South Korea threatens military response to North Korean ‘trash balloons’
(LONDON) — South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said Monday that Seoul may respond militarily to any casualties caused by North Korea’s launching of so-called “trash balloons” across the shared border, the state media Yonhap News Agency reported.
“North Korea’s gray zone provocations are continuing and are causing inconvenience and anxiety to the public, so we have summarized the military’s position to date and delivered a message,” Lee Sung-joon, a spokesperson for South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, said, as quoted by Yonhap.
“This is an internationally shameful and petty act that creates discomfort and anxiety among our people and is a low-level act intended to incite conflict.”
Though there were “no issues” so far that warranted a military response, Seoul would consider a military response if there were direct casualties caused by the North Korean balloons, Lee added.
“If North Korea’s continued trash balloons are judged to pose a serious threat to the safety of our citizens or to have crossed the line, the military will take stern military action,” he continued.
North Korea launched a total of 5,500 trash balloons at South Korea on 22 occasions from May 28 to Sept. 23, Lee said.
Approximately 120 of these were launched on Sunday and Monday, the Joint Chiefs of Staff said.
“Some are demanding physical responses from the military, such as shooting them down in the air,” the Joint Chiefs of Staff continued, according to Yonhap. “However, if unexpected hazardous materials are dispersed due to shooting them down in the air, it could pose a bigger problem to the safety of our citizens.”
Takeoffs and landings at Incheon International Airport — the main airport in the capital Seoul — were suspended twice during the early morning hours of Monday due to North Korean balloons, Yonhap reported.
Several fires have also been reported in metropolitan areas believed caused by “heat timers” attached to the balloons.
Household waste items like paper, vinyl and plastic bottles are among the confirmed contents, the South Korean military said. So far, no hazardous materials were identified. Some trash balloons carried manure.
Seoul estimated that North Korea spent 550 million won — around $411,600 — to produce the balloons to date, Yonhap reported.
South Korean civic groups also send balloons into North Korean territory, often carrying rice, essential medicine and leaflets critical of the regime in Pyongyang. North Korea has repeatedly protested such action and threatened a response.
(NEW YORK) — Conservationists in Latin America, home to some of the most important ecosystems in the world, are persisting in their environmental work despite political challenges that can sometimes stand in the way and the dangers they face, multiple experts told ABC News.
Central and South American countries are facing some of the most significant environmental challenges in recent history. Drought is widespread throughout the region — especially in Uruguay, northern Argentina and southern Brazil, according to a 2023 report by the Global Drought Observatory.
In Mexico, water pollution adversely impacts indigenous groups, according to a 2021 paper published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. In Brazil, deforestation, in the form of illegal logging as well as land clearing for agriculture, is widespread, according to the World Meteorological Organization.
Fire activity in Brazil and Bolivia has reached levels not seen in over a decade as a prolonged drought parched landscapes in both countries, according to NASA’s Earth Observatory. The Amazon rainforest, the Cerrado tropical savanna and the Pantanal wetlands are currently experiencing record-breaking wildfires as a result of these conditions, according to officials in that country.
The lives of conservationists working in Latin America are often in danger as they work to alleviate these crises, Isaac Nahon-Serfaty, a communications professor at Ottawa University who has studied mining in southern Venezuela, told ABC News.
In 2023, nearly 200 land and environmental conservationists were killed worldwide, according to a report by Global Witness, an international NGO that fights against natural resource exploitation, conflict, poverty, corruption and human rights abuses. The vast majority of the deaths — about 85% — occurred in Latin American countries, mostly in Colombia, Brazil and Mexico, the report found.
Many conservationists will avoid working in high-conflict areas due to the danger, Mauricio Bianco, vice president of Conservation International Brazil, an environmental nonprofit, told ABC News.
In Venezuela, speaking out against Nicolás Maduro, who has served as president since 2013, can bring severe consequences, Nahon-Serfaty claimed.
Virgilio Trujillo Arana, a 38-year-old Indigenous Uwottuja man who had spoken out against illegal mining in the Venezuelan Amazon, was fatally shot in 2022. While unsolved, the murder was seen as an attempt to silence those who demonstrate against Maduro’s agenda, Nahon-Serfaty said.
Maduro’s administration did not comment on Arana’s death at the time, but the United Nations warned about the violent groups that control gold mines in the country.
The U.N. Fact-Finding Mission on Venezuela recommended that the allegations made by Indigenous peoples of the State of Amazonas regarding violent attacks against their leaders “should be seriously investigated.”
Environmental threats, meanwhile, not only affect the natural ecosystem. They also impact the watersheds and food systems and, therefore, the economy as well — making it difficult for residents in the region to thrive, Rachael Garrett, a professor of conservation and development at the University of Cambridge, told ABC News.
“It’s a huge public health toll on people living in these areas. It’s devastating for biodiversity,” Garrett said. “So there is not really any part of life that it won’t impact.”
Researchers and conservationists are able to make the biggest difference before the loss occurs — before the drought sets in, the forests and the Indigenous peoples within are lost and the wildfires spark, Garrett said. The race against time motivates them, because the consequences can be irreversible in a short amount of time, she added.
“We can make a difference very quickly,” Garrett said. “We have to persist, because the consequences of not doing so are so catastrophic.”
Conservation groups have to focus on strengthening and protecting delicate ecosystems as well as Indigenous groups who are facing extinction — before the tipping point occurs, Bianco said.
These groups must also prioritize the restoration of forests and the management of agricultural land in a sustainable way, he said.
While government involvement is necessary for policy change, conservation groups in Latin America have learned to lean on Indigenous and local communities as well as grassroots organizations to accomplish their work at the project level, according to Bianco.
Even with government protections and policy in place, a sense of “lawlessness” makes it nearly impossible for them to be enforced, Garrett said. It has been difficult to track progress in these regions due to a lack of transparency, as governments in places like Brazil and Venezuela often do not release any or accurate information on the state of the environment, according to Garrett and Nahon-Serfaty.
Environmental crime is the third-largest area of criminal activity in the world, according to the FBI. Illegal activity associated with timber and wildlife trafficking, fishing, waste trade, pollution and animal cruelty generate up to $280 billion per year worldwide.
Earlier this week, Brazil’s Minister for the Environment and Climate Change Marina Silva said current punishments for environmental crimes such as arson are inadequate during an appearance on Bom Dia Ministro, a publish service program. Lula’s administration has advocated for harsher punishment for environmental crimes.
Some governments in Latin America have displayed a disdain for protecting the environment in recent years, multiple experts told ABC News.
Multiple times during the administration of Jair Bolsonaro, who served as president of Brazil from 2019 to 2022, key government officials were caught on tape talking about the ways in which they planned to deceive the public, Garrett said. In 2020, Brazilian Environment Minister Ricardo Salles was recorded during a cabinet meeting advising fellow lawmakers to use the COVID-19 pandemic as a distraction from regulations protecting the Amazon rainforest from deforestation, according to Reuters.
“We need to make an effort while we are in this calm moment in terms of press coverage, because they are only talking about COVID, and push through and change all the rules and simplify norms,” Salles was heard saying in the recording of the ministers’ meeting, released by the Brazilian Supreme Court.
In a statement issued by Brazil’s Environment Ministry, Salles said, “I have always defended de-bureaucratization and simplifying norms, in all areas, with good sense and all within the law.”
“It’s part of this whole general new set of rules that politicians play by these days where they feel like there are no consequences for doing the wrong thing,” Garrett said in regard to the Bosolnaro administration’s pro-deforestation agenda.
Salles resigned in 2021 amid a probe into illegal logging in the country. It is unclear whether Salles has or will face legal consequences in the probe.
In Venezuela, initiatives to mine for gold, diamonds and other minerals in the southern part of the country, made first by former President Hugo Chávez and reinforced by Maduro, wreaked havoc on the Venezuelan side of the Amazonian jungle, said Nahon-Serfaty. To the north, oil spills into the Caribbean Sea are common due to the lack of regulations, he added, with a spill from the refinery in El Palito reported last month.
When corruption is embedded into a political system, it plays an invisible role in almost every decision those in power make, Garrett and Nahon-Serfaty said, especially when institutionalized through campaign financing systems and the individual agendas of the policymakers.
It can be near-impossible to pinpoint the root of the issue in these types of regimes, Garrett said.
“Corruption is one of this very insidious problems that is extremely difficult to deal with because you can’t study it,” Garrett said. “It’s hidden, and it can be institutionalized.”
It will be important for governments and authorities in Latin America to enforce environmental policies going forward, Bianco said.
The global spotlight will be on Brazil going into next year as it gears up to host COP30, the 2025 United Nations Climate Change Conference.
Brazil was one of the countries with the weakest decarbonization pledges, going into COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland, in 2021. The country has since ramped up its pledges under Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s presidency in the years since, with new climate targets aiming to cut emissions by 48% by 2025 and 53% by 2030.
In Mexico, the use of environmental technologies to improve water and waste infrastructure is expected to grow in the coming years to ease the strain of drought. The country is also implementing federal regulations to reduce methane emissions from the oil and gas sector.
Those doing the work to achieve even more ambitious climate and environment goals must continue, despite the difficulties, Garrett said.
The Amazon creates an entire ecosystem of rainfall that much of southern Brazil and surrounding countries rely on, Garrett said. As deforestation creates a feedback loop of decreased rainfall and increased drought, the water system is threatened and the risk of severe wildfires heightens, driving indigenous communities out and placing food and water security at risk for all who rely on it.
“I can’t think of any better way to spend my own life than trying to help prevent these irreversible harms that will take away from the world of opportunities that future generations have to experience a healthy climate and biodiversity,” Garrett said.
(NEW YORK) — Israel’s war in Gaza has hit another grim milestone after the Hamas-run Health Ministry in the strip declared that the death toll had passed 40,000 since the start of the war on Oct. 8.
On Thursday officials in Gaza said a total of 40,005 people had been killed in the conflict.
That figure does not distinguish between civilians and combatants. However, Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry said there were more than 11,000 women and more than 16,000 children among the dead.
Israel launched its war in Gaza on Oct. 8, the day after Hamas carried out a surprise terror attack in southern Israel, killing around 1,200 people, including women and children.
The true death toll in Gaza, after more than 10 months of war, could be significantly higher than the Health Ministry’s figure because officials in Gaza estimate that an additional 10,000 people in Gaza are unaccounted for because of the war.
Casey Harrity from Wyoming, who is working in Gaza for the non-governmental organization Save the Children, agrees that the true death toll from the war is “far higher.”
Harrity, who is the NGO’s Team Lead in the strip, said Israel’s military operations over the past 10 months had “squeezed” the population of Gaza “into an incredibly small area.”
In recent days, the IDF has been dropping leaflets in the city of Khan Younis in the south of Gaza, warning civilians to relocate ahead of military operations. The Israel Defense Forces’ tactic of moving civilians has been commonplace throughout much of the war, meaning many Gazans have been displaced multiple times and much of the civilian population now lives in large encampments made up of tents.
“Every available part of land is taken up by tents,” Harrity told ABC News during a videolink interview from her office in Gaza.
“The population doesn’t have toilets. They don’t have running water. They’re living in incredibly dire situations. And we’re seeing outbreaks of disease in these shelters and camps. We’re seeing truly horrifying conditions,” she said.
Harrity said she hears “bombardments, every night” in Gaza. But she said she was “lucky” to be sleeping in a building.
“The vast majority of the population is living outside. They have nowhere safe to go,” she added.
ABC News also spoke to Ghada Al-Haddad, a Palestinian in Gaza working for British-based non-profit Oxfam.
She described how people in Gaza live in constant fear and families often congregate in the same place at night because they would rather be killed together than risk mourning the death of their loved ones.
“When you go to bed, you are not sure you are going to make it to the morning,” Al-Haddad said in an interview with ABC News.
U.N. schools in Gaza were deemed to be “safe spaces” where displaced Palestinian families could shelter.
However, the United Nations Human Rights Office said “at least” 21 schools in Gaza have been targeted by the IDF since early July.
The IDF has accused Hamas of “systematically” hiding and operating from within schools.
However, Al-Haddad said it was now clear that Gaza’s schools “are no longer safe.”
Both Harrity and Al-Haddad spoke of the suffering of Gaza’s children.
Al-Haddad, from British charity Oxfam, said many children in Gaza today are so used to the brutality of war that they can now distinguish between the noise of an Israeli airstrike or an Israeli artillery shell exploding.
She said many children have to walk miles to fetch water for their families or to find wood so they can make a fire to cook.
“This war is … very severe, very brutal and it doesn’t … come to an end,” said Al-Haddad.
Casey Harrity from Save the Children said innocent bystanders are constantly caught up in the crossfire of the war.
“Children are impacted more with their small bodies. When a blast like that goes off, they’re thrown farther, they’re thrown faster, their bones bend and break,” Harrity told ABC News.
“So children really are the largest victims in this war,” she added.
The IDF has said it takes multiple measures, like the use of high-precision weaponry and intelligence, to minimize civilian casualties.
(LONDON) — Russian missiles and drones again crisscrossed Ukrainian skies on Monday night in strikes that killed at least 44 people; 41 of whom died in an attack on a military college in Poltava.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed the strike on his official Telegram channel on Tuesday morning. According to “preliminary reports,” the president said, two ballistic missiles struck the Poltava Military Communications Institute and a nearby hospital, killing at least 41 people and injuring more than 180.
“I have ordered a full and prompt investigation into all the circumstances of what happened,” Zelenskyy said.
Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko wrote on Telegram that 25 people have so far been rescued at the attack site, 11 of whom were pulled from under rubble.
In total, Ukraine’s air force said on Telegram that Russia fired three Iskander ballistic missiles from occupied Crimea, one Kh-59/69 air-launched missile from Russia’s western Kursk region and 35 Iranian-made Shahed attack drones from two areas in Kursk and Crimea.
Ukrainian air defenses downed 27 drones, the air force said, with six more “lost.”
Ukraine’s Interior Ministry said that two people — a 38-year-old woman and her 8-year-old son — were killed in a strike on a hotel complex in the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia.
Two other members of the family — the father and a 13-year-old girl — were buried under rubble but later recovered. Both are in a “serious condition” and have been hospitalized, the ministry said.
Further north, in the city of Dnipro, one person was killed and at least six injured by a Russian missile attack, the Interior Ministry wrote on Telegram.
Ukraine’s air defense units were active overnight in Kyiv, Odesa, Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, Kherson, Poltava and the Chernihiv and Sumy regions, the air force said.
Russia’s intensifying long-range attacks on Ukrainian military, infrastructure and civilian targets have prompted Kyiv to push its Western partners — chief among them the U.S. — for permission to use Western weapons against airfields and launch sites within Russian borders.
Ukraine has scored notable successes within Russia with its own domestically produced drones and missiles, but Zelenskyy has repeatedly said Kyiv needs more advanced capabilities.
“The terrorist state must feel what war is,” the president said on Sunday. “To force Russia into peace, to move them from deceitful rhetoric about negotiations to taking steps to end the war, to clear our land of occupation and occupiers, we need effective tools.”
Following a deadly Russian guided bomb strike on the city of Kharkiv last week, Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address that such attacks can only be stopped “by striking Russian military airfields, their bases, and the logistics of Russian terror.”
“We talk about this every day with our partners,” he said. “We persuade. We present arguments.”
Curtailing Russia’s ability to strike from the air, Zelenskyy added, would be “a strong step to force Russia to seek an end to the war and a just peace.”