The International Court of Justice (ICJ), the principal judicial organ of the United Nations, commenced hearings Dec. 2 on the obligations of states concerning climate change. The oral proceedings are scheduled to run for nine days at the Peace Palace in The Hague, Netherlands.

The request for an advisory opinion from the ICJ was submitted in March 2023, following the unanimous adoption of Resolution 77/276 by the UN General Assembly. The resolution sought the court's guidance on the obligations of sates to "ensure the protection of the climate system…for present and future generations," and the legal implications of "acts and omissions [that] have caused significant harm to the climate system." The second question especially addresses the international community's legal responsibilities to small island developing States, which are disproportionately threatened by the adverse effects of climate change.

Thousands of exiled Russian dissidents and opposition figures held a multi-city mobilization against Putin's regime in several European capitals Nov. 17. The largest march was in Berlin, where speakers included Yulia Navalnaya, widow of martyred leader Alexei Navalny; Oleg Orlov, former director of the "liquidated" human rights organization Memorial; and Vladimir Kara-Murza and Ilya Yashin, recently freed from detention in a prisoner swap with the West. Participants carried the blue-and-white flag of the Russian opposition, as well as Ukrainian flags, while chanting "No to war" and "Putin is a killer" in Russian. (BBC News, RFE/RL)

Global carbon emissions from fossil fuels have hit a record high in 2024, with still no sign that they've peaked, according to a "carbon budget" assessment by the UK-based Global Carbon Project. The researchers found that burning of oil, gas and coal emitted 41.2 billion tons (37.4 billion metric tons) of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in 2024, a 0.8% increase over 2023. When added to emissions generated by land-use changes such as deforestation, a total of 45.8 billion tons (41.6 billion metric tons) of CO2 was emitted in 2024. At this rate, the researchers estimate there's a 50% chance that global warming will exceed the 1.5 Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) warming target set by the Paris Agreement within six years. The findings were published Nov. 13 in the journal Earth Systems Science Data. (LiveScience, DW)

Over 40 human rights groups have warned Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk against implementing his plan to temporarily suspend the right to claim asylum. Among the groups are Amnesty International, several asylum law organizations, and the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation. In an open letter on Oct. 14, the organizations stressed that the fundamental right to asylum is binding on Poland under international law, as the country has ratified the Geneva Convention, and under EU law as provided by Article 18 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights. Additionally, Article 56 of the Polish Constitution enshrines the right to asylum. Acknowledging that "[w]e live in difficult times of war and conflicts breaking out all over the world," the statement nonetheless asserted that fundamental rights, as the core values of Europe, are not subject to discussion or restriction.

The US ambassador to Japan did not attend this year's official commemoration of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki Aug. 9 in protest of the city's failure to invite Israel. Ambassador Rahm Emanuel said the event had been "politicized" by Nagasaki's decision to exclude the Jewish state. The embassy said Emanuel would honor the victims of the Nagasaki bombing at a ceremony at a Buddhist temple in Tokyo, and that a lower-ranking US official would attend the Nagasaki event. Five other G7 countries and the EU likewise said in a joint letter beforehand that they would send lower-ranked envoys instead of ambassadors to the ceremony. The letter said the exclusion "would result in placing Israel on the same level as countries such as Russia and Belarus," which were not invited to the ceremony for a third consecutive year. But Nagasaki Mayor Shiro Suzuki said his decision was unchanged.

European governments have reacted to a growing wave of direct-action protests by climate activists with heavy-handed policing, effectively criminalizing such campaigns, seeking to dissolve groups, and imposing restrictions on basic rights, Human Rights Watch charged in a July 22 statement. "This creates serious risks to environmental activism and civil society as a whole and undercuts vital efforts to address the climate crisis," the group found. 

A Russian military court on July 15 convicted a playwright and a theater director and sentenced them each to six years in prison over a play that was found to "justify terrorism." The judge found writer Svetlana Petriychuk and director Yevgeniya Berkovich, who had been in pre-trial detention since May 2023, guilty under Article 205.2 of the Russian Criminal Code. This provision makes the offense of "justifying terrorism" punishable by up to seven years imprisonment.

The Zionist propaganda machine continues to weaponize the accusation of anti-Semitism to delegitimize any effort to resist Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza. This increases rather than decreases the responsibility of activists to distinguish—and oppose—actual anti-Semitism. Yet in recent weeks, sectors of the activist response to the Gaza genocide in the United States have utterly surrendered to the most abject, undisguised, unambiguous anti-Semitism—playing right into the hands of the Zionist calumnies. Bill Weinberg discusses this difficult reality in Episode 231 of the CounterVortex podcast.