Photos: Climate action clashes with tradition in Ireland’s peat bogs
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EU to propose new 2040 climate target for emissions by end-March
The EU will propose a new climate target this quarter, to slash Europe’s emissions by 2040. The EU has pledged to cut net emissions 55% by 2030. The 2040 climate target will also be used to set a 2035 goal.
A Commission work programme, published on Wednesday, confirmed the EU would amend its climate law this quarter – a long-planned move that would set a 2040 target to keep countries on track for its aim to have zero net emissions by 2050.
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The Commission has said it intends to propose that EU countries jointly cut their net emissions 90% by 2040, from 1990 levels. The EU has pledged to cut net emissions 55% by 2030.
The 2040 climate target will also be used to set a 2035 goal, which all countries are required to submit to the U.N. this year, as a national contribution to the Paris climate accord.
Reporting by Kate Abnett; Editing by Alison Williams
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Swiss government approves new climate goals after court rebuke
Switzerland’s efforts to counteract global warming came under close scrutiny last year. A top European court ruled that the country was not doing enough to tackle climate change. Swiss cabinet said it had adopted an amendment to its long-term climate strategy. It will submit its new plans to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change by Feb. 10.
ZURICH, Jan 29 (Reuters) – Switzerland’s government on Wednesday approved new climate targets, proposing a cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2035 of at least 65% compared to 1990 levels.
Switzerland’s efforts to counteract global warming came under close scrutiny last year when a top European court ruled that the country was not doing enough to tackle climate change.
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The government said in a statement that the new objectives, set out under its commitments to the Paris Agreement, are to be primarily achieved via domestic measures.
“By 2035, Switzerland should reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by at least 65 per cent compared to 1990 levels, and by 59 per cent on average between 2031 and 2035,” it said.
Switzerland had previously committed to cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2030 from 1990 levels.
The Swiss cabinet said it had adopted an amendment to its long-term climate strategy and would submit its new plans to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change by Feb. 10.
In that submission, Switzerland reports on the role of renewable energies and nuclear energy in achieving climate neutrality, the cabinet added.
Writing by Dave Graham, editing by John Revill
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Redressing past wrongs: Survivors of Spain’s Franco-era “fallen women” centres seek apology, recognition
Thousands of girls and young women were taken to state-run Catholic rehabilitation institutions during the dictatorship of Francisco Franco. A Catholic body that includes most of the communities of nuns that helped operate some of the centres, will hold a ceremony to formally ask the women for forgiveness. It is the first event of its kind in Spain, announced in April but delayed by the death of Pope Francis. The operation was set up in 1941 by Franco’s Justice Ministry, overseen by the board chaired by his wife Carmen Polo. It was active until 1985, 10 years after Franco’s death. The institutes took women aged up to 25, including single mothers, children of prisoners, and those reported by their families for deviating from strict Catholic moral standards. Survivors say, through work and instruction, survivors, survivors say, could be a bad woman or a ‘lost cause’ If you want to help support Sight and Sight Sight’s fundraising campaign, visit www.sightandsight.org.uk or click here for details.
Madrid/Valencia, Spain
Reuters
Consuelo Garcia del Cid was 16 when the family doctor came into her bedroom in Barcelona, Spain with her mother in 1974, grabbed her left arm and pushed a needle into a vein.
She blacked out then woke up in a strange room a day’s drive away in Madrid – one of thousands of girls and young women who were accused of a range of perceived moral failings and taken to state-run Catholic rehabilitation institutions during the dictatorship of Francisco Franco.
Consuelo Garcia del Cid, 66, poses for a portrait in an open field that used to be the reformatory where she was a boarder in Madrid, Spain, on 22nd May, 2025. PICTURE: Reuters/Ana Beltran
On Monday, a Catholic body that includes most of the communities of nuns that helped operate some of the centres, will hold a ceremony to formally ask the women for forgiveness, the first event of its kind in Spain, announced in April but delayed by the death of Pope Francis.
“It’s just the tip of the iceberg. The event is good for the church as it cleans its own image, but the government must also act.”
– Pilar Dasi, 73, who spent several months at a centre in Valencia in 1971.
A start, but not enough, say campaigners who want a national apology for what they went through in the network of Patronato de Proteccion a la Mujer (Board for the Protection of Women) institutes – along the lines of Ireland’s 2013 apology for the abuses in its Magdalene Laundries.
“It’s just the tip of the iceberg,” said Pilar Dasi, 73, who spent several months at a centre in Valencia in 1971. “The event is good for the church as it cleans its own image, but the government must also act.”
She said she was held after her cousin, a police officer, reported her for keeping “bad company”, a reference to left-wing boyfriends.
The operation was set up in 1941 by Franco’s Justice Ministry, overseen by the board chaired by his wife Carmen Polo. It was active until 1985, 10 years after Franco’s death.
Spain’s Democratic Memory Ministry – a body set up to tackle the legacy of Spain’s civil war and Franco’s regime – told Reuters it applauded the decision by the Spanish Confederation of Religious Entities (CONFER) to ask for forgiveness.
The ministry said in a statement it hoped to hold its own ceremony later this year that would recognise the women as victims of the Franco regime.
“They will be considered victims and will be given a declaration of recognition and reparation,” it said, without going into further detail on the timing or substance of any event.
The picture shows photos, from Provincial Historical Archive in Sevilla, from the 1940’s to 1970’s of women in centers belonging to the Women’s Protection Board, in Madrid, Spain, on 23rd April, 2025. PICTURE: Reuters/Ana Beltran
Garcia del Cid said her family had called in the doctor in 1974 because they were worried about what they saw as her rebelliousness after she attended a number of demonstrations against the dictatorship.
The centre where she went was “a sinister place, with extreme religious indoctrination, and life was reduced to working, scrubbing and praying,” said the now 66-year-old who has written five books on the subject.
“If you are told all day long that you are crazy, a slut, a lost cause, on the wrong path, there comes a point when you might start to believe it if you don’t have a strong inner core.” She said she was held until 1976.
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The institutes took girls and women aged up to 25, including single mothers, children of prisoners, and those reported by priests, neighbours or their families for deviating from strict Catholic moral standards. The centres sought to rehabilitate them, survivors say, through work and instruction.
“A bad woman could be a girl who smoked, a girl who talked back like me, a girl who skipped school, wore miniskirts, kissed her boyfriend in the back row of the cinema,” said 67-year-old Mariaje Lopez, who was placed in a centre from 1965 to 1970.
“Girls who got pregnant were also considered bad girls, and often no one asked who the father was.”
Mariaje Lopez, 67, poses for a portrait on the porch of her house in Madrid, Spain, on 23rd April, 2025. PICTURE: Reuters/Ana Beltran
One of the most feared centres was Penagrande maternity centre on the outskirts of Madrid, where many young women were pressured to give up their babies for adoption, campaign group Banished Daughters of Eve says.
“Penagrande was the horror of horrors. It was scary to have a child there. Any child who went up to the infirmary never came back. They were given to other families, or sold, or whatever. We were told they died,” said Paca Blanco, 76, who was in and out of several board centres between 1967 and 1969.
CONFER – representing 403 Catholic congregations – announced in April it would hold a forgiveness ceremony, saying it took the step after listening to the experiences of survivors and conducting its own research.
“It helps [the survivors] to live that moment of healing and liberation and… us as congregations also to improve our way of dealing with these realities,” CONFER chairman Jesus Diaz Sariego told Reuters.
The Spanish Conference of Bishops referred questions to CONFER, saying the Confederation was an independent body. The Vatican did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Headquarters of the Adorers nuns, still in operation, where numerous women were imprisoned against their will during Franco’s regime and the transition to democracy by the ‘Patronato de la Mujer’, in Valencia, Spain, on 25th April, 2025. PICTURE: Reuters/Eva Manez
Garcia del Cid said she would be at the CONFER event that she saw as a step towards her and the thousands of others being recognised as victims of Franco’s regime.
But more was needed.
“I will be buried with this,” she told Reuters. “It was the greatest atrocity Spain has committed against women.”
– Additional reporting by EMMA PINEDO
Glass Lewis recommends voting against CEO pay at Goldman Sachs
proxy adviser Glass Lewis recommended investors cast advisory votes against the pay of top Goldman Sachs executives. Glass Lewis cited the Wall Street bank’s “continued inability to align pay with performance” and retention grants that Glass Lewis called excessive. Goldman Sachs spokesperson responded: “Competition for our talent is fierce. The Board took action to retain our current leadership team”
March 29 (Reuters) – Proxy adviser Glass Lewis recommended investors cast advisory votes against the pay of top Goldman Sachs (GS.N) , opens new tab executives, citing the Wall Street bank’s “continued inability to align pay with performance” and retention grants that Glass Lewis called excessive.
In a report sent late on Friday, Glass Lewis noted the combined $160 million in retention awards the bank gave to CEO David Solomon and President John Waldron in January
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“While we will review the impact of the additional $160 million on the Company’s pay and performance alignment within the full scope of 2025, thus far, the provided discussion regarding the rationale in the proxy statement is far from robust,” Glass Lewis wrote in the report.
In a statement, a Goldman Sachs spokesperson responded: “Competition for our talent is fierce. The Board took action to retain our current leadership team, to sustain our firm’s momentum and maintain a strong succession plan. A 100% stock based grant is fully aligned with long-term shareholder value creation.”
Reporting by Ross Kerber; editing by Diane Craft and Rod Nickel
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Education access: Raising school fees torments many Africans. Some expect the Catholic Church to do more to help
Rising school fees are leading many in sub-Saharan Africa to criticise the Catholic Church for not doing enough to ease the financial pressure families face. The Catholic Church is the region’s largest nongovernmental investor in education. Catholic schools have long been a pillar of affordable but high-quality education, especially for poor families. The growing trend toward privatisation is sparking concern that the. Catholic Church may price out the people who need uplifting education. The Church has not responded to a request for comment on this article or any of the claims or allegations made in it. The article has been amended to make clear that the teacher who witnessed the crying parent was Beatrice Akite, a teacher at St Kizito Secondary School in Kampala, Uganda. The school was founded by priests of the Comboni missionary order, known for its dedication to serving poor communities. Its students come mostly from working-class families and tuition per term is roughly $US300, a substantial sum in a country where GDP per capita was about $US1,000 in 2023.
Kampala, Uganda
AP
A crying parent with an unpaid tuition balance walked into the staff room of a Catholic private school and begged the teachers to help enroll her son.
The school’s policy required the woman pay at least 60 per cent of her son’s full tuition bill before he could join the student body. She didn’t have the money and was led away.
“She was pleading, ‘Please help me,’” said Beatrice Akite, a teacher at St Kizito Secondary School in Uganda’s capital city, who witnessed the outburst. “It was very embarrassing. We had never seen something like that.”
Students walk past the administration block at Uganda Martyrs’ Secondary School Namugongo, in Kampala, Uganda on Monday, 26th May, 2025. PICTURE: AP Photo/Hajarah Nalwadda.
Two weeks into second term, Akite recounted the woman’s desperate moment to highlight how distressed parents are being crushed by unpredictable fees they can’t pay, forcing their children to drop out of school. It’s leaving many in sub-Saharan Africa – which has the world’s highest dropout rates – to criticise the mission-driven Catholic Church for not doing enough to ease the financial pressure families face.
The Catholic Church is the region’s largest nongovernmental investor in education. Catholic schools have long been a pillar of affordable but high-quality education, especially for poor families.
The Catholic Church is the region’s largest non-governmental investor in education. Catholic schools have long been a pillar of affordable but high-quality education, especially for poor families.
Their appeal remains strong even with competition from other non-governmental investors now eying schools as enterprises for profit. The growing trend toward privatisation is sparking concern that the Catholic Church may price out the people who need uplifting.
Akite hopes Catholic leaders support measures that would streamline fees across schools of comparable quality. Firm fee ceilings need to be set, she said.
Kampala’s St Kizito Secondary School, where Akite teaches literature, was founded by priests of the Comboni missionary order, known for its dedication to serving poor communities. Its students come mostly from working-class families and tuition per term is roughly $US300, a substantial sum in a country where GDP per capita was about $US1,000 in 2023.
Yet that tuition is lower than at many other Catholic-run schools in Kampala, where many students report later in the term because they can’t raise school fees in time, Akite said.
Students look on the notice board at Uganda Martyrs’ Secondary School Namugongo, in Kampala, Uganda, on Monday, 26th May, 2025. PICTURE: AP Photo/Hajarah Nalwadda.
One of the most expensive private schools in Kampala, the Catholic-run Uganda Martyrs’ Secondary School Namugongo, maintains a policy of “zero balance” when a child reports to school at the beginning of a three-month term. This means students must be fully paid by the time they report to school.
Tuition at the school was once as high as $US800 but has since dropped to about $US600 as enrolment swelled to nearly 5,000, said deputy headmaster James Batte. On a recent morning, there was a queue of parents waiting outside Batte’s office to request more time to clear tuition balances.
Daniel Birungi, an electrical engineer in Kampala whose son enrolled this year at St Mary’s College Kisubi, a leading school for boys in Uganda, said the emerging risk for traditional Catholic schools is to cater only to the rich.
There is hot water in the bathrooms, he said, describing what he felt was a trend toward levels of luxury he never imagined as a student there in the 1990s. Now, students are prohibited from packing snacks and instead encouraged to buy what they need from school-owned canteens, he said.
That has “put us under a lot of pressure,” he said.
Tuition at St Mary’s College Kisubi is roughly $US800 per term, and Birungi doubts he will be able to regularly pay school fees on time.
“You can go there and see the brother and negotiate,” he said, referring to the headmaster. “I am planning to go there and see him and ask for that consideration.”
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The World Bank reported in 2023 that 54 per cent of adults in sub-Saharan Africa rank the issue of paying school fees higher than medical bills and other expenses. That’s partly because education is largely in private hands, with the most desirable schools controlled by profit-seeking owners.
Schools run by the Catholic Church are not usually registered as profit-making entities, but those who run those schools say they wouldn’t be competitive if they were run merely as charities. They say they face the same maintenance costs as others in the field and offer scholarships to exceptional students.
Regulating tuition is not easy, said Ronald Reagan Okello, a priest who oversees education at the Catholic Secretariat in Kampala. He urges parents to send their children to schools they can afford.
“As the Catholic Church, also we are competing with those who are in the private sector,” said Okello, the national executive secretary for education with the Ugandan bishops conference. “Now, as you are competing, the other ones are setting the bar high. They are giving you good services. But now putting the standard to that level, we are forced to raise the school fees to match the demands of the people who can afford.”
Students walk out of the classroom during lunch break at Uganda Martyrs’ Secondary School Namugongo, in Kampala, Uganda, on Monday, 26th May, 2025. PICTURE: AP Photo/Hajarah Nalwadda.
Across the region, the Catholic Church has built a reputation as a key provider of formal education in areas often underserved by the state. Its schools are cherished by families of all means for their values, discipline and academic success.
In Zimbabwe, the Catholic Church operates about 100 schools, ranging from dozens in impoverished areas where annual tuition is as low as $US150 to elite boarding schools that can charge thousands of dollars.
But a legacy of inclusion is under pressure in the southern African nation due to fee increases at boarding schools and efforts by Catholic leaders to fully privatise some schools. Many boarding schools already charge tuition fees between $US600 and $US800, prohibitive for the working class in a country where most civil servants make less than a $US300 per month.
Privatisation will raise tuition fees even higher, warned Peter Muzawazi, a prominent educator in Zimbabwe.
Muzawazi, who attended Catholic schools, once was the headmaster of Marist Brothers, a top Catholic school for boys in Zimbabwe. That school in Nyanga is among those earmarked for privatisation.
“I know in the Catholic Church there is a lot of space for reasonable fees for day scholars, but for boarders there is need to be watching because the possibility that they would be out of reach for the vulnerable is there,” he said.
The church needs to be actively engaged, he said. “How do we continue to guarantee education for the poor?”
Efforts to privatise church-founded schools have sparked debate in Zimbabwe, which for years has been in economic decline stemming in part from sanctions imposed by the US and others. Authorities say privatising these schools is necessary to maintain standards, even as critics warn Catholic leaders not to turn their backs on poor people.
“Schools have now turned into businesses,” Martin Chaburumunda, president of the Zimbabwe Rural Teachers’ Union, told The Manica Post, a state-run weekly. “Churches now appear only hungry for money as opposed to educating the communities they operate in.”
Students shop at the school canteen during lunch break at Uganda Martyrs’ Secondary School Namugongo, in Kampala, Uganda, on Monday, 26th May, 2025. PICTURE: AP Photo/Hajarah Nalwadda
Rather than privatising old mission schools, the church should invest in building new ones if it’s useful to experiment with different funding models, said Muzawazi, a lay Catholic who serves on the governing council of the Catholic University of Zimbabwe.
“The bright people who advance the cause of countries are not the rich ones,” he said. “We want every church and every nation to tap the potential of every person, regardless of economic status.”