DANY BLOG

JOHANNESBURG, May 28 (Reuters) - South Africa's parliament has scheduled for Monday a meeting of ‌an impeachment committee that will further probe ‌allegations surrounding President Cyril Ramaphosa's "Farmgate" scandal, the Democratic Alliance party ​said on Thursday.

The meeting is the next stage in the impeachment process against Ramaphosa that was revived by the constitutional court earlier this month.

A ‌parliament spokesperson declined ⁠to comment, and Ramaphosa's spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request ⁠for comment.

Advertisement

Ramaphosa has denied wrongdoing over the scandal, in which bundles of cash were stolen from ​a sofa ​on his farm in ​2020. An independent ‌panel found preliminary evidence he committed misconduct in 2022, but Ramaphosa's party the African National Congress blocked the impeachment process through a parliamentary vote that year.

This month the constitutional court declared that ‌vote invalid, effectively reviving the ​process.

On Tuesday, Ramaphosa filed ​court papers arguing ​the panel's findings against him were ‌flawed and should be set ​aside. He ​threatened to seek an urgent court order to halt impeachment proceedings if parliament moves ahead ​with the ‌process while his legal challenge is pending.

(Reporting ​by Anathi Madubela, Nilutpal Timsina and Sfundo ​Parakozov;Editing by Alexander Winning)

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was in Sweden on Thursday for talks with Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson on bilateral defense cooperation, the Ukrainian leader and the Swedish government said.

The two countries are preparing “a major defense package” and working on a deal to provide Gripen fighter jets to Ukraine, Zelenskyy said on social media.

The Ukrainian leader has sought to deepen defense cooperation with other countries by offering thedrone expertisehis country has built up over more than four years fighting againstRussia’s invasion.

Zelenskyy says Ukrainian specialists havehelped countries in the Middle East— specifically the Gulf Arab region — strengthen their air defenses amid theIran war. They have helped at American military bases in the Mideast as well, he says. Ukraine has also entered into joint drone production agreements with countries in the European Union, which fears that Russian President Vladimir Putin has military ambitions beyond Ukraine.

Ukrainian drones that patrol the 1,250-kilometer (780-mile) front line and strike deeper at supply routes have pinned back Russia's bigger army.

“Ukraine’s successful mid-range and front-line drone strike campaigns are limiting Russia’s ability to transport personnel to the front line and to supply and sustain front-line positions,” the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said in an assessment late Wednesday.

Russia has occupied about 20% of Ukraine so far. That includes the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia seized in 2014. The cost of capturing that land has been huge, with the head of U.K.’s GCHQ intelligence agency saying Wednesday that almost half a million Russian soldiers have been killed in the conflict.

Advertisement

Russia, however, still has an edge in long-range ballistic missiles, which it has used throughout the war to damageUkraine’s power gridand hammer cities.

Russian forcesfired almost 90 missilesas well as hundreds of drones at Kyiv last weekend in an effort to overwhelm air defenses as part of its escalating long-range aerial campaign on civilian areas of Ukraine.

Zelenskyy has written to U.S. President Donald Trump and Congress asking for more American-made air defense ammunition to counter Russian ballistic missiles, Kyiv officials said Wednesday.

Ukraine needs more U.S. Patriot PAC-3 missiles and other air defense systems, Zelenskyy said in the letter, warning that deliveries to Ukraine are falling dangerously short as the Iran war diverts U.S. stocks.

The Ukrainian capital is bracing for further heavy bombardments. But no foreign diplomats are known to have heeded Moscow’s recommendation to leave Kyiv ahead of what the Russian Foreign Ministry said earlier this week would be “systemic strikes” on Kyiv.

The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said Thursday that all diplomatic missions in the capital have continued operations.

Follow the AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine athttps://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Spanish police are searching the headquarters of the ruling Socialist Party as part of an ongoing investigation into possible financial wrongdoing, the Civil Guard said Wednesday.

The raid on the office in central Madrid is another blow to the party ofPrime Minister Pedro Sánchez, whose Socialists have been hammered by aseries of corruption scandals.

The Civil Guard told The Associated Press that the police were under judicial orders to find material relevant to a National Court probe into accusations of corruption against a former party member involved in a state-run company.

The police said the search is strictly limited to a probe led by National Court judge Santiago Pedraz into the possible wrongdoing of Socialist party member Leire Díaz.

The alleged case against Díaz started in 2025 when audio recordings appeared in Spanish media of her apparently being involved in attempts to discredit a member of the Civil Guard’s anti-corruption unit. Further reports linked her to alleged attempts to influence the work of state prosecutors.

The Socialist party said she was acting on her own.

Advertisement

Diaz, who has left the party, has denied wrongdoing.

Last week a separate court said it was investigating former Prime Minister José LuisRodríguez Zapateroin connection with a government airline bailout. He has denied any wrongdoing.

Sánchez's wife and brother are being probed over allegations of influence peddling, which both have denied.

And, most damning for the Socialists, a former minister under Sánchez and a senior party official are both being investigated on allegations they played a part in a kickback ring that started during the COVID-19 pandemic, which they have denied.

Sánchez, who has been prime minister since 2018, has called the cases against his family a “smear campaign.” But the corruption case against his former cohorts led him toask the nation for “forgiveness”in 2025.

His minority government depends on the support of a junior coalition partner, which for now has stuck with it despite the judicial actions.

Sánchez, who has stood out on the international stage for hisprogressive stancesthat have earned the ire of U.S. President Donald Trump, has not been directly linked to any of the scandals.

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — A group led by a Roman Catholic bishop in the Philippines launched a fact-finding body Wednesday to document accounts of witnesses and other details of ex-President Rodrigo Duterte’sbloody anti-drugs crackdownthat the government can use to prosecute law enforcers.

Duterte, who ended his stormy six-year presidency in 2022, wasarrested last yearand taken to the Netherlands, where he is facing trial before theInternational Criminal Courtin The Hague for alleged crimes against humanity over the killings.

Sen. Ronald dela Rosa, Duterte’s loyal ally and his former national police chief, who first enforced the bloody crackdown, is wanted by the ICC as a co-perpetrator for some of the thousands of killings, which alarmed Western governments and human rights groups.

Dela Rosa has gone into hiding and is being hunted by Philippine authorities, who have vowed to enforce an ICC warrant for his arrest and turn him over to the global court.

Dela Rosa and the brash-speaking Duterte have denied authorizing extrajudicial killings, but the then president had repeatedly threatened suspects with death.

Many of the thousands of police officers directly involved in the brutal crackdown that leftthousands of mostly poor suspectsdead have not been thoroughly investigated, and very few have been convicted, according to human rights groups.

“This is long overdue,” Cardinal Pablo Virgilio David said in a news conference. The nongovernment “EJK Truth Commission” he helped organize will focus on helping victims, their families and even repentant law enforcers to finally find closure, David said.

“This is an opportunity for a catharsis … so we can recover our dignity as a country,” David said. “Ultimately, what we aspire for is healing not only for the victims but also our institutions.”

Advertisement

Raul Pangalangan, a respected Philippine lawyer, who has served for years as an ICC judge, said the commission he will head “was created to ensure that the stories of victims, survivors and families are heard, verified and preserved.”

The commission plans to hold public hearings.

“These things happened because everybody looked the other way,” Pangalangan said. “It is almost a conspiracy of silence.”

Members of the commission said they will allow the government to use their findings to help authorities investigate, prosecute and seek accountability. Their periodic reports may be submitted to justice and human rights officials, they said.

David called on civil society, academic, religious and other groups to help the commission and said a large charity group in Germany has offered funding support.

Commission member Raquel Fortun, a forensic pathologist with the state-run University of the Philippines, told The Associated Press that the task of establishing facts years after the killings would be difficult. There were efforts by some law enforcers involved in the killings to evade accountability.

Death certificates of 13 drug suspects, whose remains were exhumed after Duterte stepped down from office, stated they died of natural causes, like heart attack and pneumonia, she said.

“When I examined the remains, I found that they were hit by gunfire,” Fortun said.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia fired more than 100 drones and two ballistic missiles at Ukraine overnight, the Ukrainian air force said Tuesday, as the country’s foreign ministry noted that Moscow’s recentthreat to hit Kyiv especially hard from the airbrought nothing new.

Russia Ukraine War

Russia on Monday urged foreign citizens, including members of diplomatic missions, to leave the Ukrainian capital as quickly as possible and told residents to steer clear of military and government facilities. It said that “systemic strikes” on Kyiv were being prepared.

Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio by phone Monday that the U.S. should evacuate its diplomatic staff from Kyiv, a foreign ministry statement said. Rubio didn’t say whether the State Department would take that step, but expressed concern during a trip to India that the “terrible” war in Ukraine could escalate further.

The Trump administration hastried for more than a yearto stop the fighting that broke out after Russia’s February 2022invasion. But its efforts yielded no significant breakthrough and are now on ice as Washington focuses on theIran war.

No diplomats say they are leaving Kyiv

There were no announcements of diplomatic departures from Kyiv. The European Union, French and Polish delegations publicly said that they would not leave.

The level of security threats posed by Russia to Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities “remains the same as in previous years and months,” Ukraine’s foreign ministry said in a statement late Monday.

Russia has continuously launched missile and drone attacks on the capital for more than four years, it pointed out, adding that Ukraine was prepared to assist diplomatic missions seeking additional security measures.

Russia said itsbiggest missile attack of the yearlast weekend was a response to Friday’s deadly Ukrainian drone strike on what Moscow said was acollege dormitoryin Starobilsk, a city in Ukraine’s Russia-occupied Luhansk region.

But the Ukrainian General Staff said that its strike in Starobilsk hit the local headquarters of the Russian military’s special drone unit.

Advertisement

Ukraine remains short of air defense missiles

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy noted that sophisticated American-made air defense systems that Ukraine needs to stop Russian ballistic missiles are in short supply due to the Iran war.

“Unfortunately, there has been no progress for a long time with America on expanding the production of anti-ballistic capabilities,” Zelenskyy said on social media late Monday, adding that Kyiv is working with Europe to improve its own anti-ballistic capabilities in sufficient quantities.

He noted that Ukrainian battlefield gains in recent months have enabled it to “stabilize” the 1,250-kilometer (780-mile) front line in eastern and southern Ukraine, suggesting that Kyiv's forces are holding their own against Russia's bigger army.

Russia’s spring offensive is floundering as Ukraine’s midrange drone strikes disrupt its rear supply lines, according to the Institute for the Study of War.

Moscow’s warning of major strikes aims to distract public attention from its “poor battlefield performance” and an economic pinch caused by war costs and international sanctions, the Washington-based think tank said late Monday.

Hatton reported from Lisbon, Portugal. Elise Morton in London contributed.

Follow the AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine athttps://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

Brussels — A train crashed into a school minibus in Belgium on Tuesday, leaving at least several "victims" in an unconfirmed condition, the country's interior minister said. Two sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the French news agency AFP that several people on the bus were killed in the collision.

The Reuters news agency also quoted a local source as saying several people were killed, but there was no immediate confirmation from police or other authorities.

"With great dismay, I learnt of the tragic accident in Buggenhout, where a school bus was struck by a train. My thoughts go out to the victims and their loved ones. I wish the injured much strength," minister Bernard Quintin wrote on X.

Advertisement

Photos from the scene showed the minibus laying on its side near the railway road crossing, with serious damage seen to its front end.

"The impact was extremely violent," said Frederic Sacre, a spokesman for the Belgian rail network operator, describing the toll as "dramatic."

"It happened at around 8:08 am when a minibus was struck by a train that was due to stop at the next station, which was about a kilometer away," he said.

KAMPALA, May 25 (Reuters) - Uganda has detected two more confirmed cases of Ebola, ‌its health ministry said on Monday, ‌bringing the total number of cases reported in the ​country to seven.

The two new cases are health workers in a private health facility in the capital Kampala and both are Ugandans, ‌the ministry said ⁠in a statement.

"Both patients have been admitted to the designated treatment ⁠unit and are now receiving care," the ministry said, adding that response teams were ​tracing all ​those who had ​been in contact with ‌the two people.

Ugandan authorities confirmed three new Ebola cases on Saturday.

Advertisement

The epicentre of the outbreak is in neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo's Ituri province, which borders Uganda.

The World ‌Health Organization has declared the ​outbreak of the rare ​Bundibugyo strain ​of Ebola a public health emergency ‌of international concern.

WHO chief ​Tedros Adhanom ​Ghebreyesus said on Sunday that there had been more than 900 suspected cases in ​the outbreak ‌so far, including 101 confirmed cases.

(Reporting ​by Elias Biryabarema; Writing by George ​Obulutsa;Editing by Alexander Winning)

BEIJING, May 25 (Reuters) - The death toll from flooding ‌in southwestern China's Chongqing has ‌risen to nine and 11 people ​are missing following torrential rain in the municipality, state broadcaster CCTV reported on Monday.

Flooding in Chongqing

A ‌number of ⁠neighbourhoods and villages in the district of Yongchuan ⁠were severely hit by sudden, extreme rainfall overnight on Saturday, ​state media ​reported ​earlier. Three deaths ‌were confirmed on Sunday.

Advertisement

The rainfall caused flash floods and landslides in the area and more than 2,000 residents have been ‌relocated, the state-run ​Xinhua news agency ​said.

Dozens ​of people were killed ‌earlier last week ​when a ​belt of intense rainfall swept across large areas of ​central ‌and southwestern China.

(Reporting by Xiuhao ​Chen and Ryan Woo;Editing ​by Helen Popper)

ARACHOVA, Greece (AP) — As a child, Giannis Stathas remembers being snowed in for days at a time in Arachova, a village famous for its ski resort and long known as a winter playground for Greeks.

Climate Greece Snow Melt

“We couldn’t go to school because of the snow,” said Stathas, now mayor of Arachova and the surrounding area. “We might have been stuck at home for two days without being able to go out because of the snow.”

“Now we don’t see that here anymore.”

Stathas says snowfall onMount Parnassosat an altitude of 2,400 meters (7,874 feet) is what once fell at 300 meters (984 feet).

New findings from the University of Cambridge’s Scott Polar Research Institute confirm the mayor’s observations.

“What we found across 10 mountains of Greece, across the mainland, is that snow cover is rapidly declining,” said Konstantis Alexopoulos, a snow hydrologist at the University of Cambridge and the National Observatory of Athens, and co-founder of the Hellenic Mountain Observatory. “We’ve lost more than half of the snow cover ... since the mid-1980s.”

Using 40 years of NASA and European Space Agency satellite imagery, researchers reconstructed gaps left by cloud coverage and infrequent satellite passes by using machine learning to estimate missing snow cover data.

Snow as a water reservoir

Alexopoulos said the decline matters because snow acts like a natural water reservoir.

“Snowpack is really like a savings account,” he said. “You can deposit an amount today and the longer you keep it in this savings account without spending it, the interest value is going to increase. And snow works in the exact same way.”

Unlike rain, which runs off quickly into rivers and the sea, snow remains stored in the mountains “ultimately melting at the time that we need it the most,” Alexopoulos said.

This helps sustain water supplies during the dry season, which is especially important in the Mediterranean climate where summer rainfall is limited.

Climate change in the Mediterranean

He added that the loss of snow is driven primarily by rising temperatures linked to greenhouse gas emissions, which reduce both snowfall and the duration of snow cover on the ground.

“The snow cover decline that we’re observing on the Greek mountains is not connected to the natural climate variability that does exist,” he said. “The current rate of climate change globally and specifically in hotspots like the Mediterranean is much faster than what the earth has experienced previously. “

Alexopoulos said the team expected a decline, but was surprised by its magnitude. “Other mountainous regions of the world, such as the Andes or the Himalayas, ... have all experienced a steep decline in snow cover but not at the rate that we saw in the Greek mountains.”

The study was one of the first long-term analyses of Greek mountains.

“Studying mountainous environments is inherently difficult due to remote access,” Alexopoulos said, adding that it’s difficult to install weather stations to take measurements and maintain a consistent record of observations.

“In Greece we haven’t focused so much on it because we never really understood the importance of snow’s contribution to our water resources,” he said. “But as this shifts and as this starts to decline, we are seeing thosedroughts, and we are trying to explain them.”

Advertisement

While Mount Parnassos wasn’t part of the study, Alexopoulos said it is still representative of theconditions seen across Greece.

Snow shortage impact already visible

Back in Arachova, in the shadow of Mount Parnassos, the consequences are already visible.

“One hundred percent of Arachova’s water is supplied by snowmelt,” said local restaurant owner Aktida Koritou.

She said locals have become increasingly conscious of water scarcity and are extra careful not to be wasteful, especially during summer when shortages are most severe.

There is great concern because the springs in Arachova are drying up and reservoirs are not refilling, according to the mayor.

“The biggest problem begins in late August and early September and lasts until late September or early October,” Stathas said.

An unexpected snowfall in April caught locals off-guard and was welcomed as a top-up, but “will hardly help the reservoirs fill up,” according to Stathas.

Adapting to less snow

Authorities are trying to adapt. The municipality is exploring the construction of small dams so that no water is lost, while the ski center is also implementing snow retention measures to help preserve it longer.

Less snow also means drier vegetation and increasedfire risk. Stathas said fires weren’t really an issue in northern Greece in the past, but this has changed.

“You could set fire among the fir trees 30 years, 40 years ago and there was never a chance that the mountain would burn,” he said. “But now there is a great danger because of the severe drought.”

Arachova’s ski-based economy is also shifting.

Koritou, who worked at the ski center when it opened in the early 1980s, said the ski season now starts in January instead of December.

“No one will come to the mountain for Christmas. They will go to Switzerland. They will go wherever they find snow,” she said. “So they leave and (business) decreases. This Christmas, there was a 30% reduction, for me at least.”

In response, the municipality is trying to diversify beyond winter tourism, promoting the mountain town of Arachova as a summer destination.

“Someone can swim and in 20 minutes come to stay here where it’s cool,” Stathas said. “But to be able to hold on to tourism in the summer, we have to have water.”

Remembering winters past

Locals still remember how winters once were. Koritou recalls farmers rushing to harvest grapes in late October before the first snowfall. People kept shovels behind their doors, and neighbors cleared roads together. She also remembers sections of the mountain where snow never fully melted before the following winter came.

“There are some years when despair grips you,” Koritou said. “For those of us who know winter well, it’s disappointing not to see snow. You want it in the winter. The change is enormous.”

GUAYAQUIL, Ecuador (AP) — Ecuador could do with some good news.

Ecuador WCup Soccer Insecurity

Many provinces are under a state of emergency. Thousands of military and police are fighting a surge in crime driven by drug traffickers. Night-time curfews abound. The fuel crisis has caused severe disruption. The border with Colombia is volatile.

But hope is high and undiminished for Ecuador at the comingWorld Cup.

The team qualified second in South America to World Cup champion Argentina, losing only twice in 18 games, both times away by one goal in Argentina and Brazil.

Supporters of La Tri believe they're good enough to surpass their previous best World Cup result, the round of 16 in 2006 in Germany, where Ecuador was ousted by a David Beckham free kick.

“I bought a giant TV on credit so I could watch Ecuador win the World Cup,” says Mario Uquillas, a 43-year-old shopkeeper from downtown Guayaquil.

“I hope that, at the very least, La Tri reaches the quarterfinals. It's about time, because we have a great team.”

Other merchants at the sprawling La Bahía market are taking advantage of the occasion, including offering Ecuador World Cup jerseys. The most popular feature the names of Arsenal defender Piero Hincapié, Chelsea midfielder Moisés Caicedo, and Paris Saint-Germain center back Willian Pacho.

Hincapié put smiles on the faces of Ecuador fans this week whenArsenal won the Premier Leaguefor the first time in 22 years. Those supporters have another opportunity to see homegrown stars win a major trophy when Hincapié and Pacho clash in the Champions League final next weekend.

Players murdered

Local soccer hasn't been immune to the country's violence. In fact, the local scene is stained with blood; five players were murdered last year and three more victims of armed attacks.

The most dramatic case occurred last December in northern Guayaquil when hitmen killed Mario Pineida, the left back of local club Guayaquil Barcelona and a former national team player.

Pineida was at a butcher shop with his mother and his female partner when two attackers shot them repeatedly. The mother was wounded and the partner died. One of the gunmen was arrested but the motive for the attack remains unclear.

Guayaquil, 270 kilometers southwest of capital Quito, ranks eighth among the most violent cities in the Americas, according to the crime index of the international platform Numbeo. Ecuador recorded 9,216 violent deaths last year, a rate of 50.1 per 100,000 inhabitants, according to the Ecuadorian Observatory of Organized Crime.

Living in the country's most violent city has led families to take precautions, especially in the sprawling slums, where children used to play soccer in the streets. Now, at nightfall, they often lock themselves in their homes for fear of the frequent shootings, robberies, or attacks.

Advertisement

And, yet, in this environment soccer manages to thrive thanks to Guayaquil Barcelona, Ecuador's most popular club. It offers a dream of a better life, starting in the youth academy that once briefly included Hincapié. But he wouldn't recognize the facilities now — secure and guarded against organized crime.

‘My dream is to be a pro’

The soccer school caters for nearly 300 youths. Piero Ortega, aged 10, has been at the academy for five years.

“My dream is to play for PSG or Real Madrid,” Ortega says. “My dream is to be a professional soccer player.”

Shouts of instructions from coaches can be heard at the academy. Boys and girls chase after the ball and repeat actions to correct plays. They seem to never tire of running.

Another 10-year-old, Washington Vera, controls the ball with great skill, eludes opponents, and delivers precise passes.

“I would like to play for the national team as a right winger,” Vera says, also eager to one day “score goals for the national team.”

Enrique Benavides is trying to deliver those dreams as the coordinator of Guayaquil Barcelona's academies while also trying to keep the kids safe.

“Insecurity has set a limit for us; fear has entered every neighborhood, every community. Nobody is safe,” Benavides says. ”Given the insecurity, this school offers children the opportunity to attend our pitches and train safely. Before, they played in parks and streets at any time of day, but now that's no longer possible because of the insecurity."

That's why there's a lot riding on Ecuador at the World Cup to distract their supporters, however briefly, from the violence outside their homes.

The fans' passion is unbridled, much like their expectations.

“Before, we dreamed of qualifying; now we're hoping they reach the quarterfinals or semifinals of the World Cup,” Guayaquil lawyer Daniel Sánchez says.

Matías Oyola is an Argentine who has recently moved from being a Guayaquil Barcelona player to the sporting director. He’s also drank the Kool-Aid.

“The World Cup for Ecuador will be a continuation of what they did in the qualifiers,” Oyola says. “It's going to be excellent.”

AP World Cup:https://apnews.com/hub/fifa-world-cup

By Ciro De Luca and Joshua McElwee

Pope Leo visits Acerra

ACERRA, Italy, May 23 (Reuters) - Pope Leo on Saturday called out companies who seek "dizzying" profits at the cost of environmental pollution, on a ‌visit to an area in Italy known as a hotbed for illegal dumping of toxic ‌waste.

On a visit to Acerra, about 220 km (137 miles) south of Rome, the first U.S. pope urged the world to "reject temptations ​of power and enrichment linked to practices that pollute the land, water, air, and social coexistence."

Leo said he wanted to come to the area near Naples known as the "Land of Fires", where the European Court of Human Rights ruled last year that authorities had failed to protect residents from waste dumping since at least ‌1988, to "gather the tears" of families who ⁠had lost loves ones to related illnesses.

Arriving by popemobile in an outside square on a sunny spring day, Leo was greeted by people waving small yellow and ⁠white Vatican flags and wearing yellow hats, some holding up posterboards with pictures of family members who had died.

Leo, who in recent months has been speaking more forcefully and will issue his first major document on Monday, ​said "unscrupulous ​people and organizations have been allowed to act with ​impunity for too long". During his four-hour visit ‌to Acerra, he also referred to "the dizzying profits of a few, blind to the needs of people, their work and their future." He also met with victims.

Advertisement

For years, collection, treatment and disposal of garbage in southern Italy was largely in the hands of a small group of private owners, with contracts sometimes tied to the Camorra, a mafia group based around Naples.

In January 2025 the European court found that Italian ‌authorities had repeatedly failed to act to stop illegal dumping ​in a region also known as the "Triangle of Death", due ​to abnormally high rates of cancer for ​local residents.

The court gave the Italian government two years to establish a comprehensive database ‌of toxic waste sites and communicate the ​risks to the public.

Prime Minister ​Giorgia Meloni in February 2025 appointed an Italian general to head a task force aimed at helping victims and pursuing environmental clean-up.

Leo will issue his first encyclical, a major text, to ​the world's 1.4 billion Catholics, on ‌Monday. It is expected to address the rise of AI and how the technology is ​being used in warfare and challenging workers' rights.

(Reporting by Ciro De Luca in Acerra ​and Joshua McElwee in Rome; Editing by Susan Fenton)

ACERRA, Italy (AP) — Families living in atoxic-waste polluted area around Napleswere preparing to meetPope Leo XIVduring his pastoral visit on Saturday, carrying with them years of grief, anger and hopes for justice after losing children to cancer linked to a multi-billion mafia racket of dumping toxic waste.

Italy Pope Acerra

The visit to the so-called Terra dei Fuochi, or Land of Fires, comes on the eve of the 11th anniversary of Pope Francis’ big ecological encyclical Laudato Si (Praised Be), and indicates Leo’s interest in carrying on his predecessor’s environmental agenda.

The European Court of Human Rights last year validated a generation of residents’ complaints that mafia dumping, burial and burning of toxic waste led to an increased rate of cancer and other ailments in the area of 90 municipalities around Caserta and Naples, encompassing a population of 2.9 million people.

The court found Italian authorities had known since 1988 aboutthe toxic pollution, blamed on the Camorra crime syndicate that controls waste disposal, but failed to take necessary steps to protect residents’ lives. The binding ruling gave Italy two years to set up a database about the toxic waste and verified health risks associated with living there.

The pope will visit the city of Acerra to meet families who lost young relatives to cancer, the human cost of environmental pollution. Bishop Antonio Di Donna estimated 150 young people died in the city of some 58,000 over the past three decades.

Advertisement

“We very much wanted the pope to meet with them because these children and young people who have died are, to all intents and purposes, victims of environmental pollution. There is a link, a correlation between pollution and the incidence of cancer,” Di Donna said.

The victims include Maria Venturato, who died of cancer in 2016 at the age of 25. Her father Angelo said he hopes to speak with the pope to explain their reality, “not for me … for the next generation.”

“I’d like to give these young people a future, so I’m asking for the pope’s help with this. That is, I’m making a strong appeal to him to go to those in power and say, ‘Look, let’s heal this land of fires,’" he said.

Filomena Carolla plans to present the pope with a book containing memories from the life of her daughter, Tina De Angelis, who died of cancer at the age of 24.

“I’m just angry at the people who poisoned the soil, because what did our children have to do with it? What did they have to do with it, so young,” Carolla said.

Francis' plans to visit the area in 2020 were canceled by the pandemic.