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The International Atomic Energy Agency board on Thursday passed a resolution demanding that Iran provide “full and prompt” cooperation including access to sensitive nuclear sites, but Tehran immediately rejected the measure.Long-simmering tensions with the UN nuclear watchdog flared anew after Israeli and US strikes on Iranian sites in June. UN inspectors have not had access to any of the damaged complex.IAEA chief Rafael Grossi on Wednesday renewed a call for Tehran to let inspectors into the key nuclear sites and the agency’s governing board passed a resolution proposed by the United States, Britain, France and Germany by 19 votes to three with 12 abstentions.The resolution “urges Iran to comply fully and without delay with its legal obligations” under existing UN Security Council resolutions “and to extend full and prompt cooperation to the IAEA, including by providing such information and access that the agency requests”.Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi condemned the vote.”With this action and disregard for Iran’s interactions and good will, these countries have tarnished the IAEA’s credibility and independence and are disrupting the process of interactions and cooperation between the agency and Iran,” said Araghchi in a foreign ministry statement.Araghchi on Wednesday refused to allow UN visits to the bombed sites, including the Natanz uranium enrichment plant and Fordo underground enrichment complex. “We only cooperate regarding nuclear facilities that have not been affected, in compliance with IAEA regulations,” he stated on Telegram.- Negative impact -Speaking after the vote, Iran’s envoy to the IAEA, Reza Najafi, also told AFP the resolution would have a “negative impact” on relations with the UN agency.”This resolution will not add anything to the current situation, will not be helpful, it is counter-productive,” Najafi said.Grossi said on Wednesday it would not be “logical” for a resolution to prompt less cooperation with his agency.The IAEA has called on Iran to let it verify its enriched uranium inventories, especially a study of the sensitive stockpile of highly enriched uranium that was “long overdue”, according to a confidential report seen by AFP.The IAEA has said Iran had some 44.9 kilogrammes of 60 percent enriched uranium when the Israel-Iran war began on June 13 — close to the 90 percent needed for a nuclear bomb and an increase of 32.3kg on May 17.According to the agency, Iran is the only country without nuclear weapons that enriches uranium to 60 percent. Western powers and Israel have long accused Iran of seeking to build a bomb. Iran denies the charge.”The stockpile of enriched uranium is still there, so we need to check on that,” Grossi said Wednesday.”We have performed a number of inspections, but we have not been able to go to the attack sites. I hope we will be able. Indeed, we have to go because this is part of Iran’s commitments,” Grossi added. “I hope we’ll be able to move in a constructive manner.” 

A 19-year-old Syrian went on trial in Berlin on Thursday over a knife attack on a Spanish tourist at the German capital’s Holocaust memorial days before February’s general election.The suspect, partially named as Wassim Al M., is accused of being a supporter of the Islamic State group who intended to “target a person of the Jewish faith”, according to the court.He allegedly approached the 30-year-old victim from behind among the concrete steles of the memorial and “inflicted a 14-centimetre-long (more than five-inch) cut to his throat with a knife”, the court said in a statement before the trial.The victim, who was visiting the memorial with two friends, was badly injured but managed to stagger out of the steles before collapsing in front of the memorial.A police officer told the court he was on duty outside the US embassy, near the memorial, when he heard people crying for the police.”I went over and saw the victim clutching his throat,” the officer said, recalling that a passer-by had phoned emergency services.”The attacked tourist turned pale and his eyes closed” while they were waiting for an ambulance, he said. Prosecutors told the court that Wassim Al M. had “internalised IS ideology, rejected the Western way of life, and was convinced that a holy war against infidels must be waged worldwide”.He shouted “Allahu akbar”, or God is the greatest, after the attack, the court was told.The suspect had travelled to Berlin from his home in the eastern city of Leipzig, according to the court, motivated by his support for IS and “driven by the escalation of the Middle East conflict”.- ‘Religious mission’ -Shortly before carrying out the attack, he allegedly sent a photo of himself to members of IS via a messaging service and offered his services as an IS member.Wassim Al M. “wanted to kill”, prosecutor Michael Neuhaus told AFP on the sidelines of the trial.”He had become radicalised in line with IS ideology…, believed he had a religious mission, wanted to send a message against liberal society and against Jews,” Neuhaus said.The suspect was arrested at the scene with blood stains on his hands. He was carrying a copy of the Koran and a prayer rug, police said at the time.The assault shocked Germany two days before February’s general election after a campaign centred heavily on immigration and security fuelled by a series of deadly stabbing and car ramming attacks carried out by migrants.Germany is home to around a million Syrians — many of whom arrived during the huge influx of refugees that peaked in 2015 under former chancellor Angela Merkel. Since the overthrow of president Bashar al-Assad in December, debate has grown heated around whether they should return to Syria.The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) in particular has called for them to go home, highlighting a recent spate of high-profile violent crimes.The government is in talks with Syria’s new Islamist-led government to resume deportations of violent criminals.

Marina El Khawand was 18 when she saw her home town of Beirut shattered by the giant 2020 port explosion and decided she needed to help.Today, at 24, she is among five laureates at Thursday’s Young Activists Summit awards at the UN in Geneva, and described how the trauma of that day spawned a movement that has helped provide free medication and consultation to thousands in need.”I needed to do something,” said Khawand, who was starting her second year of law school when the explosion ripped through large parts of Beirut.In the chaos of the blast, which claimed more than 220 lives, her family urged her to leave the country to continue her studies abroad.But she told AFP in an interview that she decided to volunteer at the explosion site for a few days before leaving.”I was traumatised… I walked between dead bodies, there was blood everywhere,” she said, describing feeling powerless — unable to offer much help.- ‘War zone’ -But one day she ventured alone to one of the heaviest hit neighbourhoods, Karantina, which was like “a war zone”, and went into a building in search of a sick, elderly woman who had refused to evacuate.Now a lawyer, Khawand recalls hesitating outside the door, fearful of what she might find inside.”I entered and I saw an old lady, pale and not moving,” she said, describing the relief she felt when she saw a slight movement in the woman’s chest.She noticed an empty medication distributor in the woman’s hand, and recognised it as the same asthma inhaler her mother used.Khawand quickly snapped a picture of the dosage and rushed to get a new one.But Lebanon’s healthcare system had taken a hit after the country’s economy went into free fall in 2019, plunging many into poverty and sparking medication shortages.She visited three pharmacies without any luck, shocked to find that such a common medication was so hard to come by. She thought: “This woman survived the explosion… I cannot accept that she will die because she doesn’t have her medication”.Her mother did not have the same dosage as the woman, so Khawand determined that her best shot was to post an appeal on Instagram.An influencer she had tagged called her two hours later to tell her she had secured 12 boxes. – ‘Health beyond borders’ -“I was stunned,” Khawand said, describing her panicked rush to get the medication to the woman in time. After taking a few puffs on the inhaler, the woman gave Khawand “the most heartfelt hug”. “She whispers in my ear: Thank you for saving my life”, Khawand said, tears glistening in her eyes.”That sentence changed me,” she said, describing it as the moment she realised “my purpose in life would be to save lives”.After that experience, Khawand founded the Medonations non-profit aimed at providing free and equal medical assistance to vulnerable communities in Lebanon.Growing in the past five years to have collection points in over 65 countries, it says it has served more than 25,000 families across Lebanon with medical supplies and surgeries.Khawand’s team also provided oxygen machines during the Covid-19 pandemic, and during last year’s deadly war between Israel and Hezbollah, helped provide displaced people with sanitary products, diapers, and medication. She has also set up the Free HealthTech Clinic, with kits containing advanced AI-integrated devices enabling doctors to examine patients remotely, assess their prescriptions and adjust their medication.”The doctor can be in Switzerland, the patient can be in Lebanon, and they can see the vital signs in real time,” Khawand said.”It’s health beyond borders.”

Gaza health authorities said fresh Israeli air strikes killed four people Thursday as Qatar, a mediator of the weeks-long ceasefire, warned that renewed attacks threatened to undermine the fragile truce between Israel and Hamas.The new strikes came the morning after one of the deadliest days in the Gaza Strip since the truce came into effect on October 10, and after Israel launched a string of attacks targeting Hezbollah in Lebanon despite the nearly year-long ceasefire there.The Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis in southern Gaza said four people were killed in the strikes early Thursday, after the territory’s civil defence agency, which operates under Hamas authority, gave a lower toll of three dead.The hospital said three from one family, including a one-year-old girl, were killed in a strike on a house east of Khan Yunis and one more person was killed in an air strike on the town of Abasan al-Kabira, also east of Khan Yunis.A source at Gaza’s Hamas-run interior ministry, who did not wish to be identified, said artillery fire was continuing in the Khan Yunis area.Qatar, a key mediator in the Hamas-Israel war, condemned what it called the “brutal” Israeli air strikes, saying they were “a dangerous escalation that threatens to undermine the ceasefire agreement”.Gazans voiced despair at the fresh wave of attacks, saying it felt on the ground like the two-year war was continuing.”We are worried about the war returning. The sound of artillery shelling and explosions from the demolition operations east of Gaza was terrifying last night,” Lina Kuraz, 33, from the Tuffah neighbourhood, east of Gaza City, told AFP.”My daughter kept asking me all night, ‘Will the war come back?’. Every time we try to regain hope, the shelling starts again. When will this nightmare end?”- ‘The war hasn’t ended’ -The so-called yellow line demarcates the boundary inside the Gaza Strip that Israeli troops have withdrawn behind, as part of the US-brokered ceasefire.”We are aware of a strike east of the yellow line that was done to dismantle terror infrastructures,” the Israeli military told AFP.”We’re not aware of the reported casualties. It’s part of the regular IDF (Israeli military) operations east of the yellow line.”Israel has carried out repeated strikes against what it says are Hamas targets during the ceasefire, resulting in the death of more than 312 Palestinians, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.Wednesday’s Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip left 27 dead, according to the civil defence agency.”The war hasn’t ended. Nothing has really changed,” said Mohammed Hamdouna, 36, who was displaced from northern Gaza to a tent in Al-Mawasi, west of Khan Yunis.”The intensity of the death toll has decreased, but martyrs and shelling happen every day. We are still living in tents. The cities are rubble, the crossings are still closed, and all the basic necessities of life are still lacking,” he told AFP.- Hamas appeals to mediators -Hamas urged US President Donald Trump and other international mediators of the weeks-long truce to put pressure on Israel to stop its attacks.”This violation requires serious and effective action from the mediators to pressure (Israel) to stop these violations and uphold the ceasefire agreement,” Hazem Qassem, a spokesman for the Islamist movement, told AFP in Gaza City.”The occupation is acting with blatant disregard to the mediators’ efforts,” he said.The war was sparked by Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,221 people.Israel’s retaliatory assault on Gaza has killed at least 69,546 people, according to figures from the health ministry that the UN considers reliable.Israel also conducted several strikes in southern Lebanon on Wednesday.The military said it targeted Hezbollah weapons storage facilities in several towns, and accused the Iran-backed group of trying to rebuild its capabilities.Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday also drew a rebuke from Damascus and others in the region after visiting Israeli troops deployed in a buffer zone inside Syria.

When Liberia’s government signed an agreement with a little-known Dubai company run by a royal sheikh in 2023, the “carbon credit” deal promised to protect vast tracts of forests and offset big polluters’ emissions.It was one of a flurry of deals UAE-based Blue Carbon signed that year covering millions of hectares of forests across Africa from Liberia to Zimbabwe -– in one case amounting to a fifth of a country’s landmass. African governments would safeguard forests for a share of revenues from carbon credit sales, benefits for communities and help fighting deforestation. It was promoted as a win-win. But more two years on, Liberia’s Blue Carbon deal has stalled. Other accords across Africa and elsewhere have also gone nowhere, while the UAE company itself appears to have fallen silent, according to a joint investigation by AFP and Code for Africa, an investigative organisation.”It was stopped,” Elijah Whapoe, Liberia’s National Climate Change Steering Committee (NCCSC) coordinator, told AFP when asked about the status of the Blue Carbon agreement. “As we speak, there is no attempt to my knowledge, anything, about trying to resuscitate it.”Blue Carbon’s Africa venture highlights the complexity of delivering on carbon credits, schemes that still lack oversight and are often criticized for offering large polluters a chance to “greenwash” emissions with little or no impact on climate change.Carbon credits or offsetting allow greenhouse gas producers to “cancel out” some of their emissions by investing in projects that prevent or reduce carbon dioxide production. Forests store huge amounts of carbon dioxide, and protecting them prevents the planet-warming gas from being released.Most of the Africa agreements were signed before or on the sidelines of the COP28 summit in the United Arab Emirates in 2023. Blue Carbon’s Chairman Sheikh Ahmed Dalmook Al Maktoum, a member of Dubai’s royal family, was often present.Blue Carbon presented them as a model for carbon trading under the Article 6 of the United Nations climate agreement that was signed in Paris in 2015 and sets the rules for how countries can trade carbon credits.  Blue Carbon also said its work would help the United Arab Emirates achieve its carbon reduction goals, according to a company statement released when it launched in October 2022. For environmentalists, Blue Carbon’s Africa agreements were at best mismatched with local realities. At worst, critics say, they were a means to allow oil-producer the UAE to earn “green” credentials before hosting the COP28 summit.Under Liberia’s deal, approximately one million hectares of forests -– around 10 percent of the country’s landmass — would be protected, local communities engaged and the government rewarded 30 percent of revenues in a deal for sustainable forest management, according to a Blue Carbon statement and a preliminary copy of the Memorandum of Understanding seen by AFP.Like Liberia’s deal, other Africa accords were so-called REDD+ frameworks where some developing countries can receive financing for reducing emissions by stopping deforestation.But Blue Carbon’s Liberia agreement soon ran into a barrage of criticism from activists and environmentalists who said the deals would trample over local community ownership agreements, undermine existing legal rights and offer little transparency.Saskia Ozinga, the founder of Fern, an organisation working to protect forests and their communities, said the Blue Carbon deals in Africa were unprecedented in scale, unclear about how they would protect forests and lacked consultations with communities.”Blue Carbon was clearly aimed to greenwash,” she said. “It was a bizarre idea from many different perspectives, which would have never worked for the climate, for forests and for people.”- Deals across Africa -One of Blue Carbon’s initial agreements on the continent was in March 2023 with Tanzania to help “preserve and manage its 8 million hectares of forest reserves,” according to a Blue Carbon statement.With Zambia, it covered 8 million hectares while Zimbabwe’s agreement involved 7.5 million hectares that would generate “profound benefits for local communities”, according to company statements on social media. Blue Carbon inked another deal with Kenya and with Nigeria’s north central Niger state.Soon after Liberia’s finance minister Samuel Tweah signed, a United Nations agency and local NGOs urged the government to reconsider the Blue Carbon deal because of the risks of legal challenges and other concerns.A letter from the UN Resident Coordinator and the Coordinating Partners Group dated August 2023 sent to Tweah warned of “serious and credible concerns that the concessions arrangement conflicts with existing community and individual land rights,” it said.Vincent Willie, a former lawmaker and chairman of a committee for natural resources and environment, said Blue Carbon had made initial proposals, but that amounted only to signing the non-binding MOU.”As far as I am concerned that is the only place the government stopped,” he told AFP of the MOU.Whapoe, the head of Liberia’s climate change secretariat, said the Blue Carbon deal was halted because it had not been “consistent” with how carbon deals are meant to be managed, including more local input.Outreach to communities was started, but James G. Otto, a Liberian activist from the River Cess region, said visits by government agencies and civil society organisations left the community with more questions.”They say and insist that any agreement on the use of their land and forest resources should be directly driven by them,” Otto told AFP. “As far as our information gathering is concerned, there has been no formal work initiated under the Blue Carbon deal.”- Africa and beyond -Other Blue Carbon programmes appear to have gone little further, according to activists and officials who spoke to AFP.Blue Carbon hailed the Zimbabwe deal, which was to cover about 20 percent of the country’s landmass, as a “historic achievement for climate action”. But Zimbabwe’s deal was only an expression of interest, and implementation still requires a formal project, said Washington Zhakata, Zimbabwe’s director for climate change.”Blue Carbon has yet to submit its project idea note. Nonetheless, the company has already applied for an account on the Zimbabwe Carbon Registry,” Zhakata said.Douty Chibamba, Zambia’s Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Green Economy and Environment, also told AFP nothing came of his nation’s Blue Carbon agreement.”The MOU lapsed without any action,” he said.Kenyan and Tanzanian officials did not respond to requests for details. Another high-profile Blue Carbon deal outside of the continent has appeared to meet a similar fate.Papua New Guinea signed an MOU with Blue Carbon in 2023 on the sidelines of the COP28 in Dubai. Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape’s office said then his nation’s “vast mangrove areas” could be harnessed.However, Papua New Guinea’s Climate Change Authority told AFP in July the agreement had “not progressed at all”. To sell the planned PNG carbon credits, Blue Carbon partnered with Singapore-based AirCarbon Exchange as its “preferred platform”. But this agreement, too, has gone nowhere.”Our MOU with the Dubai company ‘Blue Carbon’, signed in 2023, has since lapsed,” an AirCarbon Exchange spokesperson in a statement to AFP. “There has been no active engagement between the parties.”- ‘Hot air’ –Today, the company appears to have no global registration and no operational footprint in any recognised global carbon market system, according to a digital investigation by Code for Africa, a South Africa-based operation whose iLAB is Africa’s largest forensic data investigation unit.Code for Africa found no trace of Blue Carbon or its projects on the three main databases for global carbon credit certification, run by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and companies Verra and Gold Standard.And there was no sign of Blue Carbon having filed notifications of intent that are required under Article 6.4 of the Paris Agreement framework for new deals to go ahead.Blue Carbon’s publicity campaign has also evaporated.”Blue Carbon aims to be at the forefront of sustainable climate change investment,” the company said in an October 2022 statement announcing its launch that also explicitly linked its work to the UAE’s official greenhouse gas reduction strategy.”Blue Carbon will serve as an enabler of blue and green economy operational frameworks that will set the agenda for the implementation of international climate agreements as well as to contribute to the UAE Net Zero by 2050 strategic initiative.”During 2023, Blue Carbon also released statements and photos on its social media accounts showing African officials signing MOUs with the company’s leaders.But its Instagram account, which first posted in October 2022 to coincide with the company’s launch, has not had a new post since December 2023.Similarly, the company’s official X account, @BlueCarbonDxb, posted 27 times between October 18, 2022 and March 28, 2023, and has been inactive ever since. Its final post announced the signing with Liberia.Blue Carbon’s website no longer works, having gone offline between May and July 2025, according to archival records examined by Code for Africa’s iLab.  AFP attempted multiple ways to contact Blue Carbon, including emails to info@bluecarbon.ae and calls to a number for one of the company’s executives, but received no reply. An AFP journalist also visited the Blue Carbon address listed in the Liberia MOU in Dubai. A guard initially said Blue Carbon was based there. But later he said there was no Blue Carbon office, and advised the reporter needed an appointment. There was no Blue Carbon sign visible in the lobby.The UAE’s government did not respond to a request for comment.Carbon credit projects, particularly those involving forest protection, have frequently run into problems ranging from failing to protect designated forests to links with rights violations of local residents. Efforts are currently under way to improve oversight and regulation of crediting schemes.”There are a number of lessons emergent from Blue Carbon saga, chief among them the importance of robust standards related to the supply and use of carbon credits internationally,” said Injy Johnstone, research fellow in net-zero aligned offsetting at Oxford University.    “We need to see more transparency related to Article 6 transactions, concrete standards related to environmental integrity of the projects themselves and public accountability from both the supplier and end-user to ensure they do not vanish into ‘hot air’ as this one has.”This investigation was supported by insights from Code for Africa’s Anita Igbine, Eliud Akwei, Jacktone Momanyi, and Moffin Njoroge.