World roundup: September 4 2024

Stories from Israel-Palestine, Azerbaijan, Ecuador, and elsewhere

TODAY IN HISTORY

September 4, 476: Odoacer and his army depose the very young western Roman Emperor Romulus Augustus (“Augustulus”) at Ravenna. This is the conventional date given for the final end of the Roman Empire in the west, though there were other claimants to the throne still kicking around. Modern historians tend to discount the notion that there was a specific end date for the western empire, with this date instead serving as one of many markers in a lengthy transition from the Roman world to one that was more recognizably medieval in makeup.

September 4, 1839: Four British boats open fire on a group of Chinese junks enforcing a blockade on the English community in Hong Kong, killing two in what’s known as the Battle of Kowloon. This minor engagement sparked the First Opium War, which ended with Britain in control of Hong Kong and China forced to agree to major trade concessions.

September 4, 1912: The Albanian Revolt of 1912 ends with Ottoman authorities agreeing to a list of rebel demands that gave the empire’s predominantly Albanian provinces a significant degree of autonomy. The Ottoman Empire was at war with Italy when the revolt broke out and simply lacked the capacity to deal with both struggles at once, so it more or less acceded to Albanian demands (the Ottomans lost the war with Italy anyway). The First Balkan War, which broke out on October 8, short circuited the autonomy plan but ended in mid-1913 with, among other things, the creation of a fully independent Albanian nation.

INTERNATIONAL

The AP reports on a new study outlining the scope and patterns of global plastic pollution:

The world creates 57 million tons of plastic pollution every year and spreads it from the deepest oceans to the highest mountaintop to the inside of people’s bodies, according to a new study that also said more than two-thirds of it comes from the Global South.

It’s enough pollution each year — about 52 million metric tons — to fill New York City’s Central Park with plastic waste as high as the Empire State Building, according to researchers at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom. They examined waste produced on the local level at more than 50,000 cities and towns across the world for a study in Wednesday’s journal Nature.

The study examined plastic that goes into the open environment, not plastic that goes into landfills or is properly burned. For 15% of the world’s population, government fails to collect and dispose of waste, the study’s authors said — a big reason Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa produce the most plastic waste. That includes 255 million people in India, the study said.

Lagos, Nigeria, emitted the most plastic pollution of any city, according to study author Costas Velis, a Leeds environmental engineering professor. The other biggest plastic polluting cities are New Delhi; Luanda, Angola; Karachi, Pakistan and Al Qahirah [Cairo], Egypt.

MIDDLE EAST

ISRAEL-PALESTINE

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs issued a statement on Wednesday accusing the Israeli military (IDF) of employing “lethal war-like tactics” in its latest major operation in the West Bank. At +972 Magazine, Mariam Barghouti covers its “brutal” ongoing assault on the city of Jenin:

On Aug. 28, Israel launched “Operation Summer Camps,” the largest military invasion witnessed in the northern West Bank in over two decades. In Jenin, Israeli forces first moved into the city before imposing a full-blown siege on the refugee camp within hours; the army simultaneously carried out operations in Tubas, Nablus, Ramallah, and Tulkarem.

Since 2021, the Israeli military has repeatedly targeted Jenin refugee camp under the pretext of fighting armed resistance groups. Most of the victims of these assaults have been non-combatant Palestinian civilians and minors, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Local Palestinian residents and journalists say that this current assault is the most intense and violent in years, with at least 19 Palestinians killed in Jenin, including minors. This comes amid a dramatic increase in Israeli military operations and settler violence across the West Bank after October 7, which have killed nearly 700 Palestinians in the territory — 185 in Jenin alone — in brutal ways.

The OCHA hasn’t even been able to get into Jenin to assess the humanitarian situation there, thanks to IDF restrictions.