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Clean energy sources accounted for 40.9% of the world’s electricity in 2024, according to a new report by energy think tank Ember. This is the highest share since the 1940s, when hydroelectric stations dominated a smaller global energy market.

Despite this milestone, global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions have reached a record high of 14.6 billion tonnes. Hotter weather, which drove up demand for air conditioning, led to a 4% increase in electricity use—prompting more reliance on fossil fuel power stations.

“Solar power has become the engine of the global energy transition,” said Phil Macdonald, Ember’s managing director. “Hotter weather drove the fossil generation increase in 2024, but we’re very unlikely to see a similar jump in 2025.”

Solar power remains the fastest-growing source of electricity for the 20th consecutive year, with output doubling every three years since 2012. China leads the charge, contributing over half of the global solar increase, while India doubled its solar capacity between 2023 and 2024.

However, solar still only makes up just under 7% of the global electricity supply—roughly enough to power all of India. Wind accounts for a little over 8%, while hydropower, the largest clean source, contributes 14%. Nuclear energy makes up about 9%.

Though renewables are expanding quickly, they haven’t yet overtaken rising energy demands—particularly in rapidly growing Asian economies like India and China, which still rely heavily on coal and gas.

Fossil fuel use climbed by 1.4% last year, with coal making up 34% of global generation and gas contributing 22%.

The European Copernicus climate service also reported that March 2025 was the second hottest on record, extending an ongoing pattern of high global temperatures.

Ember had previously forecast that CO2 emissions would soon begin to decline, but rising electricity consumption continues to delay that shift.

The report underscores a key tension in the global energy transition: while clean energy is growing, it’s not yet outpacing the demand that still fuels fossil energy.

Most Americans anticipate rising prices in the wake of Donald Trump’s recent announcement of broad new import tariffs, a Reuters/Ipsos poll has found.

In the three-day poll, concluded Sunday, 73% of respondents said they expected prices to rise in the next six months for the goods they purchase regularly. Only 4% believed prices would fall, with others unsure or expecting no change.

Last week, Trump proposed the most significant tariff hikes in decades, imposing at least a 10% tax on imports from almost every nation. The decision sparked fears of inflation and recession, with many economists and investors expressing alarm.

57% of those surveyed said they opposed the tariffs—including 25% of Republicans. Support stood at 39%, while 52% agreed with Trump’s view that the US has been exploited by its trade partners.

Despite that agreement, 44% of respondents disagreed with Trump’s assertion that new trade barriers will revitalise US manufacturing.

The poll showed clear political divisions: Half of respondents, nearly all of whom were Republicans, agreed that “any short-term economic pain is worth it to make the U.S. stronger in the long term.” Most Democrats took the opposite stance.

The Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted online across the US and surveyed 1,027 adults. The margin of error is approximately 3 percentage points.

The number of recorded executions worldwide rose to the highest level in a decade in 2024, according to Amnesty International, BBC reported. 

In its Death Sentences and Executions 2024 report, the human rights group said at least 1,500 people were executed last year—the most since 2015.

Three countries were primarily responsible for the increase: Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, which together accounted for at least 1,380 executions. The United States carried out 25.

Despite this rise, the number of countries known to have executed people dropped to 15—the lowest ever recorded, and unchanged from 2023.

Agnes Callamard, Amnesty’s Secretary General, said: “The tide is turning on capital punishment… it is only a matter of time until the world is free from the shadow of the gallows.”

The report highlights major increases in Iran, where executions jumped from 853 in 2023 to 972 last year; Iraq, which saw a rise from 16 to 63; and Saudi Arabia, which doubled its tally from 172 to 345.

Amnesty warned that over 40% of the global executions in 2024 were for drug-related crimes—something it says breaches international human rights law. The organisation also raised alarm over governments using the death penalty as a political tool to target protesters.

The true global figure is likely much higher, the report noted, due to lack of access to reliable data from countries like China, North Korea and Vietnam. In China and Vietnam, execution data is classified as a state secret.

Conflict zones and highly controlled states, including Gaza and Syria, also pose barriers to collecting accurate figures.

There were positive signs too. Zimbabwe passed legislation in 2024 to abolish the death penalty for ordinary crimes. Amnesty also noted cases of death row inmates receiving clemency in Japan and the US.

More than two-thirds of UN member states voted in favour of a moratorium on the death penalty last year, bolstering international momentum against capital punishment.

In a surprise announcement on Monday, United States President Donald Trump revealed that the US and Iran are set to begin direct talks on Tehran’s nuclear programme on Saturday. 

While Iran’s foreign minister said the discussions in Oman would be indirect, Trump warned that if the talks are unsuccessful, “Iran is going to be in great danger”, indicating a further sign of the difficult path to any deal between the two geopolitical foes.

Recently, Iran had pushed back against Trump’s demands that it directly negotiate over its nuclear programme or be bombed, and it appeared to be sticking to that position on Monday.

“We’re having direct talks with Iran, and they’ve started. It’ll go on Saturday. We have a very big meeting, and we’ll see what can happen,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office during a meeting with visiting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“And I think everybody agrees that doing a deal would be preferable,” Trump said. He added that Saturday’s talks with Iran would be at a very high level, without elaborating. He declined to say where the talks would take place but held out the possibility that a deal could be reached.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi posted on X that indirect high-level talks would be held in Oman, adding: “It is as much an opportunity as it is a test. The ball is in America’s court.”

The US and Iran held indirect talks during former President Joe Biden’s term but made little progress. The last known direct negotiations between the two governments were under then-President Barack Obama, who spearheaded the 2015 international nuclear deal that Trump later abandoned.

Warnings by Trump of military action against Iran had jangled already tense nerves across the Middle East after open warfare in the region, a change of leadership in Syria.

Trump, who has beefed up the US military presence in the region since taking office in January, has said he would prefer a deal over Iran’s nuclear programme to armed confrontation and, on March 7, said he had written to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to suggest talks.

Iranian officials said at the time that Tehran would not be bullied into negotiations.

“Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon, and if the talks aren’t successful, I actually think it will be a very bad day for Iran,” Trump said in the Oval Office on Monday.

Direct talks would not occur without the explicit approval of Khamenei, who in February said negotiations with the US were “not smart, wise, or honourable.”

Iran insists on indirect negotiations

Hours before Trump’s announcement, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei said that Iran was awaiting a US response to Tehran’s proposal for indirect negotiations. He said the Islamic Republic believed it was making a generous, responsible and honourable offer.

After Trump spoke, a senior Iranian official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters: “The talks will not be direct … It will be with Oman’s mediation.” Oman, which maintains good relations with both the US and Iran, has been a longtime channel for messages between the rival states.

Iran’s Nournews, affiliated with the country’s top security body, described Trump’s statement about a planned direct meeting as part of a “psychological operation aimed at influencing domestic and international public opinion.”

A second Iranian official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said over the weekend there was possibly a window of around two months to reach a deal, citing worries that Iran’s longtime foe Israel might launch its attack if talks took longer.

Netanyahu, who has shown little support for US negotiations with Iran, said if diplomacy could prevent Tehran from ever getting nuclear weapons “in a full way, the way it was done in Libya, I think that would be a good thing.”

During his 2017-2021 term, Trump withdrew the US from the 2015 deal between Iran and world powers designed to curb Iran’s sensitive nuclear work in exchange for sanctions relief. Trump also reimposed sweeping US sanctions.

Since then, Iran has far surpassed that deal’s limits on uranium enrichment.

Western powers accuse Iran of having a clandestine agenda to develop nuclear weapons capability by enriching uranium to a high level of fissile purity, above what they say is justifiable for a civilian atomic energy programme.

Tehran says its nuclear programme is wholly for civilian energy purposes.

The White House National Security Council did not immediately respond to a request for details.

The fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, another key Iranian ally, has further weakened the Islamic Republic’s influence.

Iran is approaching weekend talks with the United States over its nuclear programme warily, with little confidence in progress and deep suspicions over US intentions, Iranian officials told Reuters on Tuesday.

The talks were announced on Monday by US President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly threatened Washington’s old foe Iran with military action if it does not agree to a deal since he returned to the White House in January.

Trump has said the talks on Saturday in Oman will be direct but Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi repeated on Tuesday Tehran’s position that they should be indirect, citing what he called US pressure and threats.

“Indirect negotiations can guarantee a genuine and effective dialogue,” he told Iranian state news agency IRNA.

Araqchi said the talks would be led by him and Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, mediated by Oman’s Foreign Minister Badr al-Busaidi.

A source briefed on US planning for the talks confirmed that Witkoff would lead the US delegation and that the discussions would be broad in the search for a nuclear deal and would not be technical in nature.

“This is still coming together,” the source told Reuters.

Tehran would want to see concrete gestures from the United States before any face-to-face talks between Iranian and US officials, Iranian and regional sources said.

“The Iranians told us that direct talks are possible but there has to be a goodwill gesture. Lift some sanctions or unfreeze some money,” a regional diplomat said.

Russia backs either direct or indirect talks between Iran and the US as a chance to de-escalate tensions, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday, adding: “We know that certain contacts, direct and indirect, are planned in Oman.”

Russia’s lower house of parliament also ratified on Tuesday a 20-year strategic partnership with Iran, a sign of the deepening military ties between the two countries.

Efforts to settle a dispute over Iran’s nuclear programme, which it says is purely for civilian use but which Western countries see as a precursor to an atomic bomb, have ebbed and flowed for more than 20 years without resolution.

Trump tore up a 2015 deal between Iran and six world powers – the US, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany – during his first term of office in 2017 and talks since then have stalled.

China will firmly implement retaliatory measures to protect its rights and interests if the United States intensifies its tariff actions, the nation’s Ministry of Commerce stated on Tuesday.

A spokesperson for the ministry made these remarks following the US’s warning of a potential 50% tariff increase on Chinese imports, a move that China strongly opposes.

The US so-called “reciprocal tariffs” against China are groundless and a typical practice of unilateral bullying, the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson noted that the countermeasures China has adopted are entirely legitimate actions aimed at protecting its sovereignty, security, and development interests, as well as maintaining a normal international trade order.

The US tariff escalation threat against China compounds its mistake and further exposes its nature of blackmail, which China will never accept, said the spokesperson.

“China will fight till the end if the US side is bent on going down the wrong path,” the spokesperson noted.

China reiterates that there is no winner in a trade war and protectionism leads nowhere, said the spokesperson, adding that pressuring and threatening is not the right way to engage with the country.

China urges the United States to immediately correct its wrongdoings, cancel all unilateral tariff measures against China, stop its economic and trade suppression, and settle differences with China properly through equal-footed dialogue on the basis of mutual respect, the spokesperson said.

This week’s astronomical forecasts released by the Emirates Astronomy Society have anticipated Eid ul Adha, one of the most auspicious festivals in the Islamic calendar, to fall on Friday, June 6.

Moon which marks the beginning of the month of Dhu al Hijjah, the final month in the Islamic lunar calendar, is expected to be visible on May 27. This makes May 28 the first day of the month, reported Gulf News.

Chairman of the Emirates Astronomy Society, Ibrahim Al Jarwan made the announcement.

Moreover, he noted that the crescent will appear at 07:02am UAE time on May 27 and will remain visible for approximately 38 minutes after sunset, allowing for its likely sighting that evening.

If the astronomical forecast hold, the Day of Arafah, a day of fasting and reflection observed on the 9th of Dhu al Hijjah, will fall on Thursday, June 5. This will be then followed by Eid ul Adha on Friday, June 6.

The break for Arafah Day and Eid ul Adha spans from the 9th to the 12th of Dhu al Hijjah (Islamic year 1445 AH) in line with the UAE’s public holiday calendar. This will be equivalent to four days of public holidays.

However, if Eid ul Adha indeed falls on a Friday, UAE residents are expected to enjoy an extended break, with Thursday and Friday declared as official holidays and Saturday and Sunday as part of the regular weekend.

This will result in a four-day weekend across the country.

It is also important to note that as with all Islamic holidays, the exact date of Eid ul Adha is subject to the official moon sighting, which may shift the date by a day.

The start of Dhu al Hijjah would be delayed to May 29 if the crescent is not visible on May 27, making Eid ul Adha fall on Saturday, June 7 instead of Friday.

The public holiday would still span four days — from Saturday through Tuesday in that case too but would not align as neatly with the weekend.

Eid ul Adha, also known as the “Feast of Sacrifice,” commemorates the Qur’anic story of Prophet Ibrahim’s willingness to sacrifice his son in obedience to God, a test of faith that was divinely interrupted and replaced with a ram.

Additionally, the occasion is celebrated with prayers, family gatherings, and charitable acts, including the ritual sacrifice of livestock, with the meat distributed to relatives, friends, and the underprivileged.

TEXAS: Recent reports have revealed a wave of sudden visa cancellations of international students at prestigious universities in the United States, triggering significant anxiety among affected students.

Many of those impacted are Muslim and South Asian, particularly from Pakistan. Institutions like Harvard, Stanford, and the University of Texas in Austin have seen dozens of student visas revoked.

Other major universities, including the University of Michigan and multiple campuses of the University of California, such as Berkeley, San Diego, Irvine, Davis, and UCLA, are also affected.

At UCLA alone, six current students and six recent graduates have had their visas cancelled, while at UC Berkeley, one undergraduate, three graduate students, and two alumni were impacted.

At the University of Michigan, one student whose identity has not been disclosed has already left the country following the visa revocation, with the university pledging full support to ensure their academic progress continues.

The University of California has stated that it is closely monitoring the situation and offering legal and institutional support to those affected.

Harvard confirmed the revocation of visas for three current students and two recent graduates, while Stanford reported similar action against four students and two alumni.

In most cases, neither the universities nor the students were given prior notice, and the cancellations were discovered during routine checks of the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS).

While the US State Department and Department of Homeland Security have not officially commented on these actions, former Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed that more than 300 international student visas have been cancelled nationwide.

He suggested that many of these students were involved in political activism, particularly pro-Palestinian demonstrations.

At UCLA, Chancellor Julio Frenk assured students that the university stands by its international community, supporting their rights to study, work, and live without fear. He acknowledged that the sudden nature of these cancellations has created immense uncertainty and distress.

Similarly, seven international students at Ohio State University have had their visas revoked, and four students at the University of Michigan were affected, one of whom had to leave the US upon the university’s advice. These revocations are believed to be part of a broader crackdown by the Trump administration targeting politically active international students.

University officials, human rights advocates, and student organisations have raised serious concerns about the lack of due process in these visa cancellations.

In many cases, visas were revoked without formal notification or any legal proceedings, undermining the principles of fair treatment and transparency.

International students, many of whom contribute significantly to academics, research, and campus life, are now facing a heightened sense of vulnerability.

This evolving situation demands that both the US government and academic institutions provide clarity and ensure a fair and transparent process for international students.

The current climate is sending a troubling message to the global academic community: that studying in the United States may no longer be as safe or welcoming, especially for those who choose to express their beliefs or engage in peaceful activism.

South Korea will hold a presidential election on June 3, the country’s acting president said Tuesday, after former leader Yoon Suk Yeol was removed from office over a disastrous declaration of martial law.

The democratic country has been effectively leaderless since December, when ex-president Yoon attempted to subvert civilian rule but was quickly impeached by lawmakers and suspended from office.

The country’s Constitutional Court last week upheld his impeachment, stripping him of the top job and triggering fresh elections, which must be held within 60 days.

The government has set June 3 as polling day, Prime Minister Han Duck-soo said Tuesday, adding that it would be declared a temporary public holiday to facilitate voting.

The date took into account “the need to ensure smooth election operations and allow sufficient time for political parties to prepare”, he said.

Han called on ministries and the National Election Commission to “make thorough preparations to ensure an election that is fairer and more transparent than ever, and one that can earn the trust of the people”.

The winner of the election will be inaugurated the following day, unlike a regular poll, where a president-elect has a two-month transition period.

For the time being, Prime Minister Han is running the government as acting president, a job he resumed recently after the Constitutional Court threw out his impeachment.

The official campaign period will run from May 12 until June 2.

Frontrunner Lee

The opposition leader, Lee Jae-myung, is the frontrunner to clinch the top job, with a 34% support rating, according to the latest Gallup poll.

His party already controls the National Assembly.

Lee narrowly lost to Yoon in the 2022 presidential election but staged a political comeback as leader of the main opposition, despite a career shadowed by legal troubles, including ongoing trials.

Sources told AFP on Tuesday that Lee was preparing to step down from leading the Democratic Party, which would allow him to compete freely for the party’s nomination.

Experts say he is now “highly likely” to win.

“With the election date so soon, it’s hard to expect a presidential candidate from an impeached party to be elected president,” said Lee Jun-han, a politics professor at Incheon National University.

“The current polling shows Lee Jae-myung has high approval ratings, and he is very likely to win it, as it seems he doesn’t have a proper challenger.”

In distinct second place is Labour Minister Kim Moon-soo.

Polling around nine per cent, he leads a pack of challengers from Yoon’s People Power Party, which also includes former party chief Han Dong-hoon.

Millions of Koreans watched the Constitutional Court hand down its verdict live on television last Friday, stripping Yoon of office.

Yoon sent armed soldiers to parliament in a bid to prevent lawmakers from voting down his decree, which the court said amounted to deploying troops for “political purposes”.

He is the second South Korean leader to be impeached by the court after Park Geun-hye in 2017.

South Korea has spent the four months since the martial law declaration without an effective head of state.

The leadership vacuum coincided with a series of crises and headwinds, including an aviation disaster and the deadliest wildfires in the country’s history.

Last week, South Korea was slammed with 26% tariffs on exports to its key ally, the United States, after President Donald Trump unveiled global, so-called reciprocal levies.

Yoon also faces a separate criminal trial on charges of insurrection over the martial law bid.