Twenty-six nations on Saturday made new pledges to alter their agricultural policies to become more sustainable and less polluting, and to invest in research needed for sustainable agriculture and protecting food supplies against climate change.

All continents were represented, with countries including India, Colombia, Vietnam, Germany, Ghana, and Australia.

Brazil said it will scale its ABC+ low carbon farming program to 72 million hectares, which could save a billion tons of emissions by 2030.

Germany pledged to lower emissions from land use by 25 million tons by 2030, while the UK announced it aims to engage 75% of farmers in low carbon practices by 2030.

The UK also announced funding of £500 million ($675 million) to support the implementation of the Forest, Agriculture and Commodity Trade (FACT) Roadmap that was launched during the World Leaders Summit earlier this week, in which 28 countries are working together to protect forests while promoting development and trade.

Newly made pledges will support to implement the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forests and Land Use, which is now endorsed by 134 countries covering 91% of the world’s forests.

The Declaration aims to halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030.

"If we are to limit global warming and keep the goal of 1.5C alive, then the world needs to use land sustainably and put protection and restoration of nature at the heart of all we do," said COP26 President Alok Sharma.

"The commitments being made today show that nature and land use is being recognized as essential to meeting the Paris Agreement goals," he said.

The World Bank will commit to spending $25 billion in climate finance annually to 2025 via its Climate Action Plan, including a focus on agriculture and food systems.

In another important development from the private sector, nearly 100 high-profile companies from a range of sectors committed to becoming "Nature Positive."

Commitments include supermarkets pledging to cut their environmental impact across climate and nature-loss, and fashion brands guaranteeing the traceability of their materials./aa

Spanish police have detained 11 people who participated in an unorthodox attempt at illegal immigration that brought the Palma de Mallorca airport to a standstill Friday night, according to Spanish daily El Pais.

Police have yet to comment publicly on the incident that saw around 20 people escape from an Air Arabia Maroc flight that departed from Casablanca and was bound for Istanbul.

According to Spanish media, one of the flight's passengers appeared to have entered a diabetic coma. This forced the pilot to make an emergency landing on the Spanish island of Mallorca.

Once the plane landed and an ambulance arrived, a group of passengers made their escape.

They fled onto the tarmac and jumped the fence that surrounds the busy airport.

The person who appeared to be suffering from a coma was taken to hospital, but doctors reportedly found they were in good health.

Amid the drama, a person who accompanied the seemingly sick passenger on the ambulance also snuck off hospital grounds.

The police have arrested the passenger who pretended to be sick for crimes related to enabling illegal immigration.

Back at the airport, police searched for the escaped passengers. Authorities even suspended all flights to and from the busy airport for around three and a half hours Friday night.

As many as 47 flights were delayed or rerouted to destinations like Barcelona or Ibiza, according to Spain’s air traffic controller.

Police eventually found several passengers in the town of Marratxí, 13km from the airport. They have been detained and are being processed for deportation, according to El Pais.

As of Saturday afternoon, around 12 of the 20 passengers who escaped remain on the loose, and police continue their search./aa

Tens of thousands of people on Saturday marched through the streets of Glasgow, Scotland to protest against the negative effects of climate change and for Scottish independence.

The massive protest came on the final day of the first week of the UN Climate Change Conference, COP26.

Protesters exhibited colorful scenes urging world leaders for climate action, and changing the system for a sustainable ecosystem.

Some of the banners read “Act Now for Climate Justice,” “The Future is Watching,” and “Climate Change Kills.” Just like Friday’s protest, there were many children among the marching crowd.

The COP26 saw a leaders’ summit in the first two days and some major cooperation announcements came in the first week, including halting deforestation, reducing methane gas emissions and financing poorer countries for climate friendly transition.

The rally started at Kelvingrove Park with a huge crowd and the procession continued into the city to reach the George Square with police blocking all the side roads on the route.

Scottish independence was another theme of the march as thousands of protesters demanded a second independence referendum.

Protesters demanded a second referendum, which needs permission from the central UK government.

It was the third major independence march in Scotland this year. First Minister Nicola Sturgeon recently said Scotland will hold a new referendum by the end of 2022.

In the first referendum held in 2014, voters chose to remain as part of the UK with a small margin./aa

The Turkish president on Saturday inaugurated the huge Ilisu Dam in the country's southeastern province Mardin.

Its total water storage volume is 11 billion cubic meters and can generate 1,200 megawatts of hydroelectricity.

Addressing the opening ceremony, Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the project has been completed despite obstacles, including financing issues and terror attacks.

"This work is the best answer to sworn enemies of Turkey and those who're hostile to their own country and the nation," Erdogan said.

He said it is the largest dam on the Tigris River, and the fourth largest Turkish hydroelectric plant.

"This dam is the second-largest dam in the country after Turkey's Ataturk Dam, and the largest in the world in terms of filling volume among the 'concrete faced rockfill dam' types," the president said.

Saying the project cost 20 billion Turkish liras ($2 billion), he argued that its contributions to the Turkish economy will be around 3 billion Turkish liras ($309 million) annually./aa

Turkey successfully test-fired long-range indigenous air defense missile Siper, a top defense official said on Saturday.

Different tests of the air defense system, which is planned to enter the army's inventory in 2023, will continue, Ismail Demir, the head of Turkey's Defense Industries Presidency, tweeted.

He said Turkey will continue to produce new weapons and will have up to six different air defense systems.

The Siper project is led by Turkey's defense giants ASELSAN, ROKETSAN and the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey.

Besides Siper, which is expected to rival Russia's S-400, Korkut, Sungur and Hisar air defense systems are in place./aa

Several people have been injured in a knife attack on a train in southern Germany, police said on Saturday.

A male suspect has been arrested, and there is no threat to public safety, Bavarian police said on Twitter.

The Bild newspaper reported that the attacker was a 27-year-old man with suffering from mental illness, with the attack appearing to be non-terror-related.

Among the three people stabbed on the train, two were seriously injured, according to local reports.

The high-speed train was traveling between the Bavarian cities of Regensburg and Nuremberg./aa

Russia on Saturday registered a new record number of coronavirus cases with 41,335 people testing positive over the past day, raising the country's tally to 8.75 million and active cases to 975,123.

Over the same period, 29,201 people recovered, bringing the overall count to 7.53 million, while 1,188 died, pushing the death toll to 245,635, Russia's coronavirus emergency task force said in a daily report.

Authorities blame the low level of vaccination for the spike in cases. Currently, the vaccination rate stands at 33.58% despite the wide availability of doses.

On Oct. 28, Russia launched a national 10-day non-working period, aiming to stem the virus spread.

Since December 2019, the pandemic has claimed more than 5.04 million lives in 192 countries and regions, with over 249.2 million cases reported worldwide, according to the US Johns Hopkins University./aa

At least 11 patients admitted to a COVID-19 ward in India died after a fire broke out in a government hospital in the western state of Maharashtra on Saturday, a senior official said.

The patients were admitted to the intensive care unit of the hospital in the city of Ahmednagar, according to Rajendra Bhosale, a top government official.

Bhosale told Anadolu Agency that 11 of the 17 patients present in the hospital died when the fire broke out. "The remaining patients were shifted to another hospital," added Bhosale.

The blaze has been extinguished, and preliminary investigation revealed that it could be due to a short circuit, said the official.

The state's Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray ordered an inquiry into the incident.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he was anguished by the loss of lives due to the fire. "Condolences to the bereaved families," he said on Twitter./agencies

The Taliban on Saturday claimed that over 50 Daesh/ISIS militants "surrendered" in the restive eastern Nangarhar province of Afghanistan.

An official statement from the Taliban's intelligence headquarters in the provincial capital, Jalalabad, said that 55 fighters associated with the Daesh/ISIS terrorist group had laid down their guns there.

It said the head of the intelligence agency, the National Directorate of Security in Nangarhar, Doctor Bashir, granted "conditional pardon" through mediation by tribal elders to these former fighters who had been carrying out destructive activities in the Kot, Spin Ghar, and Achin districts of the province.

"If anyone (among the fighters) violates (the accord) there will be strict legal actions (against them)," the statement quoted the Taliban intelligence chief as saying. The statement further said that the surrendering militants regretted their past actions and vowed to live peacefully under the Islamic Emirate.

Last week, another batch of 65 militants had surrendered in the same province that has been witnessing a spike in targeted assassinations and bomb blasts in connection with rifts between the Taliban and Daesh/ISIS.

Earlier this month, the Taliban claimed dismantling a Daesh/ISIS hideout in the capital Kabul that had been blamed for many attacks.

Days later, that the terror group claimed a massive suicide bombing in Kandahar, besides orchestrating targeted killings in Nangarhar and Parwan provinces and another major suicide bombing in a Shia community mosque in the northern Kunduz province, killing more than 100 people./aa

The oil rig count in the US rose this week, according to the latest data released by oilfield services company Baker Hughes on Friday.

The number of oil rigs, an indicator of short-term production in the country, increased by 6 to 450 for the week ending Nov. 5 from 444 the previous week.

The number of US oil rigs rose by 224 compared to one year ago.

At Friday's trading close, the price of international benchmark Brent crude stood at $82.89 per barrel, while American benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) was at $81.55 a barrel./agencies