People cooling off near the Colosseum in Rome. Authorities have warned people to avoid direct sunlight during the hottest hours, to stay indoors where possible and drink at least 1.5 litres of water a day. Photograph: Remo Casilli/Reuters
Move comes as fourth heatwave of summer intensifies, edging temperatures in some areas close to 40C
Italy is to place all of its 27 major cities, from Trieste in the north to Palermo in the south, under the highest heat alert as the fourth heatwave to hit the country this summer intensifies.
A red alert means there is a higher chance of an emergency owing to the health risk posed by prolonged extreme temperatures to the entire population.
Twenty-five cities were on red alert on Wednesday, with two more to be added on Thursday, the health ministry said. It is the first time this year that all 27 cities monitored by the health ministry’s heat surveillance system have been placed on maximum alert.
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As temperatures in some areas of Italy have edged up towards 40C in recent days, authorities have warned people to avoid direct sunlight between 11am and 6pm, to stay indoors where possible and drink at least 1.5 litres of water a day. Other guidelines include avoiding fizzy drinks, coffee, alcohol and heavy meals, wearing light clothes and never leaving children or animals in cars.
The extreme heat, which scientists say is driven by the human-caused climate crisis, is not forecast to let up for at least a week. Europe has warmed about twice as fast as the global average.
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The construction at Venture Global’s LNG export facility in Port Sulphur, La., on Feb. 26, 2024. Credit: Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post via Getty Images
A new report suggests that some governments have ignored legal obligations to prevent climate harm for decades.
A new report strengthens the case that the United States and other major industrialized countries knew, long before they signed the 2015 Paris Agreement to limit global warming, that they could face legal obligations to reduce climate-damaging greenhouse gas emissions.
The “What Countries Knew” report, released Wednesday by the Center for International Environmental Law, traces when climate scientists first presented governments in the United States, Australia, Canada, Germany, Italy, Norway, the United Kingdom and the combined Soviet Union and Russia with research outlining the risks posed by the emissions from burning fossil fuels.
Those countries are responsible for about 40 percent of all emissions since the fossil fuel era began in the late 1800s. Summaries and transcripts from conferences cited in the report indicate that those governments and others were discussing the risks of rising global temperature, melting polar ice caps and sea-level rise as early as 1957, during the International Geophysical Year.
The warnings grew more urgent in the 1960s just as governments and economies of industrialized and industrializing countries placed nearly all their chips on fossil-fueled growth. In 1965, scientists warned U.S. President Lyndon Johnson that rising carbon dioxide could cause “marked changes” in climate. About the same time, researchers at Norway’s and Italy’s state-owned oil companies warned of potential climate impacts while governments encouraged them to expand.
As the reports and warnings piled up, newsreel footage in Germany celebrated record coal hauls with images of miners grinning through sooty faces, and federally subsidized oil production in the U.S. meant prosperity and the freedom to “Put a Tiger in Your Tank” at an Esso gas station.
Lindsay Fenlock, a senior researcher with the Center for International Environmental Law and lead author of the report, said she was continually surprised by the breadth of international government awareness of climate impacts with a “threat of serious implications” as she combed through decades of materials archived from the pre-internet era.
During the International Geophysical Year, about 70 countries collaborated to study Earth as an interconnected system and measure the growing effects of human activities on the planet, she said. The same year, a study by American scientists Roger Revelle and Hans Suess characterized the rising amount of CO2 in the air as an unprecedented and irreversible “large-scale geophysical experiment” unlike anything in human history.
Fenlock noted several other early international conferences that “had particularly striking conversations around what to do to combat climate change and move away from fossil fuel use.”
A 1968 government-and-industry symposium in France included detailed discussions on alternatives to fossil fuels. In 1973, the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria hosted talks about government responses to climate change. And when Fenlock retrieved old Canadian federal agency employee newsletters, she found that scientists had openly discussed climate change throughout the 1970s.
The report draws “important connections” between the history of government knowledge and the legal obligations outlined in the ICJ’s Advisory Opinion, said Michael Burger, executive director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University.
“It’s a warning shot, for those on the lookout for cases that may follow in the wake of the ICJ’s opinion,” he said.
Fenlock said the report wasn’t intended to be comprehensive, but it shows that governments often overlooked scientific evidence with life-and-death relevance.
“I think that just how much was known, and how soon, was pretty shocking,” she said. “But people don’t talk about it now.”
The report may reignite those conversations by framing the historical record in the context of international climate law, said Nikki Reisch, CIEL’s climate and energy program director. What governments knew, and how they responded or failed to respond, took on new legal significance after last year’s advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice, which found that states have longstanding legal obligations to prevent significant climate harm, and may be required to pay reparations when breaches of those obligations cause damage.
Reisch said tracing government knowledge could help determine whether a country’s greenhouse gas emissions violated international obligations to avoid environmental damage beyond its borders, and whether it could be held responsible for the resulting harm.
The report illustrates that the early scientific evidence “didn’t stay in a drawer or on a shelf,” she said. “It was being published, disseminated. Their information was communicated directly to government officials, sometimes at the highest levels and to the broader public. “All this information,” she said, “was in the hands of those who could have acted.”
Under a broad reading of international environmental legal principles, some countries could be held responsible for their share of climate damages caused by their emissions even before they understood the risks, she said. But pinpointing when governments became aware of those risks establishes a clearer threshold for legal liability. From that point onward, governments had the opportunity to change course, and those that instead continued or expanded fossil fuel use bear greater responsibility for resulting harms and for helping affected communities now, she added.
Reisch said governments should be judged by what was reasonable at the time, not by today’s standards. Once they had credible evidence that fossil fuels could cause serious harm, she said, they had a duty to stop expanding their use, develop alternatives and use the tools available to limit the damage.
Documenting widespread knowledge of the dangers undercuts attempts to dismiss governments’ historical responsibility, particularly because many continued to expand fossil fuel production and use and, in some cases, obstructed efforts to scale them back. The report alone does not establish liability, she said, but provides important evidence that could help hold governments accountable for resulting damages and require them to act with greater urgency.
The report’s legal significance can be seen in common-sense terms, added Michael Gerrard, the founder and faculty director of the Sabin Center.
“If I know that the brakes on my car don’t work but I persist in driving, I have heightened culpability when I crash and injure someone,” he said.
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He described recent understandings between the US and Iran as an “encouraging development” and said there was a “glimmer of peace” in the Middle East that should not be wasted.
The foreign minister also said he would speak later with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, and that Italy was ready to support efforts to turn the US-Iran understanding into lasting peace.
Tajani stressed the importance of restoring freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz, saying it was vital for the Italian economy.
Washington and Tehran reached a temporary truce in April through Pakistani mediation before announcing a framework agreement Monday to end the war. The accord is expected to be formally signed Friday in Switzerland.
Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Orcas discuss rotting brain, front Orca says Sundown Syndrome is a dead givaway and he wishes someone would Lock Him Up
In what can only be described as an acceleration and expansion of the bellicose and dangerous far-right populist movement around the globe, the U.S. government of Donald Trump is reportedly seeking to build an international coalition to oppose the anti-fascist left.
Washington says U.S. counterterrorism officials are organizing a summit in the summer to discuss and develop “strategies to counter the anti-fascist movement.”
White House and State Department officials have described such groups as a “serious threat to national security,” lumping together “anarchists, Marxists, and violent extremists.” The State Department claimed these organizations have waged “a terrorist campaign in the United States and across the Western world for decades, involving bombings, beatings, shootings, and riots in the service of their extreme agenda.”
The move comes as Trump has faced significant domestic opposition to many of his policies. This includes a sustained two-month popular uprising in Minnesota against violent anti-migrant sweeps by ICE, which ultimately forced the president to back down and withdraw the federal agents.
Labelling virtually all opposition as “terrorist” is an alarming escalation in Trump’s rhetoric, and it suggests a significant shift in counterterrorism priorities. The fact that the U.S. is trying to internationalize this effort—invitees to the summit include Canada, Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Hungary, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, India, and Indonesia—suggests that such a shift may be underway in other countries as well.
Reuters reported that sources within U.S. counterterrorism say the summit will encourage intelligence sharing and common strategies. Other reports suggest that Washington is considering multiple international conferences, beginning in May with a workshop with foreign law enforcement officials in The Hague to “teach them about the dangers of far-left groups and how to counter them.”
The U.S. push comes as right-wing political forces in Canada are also agitating to label dissent as “terrorist.” In a move eerily reminiscent of the McCarthy era, Conservative MP Garnett Genuis has reportedly asked federal departments and agencies to determine whether any of their employees or members have current or prior association with anti-fascist and anti-racist left movements.
Right-wing politicians and media typically use the term “antifa” to refer to a sweeping range of organizations and movements that oppose fascist, racist, and far-right groups. With such a broad interpretation, virtually any political grouping, however large or small, can be described as “terrorist” or “a threat to national security” and subject to state repression.
In no small part, this is the desperate response of a system that is in crisis and decay. As capitalism’s social contradictions sharpen—evidenced by recurring and deepening social and economic crises, increased inter-imperialist rivalry and competition, and the accelerating drive to militarism and war—an increasingly broad section of the population becomes drawn into opposition and resistance.
Cutting off the organizational and political leadership of this growing movement against capitalism, even if it is nascent, is of utmost importance to the ruling class. If the commanders of capitalism, at least those in the U.S., are indeed planning ahead through their “anti-anti-fascist summit,” then working people had better start doing the same.
The working-class movement needs to get to work on developing its own independent political action plan and building up organizations and alliances that can carry it out. This includes working to win more people over to political positions like opposing NATO and other imperialist military alliances, rejecting corporate trade deals and tripartite “social dialogue” with the bosses and their governments, and insisting on the necessity of class struggle.
It also means combatting anti-socialist and anti-communist propaganda, including within labor and “left” movements. Narratives that deny the achievements of the Soviet people, or which draw false distinctions between the Cuban people and the Cuban government, or which equate communism with fascism and terror—these kinds of lies are all designed to divide and weaken the working-class movement, and to reinforce the dictatorship of capital over working people.
It’s true that capitalism is not always fascist. But it’s also true that fascism is always capitalist, and when capitalism is in crisis, it is anti-anti-fascist. This is what we are seeing now, and this is why the working class, which alone has the power to transform society, must get organized.
People’s Voice
As with all op-eds published by People’s World, the views expressed here are those of the author.
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Donald Trump sings and dances, says that it’s fun to kill everyone …Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.
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Demonstrators holding Palestinian flags gather at Piazza dei Cinquecento during a rally held as part of a general strike called by trade unions to protest rearmament programs, condemn the genocide against Palestinians, and support the Global Sumud Flotilla carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza, in Rome, Italy on May 18, 2026. [Claudia Chieppa – Anadolu Agency]
A nationwide general strike took place in Italy on Monday in protest against rearmament policies and in support of Palestinians in Gaza, Anadolu reports.
The strike was organized following a call from the USB union and other civil society groups under the slogan “We block everything.”
Participants opposed rising living costs, increased military spending, and what they described as government priorities favoring armament over healthcare and education.
They also expressed opposition to Israel’s attacks in Gaza and voiced support for the “Global Sumud Flotilla,” a civilian aid initiative attempting to reach the territory.
Demonstrations were held in multiple cities, including Rome, where protesters gathered at Piazza Cinquecento.
Many displayed Palestinian flags and demanded that the Italian government reduce or end what they called complicity with Israel.
Slogans calling for a “Free Palestine” were repeatedly heard during the protests.
Transport disruptions were reported across the country.
In Rome, one metro line was suspended, while in Naples, service on a metro line was halted.
In Milan, some suburban rail services were also affected, and port workers in Livorno carried out industrial action.
The protests also highlighted solidarity with activists involved in the Sumud Flotilla.
A Palestinian-origin Spanish activist, Saif Abukeshek, previously detained during a maritime incident involving Israeli forces, attended the Rome rally.
The Israeli army on Monday attacked and intercepted the Gaza-bound Global Sumud humanitarian flotilla in international waters and detained around 100 activists as the mission sought to break Israel’s blockade on the Palestinian enclave.
Speaking to Anadolu, he described the recent interceptions of flotilla vessels in international waters as violations of international law and linked them to broader criticism of Italy’s arms trade policies.
Another protester, Andrea Ziccaro, said the strike was aimed at opposing what he called a “war economy,” arguing that prioritizing military spending leads to neglect of social services like health and education.
Natalia Mancini, also a protester, added that recent incidents involving the flotilla exposed the “mask” of what she named the so-called democracies.
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Donald Trump sings and dances, says that it’s fun to kill everyone …Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.
