Latest news bulletin | July 27th – Evening
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00:00 The UN chief makes a plea for action on climate change as he declares the era of global warming
00:05 has been replaced by global boiling.
00:10 More victims of wildfire sweeping across Europe and beyond, with Greece, Italy and Algeria
00:16 among the worst hit regions.
00:19 Niger's presidential guard detained democratically elected President Mohamed Basoum in an apparent
00:26 coup d`etat, triggering a standoff with the army.
00:33 After July broke records for the hottest ever month recorded, the United Nations Secretary
00:37 General has made an impassioned plea for urgent radical action to tackle global warming.
00:43 In a declaration from New York, Antonio Guterres described the current conditions as terrifying
00:49 and just the beginning.
00:52 The era of global warming has ended, the era of global boiling has arrived.
00:59 The air is unbreathable, the heat is unbearable and the level of fossil fuel profits and climate
01:06 inaction is unacceptable.
01:10 Guterres will host a climate ambition summit in New York in September in which he will
01:14 call on developed countries to become carbon neutral by 2040 or sooner and emerging economies
01:20 by 2050.
01:24 July 2023 is set to be a record breaker as the hottest month on record, possibly the
01:30 warmest in human history.
01:32 A few of the highs that have been set this month, we had 52.9 degrees Celsius in China,
01:39 48.2 degrees Celsius in Sardinia, 39.6 degrees at night in Algeria and sea temperatures of
01:47 37.2 degrees in Florida.
01:50 Now we have been building up to this for some time.
01:54 If we have a look at this graphic, then the black line shows daily global surface temperatures
01:59 this year since January and it's above average all year, building up to the peak that you
02:05 see there in July.
02:07 Now this new all-time record is actually the culmination of the heat waves we've seen on
02:12 land and also in the oceans.
02:14 Here's Samantha Burgess from the Copernicus Climate Change Service.
02:17 So all of this additional warm air and warm surface water is kind of feeding back on each
02:25 other so we're seeing record temperatures warmer than we've ever seen before.
02:30 You may have heard that 2023 will be warmer because the El Nino phenomenon is back in
02:36 the Pacific, part of a natural cycle on our planet.
02:39 But scientists say it's actually too early for that.
02:43 It's not El Nino yet.
02:45 So the expectation is that with El Nino developing right now, we will get warmer temperatures
02:52 to come.
02:53 And the expectation is that the temperatures for 2024 may be even warmer still.
02:58 Indeed, the seasonal forecast for the rest of the year does show continued above average
03:04 temperatures over land.
03:06 So what can we do?
03:07 Well, world leaders will have to act quickly at the G20 and COP28 summits in order to slash
03:13 emissions of CO2 and methane into the atmosphere as soon as possible.
03:18 Doing so will slow down the rate of warming but there's no instant remedy.
03:25 The heat and the weather extremes that we have been experiencing are with us for decades
03:29 to come.
03:34 The wave of wildfires sweeping across Greece has claimed two more lives.
03:38 The victims died as a result of a blaze in a mountainous area near Volos in the central
03:43 region of Thessaly.
03:45 The fire broke out on Wednesday, adding to the devastating blazes that have scorched
03:49 thousands of hectares on the islands of Rhodes, Corfu and Evia.
03:54 The Italian island of Sicily also continues to burn.
03:57 Hundreds of hectares of forest, numerous houses and parts of the electricity and water network
04:03 have already been destroyed.
04:05 Estimates of the costs so far amount to over 60 million euros.
04:09 And that's on top of an estimated 200 million euros the heatwave has cost the agricultural
04:14 sector.
04:15 Beyond Europe, wildfires are also hitting northern Africa.
04:19 The death toll in Algeria has risen to 40, with several more people critically injured
04:23 over the past four days.
04:25 Among the victims are dozens of military personnel.
04:28 Humanitarian aid has been sent to places affected, including Beja, one of the city's hardest
04:33 hit by the fires.
04:40 Supporters of Niger's President Mohamed Bazoum took to the streets of the capital Niamé
04:44 on Wednesday, shouting "No coup d`état" after members of the presidential guard detained
04:48 the democratically elected leader, triggering a standoff with the army.
04:53 Hours after the apparent coup, protesters tried to approach the presidential palace
04:57 where Bazoum was being held, but dispersed when guards fired warning shots at the crowd.
05:04 The African Union, France, the European Union and the U.S. have all condemned the action
05:09 and called for the release of the president and his family.
05:15 Soldiers from Niger, claiming to represent defense and security forces, announced on
05:19 national television they had overthrown the government, dissolved the constitution and
05:23 closed the borders.
05:25 Neighboring Benin's president is reportedly en route to mediate as a representative of
05:29 the West African economic bloc, ECOWAS.
05:32 "Even when what is not acceptable is done, we must be able to correct it in peace.
05:40 This is our first option.
05:42 We think it will be successful."
05:47 President Bazoum is one of a dwindling group of pro-Western leaders in the Sahel region.
05:52 He was elected two years ago in the nation's first peaceful democratic transfer of power
05:56 since its independence from France in 1960.
05:59 Bazoum has taken the helm of a country burdened by poverty and a history of chronic turmoil.
06:04 Threats to his leadership could undermine the West's efforts to stabilize the region.
06:14 As tributes flow for Sinead O'Connor, the gifted Irish singer-songwriter who died at
06:19 the age of 56.
06:26 Police say her body was discovered in her London home yesterday and they are not treating
06:30 her death as suspicious.
06:35 O'Connor became a superstar in her mid-twenties when her cover of Prince's ballad "Nothing
06:40 Compares to You" topped the charts from Europe to Australia.
06:55 As the Women's World Cup enters its second week, gender issues in sports persist.
07:02 Despite progress in recognition and visibility of female athletes, wage inequality remains
07:07 a major challenge.
07:08 "We are in huge wage inequalities.
07:12 The average salary of a WNBA player was 110 times lower than that of a male colleague
07:20 of the NBA.
07:21 We have a small overview of the inequalities."
07:24 "From the players that we surveyed, which were 362 players across six continents across
07:31 the world who played in the World Cup qualification pathways for the World Cup 2023, there were
07:38 huge disparities within the wages that players received to compete for their national team.
07:45 29% of players were not paid at all for this competition.
07:50 And that meant that 66% of players had to take unpaid leave or vacation from another
07:56 form of occupation in order to compete in the World Cup qualifiers."
08:01 Inequalities in the world of sports are not limited to income.
08:05 Training conditions for female players also require improvements.
08:08 Female athletes say they've received hand-me-downs from the men's team.
08:12 "We women often collect the tickets that stay with the boys.
08:16 All the equipment that stays with the boys, and which are for example too big or too small
08:21 with the boys, that's what we're going to get back.
08:24 So typically, I have girlfriends who played in the World Cup qualifiers not so long ago
08:28 and who got back the size 43 socks that stayed with the boys."
08:34 Discrimination also manifests through disparities in media coverage given to women's sports.
08:41 "We are still faced with huge inequalities between the dissemination of women's sport
08:49 and men's sport, while we see that there are studies that show that there is an interest
08:53 in the participation of viewers and that when channels finally spread and take this financial
08:59 risk, and also in terms of audience, they have results."
09:04 And public discrimination starts in the private sphere, with prejudice, intimidation and sexism.
09:11 "I have witnessed the ambient misogyny that reigns in this environment.
09:16 We only win 3-0 to the spectator.
09:19 The one who trains us is extremely unhappy with this score and ends up threatening us
09:25 with rape.
09:27 And he looks at us like that, one by one, pointing at us with his finger and he says to us,
09:33 'You want to do the bastards with me?
09:35 I'm going to fuck you all one by one.'"
09:37 (whooshing)