The US has carried out more retaliatory strikes against Iran-backed fighters in northeast Syria after American forces stationed in the area came under rocket fire that injured three troops.

US forces struck using AH-64 Apache attack helicopters, AC-130 gunships, and M777 artillery pieces, Central Command said in a statement on Thursday. Four enemy combatants were killed and seven rocket launchers were destroyed, it added.

"We will respond appropriately and proportionally to attacks on our service members," US Central Command Commander Michael Kurilla said in a statement. 

"No group will strike at our troops with impunity. We will take all necessary measures to defend our people."

Growing tensions

The attacks are the latest after US forces stationed at the Conoco outpost and Mission Support Site Green Village came under rocket fire on Wednesday. 

The US launched retaliatory strikes using helicopters in the immediate aftermath, claiming they killed several Iran-backed fighters believed to be responsible for the rocket attacks.

Earlier Wednesday, the US launched air strikes in Syria targeting ammunition depots and logistics supply bunkers used by groups affiliated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.

The air strikes were ordered by President Joe Biden in retaliation for a series of attacks on August 15 at US military facilities in Syria.

Source: AA

Half of China's vast territory is now experiencing drought as the country goes through its hottest summer on record, with more high temperatures forecast for today.

A chart from the National Climate Centre showed on Wednesday that swathes of southern China, including the Tibetan Plateau, were experiencing "severe" to "extraordinary" drought conditions.

The world's second-largest economy has been hit by record heat, flash floods and droughts. Scientists say the extreme weather phenomena are becoming more frequent and intense due to climate change.

Southern China has recorded its longest continuous period of high temperatures since records began more than 60 years ago, the agriculture ministry said this week.

The worst-affected area is the Yangtze river basin, stretching from coastal Shanghai to Sichuan province in China's southwest. It is home to over 370 million people and contains several manufacturing hubs including the megacity of Chongqing.

The China Meteorological Administration predicted continued high temperatures of up to 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) in Chongqing and the provinces of Sichuan, Jiangxi and Zhejiang on Thursday.

Record low water levels

China's State Council on Wednesday announced a $1.45 billion (10 billion yuan) subsidy to support rice farmers experiencing drought conditions which authorities have warned pose a "severe threat" to this year's autumn harvest.

China produces more than 95 percent of the rice, wheat and maize it consumes, but a reduced harvest could mean increased demand for imports in the world's most populous country -- putting further pressure on global supplies already strained by the conflict in Ukraine.

Officials also called for "a combination of measures to increase water sources to fight drought, first ensure drinking water for the people, ensure water for agricultural irrigation," the State Council added.

Wednesday's CCTV evening news broadcast showed trucks supplying villagers who lacked drinking and agricultural water in rural Sichuan and Chongqing, with remote mountain areas particularly hard hit.

Temperatures as high as 45C (113F) have led multiple Chinese provinces to impose industrial power cuts, as cities struggle to cope with a surge in demand for electricity partly driven by people cranking up the air conditioning.

Record low water levels on the Yangtze River have also put pressure on the region's hydropower generators.

The heat broke records in Sichuan, where a temperature of 43.9C (111F) was recorded Wednesday afternoon, the province's Meteorological Service Centre said in a statement.

Source: AFP

Recent flooding in Afghanistan has killed more than 180 people, injured hundreds and destroyed thousands of homes, the Taliban said, urging countries and international donors to help the country already reeling under a severe economic crisis. 

"The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan can't manage the floods alone, we ask the world, international organisations and Islamic countries to help us," Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid told media on Thursday.

Mujahid said 182 people had been killed by floods this month and 250 injured. More than 3,100 houses had been destroyed and thousands of livestock killed.

Flooding has wrought widespread devastation in central and eastern Afghan provinces in recent weeks, washing away thousands of houses and exacerbating the country's economic and humanitarian crisis.

Afghanistan has been reeling from natural disasters this year, including a drought and an earthquake that killed more than 1,000 people in June. 

The nation has been largely cut off from the international financial system since the Taliban took over a year ago.

'Livelihoods were wiped out'

In Khoshi district in central Logar province, aid workers described widespread destruction from the powerful floods in recent days, with fields of crops reduced to mud and bodies of dead animals lying in piles.

Around 20,0000 people in the district were affected by flooding and 20 people, including at least six children, had been killed with two more missing, the UN children's agency said.

"People lost everything...they lost everything overnight," said Anne Kindrachuk, central region chief for UNICEF Afghanistan, said after a visit to the area.

"There are three tent communities or camps but (people) are unsure what comes next, how they are going to eat this winter, their livelihoods were wiped out," she said.

Source: Reuters

The Pentagon will set up a new centre in the next year to help avoid civilian casualties in military operations around the world through better education and training and increased screening before strikes are launched.

The plan ordered by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and released on Thursday comes on the heels of widespread criticism over a US air strike in Kabul last August that killed 10 civilians, including children, during the final chaotic days of the US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan.

A senior defence official said the development of a new Civilian Protection Center of Excellence and other improvements will cost "tens of millions of dollars" per year, and the plan more broadly would involve the addition of about 150 staff. 

The centre would initially start operations in the 2023 budget year that begins October 1 and would be fully staffed and working by 2025. 

The official spoke on condition of anonymity under department rules to provide details of the plan.

Laid out in a 36-page action plan, the changes approved by Austin call for updated policies and guidelines for military operations, and steps that must be taken in order to better analyse threats, assess who is on the ground and determine what other civilian structures could be affected.

Too far from the strike zone

A key criticism of the Afghanistan drone strike was that those making the final decision were too quick to conclude that the white Toyota Corolla under watch aligned with the intelligence and confirmed their conclusion to bomb what turned out to be the wrong vehicle. 

The new Pentagon plan is aimed at preventing such "confirmation bias" and more consistently involving teams to specifically challenge assumptions to make sure a strike is appropriate.

The plan would put new personnel in each of the combatant commands that are in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, the Indo-Pacific, South America and US Northern Command in Colorado, as well as in all the military services, other senior commands and vital places such as Special Operations Command, Cyber Command and the Defense Intelligence Agency.

There has been persistent criticism, particularly from human rights organisations, that US military strikes in Syria, Iraq and other battlefields have killed civilians but that officials have failed or been slow to acknowledge those deaths. 

In some cases, the US military's inability to get to a strike location in its immediate aftermath has led to conclusions that allegations of civilian deaths were not confirmable.

US unprepared for largescale urban war 

An independent review done late last year found that better communication between those making the strike decision and other support personnel might have raised more doubts about the Kabul attack or possibly prevented it.

Under Austin's plan, civilian casualty assessments will become a consistent element in military exercises so troops can practice how best to avoid killing the innocent. It will set up a new framework for how the Defense Department responds to deaths, including acknowledging them and providing condolences and other aid in the aftermath.

More broadly, the plan accounts for better assessment in counterterrorism strikes as well as the prospects of civilian casualties in a large-scale war, such as one with China or Russia.

A review by RAND Corp of the August 2021 air strike in Afghanistan concluded that military's focus on civilian casualties has for years largely involved operations in places such as Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq. RAND said the Pentagon is not prepared to deal with the issue in that larger type of war, which likely would involve combat in urban areas where it would be more difficult to distinguish between civilian and military targets.

The August 29 drone strike in Afghanistan killed Zemerai Ahmadi and nine family members, including seven children. Ahmadi, 37, was a longtime employee of an American humanitarian organisation and was not a militant, as first claimed by military officials.

The independent Pentagon review concluded there was no misconduct or negligence.

RAND's review concluded that the US military follows a flawed and inadequate process for assessing and investigating suspected civilian damage and casualties caused by US air strikes. It recommended the military take a broader view of damage to include structural damage that hurts basic community functions.

Source: AP

The number of forest fires in the Brazilian Amazon has hit a nearly 15-year high this week, according to official figures that provided the latest warning on the advancing destruction of the world's biggest rainforest.

Satellite monitoring detected 3,358 fires on Monday, August 22, the highest number for any 24-hour period since September 2007, the Brazilian space agency, INPE said on Thursday.

The number was nearly triple that recorded on the so-called "Day of Fire" –– August 10, 2019 –– when farmers launched a coordinated plan to burn huge amounts of felled rainforest in the northern state of Para.

Then, fires sent thick gray smoke all the way to Sao Paulo, some 2,500 kilometres away, and triggered a global outcry over images of one of Earth's most vital resources burning.

There is no indication that Monday's fires were coordinated, said Alberto Setzer, head of INPE's fire monitoring program.

Rather, they appear to fit a pattern of increasing deforestation and burning, he said.

'Arc of deforestation'

Experts say Amazon fires are caused mainly by illegal farmers, ranchers and speculators clearing land and torching the trees.

In Brazil, the so-called "arc of deforestation" has been advancing.

"The regions where the most fires are occurring are moving farther and farther north," Setzer told the AFP news agency.

"The 'arc of deforestation' is undoubtedly evolving."

August is typically when fire season starts in earnest in the Amazon, with the arrival of drier weather.

This has been a worrying year so far for the forest, a key buffer against global warming: INPE detected 5,373 fires last month, up eight percent from July last year.

Bolsonaro rejects criticism 

And with 24,124 fires so far this month, it is on track to be the worst August under President Jair Bolsonaro -- though well below the 63,764 fires detected in August 2005, the worse for the month since records began in 1998.

Bolsonaro, an agribusiness ally, faces international criticism for a surge in Amazon destruction on his watch. Since he took office in January 2019, the average annual deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has increased by 75 percent compared to the previous decade.

The far-right president rejects that criticism.

"None of those who are attacking us have the right. If they wanted a pretty forest to call their own, they should have preserved the ones in their countries," he wrote on Twitter Thursday.

"The Amazon belongs to Brazilians, and always will."

But with Bolsonaro running for reelection in October, the destruction risks accelerating, said Ane Alencar, director of science at the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM).

"We know from previous years that there is a link between elections and deforestation," with officials and enforcement agencies distracted by the campaign, she said.

This year, "we have high rates of deforestation... and there are still lots of felled trees waiting to burn."

Source: AFP

California has ruled that all new cars sold in America's most populous state must be zero emission from 2035, in what was billed as a "nation-leading" step to slash the pollutants that cause global warming.

The rules, announced by the state's air resources board on Thursday, demand an ever-increasing percentage of new cars sold to California's 40 million inhabitants produce no tailpipe pollutants, until their total ban in 13 years' time.

"The timeline is ambitious but achievable: by the time a child born this year is ready to enter middle school, only zero-emission vehicles or a limited number of plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) will be offered for sale new in California," California Air Resources Board said in a statement. 

The board, which was tasked with finding a way to implement Governor Gavin Newsom's order to transition the state's automotive sector, said the environmental and health benefits would be significant.

"By 2037, the regulation delivers a 25 percent reduction in smog-causing pollution from light-duty vehicles.

"This benefits all Californians but especially the state's most environmentally and economically burdened communities along freeways and other heavily traveled thoroughfares. 

"From 2026 through 2040 the regulation will result in cumulative avoided health impacts ... including 1,290 fewer cardiopulmonary deaths, 460 fewer hospital admissions for cardiovascular or respiratory illness, and 650 fewer emergency room visits for asthma."

Federal approval likely 

The widely touted move has been hailed by environmentalists, who hope it will prod other parts of the United States to quicken the adoption of electric vehicles.

The policy still needs federal approval but that's considered very likely under Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration.

"This is a historic moment for California, for our partner states, and for the world as we set forth this path toward a zero-emission future," Liane Randolph, chair of the air board, said during a public hearing before the vote.

About 16 percent of cars sold in California in the first three months of this year were electric.

California accounts for 10 percent of the US car market but has 43 percent of the nation's 2.6 million registered plug-in vehicles, according to the air board.

Over the past 12 years, California has provided more than $1 billion in rebates for the sale of 478,000 electric, plug-in or hybrid vehicles, according to the air board.

Reaching the 100 percent goal by 2035 will mean overcoming very practical hurdles, notably enough reliable power and charging stations.

California now has about 80,000 stations in public places, far short of the 250,000 it wants by 2025, which drew concerns from major car makers due to the lack of needed infrastructure and materials.

Source: AP