The Democratic Unionist party (DUP) is on track to lose three of its eight seats, which would leave Sinn Féin as the Northern Ireland party with most MPs.

The DUP lost the Lagan Valley seat vacated by its former leader, Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, who faces sexual offence charges, and suffered a stunning defeat in North Antrim where Ian Paisley lost a seat held by his family since 1970. It also lost South Antrim and had reduced majorities elsewhere.

The Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV), Ulster Unionists and Alliance were poised to take the DUP seats but the symbolic winner will be Sinn Féin which retained its seven seats and is on course to complete a hat-trick as the biggest party in local government, the Stormont assembly and Westminster.

The DUP leader, Gavin Robinson, fended off a challenge from Alliance’s Naomi Long in East Belfast but that could not conceal a devastating election for unionism’s biggest party.

Its record on Brexit and other missteps left it squeezed between moderate and hardline rivals.

In an astonishing reversal in North Antrim, Paisley, the son and namesake of the DUP’s late founder, came second to Jim Allister of the TUV, who blamed the DUP for post-Brexit checks on goods coming from Great Britain, which he said weakened Northern Ireland’s place in the UK.

June 20 (Reuters) - Hawaii on Thursday agreed to take action to decarbonize its transportation system by 2045 to settle a lawsuit by 13 young people alleging the U.S. state was violating their rights under its constitution with infrastructure that contributes to greenhouse gas emissions and climate change.

Democratic Governor Josh Green announced the "groundbreaking" settlement at a news conference attended by some of the activists and lawyers involved in the lawsuit, which they called the first-ever youth-led climate case seeking zero emissions in transportation.

They argued that the state had prioritized infrastructure projects such as highway construction and expansion that lock in the use of fossil fuels rather than focusing on projects that cut carbon emissions.

"We're addressing the impacts of climate change today, and needless to say, this is a priority because we know now that climate change is here," Green said. "It is not something that we're considering in an abstract way in the future."

The case had been set for trial on Monday. It would have been the second-ever trial in the United States of a lawsuit by young people who claim their futures and health are jeopardized by climate change and that a state's actions violated their rights.

As part of the settlement, Hawaii will develop a roadmap to achieve zero emissions for its ground, sea, and inner island air transportation systems by 2045, the year by which the state was already aiming to become carbon neutral.

The agreement, which can be enforced in court, calls for the creation of a volunteer youth council to advise the state's Department of Transportation, which committed to reworking its planning to prioritize reducing greenhouse gasses and creating a new unit dedicated to decarbonization.

The department also plans to dedicate at least $40 million to expanding the public electric vehicle charging network by 2030 and accelerate improvements to the state's pedestrian, bicycle and public transit networks.

Leinā'ala Ley, a lawyer for the youth activists at Earthjustice, said the "agreement gives Hawaii a boost in our race against climate disaster and offers a model of best practices that other jurisdictions can also implement."

The case is one of several by young environmental activists in the United States that broadly accuse governments of exacerbating climate change through policies that encourage or allow the extraction and burning of fossil fuels.

The young people, also represented by the nonprofit law firm Our Children's Trust, claim the policies violate their rights under U.S. or state constitutions.

The cases have raised novel legal claims and have been dismissed by several courts. But the young activists scored a major victory last year when the first such case went to trial in Montana.

In that case, a Montana judge concluded that the Republican-led state's policies prohibiting regulators from considering the impacts on climate change when approving fossil fuel projects violate the rights of young people.

The lawsuit against Hawaii was filed in 2022 and alleged the state Department of Transportation was operating a transportation system that ran afoul of state constitutional mandates and impaired their right to a life-sustaining climate.

The plaintiffs, ages 9 to 18 when the case was filed, argued that the state was violating a right guaranteed by the Hawaii Constitution to a clean and healthful environment and its constitutional duty to "conserve and protect Hawaii's natural beauty and all natural resources."

The state spent $3 million fighting the case and seeking its dismissal, arguing the zero emissions target and other state laws adopted by the state legislature promoting reduced carbon emissions were "aspirational" and could not form the basis of claiming the state was violating the young people's rights.

But Judge Jeffrey Crabtree in Honolulu rejected that argument in April 2023, saying the laws required timely planning and action to address climate change and that the state's inactions had already harmed the plaintiffs.

"Transportation emissions are increasing and will increase at the rate we are going," Crabtree said. "In other words, the alleged harms are not hypothetical or only in the future. They are current, ongoing, and getting worse."

WASHINGTON (AP) — A U.S. Navy submarine has arrived in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in a show of force as a fleet of Russian warships gather for planned military exercises in the Caribbean.

U.S. Southern Command said the USS Helena, a nuclear-powered fast attack submarine, pulled into the waters near the U.S. base in Cuba on Thursday, just a day after a Russian frigate, a nuclear-powered submarine, an oil tanker and a rescue tug crossed into Havana Bay after drills in the Atlantic Ocean.

The stop is part of a “routine port visit” as the submarine travels through Southern Command’s region, it said in a social media post.

Other U.S. ships also have been tracking and monitoring the Russian drills, which Pentagon officials say do not represent a threat to the United States.

“This is not a surprise. We’ve seen them do these type of port calls before,” Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said Wednesday when asked about the Russian drills. “We of course take it seriously, but these exercises don’t pose a threat to the United States.”

The exercises, however, come less than two weeks after President Joe Biden authorized Ukraine to use U.S.-provided weapons to strike inside Russia to protect Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city. Russian President Vladimir Putin then suggested his military could respond with “asymmetrical steps” elsewhere in the world.

Singh said it wouldn’t be a surprise to see more Russian activity around the United States in such global exercises. The drills are in international waters, and U.S. officials expect the Russian ships to remain in the region through the summer and possibly also stop in Venezuela.

Russia is a longtime ally of Venezuela and Cuba, and its warships and aircraft have periodically made forays into the Caribbean.

Russian ships have occasionally docked in Havana since 2008, when a group of Russian vessels entered Cuban waters in what state media described as the first such visit in almost two decades. In 2015, a reconnaissance and communications ship arrived unannounced in Havana a day before the start of discussions between U.S. and Cuban officials on the reopening of diplomatic relations.

Europe’s center of political gravity is veering to the right.

Center-right and far-right parties are set to take the largest number of seats in Sunday’s European Union election in the most populous nations: Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Poland.

France led the rightward lurch with such a crushing victory for the far-right National Rally that liberal President Emmanuel Macron dissolved France’s parliament and called an early election. Early projections suggested the National Rally would win 32 percent or more of the vote, more than twice that of the president’s party.

“The president of the Republic cannot remain deaf to the message sent this evening by the people of France,” National Rally’s President Jordan Bardella told his supporters at the Parc Floral in Paris.

In Germany, the center-right is cruising to a comfortable victory, with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) coming second and beating Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Socialists into third place.

Voters across 27 nations have voted over the past week to select 720 members of the European Parliament, who will serve over the next five years. Their first main role with be to approve or reject the main candidate for Europe’s top job: president of the European Commission.

In a Continent that has sought to exorcise the ghosts of fascism for eight decades, the scale of the presence of far-right will be one of the hottest topics of conversation.

Even though they are highly unlikely to be able to coordinate as a unified group inside the European Parliament — thanks to divisions on topics such as Russia — they will still be able to influence the overall direction of the EU, on everything from immigration to climate policies.

Collected together, the radical right parties would theoretically represent the second biggest bloc in the Parliament — being on track to come first in France and Italy, and second in Germany, the three biggest and most important countries in the 27-nation bloc.

The far-right is also expected to win in Hungary, and tie for first in terms of European Parliament seats in the Netherlands. The center-right was comfortably first in Greece and Bulgaria.

The single most ominous warning signal for the future of the EU is France, given the scale of the far right’s win over Macron. All eyes will now be on whether France’s populist wave can maintain its momentum through the impending parliamentary elections and on to presidential elections in 2027 — where a victory for far-right leader Marine Le Pen would threaten to throw the whole EU into turmoil.

The official winner of the evening looks set to be European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen whose center-right European People’s Party will still make up the single-biggest bloc in Parliament.

With early projections showing the EPP will secure about 181 out of the 720 seats in Parliament, the center right will be the dominant force but can hardly govern alone as it will be miles from an absolute majority in the chamber.

The main challenge for von der Leyen in the coming days and weeks will be whether she can strike a deal with the traditional centrist parties — the socialists and liberals — to build a majority of 361 or more in the Parliament.

“Today is a good day for [the] EPP. We won the European elections, my friends. We are the strongest party, we are the anchor of stability … Together with others we will build a bastion against the extremes from the left and from the right. We will stop them!”

Her supporters replied with chants of “Five more years.”

In all, the three big center groups look set to have about 400 seats. That means von der Leyen’s reapproval will go down to the wire, because she will be rejected if only about 10 percent of lawmakers from the main parties rebel against their party lines. The rebellion rate is normally higher.

This raises a big question of whether she will need to fish around for other allies, ranging from the Greens to Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing Brothers of Italy.

Von der Leyen’s center-right is quick to reject the xenophobia and euroskepticism of the far right, but it knows its voters share the same concerns on the cost of living, migration and a sense that Europe’s traditional core businesses — manufacturing and farming — are being strangled by green regulation.

Staking out its ground in the culture war over the EU’s identity, the EPP opened its EU election manifesto with its commitment to Europe’s “Judeo-Christian roots.”

More than two weeks have passed since the graduates’ commencement ceremony for 2024 at Harvard University, but Asmer Asrar Safi is still waiting to receive the degree for which he spent four years studying.

“The situation remains as is, unfortunately,” he tells Al Jazeera from Boston, United States.

Besides Safi, who is originally from Lahore, Pakistan, another 12 students find themselves in the same situation: they are all graduating students at one of the most prestigious educational institutions in the world but will not be awarded their degrees for at least one year.

Harvard Corporation, the university’s top governing body, barred these students from receiving their degrees during this year’s graduation ceremony on May 23 on account of their involvement in the three-week pro-Palestine encampment at the university last month.

“I am waiting for my appeals decision to come out,” 23-year-old Safi, an international student of social studies and ethnicity, migration and rights at Harvard College, says.

“I am a Rhodes Scholar and trying to ascertain if I can matriculate at the University of Oxford given that my Harvard degree has been withheld for a year, even though I have met all the academic conditions for my programme and have completed my degree requirements.”

Shraddha Joshi is another student who will not be able to receive her degree, despite having the backing of her faculty at Harvard College, where she was studying in the same programme as Safi.

“After having completed the appeal application on my end, we seem to be in a limbo as we wait for communication from the university. Students and faculty members are all quite confused by the ambiguity of the process, and the timeline for appeals is unclear,” she told Al Jazeera.

Born and raised in Texas, Joshi had been planning to pursue a master’s degree in sociology in the United Kingdom, but says her future is now uncertain.

“I was supposed to go to the University of Cambridge with the Harvard-UK Fellowship, but my plans are now in flux due to my degree status. The lack of transparency and poor communication from administrators make it difficult to predict what our next steps will look like,” she says.

Port Sudan, 6 June – The International Organization for Migration (IOM) is warning that the number of people displaced by conflict inside Sudan could top 10 million in the coming days. The world’s worst internal displacement crisis continues to escalate, with looming famine and disease adding to the havoc wrought by conflict.

IOM's Displacement Tracking Matrix, which issues weekly statistics, recorded 9.9 million people internally displaced across all 18 states in Sudan this week – 2.8 million prior to the April 2023 war, and 7.1 million since. More than half of all internally displaced persons (IDPs) are women, and over a quarter are children under the age of five.

“Imagine a city the size of London being displaced. That’s what it’s like, but it’s happening with the constant threat of crossfire, with famine, disease and brutal ethnic and gender-based violence,” said IOM Director General Amy Pope. “Humanitarian needs in Sudan are massive, acute and immediate, and yet only 19 per cent of the funds we have asked for have been delivered. Unified international efforts are required to avoid a looming famine.”

In total, some 12 million have been forced to flee their homes in Sudan, with more than 2 million crossing borders into neighbouring countries, principally to Chad, South Sudan, and Egypt.

After years of protracted crisis, full-scale civil war erupted in mid-April 2023 when fierce fighting between the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) broke out in the capital Khartoum, and quickly expanded across the huge country, home to nearly 50 million people.

The brutality and intensity of the war are relentless, with reports of grave violations of human rights including ethnic violence, rape and gang rape as tools of war. Seventy per cent of the people forced to move in Sudan are now trying to survive in places that are at risk of famine. Humanitarian access is patchy or non-existent. The upcoming rainy season will complicate this and may lead to climate-related disasters and the spread of disease.

Last week, the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC), the highest-level humanitarian coordination forum of the United Nations system, issued a stark warning that the situation in Sudan had reached catastrophic levels.

In Al Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, the intensifying conflict has left more than 800,000 civilians trapped in what the IASC called “a merciless onslaught of fighting and aerial bombardments.” Essential infrastructure, including health care, has collapsed. Prices of food, water and fuel have skyrocketed, making these basic essentials unaffordable.

“Crucial roads out of Al Fasher are blocked, preventing civilians from reaching safer areas, while at the same time limiting the amount of food and other humanitarian aid coming into the city,” added Othman Belbeisi, IOM’s Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa. “We join the United Nations in calling for an immediate end to the fighting and the guarantee of safe, unimpeded and sustained humanitarian access across the borders and across frontlines. Millions of lives depend on it.” 

UN to add Israeli army to blacklist of those who harm children in conflict, as more than 15,500 children killed in Gaza since October 7.

Gaza’s Health Ministry says 77 people have been killed and 221 were wounded in the enclave during the latest 24-hour reporting period.

Michigan’s health department announced Thursday a human case of bird flu in a dairy worker. It’s the third human case reported to date in the current U.S. avian flu outbreak among dairy cows.

Unlike the previous two cases which only involved eye infection, this patient has respiratory symptoms, according to a statement from Dr. Natasha Bagdasarian, chief medical executive with the Michigan health department. The patient had direct exposure to an infected cow and wasn’t wearing any personal protective equipment.

“This tells us that direct exposure to infected livestock poses a risk to humans,” said Bagdasarian.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a statement that its labs tested a sample from the Michigan patient and confirmed it was H5N1 bird flu. The patient had flu-like symptoms, including a cough and eye discomfort. The patient was treated with antivirals and is isolating at home. No other workers or household contacts of the patient have gotten sick so far.

The CDC said that risk to the general public remains low. Like the other two recent cases, this infection came from direct exposure to an infected animal. “There is no indication of person-to-person spread of A(H5N1) viruses at this time,” according to the CDC.

The CDC is monitoring data from influenza surveillance systems, and said “there has been no sign of unusual influenza activity in people.”

Nonetheless, scientists following the outbreak say this human case is troubling development.

“Our concerns about this outbreak are coming true,” says Dr. Rick Bright, a virologist and the former head of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA). “The longer the U.S. allows this outbreak to continue, without appropriate measures to stop it, without conducting testing in cows and people, more people will be at increased risk for exposure and infection.”

The Biden administration has decided to allow Ukraine to strike inside Russia with U.S.-made weapons with the aim of blunting Russia’s attacks in the Kharkiv area, senior American officials said on Thursday.

The decision follows weeks of discussion with the Ukrainians after Russia began a major assault on Kharkiv, the second-largest city in Ukraine.

Because Kharkiv is near Russia, in the northeast of Ukraine, the Russian military has been hitting the area around the city with artillery and missiles fired or launched from inside Russian territory, and the Ukrainians have asked the Americans to give them greater leeway in defending Kharkiv, an American official said.

The permission from President Biden is intended solely for Ukraine to strike military sites in Russia being used to attack the Kharkiv area, U.S. officials said.

A senior American official in Washington said the administration’s policy prohibiting Ukraine from using U.S.-made weapons for “long range” attacks inside Russia had not changed.

On Wednesday, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken told reporters traveling with him in Moldova that the United States would “adapt and adjust” to battlefield conditions. He was responding to a question about whether Mr. Biden would soon allow Ukraine to use American-made weapons to strike in Russia. It was a strong suggestion that the president was making the decision to give permission to Ukraine.

The leaders of NATO, France and Germany had recently urged the United States to make that decision. In internal administration discussions, Mr. Blinken has advocated moving in that direction. He is attending a NATO meeting in Prague on Thursday and Friday and visited Ukraine more than two weeks ago.

The decision by Mr. Biden was reported earlier on Thursday by Politico.

The Pentagon is charged with giving Ukraine the exact guidelines of what it can strike in Russia, U.S. officials said.

In addition to artillery and missile launchers, the Ukrainians are concerned about Russian aircraft releasing glide bombs at Kharkiv from inside Russian airspace. Glide bombs are simple munitions fitted with fins. Ukrainian officials say they want to use American-made weapons to attack Russian aircraft in Russia’s airspace and air bases inside Russia.

NEW DELHI, May 29 (Reuters) - Delhi recorded an all-time high temperature of 52.9 degrees Celsius (127.22 Fahrenheit) on Wednesday as extreme heat conditions gripped the north and western parts of India, causing students to faint in schools and drinking water taps to dry up.

A heat wave alert has been in place for large parts of India since last week but on Wednesday the temperature in Mungeshpur, a densely packed corner of Delhi, crossed the 50 C mark, the weather office said.

The Indian capital has had temperatures of over 45 C in previous years but never gone as high as 52.9 C.

Streets in Mungeshpur in northwest Delhi were deserted and most shops were shut as people stayed indoors to avoid the searing heat, while residents handed out free cold drinks in Narela after temperatures went up to 49.9 C on Tuesday.

"When we go outside it seems like someone is slapping our faces. It has become difficult to live in Delhi," said resident Akash Nirmal.

India Meteorological Department (IMD) said it is examining the data and sensors to look into Mungeshpur's temperature which was an outlier compared to other stations.

"There is so much heat in Delhi that students are fainting, some are falling sick, some are facing dehydration. The students are facing a lot of trouble in this heat. The fans don't work in our institutions," said Nidhi, a student, who gave only their first name.

An unusual transition from El Nino to La Nina and the lack of winds bringing moisture, has resulted in prolonged heating, leading to record temperatures, Gufran Beig, chair professor at the Indian Institute of Science told Reuters.

El Nino is the warming of Pacific waters that is typically accompanied by drier conditions over the Indian subcontinent while La Nina is characterised by unusually cold temperatures in the Pacific Ocean.

"We suspect that it is all associated with climate change," he told Reuters.

A spot of light rain in other parts of Delhi later on Wednesday brought some respite and weather officials expect the heat to ease later this week over northwest and central India.

India declares a heatwave when the maximum temperature is 4.5 degrees C to 6.4 degrees C higher than usual and a severe heat wave when it is 6.5 degrees C higher than normal or more.

Rose Brooks is now the first unionized domestic violence shelter in the state. Organizers say they hope the union helps stabilize an industry with high levels of burnout and turnover.

Workers at the Rose Brooks Center in Kansas City voted Thursday to become the first unionized domestic violence shelter in Missouri. More than two-thirds of eligible workers at one of Kansas City’s largest and oldest shelters opted to unionize with the Laborers Local 955.

The vote was 27-18, though shelter leadership has contested one ballot. The union includes workers who handle community programs, patient care, housing and economic services.

Maret Miller has been with Rose Brooks for about a decade, starting as a volunteer. She said the union effort began because shelter management did not respect workers’ insights on how to improve shelter operations.

“We're the ones answering the hotline 24/7,” Miller said. “We're the ones that are seeing people when they first come into the shelter. We are talking to survivors at the scene of a crime. We touch on a lot of different areas of the community and often those are in very stressful, dire situations.”

The 45 employees began their union campaign last year and petitioned to unionize in April.

I would like to submit at least the first two seasons of Twin Peaks for Hextube showings. Not sure if it’s been shown before but it’s definitely kino and I loooove just about everything David Lynch has done.

@wombat@hexbear.net

@Grebgreb@hexbear.net