The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that the Swiss Government had violated the human rights of its citizens by failing to do enough to combat climate change. Reuters has more.

The European Court of Human Rights's (ECtHR) decision on the case brought by more than 2,000 elderly Swiss women set a precedent that will resonate across Europe and beyond for how courts deal with a growing trend of climate litigation.

But in a sign of the complexities of climate litigation, the court rejected two similar climate-related cases, one brought by a group of six Portuguese young people against 32 European governments and another by a former mayor of a low-lying French coastal town.

The Swiss women, known as KlimaSeniorinnen, argued their Government's climate inaction put them at risk of dying during heatwaves.

In her ruling, Court President Siofra O'Leary said the Swiss Government had failed to meet targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions and that there had been gaps in its domestic regulatory framework.

"It is clear that future generations are likely to bear an increasingly severe burden of the consequences of present failures and omissions to combat climate change," O'Leary said. ...

The cases before the 17-judge panel in Strasbourg, France, are among the increasing number of climate lawsuits brought by communities against governments that hinge on human rights law. ...

Global civic movement Avaaz said the court's Swiss ruling had opened a new chapter in climate litigation.

"(It) sets a crucial legally binding precedent serving as a blueprint for how to successfully sue your own government over climate failures," Ruth Delbaere, legal campaigns director at Avaaz, said.

The verdicts, which cannot be appealed, could compel the Swiss federal Government to take greater action on reducing emissions, including revising its 2030 emissions reductions targets to get in line with the Paris Agreement goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit).

Members of Gaza's small Christian community were among the thousands of civilians killed in the Palestinian enclave as a result of Washington's support for Israel in its war with Hamas, a pastor from Bethlehem has told journalist Tucker Carlson.

In an interview posted on X (formerly Twitter) by the former Fox News host on Tuesday, Reverend Munther Isaac of the Evangelical Lutheran Christian Church also criticized Christian leaders in the United States for failing to oppose the destruction in Gaza.

"One of the biggest problems we are facing right now is the deterioration of our [Christian community] numbers," Isaac told Carlson. "People keep leaving because of the political reality. Life under a very harsh Israeli military occupation is difficult to bear," he explained.

Palestinian Christians "are probably disproportionately affected by all of this because of our small numbers as a religious community. Anything that happens impacts us severely," the pastor said.

Washington is planning to bar US businesses and individuals from using software created by the Russian cybersecurity company Kaspersky Lab, CNN reported on Tuesday, citing unnamed government officials familiar with the matter. The move is seen as "unprecedented," as measures of the kind have never targeted private companies and citizens.

The comprehensive ban is currently being finalized and could be imposed as soon as this month, the sources told the news network. The new regulation would use "relatively new Commerce Department authorities built on executive orders" by Presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump to prohibit Kaspersky Lab from providing certain products and services in the country, they added.

According to the sources, the order is aimed at mitigating risks allegedly posed by Kaspersky's software to critical US infrastructure.

As part of preparatory works for the move, the US Department of Commerce has made an "initial determination" to ban certain transactions between the Russian cybersecurity company and US citizens, the sources added.

Moscow and Beijing are already playing more important roles in the Middle East and North Africa than ten years ago, and in another decade could rival Washington's influence in the region, according to a recent opinion poll.

The poll was conducted by Al-Monitor in partnership with data analytics firm Premise across Egypt, Türkiye, Iraq and Tunisia between March 4 and March 22, 2024, and questioned 2,670 respondents in the four states about their views on power dynamics in the region.

When asked which of the three world leaders they viewed "most favorably," some 44.4% chose Russian President Vladimir Putin, followed by Chinese President Xi Jinping with some 33.8%, while only 21.7% said they preferred US President Joe Biden.

Putin was seen more favorably across all four states, most of all in Egypt (51.6%). Biden was slightly more popular in Iraq (29.2%) of all states, but still polled third after Putin (35.5%) and Xi (35.3%).

Al-Monitor suggested that Washington's popularity suffered due to its support of Israel's war in Gaza, but noted that a multitude of other factors could be influencing opinions. The respondents were almost split on whether Washington (30%) or Moscow (28%) could "most successfully mediate political disagreements in the Middle East." However, over 40% agreed that the US was still "best equipped to help resolve the Israel-Hamas war," compared to Russia's 27.9% and China's 13.4%.

Fears are growing that the H5N1 outbreak among cattle in the United States could have been caused by contaminated animal feed.

In contrast to Britain and Europe, American farmers are still allowed to feed cattle and other farm animals ground-up waste from other animals including birds.

Dairy cows across six US states - and at least one farm worker - have become infected with the highly pathogenic virus, which has already killed millions of animals across the globe since 2021.

Saudi Arabia will downsize plans for its $500 billion NEOM linear city, The Line, as part of Mohammad bin Salman's (MbS) 2030 vision to diversify the oil-dependent economy.

By 2030, development was planned in stages to ultimately cover a stretch of 170 kilometers of coastal desert and house 1.5 million people.

However, an unnamed official told Bloomberg on 5 April that the project would be scaled back to 2.4 kilometers, with a reduced capacity of less than 300,000 residents.


"The pullback on The Line comes as the kingdom's sovereign wealth fund has yet to approve Neom's budget for 2024," Bloomberg writes, citing unnamed sources familiar with the matter. "It shows that the financial realities of the trillions of dollars of investment are starting to cause concern at the highest levels of the Saudi government as it tries to fulfill its ambitious Vision 2030 program, the overarching initiative tasked with diversifying the kingdom's economy."

Uri Berliner, a veteran at the public radio institution, says the network lost its way when it started telling listeners how to think.

You know the stereotype of the NPR listener: an EV-driving, Wordle-playing, tote bag-carrying coastal elite. It doesn't precisely describe me, but it's not far off. I'm Sarah Lawrence-educated, was raised by a lesbian peace activist mother, I drive a Subaru, and Spotify says my listening habits are most similar to people in Berkeley.

I fit the NPR mold. I'll cop to that.

The flight of a Russian Angara A5 heavy-lift rocket from the Vostochny Cosmodrome was automatically aborted 2 min. before the planned 5:00 a.m. EDT April 9 liftoff.

The reason for the halt was a failure of the oxidizer tank pressurization system in the central block, Yury Borisov, the head of Roscosmos state space corporation, told reporters.

Launch has been reschedule for April 10.

Angara A5 is set to carry a dummy payload, as the primary goal of the first flight is to test the new launchpad at Vostochny, located in Russia's far east. The rocket was installed on the pad on March 26 and has been conducting various checks of its new Orion booster since then.

Authorities continue to respond to the site of a bridge collapse in Vyazma as of early evening April 8. The Paninsky Bridge, which services automobiles, collapsed onto a railway. At least one individual died, and two were injured as a result of the incident. Moscow Railways, which operates trains between Moscow and Smolensk via the affected track, confirmed that train service in the area is suspended.

Train disruptions between Moscow and Smolensk are likely in the coming days until authorities clear the track. Heightened security is likely near the collapse site in the coming days as authorities attempt to clear the area.

The U.S. economy is not yet out of troubled waters and could still face a "delayed" recession, according to Gary Shilling.

The financial analyst, who correctly predicted the crisis of 2007-2008, said that the resilience in the U.S. economy since the end of the pandemic has mostly been due to the labor market, but this might start to slow down in the near future.

"You haven't had that weakness in labor markets that, I think, you normally would have had and would have [caused] a recession [in 2023]," he told CNBC. "That doesn't mean we won't have one, but it means whatever it is, it's delayed."

He added that there are already "preliminary signs of weakness" in the market that would suggest it is slowing down, including wage gains, quits and service inflation.