Mike Householder/AP

United Auto Workers members march at a rally held near a Stellantis factory, Aug. 23, 2023, in Detroit.

An energized labor movement has launched a rare strike against U.S. carmakers, as wrench-turners vow to catch up on pay and benefits at a time of tectonic change.

As bargainers failed to reach a deal by a Sept. 14 deadline, one of the key sticking points can be found some 800-plus miles to the south of Detroit boardrooms: a massive electric car plant owned by Hyundai, with fellow South Korean company LG Energy Solution partnering on battery production, rising from a former slash pine forest outside Savannah, Georgia.

Part of a massive new private and public investment in weaning the U.S. economy off fossil fuels, the plant is expected to employ 8,000 nonunion workers and open in 2025. Its very existence is one reason the United Auto Workers (UAW) union is on a collision course with the three big automakers that have U.S. roots: Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis – the owner of Chrysler, among other brands.

With the auto industry increasingly shifting toward electric vehicles, a central risk for the union is that jobs are flowing southward – to a region that has traditionally shunned organized labor – and toward the supply chain for the batteries those EVs require. Already, cars from nonunion or foreign assembly plants, often with lower pay scales than the UAW, account for a large majority of U.S. sales. Yet the Detroit automakers have remained profitable. The challenge for the union is how to win a pay boost for its workers while also avoiding a scenario of continued shrinkage of its ranks.

Hence a core UAW demand in these talks: concessions that would make it easier to unionize some of the 29 current or proposed battery plants primarily sited in the South. 

“Electrification has changed the dynamics of bargaining,” says Marick Masters, an auto industry expert at the Mike Ilitch School of Business at Wayne State University in Detroit. “It’s very fluid, and we’re dealing with a new reality here.”

Taking a newly militant approach after Shawn Fain took over as president earlier this year, the UAW on Sept. 15 began an unprecedented work stoppage against parts of all three major U.S. automakers. Beyond the battery plants, the union seeks upgrades on health benefits, safety issues, and pay. That includes ending a post-2007 tier system put into place by Congress after the bailouts of Chrysler and GM, which has fueled anger among the working ranks in Detroit. 

Mike Householder/AP

Shawn Fain, president of the United Auto Workers, holds up a sign at a union rally held near a Detroit Stellantis factory in August.

After union truck drivers and longshoremen won massive concessions from U.S. corporations this summer, the UAW called for a 40% pay raise and a 32-hour work week.

A tense moment for workers

But for America’s autoworkers, the audacious bid also centers on electrification. The UAW supports the nation’s overall effort to dramatically reduce dependence on fossil fuels – as long as workers aren’t left behind. “Our union isn’t going to stand by while they replace oil barons with battery barons,” Mr. Fain said recently.

Tougher in approach than his recent predecessors, Mr. Fain refused a traditional handshake to open the talks, has thrown early proposals in the trash can, and has taken on all three automakers in bargaining at once – instead of the traditional push for a pattern at one to replicate with the others. 

Both sides have sizable war chests to carry a deep strike. But both sides also have made some concessions and have strong motivation to forge a deal. 

The question of organizing battery plants looms large, as the union demands rights to organize at plants that any of the Detroit carmakers own jointly with other companies. 

“This is a very dynamic and complex environment that touches everything, touches everyone, or will,” says Robert Charette, a veteran systems engineer in Virginia who has studied the EV transformation. “We’re trying to change core elements of our economy at scale, in really short time frames.” 

One sign of upheaval is the South Korean-owned “Metaplant” here in coastal Georgia. The Hyundai plant, with battery production aided by partner LG, is rising at dizzying speed to potentially put 300,000 electric cars on the road a year starting in 2025. Some 20,000 people could be employed by the plant and its contractors, transforming a local economy dominated by the Port of Savannah, paper mills, and tourism.

Richard Burkhart/Savannah Morning News/AP/File

Chung Eui-sun (center left), executive chair of Hyundai Motor Group, shakes hands with Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp as dignitaries join in for the official groundbreaking for the Hyundai Metaplant, Oct. 25, 2022, in Ellabell, Georgia. With partner LG, the company will make batteries and electric cars in Georgia.

In part, this reflects Biden administration subsidies that promote a greener economy. It also reflects Republican governors in the South who see a different shade of green – dollars that can help buoy state economies, provide jobs, and raise median wages. Georgia kicked in about $2 billion in tax breaks for the Savannah-area plant. 

“[Georgia is] geographically ... one of the epicenters of the future of the auto industry in a new age defined by EVs,” says Harley Shaiken, a global labor expert and emeritus professor at the University of California, Berkeley, in an email. “High noon – or, more accurately, high midnight – in Detroit will have considerable implications for Georgia, as Georgia will influence the future of Detroit.” 

Professor Shaiken adds in an interview, “What happens in these [labor] talks has a lot of implications way beyond” U.S. automakers. For one, research finds that when unions win higher wages, nonunionized plants also tend to raise wages to compete.

Only 16% of auto workers in the United States today are unionized – compared with nearly 60% in 1983. 

Yet U.S. labor more broadly has found new momentum following a pandemic that laid bare stubborn economic inequities in the U.S. 

Just this summer, the UAW won an organizing effort at Ultium Cells, a joint effort by GM and LG in Lordstown, Ohio. That plant reveals the stakes: When GM closed the factory for car assembly in 2019, the average pay was $32 an hour. Those assembling batteries on the line today start at barely half that rate, according to Professor Masters at Wayne State University.

Given the union’s history of fighting for a foothold in the South, its current demand regarding battery plants is “a reasonable one,” says American University economist Stephen Silvia, author of “The UAW’s Southern Gamble: Organizing Workers at Foreign-Owned Plants.”

Reverberations in politics

The UAW, for its part, has withheld its endorsement of President Joe Biden pending the outcome of the negotiations.

Last week, Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump appealed directly to UAW workers in Michigan to oppose their own union’s support of electrification. 

Former President Trump lost to Mr. Biden in auto-heavy Michigan in 2020, but he won the state narrowly in 2016. 

“The only acceptable policy for UAW members should be the complete and total repeal of Biden’s catastrophic EV mandate,” Mr. Trump’s campaign wrote. “President Trump looks forward to doing exactly that on his first day back in the Oval Office.”

Analysts say an EV reversal is unlikely. Yet efforts to put the brakes on the EV transformation could resonate if many perceive a gap between government-guided policy and consumer preferences or worker needs.

“We saw how powerful of an idea it is: In 2016, Trump carried Michigan by 10,000 votes,” says Professor Shaiken. “It was his ability to get autoworkers to give him a chance that made him president. So [his message] could well resonate.” 

Still, amid a rising focus worldwide on reducing emissions of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere, for many, the question is less about whether the industry is transitioning than about what it will look like – for workers as well as for consumers.

“Right now, things are on a very fine line,” says Mr. Charette, the systems engineer. “We’re heading into a period where there are no experts. It’s seat of the pants.” 

Editor’s note: Since its initial publication on Sept. 14, this story has been updated in two places that mentioned the possibility of a strike or work stoppage, to reflect that a strike has begun.

With a yellow pencil missing its eraser, the Palestinian educator draws from memory the layout of fortress-like schools in the Ain al-Hilweh refugee camp in Lebanon that have become the front line in a fight between Palestinian factions and Islamist militants.

Teacher Mahmoud, who asks that his full name not be used, knows every inch of Lebanon’s oldest and largest camp for Palestinian refugees: He was born there, taught for 30 years there, and feels deeply how surges of violence raise the level of anguish inside the overcrowded camp.

He points to a school parking lot on his map. Here, says Mahmoud, is where a senior commander of the mainstream Palestinian Fatah faction, Abu Ashraf al-Armoushi, and four of his bodyguards were ambushed and killed by Islamist militants at the end of July. The attack deepened a blood feud and led to days of clashes that left 13 people dead and forced 4,000 from their homes.

Violence erupted again over this past weekend, wrecking a fragile four-week cease-fire with heavy gunfire and explosions that spread across much more of the camp. Another cease-fire agreed to Monday collapsed by Wednesday night, reportedly bringing the death toll of the newest fighting to 16.

Lebanese Army Forces began to deploy toward the camp, raising the prospect of a broader and more destructive battle. A hospital was evacuated after its walls were struck by bullets, and – with several schools occupied by fighters and damaged in the fighting – the United Nations is urgently looking for safer alternatives for 5,900 students to start the school year.

For Mahmoud, the lethal escalation signifies a deeper crisis for Palestinians in Lebanon, a further affront to their dignity after decades of dislocation and poverty.

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

A veteran Palestinian teacher who gave the name Mahmoud shows where, on his hand-drawn map of a school in the Ain al-Hilweh refugee camp, a Fatah leader and his four bodyguards were killed in late July, triggering days of violence, in Sidon, Lebanon, Aug. 30, 2023.

“The Palestinians here want to go back, but they can’t go back home, and 75 years in we have an unresolved economic, social, and status issue, and it translates into these situations as we see in Ain al-Hilweh,” says Dorothée Klaus, Lebanon director of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, or UNRWA.

“We are proud people”

Ain al-Hilweh was created in 1948, when Palestinians uprooted by the war that accompanied the formation of the state of Israel fled north. More recently, residents of the camp include Syrian refugees and remnants of the Islamic State and Al Qaeda, as well as known fugitives.

“We face a problem today as Palestinian people: The world takes a different view of us, after they see what happened in Ain al-Hilweh,” says Mahmoud, speaking after the first round of clashes. He now lives outside the camp but provides services inside such as music, gym, and school support, which he says teach students to “see their future differently.”

“We are proud people; we are well known for how well educated we are,” he says. “Now the whole world is looking at us as a bunch of ignorant people in the camps, and this is something we are suffering from.”

The escalating violence has brought into sharp focus the oft-forgotten plight of some 200,000 to 250,000 Palestinians in Lebanon, who for decades have lived out of a dozen crowded camps where unemployment and poverty are chronic, services are limited and shriveling, and paroxysms of violence by a multitude of factions vying for control are frequent and destructive.

Bilal Hussein/AP

Smoke rises during clashes between members of the Palestinian Fatah group and Islamist militants in the Palestinian refugee camp of Ain al-Hilweh, near the southern port city of Sidon, Lebanon, Sept. 10, 2023.

The result has been widespread atrophy in this society of refugees. They say they are struggling to hold on to their history, and to pass from one generation to the next a hopeful ambition of “going home” to a Palestine that no longer exists as they remember it.

During the clashes Sunday night, rocket fire from inside the camp also struck two Lebanese Army Forces bases, prompting the army to warn of “consequences.”

Those warnings raised concerns among residents of a repeat of the events of 2007, when the army destroyed the Nahr al-Bared camp during a 15-week campaign to rid it of Islamist groups. Lebanese authorities have no jurisdiction inside the Palestinian camps; under a decades-old agreement, a committee of Palestinian factions rules the camps.

The International Committee of the Red Cross “is extremely concerned by the alarming intensification of armed violence seen in Ain al-Hilweh camp, as the constant violence over the last days had a profound impact on people’s lives, homes, essential services, and infrastructure,” says Shady Ramadan, head of the south Lebanon subdelegation for the International Committee of the Red Cross.

“We are continuing to provide critical assistance,” he says, including supplying the hospital and treating wounded people.

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

A woman passes a mural of the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat as she exits the Mar Elias Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut, Aug. 31, 2023. Lebanon hosts 12 Palestinian camps with between 200,000 to 250,000 refugees and their descendants. Some families have been in the country since the 1948 founding of Israel.

For teacher Mahmoud, the fresh violence has multiple threads.

“What we are demanding now is to control these weapons all over the place,” says Mahmoud, who describes how “shrinking” opportunities and poor education have led young men to find paid work with armed groups as a job only, instead of for “ideological reasons, for Palestine.”

“These [Islamist] people in the camp, they belong to a master; they are tools in the hands of someone,” says Mahmoud. “Some people take orders from others without thinking. Some people underestimate the impact of clashes, and what it means to grab a gun and open fire inside the camp ... which shuts everything down.

“Our duty is to treat the problem, to make changes,” he adds. “It’s hard, but it’s not impossible.”

Resources in chronic short supply

Critical to making those changes is UNRWA, which has been charged since 1949 with the mammoth task of providing for all aspects of life for displaced Palestinians across the region, now an estimated 5.9 million refugees and their descendants.

At the end of August, UNRWA mounted an emergency appeal for $15.5 million to relieve the needs of those affected by the first round of clashes. The appeal noted that Ain al-Hilweh has become “a magnifier of different actors vying for control,” with humanitarian needs “high and rising, driven largely by systematic discrimination over generations, failed governance structures [and] unprecedented” economic crises.

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

Dr. Dorothée Klaus, director of UNRWA Affairs in Lebanon, stands for a portrait in the United Nations Relief and Works Agency's offices in Beirut, Aug. 31, 2023.

Since taking her UNRWA post last February, Dr. Klaus meets every four weeks with all Palestinian faction leaders, including Islamic groups, to find better living solutions for refugees.

“What you have in Lebanon is a population that for 75 years has experienced recurrent hostilities, frequent displacement, and destruction through generations,” says Dr. Klaus. She ticks them off to include, after 1948, the destruction of three Palestinian camps in 1976 and the massacre in the Sabra and Shatila camp in 1982.

“This results in recurrent trauma, with no space for healing, and it translates often into severe depression [so] that people can no longer take care of themselves,” says Dr. Klaus.

Limited resources have been a constant problem since UNRWA began, with Dr. Klaus noting that reports sent to U.N. headquarters since 1949 have included requests for more funding.

The recent violence only compounds such problems, she says, with an estimated 30,000 textbooks stored in the occupied schools for the new school year likely destroyed, and reports of serious damage to buildings.

Opportunity for change

Still, as UNRWA searches for temporary solutions for students, Dr. Klaus says there may be a broader opportunity to build new school buildings that do not as easily lend themselves to becoming fortified positions for fighters.

“This is not a matter of reconstructing a school,” says Dr. Klaus. “This is reconstruction through a participatory, reflective process, involving the stakeholders about what society you want your children to grow up in.”

Such change is also the desire of Salah Salah, the octogenarian head of the refugees camps for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in Beirut. He speaks of a young generation – including his son, Mohammed, a university student who sits beside him – doing better at easing the despair of Palestinian refugees.

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

Salah Salah, the octogenarian head of refugee camps for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, poses for a photo in his offices in Beirut, Aug. 31, 2023. “People are frustrated, people are depressed, but we have a new generation in the camps that are educated to say, ‘No, no, no, we are Palestinians and we will defend our country and our rights,’” he says.

He says the presence of Islamists in Ain al-Hilweh is “the same time bomb” that “could explode at any moment” that led to the destruction of the Nahr al-Bared camp in 2007. “We are dealing with confusion in the camps. ... You have to ask the Lebanese army how [Islamist militants] got there, and with those weapons.”

Mr. Salah asserts that there is a deliberate policy by Lebanon to keep Palestinians frustrated by barring them from certain professions and from owning property, and by the international community to pressure UNRWA to shrink services in camps, so that the Palestinians “will melt away.”

“People are frustrated, people are depressed, but we have a new generation in the camps that are educated to say, ‘No, no, no, we are Palestinians and we will defend our country and our rights,’” adds Mr. Salah. “They are rebelling against what is happening to them right now.”

“Look at my generation: What kept us going? We still talk about liberation, and we pass this hope to the next generation by teaching them who they are, and their place,” says Mr. Salah. “All talk is ‘Palestine, Palestine.’ ... Always ‘Palestine’ is in their mouth.”

“Welcome to this great occasion of history and hope.”

Those words, spoken by former U.S. President Bill Clinton on the south lawn of the White House 30 years ago this week, did not sound wildly hyperbolic at the time. Flanking him, after all, were the bitterest of Mideast enemies: Israel’s Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat.

And they were committing to embark on the road to peace – the Oslo process, so called because the declaration of principles the leaders were signing had been hammered out in secret talks in Norway.

Mr. Clinton’s words ring hollow now. Israeli-Palestinian coexistence seems more distant than ever; Oslo’s vision of two sovereign states living side by side in peace is even further away.

Yet both sides know that the broad terms of the deal they tried to achieve in the seven fraught years after that sunny afternoon in 1993 still represent the only realistic path to peace.

The immediate challenge is to keep that path from being closed forever.

The latest salvage attempt is a component of the only Arab-Israeli negotiation that is still alive: a complex, U.S.-mediated effort to secure a landmark peace deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dearly wants a formal peace treaty with the leading Arab and Islamic power. But as head of the most right-wing coalition in Israel’s history, he also wants the door kept firmly shut on a two-state peace deal with the Palestinians.

Majdi Mohammed/AP

An older man waves a Palestinian flag during a demonstration against a new Israeli settlement in the village of Qalandia near the West Bank city of Ramallah, Jan. 20, 2023.

The Saudis and Americans, at least so far, have told him that he can’t have both.

Yet even if the door to Israeli-Palestinian negotiations is left ajar, a deeper question remains. Is peace itself, the kind of deal promised on the White House lawn, still possible?

Having followed that first failed process from the outset – and having gotten to know leading figures on both sides – my own sense is “yes ... if just barely.”

But success will hinge on learning Oslo’s lessons.

The substantive issues are undeniably difficult: security; final borders; the growing numbers of Israeli settlers on the West Bank, the intended core of a Palestinian state; Palestinian claims to a “right to return” to present-day Israel; and the status of the holy city of Jerusalem.

Still, by the time the Oslo deal foundered, the contours of a workable deal were emerging: the lion’s share of the West Bank as a Palestinian state, along with Gaza, to Israel’s south; shared sovereignty over Jerusalem; a limited, symbolic return of Palestinian returnees – all to be set out in a formal, final peace treaty.

The ultimate obstacles – and the real challenges for future peacemakers – came on two other fronts: domestic politics and leadership.

First, the politics. Making peace meant overcoming visceral opposition to the very idea of compromise in what for many, on both sides, is an existential conflict.

Eyal Warshavsky/AP

Mr. Arafat (left) addresses reporters in Arabic at a 1995 news conference at the Erez checkpoint linking Israel to Gaza, in the presence of Mr. Rabin (second from right).

In Israel, opposition grew with each step. And when Mr. Rabin agreed in 1995 to a series of withdrawals from the West Bank, the assault turned uglier. The day before that agreement passed in parliament, the then-leader of the opposition – Mr. Netanyahu – addressed a rally in the heart of Jerusalem. Some in the crowd were shouting, “Death to Rabin!”

As Mr. Rabin left a pro-peace rally in central Tel Aviv a few weeks later, a young ultranationalist Israeli opposed to Oslo shot and killed him.

On the Palestinian side, Mr. Arafat faced no similarly overt threat. But there was opposition from harder-line PLO members and increasingly influential Islamist political groups.

And that is where the issue of leadership came into play: because the Oslo plan, and any future peace effort, could succeed only if leaders with grassroots credibility were willing to make a sustained, public case for compromise.

Mr. Rabin and Mr. Arafat had credibility: the Israeli leader as a battlefield veteran, former chief of staff, and defense minister, and the PLO chief as the very symbol of armed opposition to Israel.

Mr. Rabin, though reticent at first, did begin to make the case for peace at the rally that ended in his death. Mr. Arafat never abandoned reticence. Never, after his stirring words at the White House, did he make a forceful case for peace.

Thirty years later, the discouraging news is that there is no sign on either side of leaders with the credibility and will to make peace.

Mr. Arafat’s successor, Mahmoud Abbas, is increasingly isolated, and many Palestinians view the Palestinian Authority he leads as deeply corrupt. While Mr. Netanyahu’s right-wing credentials give him potential credibility, he has shown no interest in making the case for peace.

Still, one thing is changing: A new generation of Palestinians and Israelis have to face a new reality.

Palestinians have seen the number of Israeli settlers on the West Bank grow hugely since Oslo: There are now more than a half-million. Palestinians’ daily lives are increasingly constrained by Israeli restrictions and blighted by violence, including attacks by settlers.

In Israel, the impetus is demographic. If the country abandons the idea of a negotiated peace and exerts permanent rule over the West Bank, Jews could eventually become a minority in such an enlarged Israel. They would face a stark choice between being a Jewish state or remaining a one-person-one-vote democracy.

It may be that – regardless of leadership – the logic of peace will eventually become implacable.

Disbelief turned to desperation and anger as Libyans struggled with the aftermath of unfathomable floods that as of Thursday have left more than 5,200 people dead and 10,000 missing.

Outrage simmered among Libyans as relief efforts stalled, water and fuel shortages intensified, and the failures of Libyan authorities became clearer. Some project the death toll could climb past 20,000 in coming days.

While the catastrophic storm that hit Sunday was unprecedented, experts and residents say Libyan officials’ mismanagement and neglect may have cost thousands of additional lives. There were mixed messages sent to the public, years of warnings about aging dams that were ignored, local officials overruled by military and paramilitary groups, and a broad lack of emergency planning.

Libya’s floods and other historic climate disasters hitting North Africa this year – including wildfires and drought in Tunisia and Algeria – are exposing poor or absent governance, breaking what is left of citizen trust in their leaders, and leaving communities vulnerable to extreme weather events, forced to cope on their own with little forewarning or resources.

“This shows the importance of elections. It is not about liberal democracy – it is about knowing there is a relationship between the government and the governed. In Libya there is no relationship,” says Anas El Gomati, director of the Tripoli-based Sadeq Institute, a Libyan think tank. “It has led to disastrous negligence of the worst order.”

Two governments, little governance

Efforts by the Red Crescent and the United Nations are ongoing to reach those still trapped and find shelter for the estimated 40,000 displaced Libyans. The efforts are particularly focused in the hard-hit coastal city of Derna, a town of 100,000 people where Sunday floods swept away entire neighborhoods, dragging them out to sea.

War-torn Libya is home to two rival governments, neither proving its ability to govern in the wake of the floods.

Esam Omran Al-Fetori/Reuters

Sudanese workers who lost members of their families and friends during a powerful storm and heavy rainfall sit outside a tile factory in Derna, Libya, Sept. 14, 2023.

In the west, the Tripoli-based government is led by businessman and Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh. The east is nominally governed by the Benghazi-based Libyan government, in de facto control of the self-styled Libyan National Army (LNA) and its commander, warlord Khalifa Haftar.

The disaster has placed a focus on the LNA, which rules the area hardest hit by Storm Daniel and is home to marginalized communities that have historically opposed Mr. Haftar.

The eastern Libyan government is reporting severe shortages in rescue teams, forensics equipment, DNA testing kits, rubber boats, and body bags.

Rescue teams had yet to reach several villages as of Thursday. Bodies line the streets of Derna, where locals struggle to keep up with even more washing ashore.

Both governments in the west and east ignored flood warnings by Libyan meteorologists a day before Storm Daniel made landfall, leading to widespread calls for an investigation. 

Instead of evacuating the tens of thousands living in flood plains, the eastern Libyan government and military reportedly instructed citizens to shelter in place on Sunday, imposing a 48-hour curfew. Entire extended families were inside their homes when their buildings were swept away to sea.

“An authoritarian government structure is not equipped to address the phenomena of climate change as it requires openness, creativity, and the ability to share information,” says Mr. El Gomati.

Libya, like the rest of North Africa, is witnessing rising sea levels, eroding shorelines, flooding, higher temperatures, and worsening drought. The region is warming at a rate nearly twice as fast as the rest of the world, on pace to warm by 4 degrees Celsius by 2050.

In 2022, a study from Libyan Sebha University warned that accelerated erosion left populations in low-lying coastal areas like Derna at risk of floods and that dams built in the 1980s were decrepit.

When Storm Daniel hit, two aging dams burst, turning torrential rains into a biblical flood that swept downhill to Derna and outlying villages.

An LNA spokesperson told BBC Arabic on Wednesday that “we don’t know for certain whether regular maintenance of the dams has been carried out.”

Local officials and residents say the dams were not kept up, despite money earmarked for repairs. Oil-rich Libya, which has a government surplus, has years of missing and misspent funds.

“For the last four years there was money and no war. You would think the ruling elites would rush and do the right thing by maintaining infrastructure, but they didn’t,” says Jalel Harchaoui, a Libya expert and associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based think tank.

Instead, oil revenues went to fuel subsidies and grand projects that their allies could profit from.  

“When you are stealing money and need to placate the public, maintenance is not something you spend money on, particularly in a municipality that you hate,” Mr. Harchaoui adds.

Libya lacked a functioning weather service, despite previous concerns raised to the governments by the World Meteorological Organization, which on Thursday said such services could have “avoided most of the human casualties.”

Taylor Luck

Octogenarian resident Fatima Malmeisi stands in front of her burnt-out home in the wildfire-hit Tunisian village of Maloula, in the country's northwest, Aug. 23, 2023.

Fire, drought

When fires ravaged Algeria and northwest Tunisia for the second summer in a row in late July, with unprecedented winds turning the flames into towering infernos, officials and residents were unprepared.

Due to drought, the Tunisian water distribution company had cut off water supplies to villages in the affected areas, leaving residents to battle blazes with bottled water as they waited military planes to douse the fires. They evacuated in their own cars or on foot.

In the northwest Tunisian village of Maloula, a pine-lined mountainous area overlooking the Mediterranean, residents have yet to rebuild from a fire that destroyed two dozen homes and turned 50 acres into ash.

More than a month later, residents are struggling to pick up the charred pieces.

Following a visit by Tunisian President Kais Saied, residents say there has been no follow-up. All they have received are some bundles of used clothes and a few bags of dried pasta from Tunisian charities.

“Not one official has come to our aid. Not the president’s political movement, no governor. Not a single person has called us,” says Samir Malmeisi, looking lost in his own charred-out, wall-less kitchen in late August.

“We have no resources; we have no money. We have lost all that we had, and we are confronting climate change on our own.”

Fatima Malmeisi, an 80-year-old Maloula resident distantly related to Samir, sits by the shell of her home, with little left but a collapsed roof and burnt bed.

“This home is all I had,” she says. “Where is the compensation? Where is the government? Where is the state?”

Taylor Luck

Samir Malmeisi stands in the kitchen of his fire-damaged home in the wildfire-hit Tunisian village of Maloula, Aug. 23, 2023.

Lack of local authority

Centralization of authoritarian rule in recent years has left many North African communities on the front lines of climate change with little local governance.

Eastern Libya was due to hold local elections this month. Derna, which has been under an LNA-handpicked mayor and de facto military rule since 2018, was to elect its mayor and city council, with candidates registered and posters put up across the town – before LNA-aligned brigades threatened and intimidated candidates. Elections were postponed.

As Storm Daniel approached, the Derna mayor’s calls for citizens to evacuate were ignored by the ruling military and drowned out by its orders and text messages instructing citizens to shelter in place.

In Tunisia, Mr. Saied fired all the mayors and dissolved municipal councils in March, effectively erasing local governance overnight.

Maloula and other fire- and drought-hit towns and villages have been without mayors or councils or local strategies to cope, monitor, and raise the alarm for climate disasters.

The U.N. on Thursday hailed the cooperation between the two rival Libyan governments, but it remained unclear whether either unelected government had an understanding of the needs of flood-stricken areas – or how much aid will be lost to graft.

Sanyé Mylo’s eyes twinkle with excitement. He is standing in the sound booth of The Record Co. in Boston, eager to bring his creation to life.

“This place is a musical creative sandbox,” he says. With the press of a button, his latest rap track fills the room. As the speakers blast Mr. Mylo’s beat-pulsing rhythms, it’s hard to resist the urge to dance.

“I didn’t know spaces like this existed,” says Mr. Mylo, who grew up in the low-income neighborhood of Dorchester. “It’s the community. It’s the mission. It’s the energy. It’s more than just the environment.”

Mr. Mylo is one of the young musicians in Boston who, thanks to The Record Co., has turned his music into a full-time occupation. The sound studio, located amid a graying backdrop of warehouses on Massachusetts Avenue, is an unexpected island of creativity and hope.

Founded in 2010 by Matt McArthur, The Record Co. aims to give musicians more affordable access to creative workspaces and introduce the world of music to those who may have never considered their place in it.

Mr. McArthur understands this challenge firsthand. As a music technology student at Berklee College of Music, he was frustrated by the high costs of renting time in production studios.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Founder Matt McArthur poses at a piano at The Record Co., a nonprofit rehearsal and recording studio, Aug. 28, 2023, in Boston.

Music, often heralded as the universal language, finds itself increasingly ensnared in a web of exclusivity and commercial trappings. Access to quality recording spaces has often been the privilege of those who can afford them. On average, a recording studio in Boston costs more than $100 per hour to rent. Mr. McArthur’s vision flipped that model on its head. He saw a recording studio not as a sanctuary for wealthy people but as a community hub available to all.

He took out loans, collected donations, and opened a studio in a tiny basement in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Slowly but steadily, Mr. McArthur expanded it and eventually rented a new property to include rehearsal spaces and production suites.

Today, The Record Co., with a full-time staff of more than 20 people, is a state-of-the-art, 12,000-foot facility that can be rented for as little as $10 per hour. Each month, it receives about 1,000 reservations, and around 3,500 musicians pass through its doors.

“We don’t care if you’re good or trying to do it for a living,” says Mr. McArthur. “Our philosophy is that every single person deserves to express their musical creativity.”

At The Record Co., the ethos is clear: Music belongs to everyone, and so does the space to create it. The building has been shaped not only with an ear to acoustics but also with an eye to inclusivity, ensuring it is as welcoming to a musician in a wheelchair as to one who walks in with a guitar slung over their shoulder.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Kyle Johnson (left) and Jonathan Hua-Phan create beats in a studio Aug. 24, 2023. Musicians can rent studio space for as little as $10 an hour – as opposed to the $100 an hour average rate in Boston.

“That moment of creation where something now exists that didn’t exist before – watching other people have that experience – is magic,” says Mr. McArthur.

Beat the Odds serves low-income communities to help young people channel their energies into creative pursuits, and confront and discuss their mental health challenges. Thanks in part to the music production facility available at The Record Co., the group continues to expand its reach. It recently received a $600,000 grant from Boston Mayor Michelle Wu to finance its after-school programs.

“Our journey with The Record Co. has been nothing short of remarkable,” says Giovanni Lopez, co-founder of Beat the Odds. “They’ve given us the platform to share our music in a way we could never have done alone. Our partnership with TRC isn’t just professional; it feels like family. We’ve grown together, experienced the highs and the lows, and come out stronger.”

Since rental fees don’t fully cover the operational costs, The Record Co. relies on donations. As a graduate of Berklee with her own memories of scraping by as a poor music student in Boston, Rachel Jordan says her investment feels personal. Now head of marketing for a tech startup in California, she says she welcomes the opportunity to help eliminate barriers to producing music, and she is committed to attracting investors to believe in the value of The Record Co.’s mission.

“There are so many quantitative ways to measure impact,” says Ms. Jordan, “but sometimes the most meaningful way is through one human story at a time. We can talk about the economic impact of a thriving arts community, and that matters. But the artists themselves also tell the story of impact so well. And each person living a fulfilled life has an endless impact on the people, in their lives and beyond.”

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Guitars and other instruments are available for artists who are renting rehearsal or recording space at the nonprofit studio.

The Record Co.’s purpose becomes more meaningful in the context of the neighborhood surrounding it, which struggles with addiction and homelessness.

In Boston, the stretch where Massachusetts Avenue intersects with Melnea Cass Boulevard is known as Methadone Mile, a reference to the addiction treatment centers that share the same block as the studio. Mr. McArthur, who lives in the neighborhood, acknowledges the challenges facing those with addictions, noting, “I’m not delusional to think that somebody is going to kick a chemical habit just because they got in the studio one day.” Yet he holds that music offers a positive alternative to counter the pull toward destructive behaviors.

Mr. Mylo can attest to the transformative power of music. He felt the one-size-fits-all educational system stymied his creativity. College seemed more like an insurmountable debt rather than an opportunity to learn and grow.

A friend introduced him to Beat the Odds and The Record Co. Here he felt that his talent was not only recognized, but also nurtured.
“It wasn’t just a place to drop beats,” Mr. Mylo says. “We all had stories, sounds that needed an outlet. [Beat the Odds] taught me how to be more human.”

Walls, built from years of distrust and self-preservation, began to crumble, recalls Mr. Mylo.  

Now he works not only as a musician but also as a producer and mentor for new musicians who join Beat the Odds. He sees the vision, community, and resources that The Record Co. provides converging to create a vibrant hub that is helping to transform the city’s creative landscape, one artist at a time.

Some of the The Record Co.’s early users now make their living touring and performing full time, Mr. McArthur says.

“When I ponder on success stories, I visualize those brimming with happiness, not necessarily those drenched in fame,” he adds. “And we’re witnessing more and more of that.”

AP

Two women walk down stairs at Galata bridge as the sun sets behind Suleymaniye mosque, right, in Istanbul, Turkey, Sept. 13.

In a speech on Wednesday, the chief executive of the European Union said that “the call of history” – meaning the need to stop Russia from taking land from its neighbors – requires adding more countries to the 27-member bloc.

“It is clearly in Europe’s strategic and security interests to complete our Union,” said Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission.

Her timing was perfect. On the same day, a court in Turkey – a NATO ally that has tried for decades to join the EU – took a step toward meeting one criterion for membership: protecting the freedom of association and freedom of expression. The court rejected an attempt by the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to shut down a prominent women’s rights group that has been trying to end violence against women.

Prosecutors had made a vague charge against the group, called We Will Stop Femicide Platform, saying that the group is “against the law and morality.” The group’s secretary-general, Fidan Ataselim, told Agence France-Presse that the court ruling “offers society a spark of hope about putting trust in the justice system.”

Those sparks of hope could be increasing. The EU and Turkey have stepped up their negotiations since May when President Erdoğan was reelected. With his political survival intact, he may be ready to challenge Turkey’s Islamic conservatives, who want him to keep rolling back protections for women. In 2021, Turkey withdrew from a European convention aimed at combating violence against women.

“At a time when the enlargement policy is back on the EU agenda due to geopolitical concerns, excluding Turkey from this process would be a great strategic mistake,” said Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan.

The EU insists that any aspirant for membership, such as Turkey or Ukraine, still meet the bloc’s high standards. “Our future is a Union of freedom, rights and values for all,” said the European Commission president. “We will be very strong on the rule of law.”

Turkey in particular must show real progress on its “democracy and the rule of law,” said Olivér Várhelyi, EU commissioner for enlargement.

While violence against women in Turkey has risen, the country has made some progress on women’s rights. The May elections saw the highest number of women elected to parliament in Turkey’s recent political history. When the women’s national volleyball team won the European championship this month, the players returned home to a hero’s welcome – and a congratulatory phone call from Mr. Erdoğan.

The values that bind the EU are also a shield from aggression, as Turkey may be learning. If it adopts EU-style reforms, it may well be heeding the call of history.