AFP UK

Baker Lake surrounded by fall colors near East Bolton, Quebec, Canada

Despite the complete absence of snow, the ski resort in Canada’s Quebec province attracts tens of thousands of visitors every fall to witness one of the world’s great displays of autumnal glory.

The auburn, crimson and golden foliage spreads across much of eastern Canada each year, with the bright red leaves of the country’s signature maple trees taking a starring role.

At Mont Orford, shivering hikers step off the resort’s chairlift and declare the trip worthwhile despite temperatures barely above freezing at the top.

“The temperature, the colors, the atmosphere it creates… It’s something, honestly, that I wouldn’t trade for anything in the world,” said Dominique Poudrier, 42, from nearby town Trois Rivieres Quebec, who came to admire the spectacle with his family.

Situated about 100 kilometers (60 miles) from Montreal, near the border with the US states of Maine and Vermont, Mont Orford even boasts views over heart-shaped Baker Lake — a highlight for many visitors.

“The ski lift, coming to see the colors at the top, that’s what really attracts people here,” resort spokeswoman Valerie Collette, sporting a knitted cap and parka, told AFP.

Quebecker Melanie Diamond, 46, admired the display, but cautioned that the peak colors would soon slip away.

“It’s very, very beautiful,” said Diamond who came with her niece. “It loses a bit of its intensity as we’re heading into winter, but the view is incredible, the colors are really superb.”

Floods in Chad have hit 18 of the country's 23 provinces and affected more than a million people

Chad’s leader Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno on Wednesday declared a state of emergency as the country struggles to deal with exceptional flooding that has affected hundreds of thousands of lives.

The floods, caused by heavy rains in the south and central areas, have hit 18 of the country’s 23 provinces and affected “more than a million people”, Deby said in a television address, adding that no one had yet died as a result.

The flood water has “swallowed  up more than 465,000 hectares of fields and 19,000 heads of livestock,” he added.

“A state of emergency will be instituted to better contain and manage this natural disaster situation,” Deby announced.

“The areas most at risk are the capital N’Djamena and surrounding areas,” the president said, calling the situation “increasingly worrying”.

Chad is the world’s third poorest country, according to the benchmark of the UN’s Human Development Index.

The United Nations says 5.5 million Chadians need “emergency humanitarian aid”, while the World Bank says 42 percent of the 16 million population live in poverty.

“We have to provide shelter, basic necessities and health protection,” Deby said.

“We have to thank the Almighty who has spared us the loss of life until now,” he added.

He urged “friendly countries” and “technical and financial partners” to support the government’s efforts.

The 38-year-old five-star general took the helm in April 2021 after his father, Idriss Deby Itno — Chad’s iron-fisted ruler for three decades — was killed during an operation against rebels.

Strikes by workers at oil refineries calling for higher salaries have caused fuel shortages across France

After three weeks of blockades, strikes at sites owned by French oil giant TotalEnergies were starting to ease on Wednesday, although uncertainty remains over fuel supply as the country heads into the autumn holiday break.

In recent weeks several of France’s seven refineries and one fuel depot were out of action as striking members of the hard-left CGT union rejected a pay offer from the hydrocarbon industry leader that other unions accepted.

But on Wednesday the CGT said the strike at the Donges refinery in the west of the country was suspended, as well as at two other oil sites in France, one in the north and one in the south.

Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne said the situation “continues to improve markedly”.

The blockades will continue at the Normandy and the Rhone sites.

Strike action at two Esso-ExxonMobil refineries ended last week, after a pay deal between management and moderate unions which represent a majority of workers.

“We hope that management will heed the demands of the strikers in order to bring this conflict to an end,” Benjamin Tange of the CGT union told AFP.

The CGT had announced on Wednesday morning that it had proposed a “protocol for ending the conflict” to the management of TotalEnergies.  

According to the union, the proposal was rejected by management, a statement not confirmed by the company when questioned by AFP.

The union proposal called for “negotiations on employment and investment” as well as guarantees that those who went out on strike would not be punished.

The CGT — which launched the industrial action three weeks ago — has been pushing for a 10-percent pay rise for staff at TotalEnergies, retroactive to the start of this year.

It says the French group can more than afford it, citing TotalEnergies’ net profit of $5.7 billion in the April-June period as energy prices soared with the war in Ukraine, and its payout of billions of euros in dividends to shareholders.

But the strike action has forced many filling stations to close and had a knock-on effect across all sectors of the economy.

Faced with the fuel shortages, many people have started to cancel holidays ahead of the upcoming school break, which has been impacting on an anticipated boost for the country’s tourism sector.

Energy Transition Minister Agnes Pannier-Runacher said the government is “doing everything so that people can go on a peaceful vacation”.

Some 20 percent of service stations were still short of petrol or diesel on Wednesday, according to the health ministry.

To try and ease the shortage, the government has used requisitioning powers to force some strikers back to open fuel depots — a move that has infuriated unions but been upheld in the courts.

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These handout photos provided by NASA show the 'Pillars of Creation' that are set off in a kaleidoscope of color in theJames Webb Space Telescope's near-infrared-light view (R) compared to the Hubble telescope's 2014 wider view in visible light

The James Webb Space Telescope captured the iconic “Pillars of Creation,” huge structures of gas and dust teeming with stars, NASA said Wednesday, and the image is as majestic as one could hope.

The twinkling of thousands of stars illuminates the telescope’s first shot of the gigantic gold, copper and brown columns standing in the midst of the cosmos.

At the ends of several pillars are bright red, lava-like spots. “These are ejections from stars that are still forming,” only a few hundred thousand years old, NASA said in a statement.

These “young stars periodically shoot out supersonic jets that collide with clouds of material, like these thick pillars,” the US space agency added.

The “Pillars of Creation” are located 6,500 light years from Earth, in the Eagle Nebula of our Milky Way galaxy.

The pillars were made famous by the Hubble Space Telescope, which first captured them in 1995 and then again in 2014.

But thanks to Webb’s infrared capabilities, the newer telescope — launched into space less than a year ago — can peer through the opacity of the pillars, revealing many new stars forming.

“By popular demand, we had to do the Pillars of Creation” with Webb, Klaus Pontoppidan, the science program manager at the Space Telescope Science Institute, said Wednesday on Twitter.

STScI operates Webb from Baltimore, Maryland.

“There are just so many stars!” Pontoppidan added.

NASA astrophysicist Amber Straughn summed it up: “The universe is beautiful!” she wrote on Twitter.

The image, covering an area of about eight light years, was taken by Webb’s primary imager NIRCam, which captures near-infrared wavelengths — invisible to the human eye.

The colors of the image have been “translated” into visible light.

According to NASA, the new image “will help researchers revamp their models of star formation by identifying far more precise counts of newly formed stars, along with the quantities of gas and dust in the region.”

Operational since July, Webb is the most powerful space telescope ever built, and has already unleashed a raft of unprecedented data. Scientists are hopeful it will herald a new era of discovery.

One of the main goals for the $10-billion telescope is to study the life cycle of stars. Another main research focus is on exoplanets, planets outside Earth’s solar system.

Dad? New genetic research has offered a glimpse into the family life of Neanderthals

The original Flintstones? The largest genetic study of Neanderthals ever conducted has offered an unprecedented snapshot of a family, including a father and his teenage daughter, who lived in a Siberian cave around 54,000 years ago.

The new research, published in the journal Nature on Wednesday, used DNA sequencing to look at the social life of a Neanderthal community, finding that women were more likely to stray from the cave than men.

Previous archaeological excavations have shown that Neanderthals were more sophisticated than once thought, burying their dead and making elaborate tools and ornaments. 

However little is known about their family structure or how their society was organised.

The sequencing of the first Neanderthal genome in 2010, which won Swedish paleogeneticist Svante Paabo the medicine Nobel prize earlier this month, offered a new way to discover more about our long extinct forerunners.

An international team of researchers focused on multiple Neanderthal remains found in the Chagyrskaya and Okladnikov caves in southern Siberia. 

The scattered fragments of bones were mostly in a single layer in the earth, suggesting the Neanderthals lived around the same time.

“First we had to identify how many individuals we had,” Stephane Peyregne, an evolutionary geneticist at Germany’s Max Planck Institute and one of the study’s co-authors, told AFP.

– ‘Seem much more human’ –

The team used new techniques to extract and isolate the ancient DNA from the remains.

By sequencing the DNA, they established there were 13 Neanderthals, seven males and six females. Five of the group were children or early adolescents.

Eleven were from the Chagyrskaya cave, many of them from the same family including the father and his teenage daughter, as well as a young boy and a woman who were second-degree relatives, such as a cousin, aunt or grandmother.

The researchers also worked out that one man was a maternal relative of the father because he had a genetic phenomenon called heteroplasmy, which only passes down a couple of generations.

“Our study provides a concrete picture of what a Neandertal community may have looked like,” Max Planck’s Benjamin Peter, who supervised the research along with Paabo, said in a statement.

“It makes Neandertals seem much more human to me,” he added.

Genetic analysis showed that the group did not interbreed with its nearby relatives such as humans and Denisovans, hominins discovered by Paabo in caves just a few hundred kilometres away.

However we know that Neanderthals did breed with homo sapiens at some point — Paabo’s research also revealed that almost all modern humans have a little Neanderthal DNA.

– Rampant inbreeding –

The community of around 10 to 20 Neanderthals seems to have instead bred largely among themselves, displaying very little genetic diversity, the study found.

Neanderthals existed between 430,000 to 40,000 years ago, so this group was living in the twilight of its species.

The study compared the community’s level of inbreeding to endangered mountain gorillas. Another explanation for the inbreeding could be that the Neanderthals lived in an isolated region.

“We are probably dealing with a very subdivided population,” Peyregne said.

The researchers found that the group’s Y-chromosomes, which are inherited from father to son, were far less diverse than its mitochondrial DNA, which is inherited from mothers.

This suggests that the women travelled more frequently to interact and breed with different groups of Neanderthals, while the men largely stayed home.

Antoine Balzeau, a palaeoanthropologist at France’s National Museum of Natural History, said that fossils found in the Sidron Cave in Spain prompted suggestions of a similar Neanderthal community there, but far less complete genetic material is available.

Balzeau, who was not involved in the latest study, said it was “a very interesting technical feat”.

But “it will have to be compared with other groups” of Neanderthals, he added.

Spain's Energy Minister calls the European reaction to the energy crisis 'slow and laboured'

The EU’s proposals to rein in soaring energy prices are too “timid” and could lead to a “breakdown in confidence” in European institutions, Spain’s Energy Minister Teresa Ribera said Wednesday during an interview with AFP on the eve of an EU leaders summit.

Energy prices and inflation have surged across the 27-nation European Union as Moscow slashed gas supplies apparently in response to EU sanctions over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February.

As winter approaches, the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, has been under intense pressure to tackle soaring heating bills for household and businesses.

On Tuesday it unveiled its latest proposals which put the emphasis on joint purchasing among EU countries in order to better command lower prices to refill gas reserves.

“The proposals are, in my view, still too timid: we are still missing concrete measures regarding the vast majority of subjects,” Ribera said.

While there has been a “real effort” to tackle the energy crisis over the past year, it is “frustrating to see” that “Europe’s reaction in the face of this challenge is slow and laboured,” she added.

Spain, the fourth largest eurozone economy, has been one of the loudest voices within the bloc calling for a vigorous reform of the EU’s energy market.

The commission’s latest plan — which will be taken up at a two-day summit of EU leaders which begins Thursday in Brussels — does not include an immediate gas price cap.

A large group of EU countries, led by Italy, have pushed hard for some form of price cap, which is opposed by Germany which fears scaring off alternative suppliers that have stepped in to replace Russia as the bloc’s main source of gas.

“I think it is important to go a bit faster on this issue,” Ribera said.

“We shouldn’t have to ask the Commission four times the same thing to have a proposal. But I trust that the Commission will speed up and make the proposals. It would be risky not to take the decisions in time.”

– ‘Tough situation’ –

The skyrocketing energy prices have fuelled large protests in several European nations against rising inflation and to demand higher wages.

“The energy crisis causes a tough situation for families and for the productive fabric. If we do not respond quickly enough, there may be a breakdown of confidence in the European institutions,” Ribera said.

“The current situation is a very important stress test for Europe,” she added.

Ribera said she was “moderately””optimistic that Spain will be able to convince France to lift its opposition to the construction of a new gas pipeline across the Pyrenees mountains.

With Russia withholding gas deliveries to most of Europe in reaction to sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine, there has been a resurgence of interest — especially from Germany — in a link to bring in much-needed supplies from Spain to the rest of the continent.

Plans for such a pipeline, known as MidCat, emerged a decade ago but were dropped in 2019 over regulatory and funding issues. 

“We respect and understand some of France’s arguments but not all,” Ribera said.

“It is important to find a European solution to the problem, and that the demand for help from Germany and other member states be heard.”

Coal emissions have risen less than expected given the surge in natural gas prices

Global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel combustion are expected to grow just one percent this year despite concerns over the impact of the energy crisis, the International Energy Agency said Wednesday, amid bumper growth for renewable energy.

The IEA predicted that the CO2 emitted for energy by burning oil, gas and coal would stand at 33.8 billion tonnes in 2022, more than 300 million tonnes more than in 2021.

That increase was however far smaller than the 2-billion-tonne jump the world experienced last year as countries turned to fossil fuels to power their Covid-19 recoveries, it added.

The United Nations says greenhouse gas emissions must be halved by 2030 to keep the Paris Agreement temperature goals within reach — effectively a drop of some eight percent each year this decade.

The energy crisis sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine propped up some coal demand this year due to hikes in natural gas prices, said the IEA.

But the relatively small increase in coal emissions had been offset by widespread deployment of renewable tech, including electric vehicles (EVs) — and this had prevented a CO2 rise of some 1 billion tonnes in 2022.

“The encouraging news is that solar and wind are filling much of the gap, with the uptick in coal appearing to be relatively small and temporary,” said IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol. 

“This means that CO2 emissions are growing far less quickly this year than some people feared –- and that policy actions by governments are driving real structural changes in the energy economy.”

The IEA analysis showed that solar photovoltaic and wind capacity grew by more than 700 terawatt-hours in 2022, the largest single year rise on record. 

Birol said the trend is due to continue “thanks to the major clean energy policy plans that have advanced around the world in recent months”.

Coal was expected to register the next largest increase due to high gas prices, rising 200 millions tones in terms of CO2, or around two percent year-on-year.

The IEA said emissions in Europe were likely to fall slightly this year and continue their downward trajectory with a spate of new renewable projects slated for next year. 

In China, the world’s largest polluter, emissions will stay largely flat in 2022, it said.

Astrophysicists measured the light for exploding stars called supernovae to arrive at the most precise limits yet for the universe's composition

The most precise measurements ever made of the universe’s composition and how fast it is expanding suggest “something is fishy” in our understanding of the cosmos, the astrophysicist who led the research said Wednesday.

The comprehensive new study published in The Astrophysical Journal further confirmed that there is a significant discrepancy between two different ways to estimate the speed at which the universe is expanding. 

The study said that around five percent of the universe is made up of what we might think of as normal matter, while the rest is dark matter and dark energy — both of which remain shrouded in mystery.

Dark energy, a hypothetical force causing the universe to expand at an ever-increasing rate, makes up 66.2 percent of the cosmos, according to the study published in The Astrophysical Journal.

The remaining 33.8 percent is a combination of matter and dark matter, which is also unknown but may consist of some as-yet-undiscovered subatomic particle.

To arrive at the most precise limits yet put on what our universe is made up of, an international team of researchers observed exploding stars called supernovae.

They analysed the light from 1,550 different supernovae, ranging from close to home to more than 10 billion lights year away, back when the universe was a quarter of its current age.

“We can compare them and see how the universe is behaving and evolving over time,” said Dillon Brout of the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and lead author of the study, called Pantheon+.

– Two decades of analysis –

The study updated the data from the Pantheon project a couple of years ago, stamping out possible problems and nailing down more precise calculations.

“This latest Pantheon+ analysis is a culmination of more than two decades’ worth of diligent efforts by observers and theorists worldwide in deciphering the essence of the cosmos,” US astrophysicist Adam Reiss, 2011’s physics Nobel winner, said in a statement.

It was by observing supernovae back in the late 1990s that Reiss and other scientists discovered the universe was not only expanding but also doing so at an increasing rate, meaning galaxies are racing away from each other.

“It was like if you threw a ball up, and instead of the ball coming down, it shot up and kept accelerating,” Brout said of the surprise of that discovery.

Pantheon+ also pooled data with the SH0ES supernova collaboration to find what is believed to be the most accurate measurement for how rapidly the universe is expanding.

They estimated the universe is currently expanding 73.4 kilometres a second every megaparsec, or 3.26 million light years. That works out to be around 255,000 kilometres (160,000 miles) per hour, according to a Harvard-Smithsonian statement.

But there’s a problem.

– The Hubble tension – 

Measuring cosmic microwave background radiation, which can look much farther back in time to around 300,000 years after the Big Bang, suggests the universe is expanding at a significantly slower rate — around 67 kilometres per megaparsec.

This discrepancy has been called the Hubble tension, after US astronomer Edwin Hubble.

The Pantheon+ results have raised the certainty of the Hubble tension above what is known as the five sigma threshold, which means the discrepancy “can no longer be attributed to luck”, Brout said.

“It certainly indicates that potentially something is fishy with our understanding of the universe,” Brout told AFP.

Some possible, unverified theories for the discrepancy could include another kind of dark energy in the very early universe, primordial magnetic fields, or even that the Milky Way sits in a cosmic void, potentially slowing it down.

But for now, Brout said that “we, as scientists thrive on not understanding everything.

“There’s still potentially a major revolution in our understanding, coming potentially in our lifetimes,” he added.

Sun, sea, sand… and diamond mining: The Olifants estuary on South Africa's west coast

To those who live here, it’s like a little piece of heaven, boasting pink flamingos, white beaches and blue ocean waters.

Yet this stretch of South Africa’s west coast has also become a battleground, pitching mining firms against environmentalists fearful that one of nature’s last wild treasures is being bulldozed away.

Diamonds, zircon and other minerals have long been extracted in the sandy coastline near the Olifants river, which flows into the Atlantic about 300 kilometres (180 miles) north of Cape Town. 

But plans to expand the mining have angered surfers, animal lovers and residents in this remote, sparsely populated region — and they are pushing back with lawsuits and petitions. 

“It’s one of the last frontiers of the South African coastline where you can go and sort of lose yourself,” said surfer Mike Schlebach, 45, co-founder of a green campaign group, Protect the West Coast.

Mining companies say they bring much-needed jobs to the area and insist they abide by environmental rules. 

But locals contend the excavation, in which sand is extracted from beaches and the seabed and sifted for valuable minerals, is scaring off fish and tourists alike — and shrinking rather than broadening employment opportunities.

“If we are going to have sea mining, beach mining, land mining… where is the public going to have access to the coast?” questioned Suzanne Du Plessis, 61, a local resident and campaigner. 

– Dolphins, seals and excavators – 

From off-shore diamond prospecting to the construction of a new harbour, several projects threaten to scar the area, a biodiversity hotspot home to dolphins, seals and succulent plants, according to Protect the West Coast. 

Campaigners secured a small victory in June, when the operator of a mineral sand mine that had gained government approval to expand its activities to 10 more beaches, committed to additional environmental checks. 

This came on the back of a lawsuit brought by the Centre of Environment Rights (CER), another environmental group, that was settled out of court by the mine operator, Australian-owned Minerals Commodities. 

But activists remain wary. 

“CER is entitled to go back to court should the mine not comply with the provisions of the agreement,” said CER’s lawyer Zahra Omar.

The mine has already asked for more time to put together its biodiversity management plan, she said.

Minerals Commodities legal counsel Fletcher Hancock said the company was committed to conducting its operations “in an environmentally sustainable and responsible way.”

Activists and locals feel the government has left them to fend for themselves. 

Two government ministries in charge of mineral resources and environmental affairs did not respond to requests for comment. 

– Smaller catch –

In Doringbaai, a small town a few kilometres south of the Olifants estuary, a once-pristine beach where people used to walk their dogs and enjoy the sunset to the sound of crashing waves is now being torn up by heavy machinery.

Resident Peter Owies, 54, said locals were blindsided when mining started earlier this year.

“It was quite a surprise and shock to us,” he said. 

A meeting requested by the community to discuss the mining plans was never held, with the required consultation happening only online, said Du Plessis, the campaigner. 

Preston Goliath, a 46-year-old fisherman, said his catch had dwindled after the mining work began and the same is true for dozens of others. 

“Because they were pumping for diamonds… the fish moved away and our richest (fisheries) bank is now empty,” said Goliath.

Some residents want the beach mining to stop.

But mine owner Trans Hex said all its environmental papers are in order, adding it has held mining rights for the area since 1991.

With dozens more mining permits waiting for approval, Schlebach of Protect the West Coast said he hoped the government would rethink its strategy for the region.

“There’s a whole array of new industries that could have a profoundly positive effect on the people that live on that coastline like algae farming,” Schlebach said. 

“We’ve got to show them that there’s a much better way.

Activists here are optimistic, emboldened by victories scored elsewhere by environmentalists.

On September 1, activists claimed victory in a court case against energy giant Shell — despite the government’s support of the company — resulting in the ban of seismic exploration off the touristic Indian Ocean coast.

Experts and residents believe air pollution contributes to higher rates of cancer and respiratory disease in Zouk Mikael

After losing four relatives to respiratory illness, Zeina Matar fled her hometown north of Lebanon’s capital where she says a decaying power plant generates little electricity but very deadly pollution.

Thick black smoke sometimes billows from its red-and-white chimneys, leaving a grey haze in the air above the Zouk Mikael industrial district where the toxins remain trapped by a nearby mountain chain.

Zeina, aged 40, says she lost her younger sister and a cousin to pulmonary fibrosis and that two of her uncles died of lung cancer years earlier.

They all lived near the plant where, experts and residents believe, air pollution means people are more likely to develop cancer and respiratory disease than anywhere else in the crisis-torn country.

“We could die tomorrow,” said Zeina, who has relocated to Lebanon’s south to escape the plant’s emissions.

A Greenpeace study found that the surrounding Jounieh area ranked fifth in the Arab world and 23rd globally for cities most contaminated by nitrogen dioxide, a dangerous pollutant released when fuel is burnt.

The environmental group’s 2018 study singled out the Zouk plant, built in the 1940s, as well as cars on a busy motorway and privately owned electricity generators as the main causes of pollution.

The walls of Zeina’s balconies in her old Zouk Mikael home are blackened by the smoke, and laundry she used to hang outside would be damaged by toxic chemicals emanating from the plant, she said. 

“Whenever they refill the station with fuel oil, we would close the windows,” Zeina said. “The smell is unbearable.”

– Doctor says ‘I fled’ –

Lebanon’s economy has been in free-fall since a financial crisis hit late in 2019, with authorities now barely able to afford more than an hour of mains electricity a day.

The Zouk Mikael plant, one of the country’s largest, now runs at minimum capacity when it operates at all, but still its emissions are causing high rates of pulmonary disease, experts warn.

Among them is Paul Makhlouf, a lung doctor at the Notre Dame du Liban Hospital in Jounieh, who said he abandoned his local apartment after noticing a rise in respiratory disease among patients. 

In 2014, he found that lung ailments had increased by three percent in patients living near the plant compared to the previous year, an annual rise he estimates has now doubled.

“When I saw the results, I moved from there,” he said. “I fled.”

Makhlouf mainly blames the type of fuel burnt at the Zouk Mikael plant, which he says is rich in sulphide and nitric oxide — carcinogenic chemicals that affect the respiratory system and the skin.

Compounding the problem, he said, is the fact the seaside plant is located at a low altitude, with heavy smoke trapped in the densely-populated area by nearby mountains that overlook the Mediterranean.

– ‘Under black cloud’ –

Pictures went viral online last month of thick black smoke again billowing from the Zouk plant as it burnt low-quality fuel oil to produce just one hour of power that day.

The energy ministry said the plant had been forced to use heavy fuel to “keep supplying the airport, hospitals and other vital institutions” with electricity.

Since then, the plant has mostly operated at night.

“Sometimes, we wake up to a loud noise in the middle of the night” when the station kicks into action and burns fuel oil, said Zeina’s 80-year-old aunt Samia, who still lives near the plant. 

Elie Beaino, who heads the Zouk municipality, said a second plant, built without authorisation in 2014, runs somewhat more cleanly on higher-quality fuel or gas, but that it has stopped working as its operators cannot afford those higher-quality hydrocarbons.

“Most residents want the power plants to close down,” he said.

Lawmaker Najat Saliba, an atmospheric chemist, said residents near Zouk are at least seven times more likely to develop cancer than those of Beirut, citing a 2018 study she helped author for the American University of Beirut. 

She said the heavy fuel oil it uses releases harmful chemicals. “The solution is to import quality fuel oil and gas,” she said, adding however that Lebanon cannot afford those fuels.

“We have two options today,” she said. “To switch the lights off at the airport and in hospitals, or to sit under a black cloud in Zouk.”