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BAKU: The United Nations climate talks neared the end of their first week on Saturday with negotiators still at work on how much wealthier nations will pay for developing countries to adapt to planetary warming. Meanwhile, activists planned actions on what is traditionally their biggest protest day during the two-week talks.
The demonstration in Baku, Azerbaijan is expected to be echoed at sites around the world in a global “day of action” for climate justice that’s become an annual event.
Negotiators at COP29, as the talks are known, will return to a hoped-for deal that might be worth hundreds of billions of dollars to poorer nations. Many are in the Global South and already suffering the costly impacts of weather disasters fueled by climate change. Several experts have said $1 trillion a year or more is needed both to compensate for such damages and to pay for a clean-energy transition that most countries can’t afford on their own.
Panama environment minister Juan Carlos Navarro told The Associated Press he is “not encouraged” by what he’s seeing at COP29 so far.
“What I see is a lot of talk and very little action,” he said, noting that Panama is among the group of countries least responsible for warming emissions but most vulnerable to the damage caused by climate change-fueled disasters. He added that financing was not a point of consensus at the COP16 biodiversity talks this year, which suggests to him that may be a sticking point at these talks as well.
“We must face these challenges with a true sense of urgency and sincerity,” he said. “We are dragging our feet as a planet.”
The talks came in for criticism on several fronts Friday. Two former top UN officials signed a letter that suggested the process needs to shift from negotiation to implementation. And others, including former US Vice President Al Gore, criticized the looming presence of the fossil fuel industry and fossil-fuel-reliant nations in the talks. One analysis found at least 1,770 people with fossil fuel ties on the attendees list for the Baku talks.
Progress may get a boost as many nations’ ministers, whose approval is necessary for whatever negotiators do, arrive in the second week.

KYIV: A high-tech factory in central Russia has created a new, deadly force to attack Ukraine: a small number of highly destructive thermobaric drones surrounded by huge swarms of cheap foam decoys.
The plan, which Russia dubbed Operation False Target, is intended to force Ukraine to expend scarce resources to save lives and preserve critical infrastructure, including by using expensive air defense munitions, according to a person familiar with Russia’s production and a Ukrainian electronics expert who hunts them from his specially outfitted van.
Neither radar, sharpshooters nor even electronics experts can tell which drones are deadly in the skies.
Here’s what to know from AP’s investigation:
A deadly mix
Unarmed decoys now make up more than half the drones targeting Ukraine and as much as 75 percent of the new drones coming out of the factory in Russia’s Alabuga Special Economic Zone, according to the person familiar with Russia’s production, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the industry is highly sensitive, and the Ukrainian electronics expert.
The same factory produces a particularly deadly variant of the Shahed unmanned aircraft armed with thermobaric warheads, the person said.
During the first weekend of November, the Kyiv region spent 20 hours under air alert, and the sound of buzzing drones mingled with the boom of air defenses and rifle shots. In October, Moscow attacked with at least 1,889 drones – 80 percent more than in August, according to an AP analysis tracking the drones for months.
On Saturday, Russia launched 145 drones across Ukraine, just days after the re-election of Donald Trump threw into doubt US support for the country.
Since summer, most drones crash, are shot down or are diverted by electronic jamming, according to an AP analysis of the Ukrainian military briefings. Less than 6 percent hit a discernible target, according to the data analyzed by AP since the end of July. But the sheer numbers mean a handful can slip through every day – and that is enough to be deadly.
The drone lab
Tatarstan’s Alabuga zone, an industrial complex about 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) east of Moscow, is a laboratory for Russian drone production. Originally set up in 2006 to attract businesses and investment to Tatarstan, it expanded after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine and some sectors switched to military production, adding new buildings and renovating existing sites, according to satellite images analyzed by The Associated Press.
In social media videos, the factory promoted itself as an innovation hub. But David Albright of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security said Alabuga’s current purpose is purely to produce and sell drones to Russia‘s Ministry of Defense. The videos and other promotional media were taken down after an AP investigation found that many of the African women recruited to fill labor shortages there complained they were duped into taking jobs at the plant.
Russia and Iran  signed a $1.7 billion deal for the Shaheds in 2022, after President Vladimir Putin invaded neighboring Ukraine, and Moscow began using Iranian imports of the unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, in battle later that year. Soon after the deal was signed, production started in Alabuga.
The most fearsome Shahed adaptation so far designed at the plant is armed with thermobarics, also known as vacuum bombs, the person with knowledge of Russian drone production said.
The plan to develop unarmed decoy drones at Alabuga was developed in late 2022, according to the person with knowledge of Russian drone production. Production of the decoys started earlier this year, said the person, who agreed to speak only on condition of anonymity. Now the plant turns out about 40 of the unarmed drones a day and around 10 armed ones, which are more expensive and take longer to produce.
The vacuum bomb
From a military point of view, thermobarics are ideal for going after targets that are either inside fortified buildings or deep underground. They create a vortex of high pressure and heat that penetrates the thickest walls and, at the same time, sucks out all the oxygen in their path.
Alabuga’s thermobaric drones are particularly destructive when they strike buildings, because they are also loaded with ball bearings to cause maximum damage even beyond the superheated blast.
Serhii Beskrestnov, a Ukrainian electronics expert and more widely known as Flash whose black military van is kitted out with electronic jammers to down drones, said the thermobarics were first used over the summer and estimated they now make up between 3 percent and 5 percent of all drones.
They have a fearsome reputation because of the physical effects even on people caught outside the initial blast site: Collapsed lungs, crushed eyeballs, brain damage, according to Arthur van Coller, an expert in international humanitarian law at South Africa’s University of Fort Hare.
For Russia, the benefits are huge.
An unarmed drone costs considerably less than the estimated $50,000 for an armed Shahed drone and a tiny fraction of the cost of even a relatively inexpensive air defense missile. One decoy with a live-feed camera allows the aircraft to geolocate Ukraine’s air defenses and relay the information to Russia in the final moments of its mechanical life. And the swarms have become a demoralizing fact of life for Ukrainians.