World roundup: September 13 2023

Stories from Egypt, Afghanistan, Sudan, and elsewhere

TODAY IN HISTORY

September 13, 533: A Byzantine army under Belisarius defeats the Vandals in the Battle of Ad Decimum, near Carthage. This was Belisarius’s first victory in his invasion of North Africa and kicked off his campaign to restore the western Mediterranean to imperial control.

September 13, 1993: Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organization chair Yasser Arafat sign the Oslo I Accord in Washington, DC. Oslo I established a Palestinian government of sorts, the Palestinian Authority, and included provisions for the eventual withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Occupied Territories and economic cooperation between the Israelis and Palestinians. It was supposed to be an interim agreement but, well, you can see how that went.

INTERNATIONAL

• A study published in the journal Science Advances on Wednesday says that Earth is outside the “safe operating space for humanity” on six of nine measures. It updates a previous version of the same study, published in 2015, that gave the planet failing grades on five of those measures. The sixth category is apparently “water,” so at least it’s not critical to survival. One category is improving, that being the health of the ozone layer. Activists continually cite the Montreal Protocol, the international accord that saved the ozone layer, as proof that humanity can coalesce around a plan to tackle climate change. But it’s been about 35 years since Montreal and there’s been no evidence since then to suggest that its success can be replicated.