent of the world’s countries still have no such early warning systems.
“Urgent action is needed to close these remaining gaps,” it said.
Heavy flooding in Talisay City, Cebu has destroyed homes after Typhoon Kalmaegi dumped a month’s worth of rain. One person died in a low-income area that evacuated early, while dozens may be trapped in a nearby subdivision where residents did not leave. Al Jazeera’s Barnaby Lo is there.
A 16-year-old Palestinian girl in Gaza is using art as an outlet for her trauma and grief from Israel’s war, drawing anime cartoons of the suffering she and others have experienced.
