Category: News

JERUSALEM — Government ministers from Israel and the United Arab Emirates signed a free-trade agreement on Tuesday that, once ratified, would be the widest-ranging deal of its kind between Israel and an Arab country and the latest example of deepening ties between the Jewish state and some Arab governments.

The text of the deal has yet to be published and is still subject to review by the Israeli Parliament and formal ratification by the Israeli government, a process that will take at least two weeks. But officials said that once confirmed, the agreement would loosen restrictions on almost all trade between the two countries and could increase its annual value 10-fold within five years.

The speed at which the deal took shape — it was sealed less than two years since the establishment of formal ties between Israel and the Emirates — highlights the readiness with which Israel is now being accepted by some Arab leaders after years of diplomatic isolation.

For decades, Israel was ostracized by all but two Arab countries, with the others mostly avoiding formal diplomatic relations with it because of the lack of resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

That changed in 2020, when Israel, in four agreements brokered by the Trump administration, established diplomatic relations with Bahrain and the U.A.E., re-established them with Morocco and improved relations with Sudan.

The agreements reflected a shift in priorities by those countries, which now consider the creation of a Palestinian state of less immediate importance than building a united front against the threat of Iran and establishing better trade and military ties with Israel.

The trade deal signed Tuesday in Dubai by the Israeli and Emirati economy ministers — Orna Barbivay and Abdulla bin Touq al-Marri — is the most substantive consequence of those agreements.

The deal will lead to the removal of tariffs on 96 percent of goods traded between the two countries within five years, both ministries said.

Bilateral trade was worth $885 million in 2021, the Israeli economy ministry said. The free trade agreement may allow the annual value of trade to rise to $10 billion within five years, the Emirati economy ministry said.

The Israeli prime minister, Naftali Bennett, described the deal as “historic,” and said that the negotiations, which began around the time of Mr. Bennett’s visit to the Emirates last December, led to “the fastest F.T.A. to be signed in Israel’s history.”

Mohamed Al Khaja, the Emirati ambassador to Israel, called it “an unprecedented achievement.”

According to the Israeli government, the deal will enhance the trade of medicine, medical equipment, food, plastic goods and fertilizer, as well as Israeli jewelry.

The deal will also improve bilateral cooperation over intellectual property rights, copyright and patents, particularly in the technology and agriculture sectors. It could also help Israeli and Emirati companies compete for government contracts in either country, the Israeli statement said.

The deal follows several other milestones in the relationship between Israel and its new Arab partners.

Mr. Bennett and several of his ministers have met their counterparts in the U.A.E. and Bahrain — visits that were once considered unthinkable — and some ministers have also visited Morocco. Those warming ties have also bolstered Israel’s relationship with Egypt, its oldest Arab partner. Egypt and Israel sealed a peace deal in 1979 but avoided establishing a warm relationship until the recent thaw between Israel, the Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco.

In a sign of improving ties between Israel and Egypt, Mr. Bennett met in March in Egypt with both Mohammed bin Zayed, the Emirati leader, and the Egyptian president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi — another summit that would have been hard to imagine before 2020.

Israel has also signed provisional defense agreements with the Bahraini and Moroccan defense ministries, making it easier for their armies to coordinate and trade military equipment. And in a highly symbolic meeting in March, the foreign ministers of Israel, Egypt, Bahrain, Morocco, the U.A.E. and the United States gathered in southern Israel, at the retirement home of Israel’s founding prime minister, David Ben-Gurion.

Jews living in the Emirates are also observing their religious traditions increasingly openly. Community leaders estimate that the number of resident observant Jews in Dubai has doubled, to 500, in the last year, and at least five kosher restaurants have opened in that time.

ALBANY, N.Y. — Money and lobbying hold enormous sway in the State Capitol, but there are few pressures like an old-fashioned deadline to get major legislation over the finish line.

With New York’s yearly legislative session scheduled to conclude June 2, state lawmakers are racing to put finishing touches on a wide range of legislative packages, from efforts to strengthen gun laws and reproductive rights to a deal to renew New York City’s authority over its schools.

The Legislature, controlled by Democrats, has already passed a steady stream of legislation in recent weeks, including a landmark bill to allow adult victims of sexual assault to sue their abusers, and legislation to ban the sale of cosmetics tested on animals. The Senate has passed bills to crack down on monopolies and cap the cost of insulin, though it remained unclear if the Assembly would follow suit.

Consensus on other hot-button legislation seemed even less certain, with many legislators already eyeing re-election campaigns and grappling with the chaos of new district lines that have led to a harried game of musical chairs.

Here’s a look at five of the most contentious issues facing lawmakers in their final week of session.

Raising the age to buy AR-15-style weapons

New York already has some of the strictest gun laws in the nation, but lawmakers want to further strengthen them, something they had been discussing even before the massacres in a Buffalo supermarket and a Texas elementary school.

The recent shootings, each involving 18-year-old suspects, only added momentum for new gun policies: Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, declared on Wednesday that she would seek legislation to raise the minimum age to 21 for the purchase of AR-15-style weapons, and perhaps other firearms.

Currently, anyone over 18 can purchase a long gun in New York as long as they pass a background check; permits to obtain a long gun are required in New York City, but not elsewhere in the state.

Raising the age for the purchase of at least some rifles, a step that other Democratic-led states have taken, appears to have support among Democratic lawmakers, even though it could be challenged in court by the gun lobby, which prevailed in California recently.

Lawmakers are discussing other gun-control measures, including a proposal to “microstamp” semiautomatic pistols to help law enforcement officials trace cartridge cases to the guns that discharged them.

State lawmakers are being cautious about the type of gun legislation they take on, wary of not passing any laws that the Supreme Court could use in its looming decision over the state’s concealed carry law, which many Democrats fear will be struck down. The law imposes limits on carrying guns outside the home.

“We don’t want to tip off any Supreme Court clerks who might be drafting an opinion and citing New York legislators trying to pre-empt their eventual opinion,” said State Senator Brad Hoylman, a Democrat who sponsored the microstamping legislation. “So there’s a lot of unease but also calculation that these bills don’t touch that area of concealed carry.”

Lawmakers may have some leeway in their timing: Ms. Hochul said this week she was prepared to call a special legislative session to pass bills in response to a Supreme Court decision, which is expected sometime in June.

Lawmakers weigh environmental impact of crypto mining

Two environmental bills are facing hurdles: One would impose a two-year moratorium on the most energy intensive cryptocurrency mining, while the other would task the New York Power Authority with building wind and solar plants with the goal of energizing the renewable energy market.

Proponents of both bills say they are critical to meeting goals of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act of 2019, a landmark law that mandated the state be 70 percent renewably powered by 2030, and carbon neutral by 2050. As of this week, New York received less than 3 percent of its power from wind and solar renewables.

“If the private sector is too slow to help us comply with C.L.C.P.A., which as of now it seems that we’re moving too slowly, we have a public entity that can help accelerate the pace,” State Senator Michael Gianaris, the Democratic deputy majority leader, said of the public utility bill, a top priority for progressives.

Opponents say that the bill is not necessary, given how many private-sector renewable projects are in the pipeline, and will lead to increased costs for consumers.

But it is the cryptocurrency bill — the first of its kind in the nation — which has received the most attention.

The bill would temporarily block new permits from being issued to facilities that are mining the digital currency using nonrenewable energy sources. The legislation is a direct response to the environmental concerns over old fossil-fuel power plants that have been converted into crypto mining facilities, especially for Bitcoin, across upstate New York.

The bill passed the Assembly in April, but the cryptocurrency industry — a newcomer in Albany politics — has mobilized to try to block the legislation in the Senate, where the chamber passed a broader moratorium last year.

The industry has argued that banning the operations would hurt the nascent industry in New York and open the floodgates for similar regulations by Congress and other statehouses. Ms. Hochul said this week that she was “open-minded” about the legislation, but wanted to balance the creation of upstate jobs with the environmental impact of the facilities, a concern echoed by other lawmakers.

“I think there is a way to make crypto mining fossil-free without using the stick, and instead using carrots to get there,” said State Senator Todd Kaminsky, a Democrat from Long Island.

New York City mayors have trekked up to Albany on a regular basis to renew the city’s control over its public schools ever since Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg first convinced lawmakers to grant him so-called mayoral control.

While local boards oversee schools in the rest of the state, lawmakers have typically granted the city authority over its schools in increments of anywhere from one to seven years.

Mayor Eric Adams, with the backing of the governor, has asked to extend mayoral control four more years, which is longer than any extension that his predecessor, Bill de Blasio, had received.

John C. Liu, who leads the State Senate’s New York City Education Committee, said he believed that four years was too long of an extension. He suggested that he would be open to a multiyear agreement, provided that certain issues like class size, and representation for English as a second language students, and those with disabilities, were addressed.

The broader question of school governance remains open, however, with Mr. Liu, a Queens Democrat, saying he believed the state should commission a study on how city schools had fared under two decades of mayoral control and how they compared to those in other large American cities.

Democratic lawmakers have been working on a package of bills that would strengthen New York’s already robust protections for abortion, following a leaked Supreme Court opinion indicating the court was poised to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Some of those efforts have been focused on shielding providers from liability for patients coming from states where abortion has been criminalized. Others seek to protect patients who travel to New York for sexual health care.

Democrats are also working to enshrine the right to an abortion in the State Constitution, a move Ms. Hochul has expressed support for. It remains unclear, however, whether lawmakers will advance language focused narrowly on abortion, or put forth a more ambitious bill, which would provide comprehensive protection from discrimination.

A real estate tax break about to expire

Democratic lawmakers appear poised to let expire a divisive tax incentive program that New York City developers have used for five decades in the construction of most large residential projects.

Both Ms. Hochul and Mr. Adams have pushed for the renewal of the much-debated subsidy, known as 421a, or a revamped version of the program, which is meant to help subsidize the construction of affordable housing.

But there has been little appetite to renew the program among progressive Democratic lawmakers who have cast the subsidy as a tax giveaway for developers in exchange for too few units of below-market rental apartments.

“If we’re going to have a program that grants such generous tax benefits, we need to make sure that the public benefit is commensurate with the tax revenue we’re foregoing,” said State Senator Brian Kavanagh, the chair of the housing committee. “I think we have an opportunity to do that in the future. It’s not something that needs to happen by next Thursday.”

The impact of the subsidy’s expiration on June 15 is not expected to be felt for years. Ms. Hochul said the state could revisit the program in the future, even as some lawmakers made last ditch attempts to assemble a package of housing bills that could include an extension of the program.

Lawmakers appeared to be nearing consensus on another housing front: legislation to help salvage New York City’s deteriorating public housing system, home to more than 400,000 low-income residents.

The legislation, which Mr. Adams has lobbied for, would create a Public Housing Preservation Trust aimed at unlocking federal funds to finance the repairs to thousands of public housing units suffering from leaks, heat outages and mold.

BAMAKO, Mali — On the last Sunday in March before Ramadan, thousands of merchants and villagers filled the market of Moura, in central Mali, trading cattle in a vast pen and stocking up on spices and vegetables in the town’s sandy alleys.

Suddenly, five low-flying helicopters thrummed overhead, some firing weapons and drawing gunfire in return. Villagers ran for their lives. But there was nowhere to escape: The helicopters were dropping soldiers on the town’s outskirts to block all the exits.

The soldiers were in pursuit of Islamist militants who have been operating in the region for years. Many of the soldiers were Malians, but they were accompanied by white foreigners wearing military fatigues and speaking a language that was neither English nor French, locals said.

The foreigners, according to diplomats, officials and human rights groups, belonged to the Russian paramilitary group known as Wagner.

Over the next five days in Moura, Malian soldiers and their Russian allies looted houses, held villagers captive in a dried-out riverbed and executed hundreds of men, according to eight witnesses from Moura and more than 20 Malian politicians and civil society activists, as well as Western military officials and diplomats.

Both Malian soldiers and foreign mercenaries killed captives at close range, often without interrogating them, based on their ethnicity or clothes, according to witnesses. The foreigners marauded through the town, indiscriminately killing people in houses, stealing jewelry and confiscating cellphones to eliminate any visual evidence.

However, using satellite imagery, The New York Times identified the sites of at least two mass graves, which matched the witnesses’ descriptions of where captives were executed and buried.

The Malian authorities and military did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Mali has been fighting armed militants for the past decade, initially with the help of French and later European forces. But as the relationship has deteriorated between France and the Malian military junta, which seized power last year, French forces are withdrawing from Mali, and the Wagner Group has moved in — a step denounced by 15 European countries and Canada, as well as the United States.

The Wagner Group refers to a network of operatives and companies that serve as what the U.S. Treasury Department has called a “proxy force” of Russia’s ministry of defense. Analysts describe the group as an extension of Russia’s foreign policy through deniable activities, including the use of mercenaries and disinformation campaigns.

Since it appeared in Ukraine in 2014, its operatives have been identified working in Libya, Syria and countries in sub-Saharan Africa, including the Central African Republic, Mozambique, Sudan, and now Mali. They ally with embattled political and military leaders who can pay for their services in cash, or with lucrative mining concessions for precious minerals like gold, diamonds and uranium, according to interviews conducted in recent weeks with dozens of analysts, diplomats and military officials in Africa and Western countries.

The Malian authorities hailed the Moura attack as a major victory in their fight against extremist groups, claiming to have killed 203 fighters and arrested more than 50 others, but making no mention of civilian casualties. They have denied the presence of Wagner operatives, saying only that they have a contract with Russia to provide “instructors.”

However, Russian foreign minister Sergey V. Lavrov said in May on Italian television that Wagner was present in Mali “on a commercial basis,” providing “security services.”

Witnesses and analysts say the death toll in Moura was between 300 and 400 by their most conservative estimates, with most of the victims civilians.

“From Monday to Thursday, the killings didn’t stop,” said Hamadoun, a tailor working near the market when the helicopters arrived. “The whites and the Malians killed together.”

Bara, a cattle trader from Moura, said, “They terminated all the youth of this area.”

The witnesses, fearing retribution, spoke to The Times on condition that they be identified only by their first names. They were interviewed after fleeing Moura and taking refuge elsewhere in Mali.

The death toll in Moura is the highest in a growing list of human rights abuses committed by the Malian military, which diplomats and Malian human rights observers say have increased since the military began conducting joint operations with the Wagner Group in January.

In central Mali, nearly 500 civilians have been killed in the joint operations, including in Moura, according to confidential reports from the U.N. mission in Mali seen by The Times and a database compiled by Héni Nsaibia, a senior researcher at the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data project, or ACLED. Some abuses could amount to crimes against humanity, the U.N. said in one report.

On Monday, the U.N. mission said human rights violations committed by the Malian military against civilians had increased tenfold between the end of 2021 and the first quarter of this year. In Moura, the security forces “may have also raped, looted, arrested and arbitrarily detained many civilians,” according to the mission, which is preparing a report on the incident.

Militaries in the Sahel, the vast sub-Saharan region that cuts across Africa, have long been accused of killing their own people — including after training by Western instructors. But the particular human rights violations in Mali fit a pattern of abuses — including torture, beatings and summary executions — reported in other countries where Wagner mercenaries have been deployed.

The Wagner Group is believed to be led by Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, a Russian oligarch with close ties to President Vladimir Putin. In a written response to questions sent by The Times, Mr. Prigozhin praised Mali’s current leader, its military and its actions in Moura. But he denied the presence of Wagner contractors in Mali, calling it “a legend” that the group even exists.

He added, “Wherever there are Russian contractors, real or fictional, they never violate human rights.”

In December, the European Union imposed sanctions on eight people, though not Mr. Prigozhin, connected to the group, accusing it of looting natural resources, fueling violence and violating international law.

In Mali, about 1,000 Wagner mercenaries have been deployed to at least 15 military bases, security outposts and checkpoints, including former French bases and facilities funded by the European Union, according to a French military official and a senior diplomat based in Mali.

Sorcha MacLeod, chair of the U.N. working group on the use of mercenaries, said human rights abuses and war crimes increased wherever mercenaries were deployed. “They have no incentive to end the conflict, because they are financially motivated,” she said.

A Slow-Motion Massacre

A hard-to-reach town of mud brick buildings in the floodplain of the Inner Niger Delta, Moura is known for its “galbal,” or livestock market, which draws thousands of buyers and merchants every Sunday.

The region is home to many herders and farmers of the Fulani ethnic group, who are prime recruits for the militants, and often, victims of the violence too.

Since 2015, the Katibat Macina, a local affiliate of the terrorist group Al Qaeda, has had a grip on the area, collecting taxes and forcing men to grow their beards.

“They are the government in the region,” said Hamadou, a herder who was held by the soldiers.

On the day of the attack, armed Islamist militants were roaming Moura, their motorcycles parked nearby. When the helicopters approached the town, some villagers climbed on the roofs their houses to see what was happening. Some militants tried to flee on motorcycles, while others fired at the helicopters.

Malian soldiers rounded up captives and held them under guard at two sites: an area southwest of the town, not far from the galbal, and a dried riverbed east of the town, the villagers said in interviews.

The mass executions began on the Monday, and the victims were both civilians and unarmed militants, witnesses said. Soldiers picked out up to 15 people at a time, inspected their fingers and shoulders for the imprint left by regular use of weapons, and executed men yards away from captives.

Meanwhile, Russian mercenaries chased people in the streets and broke into houses. “The white soldiers were killing anyone trying to flee,” said Bara, the cattle trader, who was taken to the riverbed.

On Tuesday, Malian soldiers used the mosque’s loudspeakers to order everyone still hiding in houses to get out. Russian mercenaries made sure they did.

Modi, a 24-year-old resident, said two white men with guns shot through the door of his house, narrowly missing him. He ran to the riverbed, hoping he would be safer with the Malian soldiers.

When Hamadou, the herder, left his house on Tuesday, he said he discovered “cadavers everywhere.”

With the stench becoming unbearable, soldiers ordered those who had wheeled carts to collect bodies, and others to collect dry grass. The soldiers doused some of the bodies with fuel and set them on fire, in full view of the captives.

More interrogations followed on Wednesday, which women and children were ordered to witness. Soldiers pushed captives wearing the short pants or boots that could affiliate them with militants to walk around a house which they said contained a machine that could identify jihadists, eyewitnesses said, noting that this was likely a bluff. The soldiers executed a few men, and forced others into helicopters.

The soldiers and their Russian allies left on Thursday, after killing six last prisoners in retaliation for four who had escaped. A Malian soldier told a group of captives that the soldiers had killed “all the bad people,” said Hamadou.

The soldier apologized for the good people who “died by accident.”

All of the victims were Fulani, according to the survivors and testimonies collected by Human Rights Watch. Corinne Dukfa, the group’s Sahel director, said this would likely push more Fulani into the arms of Islamist groups.

Deadly Joint Operations

Since the military began conducting joint operations with Wagner mercenaries, “the distinction between civilians and fighters” — already barely respected — has “completely disappeared,” said Ousmane Diallo, a West Africa researcher with Amnesty International.

In early March, 30 charred bodies were discovered near the military base of Diabaly, where Malian soldiers and Wagner operatives have been deployed, weeks after a similarly sized group of men was abducted, according to U.N. peacekeepers in Mali and the French military.

In early April, Malian security forces and Russian mercenaries executed seven young children near the town of Bandiagara, according to the French military. In mid-April, the Malian military said it killed 18 Islamist militants and rounded up hundreds of others at a livestock market in the town of Hombori. But among those injured and taken to a clinic were older people, women and children, according to witnesses. At least one of those killed was also a civilian.

Investigators from the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Mali have so far been denied access to Moura. Russia and China blocked a vote at the U.N. Security Council on an independent investigation.

Some Malians in these regions are losing trust in the government.

“We thought the white soldiers would free us from jihadists, but they are more dangerous,” said Oumar, who said his brother was among the 18 victims in Hombori. “At least jihadists don’t fire at anyone moving.”

Ten days after the siege ended, two government ministers brought food and donations to Moura, claiming that the army had brought peace and security. On Malian television, local officials praised the military operation.

Soon after, the militants returned and kidnapped the deputy mayor. He hasn’t been heard from since.

As villagers were at worship one evening in late April, said Bara, the trader, three militants arrived and announced that anyone who valued their lives should leave the village before 6 a.m. the next day. It has since emptied out.

“We had a home,” Bara said, “but we’re now strangers in our own country.”

Elian Peltier reported from Bamako, Mali; Mady Camara from Dakar, Senegal; and Christiaan Triebert from Leeuwarden, Netherlands. Declan Walsh contributed reporting from Nairobi, Kenya, and Christoph Koettl from New York.

For four years under President Donald J. Trump, the United States all but stopped trying to combat climate change at the federal level. Mr. Trump is no longer in office, but his presidency left the country far behind in a race that was already difficult to win.

A new report from researchers at Yale and Columbia Universities shows that the United States’ environmental performance has tumbled in relation to other countries — a reflection of the fact that, while the United States squandered nearly half a decade, many of its peers moved deliberately.

But, underscoring the profound obstacles to cutting greenhouse gas emissions rapidly enough to prevent the worst effects of climate change, even that movement was insufficient. The report’s sobering bottom line is that, while almost every country has pledged by 2050 to reach net-zero emissions (the point where their activities no longer add greenhouse gases to the atmosphere), almost none are on track to do it.

The report, called the Environmental Performance Index, or E.P.I., found that, based on their trajectories from 2010 through 2019, only Denmark and Britain were on a sustainable path to eliminate emissions by midcentury.

Namibia and Botswana appeared to be on track with caveats: They had stronger records than their peers in sub-Saharan Africa, but their emissions were minimal to begin with, and the researchers did not characterize their progress as sustainable because it was not clear that current policies would suffice as their economies develop.

The 176 other nations in the report were poised to fall short of net-zero goals, some by large margins. China, India, the United States and Russia were on track to account for more than half of global emissions in 2050. But even countries like Germany that have enacted more comprehensive climate policies are not doing enough.

“We think this report’s going to be a wake-up call to a wide range of countries, a number of whom might have imagined themselves to be doing what they needed to do and not many of whom really are,” said Daniel C. Esty, the director of the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy, which produces the E.P.I. every two years.

A United Nations report this year found that there is still time, but not much, for countries to change course and meet their targets. The case of the United States shows how gravely a few years of inaction can fling a country off course, steepening the slope of emissions reductions required to get back on.

The 2022 edition of the index, provided to The New York Times before its release on Wednesday, scored 180 countries on 40 indicators related to climate, environmental health and ecosystem vitality. The individual metrics were wide-ranging, including tree-cover loss, wastewater treatment, fine-particulate-matter pollution and lead exposure.

The United States ranked 43rd overall, with a score of 51.1 out of 100, compared with 24th place and a score of 69.3 in the 2020 edition. Its decline is largely attributable to the bottom falling out of its climate policy: On climate metrics, it plummeted to 101st place from 15th and trailed every wealthy Western democracy except Canada, which was 142nd.

The climate analysis is based on data through 2019, and the previous report was based on data through 2017, meaning the change stems from Trump-era policies and does not reflect President Biden’s reinstatement or expansion of regulations.

American emissions did fall substantially over the full 10-year period examined, which also included most of the Obama administration and its efforts to regulate emissions, and the nation continues to outperform other major polluters.

But the pace of reduction has been insufficient given the United States’ extremely high starting point. The U.S. is the second largest emitter of greenhouse gases, behind China. If current trajectories held, it would be the third largest in 2050, behind China and India, the lowest-ranked country in the overall index.

At the other end of the spectrum is Denmark, ranked No. 1 on climate and overall, whose Parliament has made a binding commitment to reduce emissions 70 percent below 1990 levels by 2030. The country gets about two-thirds of its electricity from clean sources, and its largest city, Copenhagen, aims to reach carbon neutrality in the next three years.

Denmark has hugely expanded wind energy, set a date to end oil and gas exploration in the North Sea, taxed carbon dioxide emissions and negotiated agreements with leaders in transportation, agriculture and other sectors. Its economy has grown as emissions have fallen.

“This is such a comprehensive transformation of our entire society that there’s not one tool that you can use, one policy you can use overall, and then that will just solve the problem,” said Dan Jorgensen, the Danish climate minister. Denmark showed “it is possible to make this transformation in a way that doesn’t hurt your societies,” he said.

“It’s not something that makes you less competitive,” Mr. Jorgensen said. “Actually, it’s the opposite.”

The report’s methodology distinguishes between countries like Denmark that are intentionally transitioning to renewable energy and countries like Venezuela whose emissions are dropping only as a side effect of economic collapse.

One piece of good news it found was that many countries, including the United States, have begun to “decouple” emissions from economic growth, meaning their economies no longer directly depend on the amount of fossil fuels they burn.

Broadly, wealthier countries still emit much more than poorer ones. But two countries with similar G.D.P.s can have very different emissions levels.

“The main take-home right now is that policy does matter, and there are specific pathways toward a more carbon-neutral and climate-friendly future,” said one of the report’s co-authors, Alexander de Sherbinin, associate director and senior research scientist at Columbia’s Center for International Earth Science Information Network. “But it really takes high-level policy agreement.”

The report is the first edition of the Environmental Performance Index to estimate future emissions, and its methodology has limitations. Most obviously, because it relies on data through 2019, it does not factor in more recent actions. Nor does it account for the possibility of removing already-emitted carbon from the air; such technology is limited now but could make a significant difference down the line. And it reflects only what would happen if countries continued to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions at the same rate, rather than enacting stronger policies or, conversely, losing steam.

That accounts for a striking disagreement between the E.P.I. researchers, who found Britain on track, and Britain’s independent Climate Change Committee, which advises the British government and has said current policies are insufficient. (There is also a technical distinction: In addition to domestic emissions, the committee considers what other countries emit in producing goods that Britain imports, and the E.P.I. doesn’t.)

Britain’s recent reductions came largely from switching from coal to natural gas, and the Climate Change Committee is “somewhat pessimistic that the trend will continue now that the low-hanging fruit has been picked,” said Martin Wolf, the E.P.I.’s project director. “I see the rapid expansion of renewable energy capacity in the U.K. as a sign that the country is still on track.”

Tanja Srebotnjak, the director of the Zilkha Center for Environmental Initiatives at Williams College and an expert in environmental statistics, said she viewed the projection methodology as “a reasonable first attempt” that could be refined later.

How best to extrapolate current trends is a matter of debate, said Dr. Srebotnjak, who has worked on past E.P.I. editions but was not involved in this year’s report or in developing the new metric. But she added, “I think it will help policymakers have another tool in their toolbox for tracking how they’re doing and for comparing themselves with peers, to maybe learn from each other.”

Covid cases and hospitalizations are rising again in the U.S., and deaths are starting to rise, too. In response, many people are understandably asking what the country can do to minimize the virus’s toll in the weeks ahead.

So far, a lot of discussion has focused on mask mandates. Schools in Philadelphia; Providence, R.I.; Berkeley, Calif.; and Brookline, Mass., have reimposed theirs, as have several colleges. Elsewhere, some people are frustrated that officials, like New York City’s mayor, Eric Adams, have not done so.

Critics have accused these leaders of a lack of political courage, saying that they are yielding to Covid fatigue rather than imposing necessary public health measures. But I think that the criticism misreads both the history of public health and the recent scientific evidence about mask mandates.

The evidence suggests that broad mask mandates have not done much to reduce Covid caseloads over the past two years. Today, mask rules may do even less than in the past, given the contagiousness of current versions of the virus. And successful public health campaigns rarely involve a divisive fight over a measure unlikely to make a big difference.

The evidence

From the beginning of the pandemic, there has been a paradox involving masks. As Dr. Shira Doron, an epidemiologist at Tufts Medical Center, puts it, “It is simultaneously true that masks work and mask mandates do not work.”

To start with the first half of the paradox: Masks reduce the spread of the Covid virus by preventing virus particles from traveling from one person’s nose or mouth into the air and infecting another person. Laboratory studies have repeatedly demonstrated the effect.

Given this, you would think that communities where mask-wearing has been more common would have had many fewer Covid infections. But that hasn’t been the case.

In U.S. cities where mask use has been more common, Covid has spread at a similar rate as in mask-resistant cities. Mask mandates in schools also seem to have done little to reduce the spread. Hong Kong, despite almost universal mask-wearing, recently endured one of the world’s worst Covid outbreaks.

Advocates of mandates sometimes argue that they do have a big effect even if it is not evident in populationwide data, because of how many other factors are at play. But this argument seems unpersuasive.

After all, the effect of vaccines on severe illness is blazingly obvious in the geographic data: Places with higher vaccination rates have suffered many fewer Covid deaths. The patterns are clear even though the world is a messy place, with many factors other than vaccines influencing Covid death rates.

Yet when you look at the data on mask-wearing — both before vaccines were available and after, as well as both in the U.S. and abroad — you struggle to see any patterns.

Almost 30 percent

The idea that masks work better than mask mandates seems to defy logic. It inverts a notion connected to Aristotle’s writings: that the whole should be greater than the sum of the parts, not less.

The main explanation seems to be that the exceptions often end up mattering more than the rule. The Covid virus is so contagious that it can spread during brief times when people take off their masks, even when a mandate is in place.

Airplane passengers remove their masks to have a drink. Restaurant patrons go maskless as soon as they walk in the door. Schoolchildren let their masks slide down their faces. So do adults: Research by the University of Minnesota suggests that between 25 percent and 30 percent of Americans consistently wear their masks below their nose.

“Even though masks work, getting millions of people to wear them, and wear them consistently and properly, is a far greater challenge,” Steven Salzberg, a biostatistician at Johns Hopkins University, has written. Part of the problem, Salzberg explains, is that the most effective masks also tend to be less comfortable. They cover a larger part of a person’s face, fit more snugly and restrict the flow of more air particles.

During an acute crisis — such as the early months of Covid, when masks were one of the few available forms of protection — strict guidelines can nonetheless make sense. Public health officials can urge people to wear tightfitting, high-quality masks and almost never take them off in public. If the mandate has even a modest benefit, it can be worth it.

But this approach is not sustainable for years on end. Masks hinder communication, fog glasses and can be uncomfortable. There is a reason that children and airline passengers have broken out in applause when told they can take off their masks.

In the current stage of the pandemic, there are less divisive measures that are more effective than mask mandates. Booster shots are widely available. A drug that can further protect the immunocompromised, known as Evusheld, is increasingly available. So are post-infection treatments, like Paxlovid, that make Covid less severe.

(For young children, who are not yet eligible for the vaccine, Covid is overwhelmingly mild, similar in severity to the flu.)

Continuing to expand access to these treatments can do more to reduce Covid hospitalizations and deaths than any mask rule probably would. “People have the wherewithal to protect themselves,” Dr. Robert Wachter, chair of the medicine department at the University of California, San Francisco, told me. Absent a much larger surge in Covid hospitalizations, he added, the case for mandates is weaker than it used to be.

Dr. Aaron Carroll, the chief health officer of Indiana University, recently wrote for The Times’s Opinion section: “Instead of continuing to bicker about things that have become hopelessly politicized like mask mandates, those in public health could focus on efforts that might make much more of a difference.”

The available data also suggests that more than half of Americans have had Covid in the past six months, making many of them unlikely to contract it again now. As Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist at Brown University, told Vox: “Many of the people who are not wearing masks have already had Covid, so they’re like, ‘I’ve been vaccinated, I already had it — how much longer do you want me to do this for?’ And it’s kind of hard to say, ‘No, you absolutely must wear it.’”

One-way masking

The country is probably never going to come to a consensus on masks. They have become yet another source of political polarization. Democrats are more likely to wear masks than Republicans, and Democrats who identify as “very liberal” are more likely to support mandates.

Fortunately, the scientific evidence points to a reasonable compromise. Because masks work and mandates often don’t, people can make their own decisions. Anybody who wants to wear a snug, high-quality mask can do so and will be less likely to contract Covid.

If anything, that approach — one-way masking — is consistent with what hospitals have long done, as Doron, the Tufts epidemiologist, points out. Patients, including those sick with infectious diseases, typically have not worn masks, but doctors and nurses have. “One-way masking is how we have always used them,” she wrote.

The same system can work for Covid outside of hospitals. Wachter, for example, believes that the time for mandates has passed but still wears one at the supermarket, in classrooms, on airplanes and elsewhere. Different people can reasonably make different choices.

THE LATEST NEWS

Uvalde Shooting

A kitchen run by refugees

A weekly program where immigrants cook takeout meals, called United We Eat @Home, has turned Ghalia Ahmad Fayez AlMasri into a local celebrity in Missoula, Mont. “When I cook, my meal goes very, very fast — 15 minutes this time,” AlMasri, who fled Syria in 2017, told The Times.

The program has helped refugees apply for farmers’ market permits and find restaurant jobs. And it has diversified the city’s dining scene: Without it, there would be no place for Missoulians to order Congolese, Pakistani or Guinean food. Here’s more about the program, as well as mouthwatering photos.

PLAY, WATCH, EAT

What to Cook

Agatha, the year’s first named storm in the eastern Pacific region, was moving across southern Mexico early Tuesday as a tropical storm, hours after making landfall as a Category 2 hurricane.

Agatha came ashore on Monday afternoon just west of Puerto Angel, a fishing town in the Mexican state of Oaxaca, with heavy rains and winds of nearly 105 miles per hour — strong enough to uproot trees, cause major power losses and rip roofs off well-built homes.

As of 10 p.m. local time, the storm was moving northeast through Oaxaca at nearly eight miles per hour, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said in an advisory. Parts of the state could receive as much as 16 inches of rain, with isolated amounts of 20 inches, the center said, and a portion of southern Mexico was at risk for mudslides and life-threatening flash floods on Tuesday.

But Agatha’s maximum sustained winds had already decreased to about 70 miles per hour and the storm was expected to dissipate over Mexico by Tuesday afternoon, the Hurricane Center said.

Agatha’s arrival marked the first time that a Category 2 storm had made landfall in the eastern Pacific in the month of May, said Dan Pydynowski, a senior meteorologist at AccuWeather.

Before Agatha, only two Category 1 hurricanes had made landfall in the region: Hurricane Barbara on May 29, 2013, and, coincidentally, Hurricane Agatha on May 24, 1971, Mr. Pydynowski said.

Home to surfing hot spots, the coast of Oaxaca has long attracted tourists from around the world who are drawn to the golden sand beaches and laid back vibes of the Pacific region. The beach town Zipolite, near where Agatha made landfall, has become an increasingly popular tourism destination, particularly for the L.G.B.T.Q. community.

The industry has been an important driver for the state’s economy. In 2019, before the pandemic decimated tourism in the region, more than 200,000 foreign tourists traveled to Oaxaca State, largely visiting the colonial capital city of Oaxaca. But more than 80,000 foreigners also chose the beaches of Huatulco and Puerto Escondido.

The industry generated more than 159,000 jobs that year, according to government figures, and yielded more than $29 million in income across those three destinations, an important economic boost for one of the poorest states in Mexico.

Given the importance of tourism to Oaxaca, the arrival of a potentially devastating storm could be catastrophic for the more than half a million people who call the coastal region home.

Alejandro Murat Hinojosa, governor of Oaxaca, said the country’s national defense, the military, the Mexican National Guard and the Navy had been deployed to respond to the hurricane.

Classes had been canceled along the coast on Monday and Tuesday, he said.

Images shared on social media Monday morning showed residents of the Oaxacan coast preparing for the worst, including boarding up buildings. Videos showed winds beginning to pick up, tossing palm trees back and forth as waves crashed with increasing ferocity.

Before the storm, the head of the Huatulco Hotel and Motel Association, Pia Overholzer, said the city had an occupancy of around 60 percent with some 3,500 tourists.

Julián Herrera Velarde, representative of the Oaxaca tourism ministry in Puerto Escondido, said the town had some 2,700 visitors, of whom only 40 had been transferred to a temporary shelter.

Although not as prone to hurricanes as the Caribbean, the Pacific Coast of Mexico is no stranger to deadly storms. In 1997, Hurricane Pauline slammed into the coasts of Oaxaca and neighboring Guerrero, leaving more than 200 people dead and some 300,000 homeless.

More recently, in 2017, Tropical Storm Beatriz wreaked havoc across the state, provoking widespread flooding and mudslides. At least two people were killed and hundreds of families saw their homes damaged.

Agatha formed off the Mexican coast and was named on Saturday, not long after the official start of the eastern Pacific hurricane season, which runs from May 15 to Nov. 30.

The Atlantic hurricane season — the term used for storms that form in the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean — runs from June 1 to Nov. 30. Those regions account for the severest hurricanes that have struck the United States, Mr. Feltgen said.

This year is on track to be the first since 2014 that a hurricane has not formed in the Atlantic before the official start of the season. However, the season generally does not peak until mid-August to late October, and forecasters predict above-average Atlantic activity this year, with six to 10 hurricanes and three to six major hurricanes, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said last week.

If the prediction comes true, this year will be the seventh consecutive above-average hurricane season.

The causes for the predicted intensity of hurricanes cited by NOAA include the climate pattern known as La Niña, which affects the speed and direction of wind, and a particularly intense West African monsoon season, which produces waves that can lead to powerful and long-lasting hurricanes.

Alex Traub, Vimal Patel, Derrick Bryson Taylor, Omar Gasga, Oscar Lopez and Mike Ives contributed reporting.

OTTAWA — Most owners of what Canada calls “military-style assault weapons” would be required to turn over their firearms to a government buyback program under legislation introduced on Monday, which would tighten the country’s already stringent control of firearms.

The Canadian government also announced new regulations that will ban the sale, purchase, importation or transfer of handguns. “We are capping the number of handguns in this country,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Monday.

The handgun sales ban and the proposed assault weapons law are the latest in a series of steps Mr. Trudeau has taken to restrict firearms since 22 people were killed in rural Nova Scotia by a gunman in 2020, in the deadliest rampage in the country’s history. The legislation, which could apply to tens of thousands of firearms, is expected to pass.

“As a government, as a society, we have a responsibility to act to prevent more tragedies,” Mr. Trudeau told reporters on Monday. He also said: “We need only look south of the border to know that if we do not take action, firmly and rapidly, it gets worse and worse and more difficult to counter.”

The buyback proposal comes as another mass shooting in the United States has reignited an often searing debate on gun violence. Last week a gunman used a military-style rifle to kill 19 children and two teachers in the town of Uvalde, Tex. Only 10 days earlier, a teenage gunman entranced by a white supremacist ideology opened fire at a supermarket in Buffalo, N.Y., killing 10 people and injuring three more, almost all of them Black.

After 20 children and six adults were massacred in 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., there were widespread calls in the United States for stronger controls on powerful firearms, but many Republicans aligned with the gun lobby refused to even allow a vote on any proposed legislation. American lawmakers have failed to restore restrictions on military-style semiautomatic weapons that expired in 2004.

Mr. Trudeau’s program echoes a semiautomatic weapons ban and buyback program launched by New Zealand in 2019, after a lone gunman stormed two mosques, killing 51 people and injuring dozens of others in Christchurch. After a mass shooting in 1996 in which a gunman killed 35 people in the town of Port Arthur, Australia, the government there collected more than 650,000 semiautomatic rifles and many shotguns after they were banned under new legislation.

Marco Mendicino, Canada’s public safety minister, said the buybacks should begin by the end of the year.

The Small Arms Survey, a nonprofit organization based in Switzerland, estimated in 2017 that there were 12.7 million legal and illegal guns in civilian hands in Canada, or 34.7 firearms per 100 people. In the United States, it estimates, there were more than 300 million guns in circulation, or 120.5 firearms per 100 people.

Soon after the deadly 2020 rampage in Nova Scotia, Mr. Trudeau used a cabinet order to announce it would ban more than 1,500 models of rifles, including the AR-15, a popular military-style semiautomatic rifle. But in the end, it allowed owners to keep their rifles, if they had a permit — but could no longer use them, trade them or sell them except, with permission, to buyers outside Canada.

The government followed that up in 2021 with a sweeping package of proposed changes to gun laws. That bill, which expired before making its way through Parliament, disappointed groups calling for tighter gun controls by making participation in the buyback program voluntary.

Automatic weapons have long been banned for civilians in Canada, and magazines for semiautomatic weapons are restricted: no gun may shoot more than five rounds without reloading.

The law introduced on Monday fulfills a pledge made by Mr. Trudeau last year to force owners of military-style rifles to turn them in for destruction. Mr. Trudeau’s proposal will allow some exemptions, but those weapons must be modified by the government to make them permanently inoperable.

There is, though, no legal definition of a “military-style assault weapon.” Mr. Trudeau said the government would seek to come up with one that could not be easily circumvented by gun makers.

Until then, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police will continue to evaluate weapons on a model-by-model basis to see if they belong on the ever expanding banned list introduced by Mr. Trudeau in 2020.

Most rifles and shotguns in Canada, apart from automatic weapons and handguns, have been relatively loosely regulated. The previous Conservative government closed a registry for such weapons that was set up after a man killed 14 young women and injured 13 others in 1989 at the École Polytechnique engineering school in Montreal.

The registry’s database was plagued with technical problems, and it was deeply unpopular in rural areas. Mr. Trudeau has not heeded calls from gun control groups to renew it.

Compared with hunting rifles, there are relatively few legal handguns in Canada and their use has long been heavily restricted. Aside from members of the police, border agencies, the military and some private security guards, handgun users may fire their weapons only at shooting ranges, and the guns must otherwise be stored in locked containers at their homes.

Mr. Trudeau’s earlier legislative attempt would have allowed provinces to ban all handguns within their borders, an idea that swiftly led to concerns from gun control groups about the development of a patchwork system nationally. On Monday he acknowledged those criticisms.

“We decided to take a new route, something that would tackle this issue at a national level,” he said.

While Mr. Trudeau’s Liberal Party does not hold a voting majority in the House of Commons, the left-leaning New Democratic Party has long pushed for tighter gun controls and is expected to support the new measure, allowing it to overcome any potential opposition from the Conservatives.

Handguns account for close to 60 percent of firearms-related crimes in Canada, according to a report released last week by Statistics Canada, the census agency. Rates of death linked to gun violence are far lower in Canada than in the United States.

The agency is pushing for more comprehensive collection of data on guns. While the police have long held that most illegal firearms, particularly handguns, are smuggled in from the United States, not much is known about the origins of guns used in crimes.

The shooter in Nova Scotia used two weapons that are now banned; both were smuggled in from the United States.

Other measures in the sweeping bill, which amends several pieces of legislation, include making it a crime to modify a rifle to increase its capacity; increasing the penalties for gun smuggling; and giving police power to seize guns from people whom a judge has determined to be at risk of hurting themselves or others.

A protester who faked a disability to get close to the Mona Lisa in a wheelchair stood up and smeared a pastry on its glass case on Sunday, according to the Louvre museum in Paris.

The painting, one of the world’s most recognizable pieces of art, was not damaged, museum officials said.

Videos on social media showed that the man, speaking in French, yelled that there were “people who were destroying the planet” and “that’s why I did it.”

The Mona Lisa, painted by Leonardo da Vinci in the 16th century and perhaps the crown jewel of the Louvre’s collection, is typically swarmed by camera-wielding tourists. The painting is held behind a thick glass case, an effective shield against pastries.

A witness who posted a video of the aftermath on Twitter said the man had “dressed as an old lady” and jumped out of a wheelchair before attempting to smash the glass.

The witness said the unidentified man smeared the pastry, which the witness identified as cake, before throwing roses around the room. He was then tackled by security guards, the witness said.

The Louvre said in a statement that officials with the museum had followed its usual procedures for people with reduced mobility, “allowing them to admire this major work of the Louvre.”

Once he was near the painting, the man threw the pastry that he had hidden, the museum said.

Security guards seized the man and escorted him out before handing him over to the police, the museum said. The museum filed a complaint, officials said.

There have been several attempts to vandalize the painting, some more successful than others. In 1956, a man threw a stone at the painting, shattering a glass shield and scratching Mona Lisa’s left elbow, causing a chip of paint to fall off.

The man initially said he had no real reason to commit the act. “I had a stone in my pocket and suddenly the idea to throw it came to my mind,” the police quoted him as saying.

He later said he was jobless, had no money and simply wanted to be jailed through the cold weather.

The painting had been moved behind glass, at the time the only piece in the Louvre to receive such protection, because years earlier a man who said he was “in love with the painting” had tried to steal it after cutting it with a razor blade.

In 2009, a woman threw a teacup at the glass. The teacup shattered and order was quickly restored.