May 2023

Some 258 million people needed emergency food aid last year because of conflict, economic shocks and climate disasters, a U.N. report said Wednesday, a sharp rise from 193 million the previous year.   

“More than a quarter of a billion people are now facing acute levels of hunger, and some are on the brink of starvation. That’s unconscionable,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said.   

It was “a stinging indictment of humanity’s failure to make progress… to end hunger, and achieve food security and improved nutrition for all,” he said.   

More than 40% of those in serious need of food lived in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Nigeria and Yemen, the U.N. report said.   

“Conflicts and mass displacement continue to drive global hunger,” Guterres said.   

“Rising poverty, deepening inequalities, rampant underdevelopment, the climate crisis and natural disasters also contribute to food insecurity.”   

In 2022, 258 million people faced high levels of acute food insecurity in 58 countries or territories, up from 193 million in 53 countries the previous year, the report said.   

This overall figure has now increased for the fourth year in a row. 
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In a massive global crackdown on fentanyl trafficking on the darknet, U.S. law enforcement agencies and their international partners announced Tuesday the arrests of nearly 300 suspects and seizure of a large cache of drugs, cash, virtual currency and weapons.

The law enforcement action, part of a two-year-old program known as Operation SpecTor, spanned three continents and involved the collaboration of eight countries. It was part of a Justice Department initiative led by the FBI known as JCODE, which aims to dismantle darknet marketplaces that sell drugs and other illegal goods.

The Justice Department described the takedown as “the largest international law enforcement operation targeting fentanyl and opioid traffickers on the darknet.”

The operation netted 288 arrests, 850 kilograms of drugs, including 64 kilograms of fentanyl or fentanyl-laced narcotics, $53.4 million in cash and virtual currencies and 117 firearms.

The total number of arrests was the highest ever for any JCODE operation and more than double that of the largest previous law enforcement action, officials said.

The seizures were also larger than in any prior operation.

“Our message to criminals on the dark web is this, ‘You can try to hide in the furthest reaches of the internet, but the Justice Department will find you and hold you accountable for your crimes,’” Attorney General Merrick Garland said at a press conference in Washington.

Officials said they collaborated with law enforcement agencies in Austria, France, Germany, Netherlands, Poland, Brazil, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

The operation had an unusual public awareness component. For the first time, the FBI deployed agents around the country to “knock and talk” with numerous buyers of drugs on the darknet and to warn them about the dangers of their drug buys, FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate said.

The risks of buying drugs from the dark web are “far too real and far too prevalent, and users never know which pill may be their last,” Abbate said.

The FBI-led operation is part of a broader effort by U.S. law enforcement agencies to curb fentanyl trafficking.

Last month, the Justice Department announced charges against the Sinaloa Cartel, a notorious drug trafficking organization based in Sinaloa, Mexico, and its facilitators around the world.

Garland described the cartel’s fentanyl trafficking operation as “the largest, most violent, and most prolific” in the world.

The Sinaloa is one of two major Mexican cartels that dominate the U.S. fentanyl market. The other one is known as the Jalisco Cartel.

Officials say the cartels cook fentanyl using precursor chemicals imported from China.

The announcement comes at a time when the United States is grappling with an opioid overdose crisis that claimed more than 100,000 American lives in the 12-month period ending in August 2022.

Synthetic opioids such as fentanyl were behind more than two-thirds of the deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Law enforcement officials say drug traffickers are increasingly turning to the dark web to sell illegal drugs, often in exchange for cryptocurrency.

The Justice Department showcased several prosecutions executed previously as part of Operation SpecTor.

Anton Peck of Boca Raton, Florida, was sentenced to 16 years in prison in December 2022 for allegedly peddling drugs from various darknet markets under the name Syntropy. He and two co-conspirators received cryptocurrencies before mailing parcels containing fentanyl, heroin and methamphetamine to customers around the country.

Christopher Hampton of Cerritos, California, was charged in November 2022 with leading an organization that pushed millions of fake pills containing fentanyl and methamphetamine to thousands of customers on the darknet. Hampton operated on at least nine darknet marketplaces, according to court documents.

The alarming spike in fentanyl deaths has prompted Republican demands that the Biden administration label the cartels as foreign terrorist organizations and unleash the full force of the law against them.
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Widespread loneliness in the U.S. poses health risks as deadly as smoking a dozen cigarettes daily, costing the health industry billions of dollars annually, the U.S. surgeon general said Tuesday in declaring the latest public health epidemic.

About half of U.S. adults say they’ve experienced loneliness, Dr. Vivek Murthy said in a report from his office.

“We now know that loneliness is a common feeling that many people experience. It’s like hunger or thirst. It’s a feeling the body sends us when something we need for survival is missing,” Murthy told The Associated Press in an interview. “Millions of people in America are struggling in the shadows, and that’s not right. That’s why I issued this advisory to pull back the curtain on a struggle that too many people are experiencing.”

The declaration is intended to raise awareness around loneliness but won’t unlock federal funding or programming devoted to combatting the issue.

Research shows that Americans, who have become less engaged with worship houses, community organizations and even their own family members in recent decades, have steadily reported an increase in feelings of loneliness. The number of single households has also doubled over the last 60 years.

But the crisis deeply worsened when COVID-19 spread, prompting schools and workplaces to shut their doors and sending millions of Americans to isolate at home away from relatives or friends.

People culled their friend groups during the coronavirus pandemic and reduced time spent with those friends, the surgeon general’s report finds. Americans spent about 20 minutes a day in person with friends in 2020, down from 60 minutes daily nearly two decades earlier.

The loneliness epidemic is hitting young people, ages 15 to 24, especially hard. The age group reported a 70% drop in time spent with friends during the same period.

Loneliness increases the risk of premature death by nearly 30%, with the report revealing that those with poor social relationships also had a greater risk of stroke and heart disease. Isolation also elevates a person’s likelihood for experiencing depression, anxiety and dementia.

The surgeon general is calling on workplaces, schools, technology companies, community organizations, parents and other people to make changes that will boost the country’s connectedness. He advises people to join community groups and put down their phones when they’re catching up with friends; employers to think carefully about their remote work policies; and health systems to provide training for doctors to recognize the health risks of loneliness.

Technology has rapidly exacerbated the loneliness problem, with one study cited in the report finding that people who used social media for two hours or more daily were more than twice as likely to report feeling socially isolated than those who were on such apps for less than 30 minutes a day.

Murthy said social media is driving the increase in loneliness in particular. His report suggests that technology companies roll out protections for children especially around their social media behavior.

“There’s really no substitute for in-person interaction,” Murthy said. “As we shifted to use technology more and more for our communication, we lost out on a lot of that in-person interaction. How do we design technology that strengthens our relationships as opposed to weaken them?”
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The president of upcoming U.N. climate talks Sultan Al Jaber on Tuesday called on participants to drastically ramp up their use of renewable energy ahead of the key summit in the United Arab Emirates later this year.

The meeting in November needs “ambitious, transparent and accountable commitments from countries and businesses,” Al Jaber said in a speech at the opening of the Petersberg Climate Dialogue, a meeting of climate diplomats in Berlin.

“We will accelerate delivery in sectors like renewables that must triple capacity by 2030 and double it again by 2040,” he added.

The summit chief’s call echoes a key target laid out by the International Energy Agency.

Al Jaber had already raised the potential target at a closed-door meeting with G7 leaders in Japan last month.

While setting out a goal for faster renewables expansion, Al Jaber, who is also the chief executive of the UAE’s state oil company, did not call for a complete end to the use of fossil fuels.

Rather, the future COP28 chair said the focus must be on removing the emissions such fuels produce.

“We must be laser focused on phasing out fossil fuel emissions, while phasing up viable, affordable zero-carbon alternatives,” said Al Jaber.

Climate activists have criticized the decision to hold COP28 in the oil-rich UAE and the choice as COP president of Al Jaber, who also serves as the Gulf state’s minister of industry and advanced technology.

Climate fund

Al Jaber also used his speech to call on developed countries to deliver a long promised $100-billion climate package for developing countries.

“This is holding up progress. And as part of my outreach, I am requesting donor countries to provide a definitive assessment on the delivery of this commitment before COP28,” Al Jaber said.

In 2009, the chaotic UN climate summit in Copenhagen saw rich nations promise $100 billion a year by 2020 to the Global South, but last year the OECD said the amount delivered was still $17 billion short.

At the same time, the funding needed for developing countries to stop burning planet-heating fossil fuels and prepare for future climate disasters has already far outstripped that sum.

Campaigners are pushing for a redesign of the global financial architecture to help countries cope, as many emerging nations grapple with rising costs, soaring debts and extreme weather events.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, who is hosting the Petersberg dialogue, however, reported that the pledged sum may finally be close.

“The good news is we are on the way to finally reaching this $100 billion sum this year,” she said.

Protest group

Earlier this year, the UN’s climate expert panel said the world risks crossing the key 1.5-degree Celsius global warming limit in about a decade, urging a drastic reduction in planet-heating emissions.

While solar and wind power are already increasing dramatically, the UN report said that existing fossil fuel infrastructure will be enough to push the world beyond 1.5C, without the effective use of costly and emerging technology to capture and store the carbon pollution.

The meeting in Berlin came as the German capital was roiled by days of climate protests, with the action continuing Tuesday.

Campaigners from the Last Generation group have caused widespread disruption in the city by sticking themselves to the road surface to stop traffic and agitate for more climate protection.

Among other measures, Last Generation has called for the government to provide a “detailed plan” to meet the goal of a 1.5C-limit and introduce a general speed limit.

Representatives from the group met Germany’s Transport Minister Volker Wissing on Tuesday.

Wissing said on radio Deutschlandfunk that he was surprised the activists “make so few sensible suggestions for climate protection and at the same time act so radically.”
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