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WASHINGTON, Dec 1, bdnews24.com/Reuters) - US President Barack Obama's decision on a new strategy for the war in Afghanistan carries political peril as his Democratic Party gears up for tough midterm congressional elections next year. Obama will unveil the strategy on Tuesday in an address from the West Point military academy. He will significantly bolster US troop levels in Afghanistan and may also outline an exit strategy for the conflict. Republicans have urged Obama to take decisive action, while many Democrats have expressed serious doubts, making a delicate balancing act for a president already battling to deliver on his political promises. WHAT IS AT STAKE? Obama must decide whether to grant a request by his top Afghan commander, Army General Stanley McChrystal, for as many as 40,000 more U.S. troops or to side with more cautious advisers who favor a smaller deployment of 10,000 to 20,000 additional troops and a greater role for Afghan forces. Influential voices in Obama's Cabinet, including Defense Secretary Robert Gates as well as military chiefs, favor a US troop increase of 30,000 or more, and the final number could reach 35,000 once US trainers are factored in. The decision is critical for the future of the US-led war in Afghanistan, where 68,000 US soldiers already anchor a multinational force of about 110,000 troops battling resurgent Taliban militants. Part of a broader campaign against al Qaeda, the conflict carries risks for neighboring countries such as nuclear-armed Pakistan as well as for US allies such as Britain, where public support for the war is flagging. It could also imperil Obama's domestic agenda from healthcare to climate change as politicians in Washington and the voters who put them there weigh the wisdom of a costly US campaign in a country long known as "the graveyard of empires." WHAT DO AMERICANS THINK? Opinion polls show Americans -- exhausted by the long war in Iraq and their own economic problems -- are deeply divided on Afghanistan. A recent Washington Post-ABC News poll found 46 percent of Americans supported a large influx of troops to fight insurgents and train the Afghan military, while 45 percent favored sending a smaller number of troops. The poll showed 48 percent of Americans disapproved of how Obama was handling Afghanistan, against 45 percent who approved. Most worrisome for Democrats, approval among independents -- swing voters who helped put Obama in the White House in 2008 -- fell to a new low of 39 percent. Doubts over Afghanistan coincide with widespread concern among Americans over high unemployment, huge government bailout programs, a rising federal budget deficit and a divisive debate over reforming the expensive healthcare system. The anti-incumbent mood could cut into Democrats' legislative majorities in November 2010, when all 435 seats in the House of Representatives and a third of the seats in the 100-member Senate are up for election. HOW ARE DEMOCRATS REACTING? Many liberal Democrats oppose a major escalation of involvement in a conflict they no longer see as central to U.S. security. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, an advocate for other Obama initiatives such as healthcare reform, spoke out against upping the ante in Afghanistan, calling Afghan President Hamid Karzai an "unworthy partner" tainted by corruption who does not merit more U.S. aid. Other top Democrats have urged Obama to outline what the U.S. "exit strategy" will be for Afghanistan. McChrystal, in a briefing to a delegation of U.S. lawmakers last week, suggested the U.S. troop presence could begin to diminish after a post-surge peak by 2013, while an international conference on Afghanistan set for London in January would aim to set conditions for a gradual transfer of security responsibility to Afghan control. Several veteran Democratic lawmakers have proposed a "war tax" -- almost unthinkable in an election year -- on the richest Americans to pay for the conflict. Democrats hope that by reining in Obama on Afghanistan, they can prevent the party from becoming too closely associated with an unpopular war with no clear path to victory. They also hope to regain some credibility as fiscal managers by hitting the brakes on war spending that could rise by $30 billion to $40 billion per year. WHAT DO REPUBLICANS SAY? For Republicans, Obama's Afghanistan quandary has been an opportunity to showcase their traditionally strong views on national security and highlight what some portray as indecisiveness on the part of the Democratic president. Former Vice President Dick Cheney told a conservative talk radio host that Obama's three-month review of the options in Afghanistan had taken too long. "The delay is not cost-free," Cheney said. "Every day that goes by raises doubts in the minds of our friends in the region what you're going to do, raises doubts in the minds of the troops." Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell urged Obama to "keep the pressure on" the Taliban, while 14 House Republicans sent Obama a letter endorsing McChrystal's request for 40,000 more troops. Republicans hope the debate will show them as vigilant against threats to the United States and win back voters in swing districts who have grown disillusioned with Obama. Democrats say Republicans are trying to distract Americans from the failure to defeat the Taliban in seven years of military operations under former President George W. Bush, who committed far greater forces to his war in Iraq.

Ocean scientists urged governments on Sunday to invest billions of dollars by 2015 in a new system to monitor the seas and give alerts of everything from tsunamis to acidification linked to climate change. They said better oversight would have huge economic benefits, helping to understand the impact of over-fishing or shifts in monsoons that can bring extreme weather such as the 2010 floods in Pakistan. A scientific alliance, Oceans United, would present the plea to governments meeting in Beijing on Nov. 3-5 for talks about a goal set at a 2002 U.N. Earth Summit of setting up a new system to monitor the health of the planet. "Most ocean experts believe the future ocean will be saltier, hotter, more acidic and less diverse," said Jesse Ausubel, a founder of the Partnership for Observation of the Global Oceans (POGO), which leads the alliance and represents 38 major oceanographic institutions from 21 nations. "It is past time to get serious about measuring what's happening to the seas around us," Ausubel said in a statement. POGO said global ocean monitoring would cost $10 billion to $15 billion to set up, with $5 billion in annual operating costs. Currently, one estimate is that between $1 and $3 billion are spent on monitoring the seas, said Tony Knap, director of the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences and a leader of POGO. Knap said new cash sounded a lot at a time of austerity cuts by many governments, but could help avert bigger losses. JAPAN TSUNAMI Off Japan, officials estimate an existing $100 million system of subsea cables to monitor earthquakes and tsunamis, linked to an early warning system, will avert 7,500-10,000 of a projected 25,000 fatalities in the event of a huge subsea earthquake. "It sounds a lot to install $100 million of cables but in terms of prevention of loss of life it begins to look trivial," Knap said. New cash would help expand many existing projects, such as satellite monitoring of ocean temperatures, tags on dolphins, salmon or whales, or tsunami warning systems off some nations. Ausubel told Reuters: "The Greeks 2,500 years ago realised that building lighthouses would have great benefits for mariners. Over the centuries, governments have invested in buoys and aids for navigation. "This is the 21st century version of that," said Ausubel, who is also a vice-president of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation in the United States. Among worrying signs, surface waters in the oceans have become 30 percent more acidic since 1800, a shift widely blamed on increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from burning of fossil fuels. That could make it harder for animals such as lobsters, crabs, shellfish, corals or plankton to build protective shells, and would have knock-on effects on other marine life.

South Korea, Asia's fourth largest economy, has pledged to set one of three targets for carbon emissions by 2020, voluntarily joining Kyoto signatories in moving toward a firm commitment to roll back climate change. The government said on Tuesday it would choose a 2020 gas emission target this year from three options: an 8 percent increase from 2005 levels by 2020, unchanged from 2005, or 4 percent below 2005 levels. The country is one of Asia's richest nations and an industrial powerhouse. Emissions doubled between 1990 and 2005 and per-capita emissions of planet-warming carbon dioxide based on 2005 levels were 11.1 tonnes, the same as some European nations and the 17th largest among OECD members. "Compared with developed countries, the targets may look mild," said Sang-hyup Kim, Secretary to the President for National Future and Vision at the Presidential Office. "But these are utmost, sincere efforts, reflecting Korea's capabilities." The government estimated each target to cost between 0.3 and 0.5 percent of GDP and will curb emissions by increased use of hybrid cars, renewable and nuclear energy consumption, energy efficiency with light-emitting diodes and smart grids. Rich nations bound by the Kyoto Protocol to curb greenhouse gas emissions are under intense pressure from developing countries to ramp up their targets to cut emissions as part of a broader climate pact under negotiation. Those talks culminate at the end of the year at a major UN gathering in the Danish capital, Copenhagen. Wealthy developing states such as South Korea, Singapore and Mexico have also come under pressure to announce emissions curbs. South Korea's targets are modest compared with developed countries such as the United States and the European Union. Japan and the United States respectively aim to cut emissions by 15 and 17 percent by 2020 against 2005 levels, while the European Union and Britain are each aiming for reductions of 20 and 34 percent by 2020, compared with 1990 levels. China and many developing nations want the rich to cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least 40 percent by 2020 to avoid the worst effects of global warming such as droughts, floods and rising seas.

Nearby, sleeves rolled up, suds up to their elbows, women washed plastic jerrycans in rainbow colors, cut into pieces. Around them, piles of broken toys, plastic mayonnaise jars and hundreds of discarded synthetic wigs stretched as far as the eye could see, all ready to be sold and recycled. Plastic waste is exploding in Senegal, as in many countries, as populations and incomes grow and with them, demand for packaged, mass-produced products. This has given rise to a growing industry built around recycling plastic waste, by businesses and citizens alike. From Chinese traders to furniture makers and avant-garde fashion designers, many in Senegal make use of the constant stream of plastic waste. Mbeubeuss — the dump site serving Senegal’s seaside capital of Dakar — is where it all begins. More than 2,000 trash pickers, as well as scrubbers, choppers, haulers on horse-drawn carts, middlemen and wholesalers make a living by finding, preparing and transporting the waste for recycling. It adds up to a huge informal economy that supports thousands of families. Over more than 50 years at the dump, Pape Ndiaye, the doyen of waste pickers, has watched the community that lives off the dump grow, and seen them turn to plastic — a material that 20 years ago the pickers considered worthless. “We’re the people protecting the environment,” said Ndiaye, 76, looking out at the plastic scattered over Gouye Gui, his corner of the dump. “Everything that pollutes it, we take to industries, and they transform it.” Despite all of the efforts to recycle, much of Senegal’s waste never makes it to landfills, instead littering the landscape. Knockoff Adidas sandals and containers that once held a local version of Nutella block drains. Thin plastic bags that once contained drinking water meander back and forth in the Senegalese surf, like jellyfish. Plastic shopping bags burn in residential neighborhoods, sending clouds of chemical-smelling smoke into the hazy air. Senegal is just one of many countries trying to clean up, formalise the waste disposal system and embrace recycling on a bigger scale. By 2023, the African Union says, the goal is that 50% of the waste used in African cities should be recycled. But this means that Senegal also has to grapple with the informal system that has grown up over decades, of which the grand dump at Mbeubeuss is a major part. The recycled plastic makes it to enterprises of all stripes across Senegal, which has one of the most robust economies in West Africa. At a factory in Thies, an inland city known for its tapestry industry to the east of Dakar, recycled plastic pellets are spun out into long skeins, which are then woven into the colorful plastic mats used in almost every Senegalese household. Custom-made mats from this factory lined the catwalk at Dakar Fashion Week in December, focused this time on sustainability and held in a baobab forest. Signs were constructed out of old water bottles. Tables and chairs were made of melted down plastic. The trend has changed the focus of the waste pickers who have worked the dump for decades, gleaning anything of value. “Now everyone’s looking for plastic,” said Mouhamadou Wade, 50, smiling broadly as he brewed a pot of sweet, minty tea outside his sorting shack in Mbeubeuss, where he has been a waste picker for more than 20 years. Adja Seyni Diop, sitting on a wooden bench by the shack in the kind of long, elegant dress favored by Senegalese women, agreed. When she first began waste picking, at age 11 in 1998, nobody was interested in buying plastic, she said, so she left it in the trash heap, collecting only scrap metal. But these days, plastic is by far the easiest thing to sell to middlemen and traders. She supports her family on the income she makes there, between $25 and $35 a week. Wade and Diop work together at Bokk Jom, a kind of informal union representing over half of Mbeubeuss’ waste pickers. And most of them spend their days searching for plastic. A few days later, I bumped into Diop in her workplace — a towering platform made entirely of rancid waste that is so hostile an environment that it is known as “Yemen.” I almost didn’t recognise her, with her face obscured by bandannas, two hats and sunglasses, to protect her against the particles of trash blowing in every direction. Around us, herds of white, long-horned cattle munched on garbage as dozens of pickers descended on each dump truck emptying its load. Some young men even hung from the tops of trucks to catch precious plastic as it spilled out of the trucks, before bulldozers came to sweep what remained to the edge of the trash mountain. Most of the pickers who target plastic, such as Diop, sell it — at about 13 cents a kilogram — to two Chinese plastic merchants who have depots on the landfill site. The merchants process it into pellets and ship it to China to be made into new goods, said Abdou Dieng, manager of Mbeubeuss, who works for Senegal’s growing waste management agency and has brought a little order to the chaos of the landfill. Senegal is flooded with other countries’ plastic waste as well as its own. China stopped accepting the world’s unprocessed plastic waste in 2018. Casting around for new countries to export it to, the US began to ship plastic to other countries, including Senegal. But that is beginning to change, too, as the Senegalese government appears to be cracking down on plastic waste coming from abroad. Last year, a German company was fined $3.4 million when one of its ships was caught trying to smuggle 25 tons of plastic waste into Senegal. In the past two years, the number of trucks coming to Mbeubeuss daily has increased to 500 from 300. The government says that in a few years, the giant landfill will close, replaced by much smaller sorting and composting centers as part of a joint project with the World Bank. Then, most of the money made from plastic waste will go into government coffers. The waste pickers worry about their livelihoods. Ndiaye, the last of the original waste pickers who came to Mbeubeuss in 1970, surveyed what has been his workplace for the past half-century. He remembered the large baobab under which he used to take tea breaks, now long dead, replaced by piles of plastic. “They know there’s money in it,” he said, about the government. “And they want to control it.” But Dieng insisted that the pickers would either be given jobs at the new sorting centers, “or we help them find a job that will allow them to live better than before.” That doesn’t reassure everyone. “There are many changes,” said Maguette Diop, a project officer at WIEGO, a nonprofit organisation focused on the working poor worldwide, “and the place of the waste pickers in these changes is not clear.” For now, though, hundreds of waste pickers have to keep on picking. Dodging bulldozers, piles of animal guts and cattle, with curved metal spikes and trash bags in their hands, they head back into the fray. © 2022 The New York Times Company

Now, after sailing across the Atlantic on an emissions-free yacht, Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish climate activist, has disembarked in New York ahead of her speech next month at the UN Climate Action Summit. After a 15-day sail that was obsessively tracked by European news media, cheered by fellow climate activists, mocked by critics and rocked by rough waves off Nova Scotia, Greta and the boat’s crew went through customs on Wednesday morning while anchored off Coney Island, Brooklyn. Just before 3pm, a shout went up from those waiting in the intermittent light rain to greet her at the North Cove Marina, most of them young activists. The boat’s black sails had come into sight just blocks from Wall Street, the heart of the global financial system whose investments in fossil fuels are one of the main targets of climate protesters. “Sea levels are rising, and so are we!” they chanted. As the vessel glided past the marina, there were more chants, and one anxious cry: “She’s going to Jersey!” But the yacht, trailed by a fleet of small boats, wheeled around. Soon Greta, with a slight smile, disembarked unsteadily, perhaps unsure of her land legs. Amid a flurry of questions, Greta was asked to comment on President Donald Trump in his hometown. “My message to him is just to listen to the science, and he obviously doesn’t do that,” she said. Greta began protesting outside the Swedish parliament in 2018. With her signature double braids and stern demeanour, she inspired a movement called Fridays for Future, in which thousands of children have walked out of school in locally and sometimes globally coordinated strikes. She does not fly because of airplanes’ high emissions of gases. To reach New York for the UN speech on Sep 23 at the climate summit, she was offered a ride on the Malizia II, a racing yacht that uses solar panels and underwater generator turbines to avoid producing carbon emissions, according to a statement from Greta’s team. The yacht was skippered by a German sailor, Boris Herrmann, and Pierre Casiraghi, a son of Princess Caroline of Monaco. It collects data that allow scientists to study rates of ocean acidification, a byproduct of carbon emissions. Greta has her detractors. She was criticised after single-use plastic water bottles were seen on the yacht. Some have labelled her call to “pull the emergency brake” on emissions simplistic or even undemocratic. Others question whether encouraging teenagers and even younger children to skip school to protest is the right approach. She has responded by arguing that the world is in a climate emergency and requires emergency action. A shy, small girl who self-identifies as having Asperger’s syndrome, a neurological difference on the autism spectrum, Greta was thrust into the role of a global leader after years of struggling with crippling depression. One of her first victories was persuading her mother, a well-known opera singer in Sweden, to stop flying. “We cannot solve the crisis without treating it as a crisis,” she said in a 2018 speech at the UN Climate Change Conference in Katowice, Poland. “You say you love your children above all else, and yet you’re stealing their future in front of their very eyes.” Many of the students at North Cove Marina on Wednesday said they were planning to attend a “climate strike” on Sep 20. Some, like Olivia Wohlgemuth, said they regularly skip school to participate in the Fridays for Future movement. “There’s nothing in the curriculum to explain the urgency of the climate crisis and the need to act,” said Olivia, a 16-year-old senior at Manhattan’s LaGuardia High School who learned of Greta about a year ago. “We’re saying, ‘Why study for the future we’re not going to have?’” Greta’s arrival in New York comes just weeks after the state passed the country’s most aggressive climate law, which seeks to reshape the region’s economy over the next 30 years, cutting net greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050 and requiring the state to get 70% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030. When asked what she would miss about the voyage, Greta said — much as some harried adults feel about a long trip — the best part was “to just sit, literally sit, staring at the ocean for hours not doing anything.” “To be in this wilderness, the ocean, and to see the beauty of it,” she added. “That I’m going to miss. Peace and quiet.” She paused for a moment. “We love you Greta!” someone shouted. © 2019 New York Times News Service

At a Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica opening the synod, Francis also denounced past and present forms of colonialism and said some of the fires that devastated forests in Brazil in recent months were set by special interest groups. In his sermon, Francis said some Church leaders risked becoming “bureaucrats, not shepherds”, and urged them to have the courage of rekindling what he called the fire of God’s gift by being open to change. “If everything continues as it was, if we spend our days content that ‘this is the way things have always been done’, then the gift vanishes, smothered by the ashes of fear and concern for defending the status quo,” he said. One of the most contentious topics of the synod, whose some 260 participants are mostly bishops from the Amazon, is whether to allow older married “proven men” with families and a strong standing in local communities to be ordained as priests in the Amazon. This solution to the shortage of priests, backed by many South American bishops, would allow Catholics in isolated areas to attend Mass and receive the sacraments regularly. At least 85% of villages in the Amazon, a vast region that spans eight countries and the French territory of Guiana - cannot celebrate Mass every week. Some see a priest only once a year. Conservative opponents fear it would be a doctrinal Trojan horse that would then spread to the entire Church in the West. HERESY AND ERROR They have attacked the synod’s working document as heretical, including what they say is an implicit recognition of forms of paganism and pantheism practiced by indigenous people, such as nature worship. The three-week synod will discuss spreading the faith in the vast region, a greater role for women, environmental protection, climate change, deforestation, indigenous people and their right to keep their land and traditions. Bill Donohue, president of the US-based Catholic League, a conservative group, drew criticism for what was perceived as a condescending attitude toward native cultures when he said this week that a dilemma in the Amazon was “how to respect the culture of indigenous peoples while at the same time acknowledging inherent deficiencies in it.” A number of conservatives have tweeted their disapproval of a three-planting ceremony in the Vatican on Thursday in which people from the Amazon used native symbols and gestures, such as blessing the earth. In his sermon, Francis said indigenous cultures had to be respected.  “When peoples and cultures are devoured without love and without respect, it is not God’s fire but that of the world. Yet how many times has God’s gift been imposed, not offered; how many times has there been colonization rather than evangelization!” he said. The synod is taking place at a time when the Amazon is in the world spotlight because of the devastating fires in Brazil. Francis implied that he believed at least some of the fires were intentionally set. “The fire set by interests that destroy, like the fire that recently devastated Amazonia, is not the fire of the Gospel (which is) fed by sharing, not by profits,” he said. The synod does not make decisions. Participants vote on a final document and the pope will decide which recommendations to integrate into his future rulings.

Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent OSLO, Dec 6 (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - After two years of work, and 12 years after their last attempt, 190 nations gather in Copenhagen from Monday to try to avert dramatic climate change -- what one minister called "the most difficult talks ever embarked upon by humanity." Already the sheer size of the measures needed, and splits between rich and poor about who should pay, mean that a historic U.N. pact to fight global warming and ease dependence on fossil fuels may be put off in favor of a less binding "declaration." The conference runs from December 7-18 and will draw 15,000 officials, campaigners and journalists, making it the biggest climate summit yet. U.N. scientists predict ever more heatwaves, floods, desertification, storms and rising sea levels this century. But recession has sapped willingness to invest in a green future, and many opinion polls suggest that public concern about global warming is declining. "These are the most difficult talks ever embarked upon by humanity," said Norwegian Environment Minister Erik Solheim. "The effects will be felt by the rice farmer in Sichuan in China, by Google headquarters ..., or by the oil worker in Norway," he said. "It's much more difficult than disarmament, global trade or previous environmental agreements." PLEDGES FALL SHORT Experts say pledges made so far are not enough to reach the benchmarks that have been set for averting the worst of climate change, such as ensuring that global emissions fall after 2020. And rich nations have not yet come up with cash to help developing nations kickstart a deal. "It's unlikely that we'll achieve what's necessary so that emissions will peak before 2020," said Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, head of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. He hoped for a "magic moment" of concessions when more than 100 leaders come to the summit for a final push on the last two days, but added: "It's possible that Copenhagen could end up as a fiasco." After an offer by India on Thursday to slow the rise of its greenhouse gas emissions, mainly from burning coal and oil, all the top emitters, led by China and the United States, have pledged curbs. "We have a full house in terms of targets from industrialized countries and indications from major developing countries of what they intend to do," said Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat. But he said there was still a "huge challenge" to work out a deal that produces action fast enough to slow climate change. "POLITICAL AGREEMENT?" At best, most experts say the talks will reach a "political agreement" including targets for cuts in greenhouse gases by rich nations by 2020, and new funds for the poor. Agreement on a legally binding treaty text to succeed the 1997 Kyoto Protocol will be put off until 2010. Most say a full treaty is out of reach at least partly because the United States has not yet joined other industrialized nations in passing carbon-capping laws. The U.S. Senate is still debating a bill, although U.S. President Barack Obama will come to Copenhagen on December 9, on his way to collect the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo. "What we need is a two-step process with some real momentum and a political agreement coming out of Copenhagen," said Eileen Claussen, head of the Washington-based Pew Center on Global Climate Change. A second step would be a legal treaty. There are also deep rifts between rich and poor nations about how to share the burden of fighting global warming. China, India, Brazil and South Africa have outlined domestic goals on carbon emissions but rejected some core demands by rich nations, including a goal of halving world emissions by 2050. They say the rich -- who have benefited from decades of the industrialization that has boosted carbon emissions -- first have to set deeper cuts in their own output by 2020. So far, cuts on offer by the rich total about 14 to 18 percent by 2020 below a U.N. benchmark year of 1990. Obama will offer 3 percent, or a 17 percent cut judged from 2005 levels.

As the 30-year-old leads the world's lone superpower on a global game of hide and seek, US government officials faced questions about whether they had botched the effort to extradite Snowden from Hong Kong to face charges related to his leak of classified information.The latest wrinkle in the Snowden saga poses a different set of questions for an administration that has spent weeks fending off questions about whether it has abused its power to collect taxes, investigate criminal activity and fight terrorism.On Monday, administration officials said they had done all they could to bring Snowden to justice. Chinese defiance, rather than bureaucratic bungling, had allowed the 30-year-old former contractor to slip out of Hong Kong as officials there weighed Washington's request for extradition, they said."This was a deliberate choice by the government to release a fugitive, despite a valid arrest warrant," White House spokesman Jay Carney said at a briefing.Carney said early Monday afternoon that it was the US assumption that Snowden was still in Russia after fleeing Hong Kong for Moscow over the weekend.Other administration officials tried to dispel any notion of foot-dragging since Snowden first went public on June 9, and dismissed suggestions that they could have taken other steps to detain Snowden, who had gained access to highly sensitive information as a contract systems administrator at a National Security Agency facility in Hawaii.Snowden's exact whereabouts were a mystery on Monday as Russia resisted White House pressure to stop him during his journey to escape US prosecution.Reporters staking out an Aeroflot flight to Havana from Moscow on Monday, saw no sign of Snowden. The captain told reporters on emerging from customs: "No Snowden, no."Ecuador said it was considering Snowden's request for asylum, and advocates in the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks were also asking Iceland to take him in.Snowden's decision to go on the lam creates another headache for the Obama administration, which has seen priorities like immigration reform threatened by a string of scandals.Republicans in Congress say the Obama administration has abused its power by targeting conservative groups for heavy-handed tax scrutiny and seizing reporters' phone records in the process of investigating security leaks.When it comes to the NSA revelations, most lawmakers were already aware of the surveillance program and few have raised objections. Republicans by and large have focused their criticism on Snowden and China rather than the administration.That may change if the ordeal drags on. Republican Representative Peter King of New York on Monday said Obama should have taken a harder line with the Chinese authorities who ultimately control the semi-autonomous region of Hong Kong."I hate to be in the middle of a crisis second guessing the president, but where is he? Where is the President? Why is he not speaking to the American people? Why is he not more forceful in dealing with foreign leaders?" King said on CNN television.There are also likely to be increasingly embarrassing questions about how Snowden managed to download and take many highly sensitive documents when he was working in Hawaii for NSA contractor Booz Allen Hamilton.The head of the NSA, General Keith Alexander, said on Sunday that he did not know why the NSA did not catch Snowden before he left Hawaii for Hong Kong in May.White House Steers ClearObama first learned that Snowden had turned up in Hong Kong on Sunday, June 9, as he flew back from a weekend of talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping.But Obama does not appear to have played a direct role in trying to get him back. Obama declined to say on Monday whether he has spoken directly with Russian President Vladimir Putin or other foreign leaders about the extradition efforts. Obama had an icy meeting with Putin a week ago at the G8 summit in Northern Ireland."We're following all the appropriate legal channels and working with various other countries to make sure the rule of law is observed," Obama told reporters at an unrelated event on Monday on immigration reform.Obama's public schedule leaves little room for the extradition effort. He makes a major speech on climate change on Tuesday, and then leaves on a week-long trip to Africa.Michael Chertoff, a former Homeland Security Secretary under Republican President George W Bush, said extradition laws are riddled with loopholes and the United States has a limited ability to get other countries to do what it wants."You can do all the paperwork, but it becomes a question of leverage," he said. "Either they didn't have enough, or they didn't exercise enough."Though the White House has distanced itself from the Snowden affair, other agencies have taken pains to show that they have done all they could to bring Snowden back to face charges.The Justice Department said it had filed espionage and theft charges against Snowden on June 14, one week before it made the charges public, and asked Hong Kong to arrest Snowden the next day.Officials from the FBI, the Justice Department and the State Department worked with their counterparts in Hong Kong to extradite Snowden over the next several days, culminating in a telephone call between US Attorney General Eric Holder and Hong Kong's Secretary for Justice, Rimsky Yuen, on June 19."There was a sense that the process was moving forward," a Justice Department official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.Hong Kong officials asked for more information and evidence two days later, but did not give the United States enough time to respond before Snowden left the Chinese territory on June 23.Administration officials dismissed suggestions that they had mishandled the extradition effort. Using a so-called "red notice" to ask Interpol, the international police organisation, for help was unnecessary because Snowden should not have been able to leave Hong Kong if his passport had been revoked, a Justice Department official said.US officials said privacy laws prevent them from describing the status of any individual's passport, but Carney hinted that it had indeed been revoked."Hong Kong authorities were advised of the status of Mr. Snowden's travel documents in plenty of time to have prohibited his travel," he said.George Terwilliger, who served as the Justice Department's No. 2 official under President George HW Bush, said it was too early to know whether the agency should be blamed for failing to get Snowden."These are not legal issues, per se. They're political and diplomatic issues, and most of the skills that are exercised are exercised away from the public eye."

He is combative and outspoken. She is conciliatory and deferential. But few leaders in Europe have as much in common where it really counts as Nicolas Sarkozy, the winner of Sunday's French presidential election, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Born within six months of each other, Sarkozy and Merkel are outsiders who overcame strong opposition from within their own parties to reach the pinnacle of European politics -- she as a pastor's daughter from communist East Germany and he as the son of a Hungarian immigrant who fled communism. The two conservatives are united in their support for closer ties with Washington and in their opposition to Turkey's bid to join the EU -- clear departures from the stances of their predecessors Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroeder. Both are advocates of reforming the European welfare state, although Merkel has been limited by her "grand coalition" in Berlin and Sarkozy has raised questions with his protectionist support of French national champions. Together, they are ideally positioned to restart the Franco-German motor that has driven the European Union forward for the past five decades but stalled when French voters rejected a draft constitution for the bloc two years ago. "He wants to get European integration on track again and does not define Europe as a counterweight to the United States," Andreas Schockenhoff, a leading conservative in parliament told German television. "These are the very principles on which our foreign policy is based." Sarkozy has vowed to visit Merkel on his first foreign trip as president and, in his victory speech on Sunday, signalled that she can count on his cooperation as she strives to deliver a G8 deal on climate change and an EU agreement on reviving the rejected treaty at separate summits in June. In the speech, the 52-year-old Frenchman, said his country was "back in Europe" and urged the United States, whose reluctance to commit to measures to combat global warming risks dooming Merkel's G8 plans, to take a leadership role on climate change. Language like this has comforted the German government in its hopes that Sarkozy will be more pragmatic as president than he was during his campaign and stints in Chirac's government. At a March campaign rally in the southern city of Nice, Sarkozy raised eyebrows by taking a swipe at Germany as he defended his own country's past. "(France) has not carried out a genocide. It did not invent the final solution," he said. As finance minister under Chirac, he helped prevent German conglomerate Siemens from purchasing assets from ailing French rival Alstom, then rankled Berlin in 2004 by pushing through French drug maker Sanofi's purchase of part-German peer Aventis. But German officials praise Sarkozy for taking a more measured stance when a crisis flared at Franco-German plane maker Airbus earlier this year and note that he has dropped calls for an overhaul of the European Central Bank's statutes. "I think we will see a much more pragmatic Sarkozy on European issues than we have in past years," said a senior member of Merkel's cabinet, requesting anonymity.

Poor countries will soon receive billions of dollars from a new World Bank fund to help them cut pollution, save energy and fight global warming, the international organisation said. Developing countries such as India and China are already trying to reduce their carbon emissions, mainly to save on energy, but have baulked at doing more without technological help from Europe, Japan and the United States. Most carbon dioxide heating the planet now is a result of western industrialisation, and developing countries want financial help to cut their own growing emissions. "The fund will support publicly and privately financed projects that deploy technologies that can cut emissions, increase efficiency and save energy...(in) developing countries," the US, British and Japanese finance ministers said in the Financial Times on Friday. The World Bank clean technology fund would receive some of the $2 billion in climate funds US President George W Bush announced last month, and part of the 800 million pounds ($1.56 billion) Britain pledged to "environmental transformation" last year, Henry Paulson, Alistair Darling and Fukushiro Nukaga said. Japan last month announced a $10 billion package to support developing countries' fight against climate change but the finance ministers' letter did not detail how much of this would be channelled through the World Bank. In a written response to questions from Reuters, the World Bank said, "It is expected that the formal announcement of the creation of the facility will be made soon." "In addition to discussions with donor countries, talks have been or will shortly be undertaken with other interested parties, including other agencies in the UN system and the private sector." The World Bank statement referred to "a strategic climate investment facility that would accelerate and scale up low carbon and climate-resilient investments in developing countries". The three finance ministers said the fund would not be an alternative to UN-led talks to agree new emissions curbs to succeed measures now under the Kyoto Protocol from 2013, a concern in Europe. "While the idea of a clean tech fund is welcome it should not be used to distract from or undermine the main event which is global negotiations on reducing carbon emissions," an EU source told Reuters, who said agreeing on binding emissions cuts was the top priority.

Putin was speaking at a G20 leaders summit in Brisbane where he has come under intense pressure, with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper telling him to "get out of Ukraine".The leaders of the United States, Japan and Australia vowed to oppose Russian aggression, and European leaders including German Chancellor Angela Merkel have warned of more sanctions unless Russia withdraws troops and weapons from Ukraine and ends its support for pro-Russian separatist rebels.The crisis has taken relations between Russia and the West a post-Cold War low.Sanctions aimed at sectors like oil and banking, as well as individuals close to Putin, are squeezing Russia's economy at a time when falling oil prices are straining the budget and the rouble has plunged on financial markets.Elsewhere at the summit, the United States and other nations overrode host Australia's attempts to keep climate change off the formal agenda. The communique at the end of the meeting will include a significant passage on climate change, EU officials said.Russia has denied any involvement in the conflict in Ukraine that has killed more than 4,000 people this year."Today the situation (in Ukraine) in my view has good chances for resolution, no matter how strange it may sound, but certain structures had been established on both sides that could handle the tasks they are facing better," Putin told reporters before he left Brisbane ahead of the formal ending of the summit.U.S. President Barack Obama, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe lined up together against Russia on Sunday, vowing to oppose what they called Moscow's efforts to destabilise eastern Ukraine.Speaking after a rare trilateral meeting on the sidelines of the summit, the three said they would oppose "Russia's purported annexation of Crimea and its actions to destabilise eastern Ukraine", and were committed to "bringing to justice those responsible for the downing of Flight MH17."The Malaysian Airlines flight was shot down over Ukraine earlier this year.Obama is due to meet European leaders to discuss Ukraine later in the day and EU foreign ministers will meet on Monday to consider further steps, including additional possible sanctions on Russia.Security, climate changeSecurity and climate change have overshadowed G20 talks on boosting flagging global economic growth at the summit."The most difficult discussion was on climate change," an EU official told reporters on condition of anonymity. "This was really trench warfare, this was really step by step by step. In the end we have references to most of the things we wanted."As world leaders debated how to tackle climate change, environmental protesters outside the summit venue sweltered in the scorching heat of the Australian summer.Australia, one of the world's biggest carbon emitters per capita, had argued climate change was not a clear economic issue and should not be discussed at the G20. Prime Minister Tony Abbott has questioned the science behind climate change and abolished a tax on carbon emissions and plans for an emissions trading scheme in July.The EU official said the climate change passage included practical measures and a reference to the Green Climate Fund, which U.S. President Barack Obama committed $3 billion to on Saturday, and Japan pledged $1.5 billion on Sunday.The United States and Europe led the push to have climate change discussed at the meeting, with Obama using a speech on Saturday to warn that Australia's iconic Great Barrier Reef was under threat.Asked on Sunday if he accepted that climate change was potentially one of the biggest impediments to global economic growth, Australian Treasurer Joe Hockey said: "No. No I don't. Absolutely not.""Australia is doing the same amount of work on climate change as the United States over a 30-year period. Frankly, what we're focused on is growth and jobs."EU officials said the communique, likely to be three pages, down from 27 last year, would also include an anti-corruption action plan. China had agreed to a G20 deal aimed at cracking down on companies masking their ownership, after initial concerns about the proposal, the EU official said.A working group at the Group of 20 lead by Australia has been seeking agreement on how to improve beneficial ownership transparency and combat the use of shell companies that can hide ill-gotten money or avoid taxation. China had said on Thursday an agreement was still under discussion.Hockey also said the G20 will exceed a target to boost global growth by an additional 2 percentage points over the next five years."The 2 percent target that we announced in Sydney has been met. It will go further," Hockey told ABC television ahead of Sunday's G20 leaders meetings. He did not specify by how much the G20 would exceed the target.

Nuclear operator British Energy has reached a long-awaited decision to extend the lives of two reactors by an extra five years to 2016, helping the UK towards ambitious climate change goals. The Hinkley Point reactor in Somerset, southwest England, and the Hunterston reactor on Scotland's west coast had been scheduled to close in 2011, 35 years after they were first fired up. "This decision ... is important in supporting the UK's climate change goals for the reduction of CO2 emissions," said Chief Executive Bill Coley. "Life extension helps provide support as the country considers energy conservation, efficiency and investment in new generating plant of all types," he added. The company expects to spend an additional 90 million pounds ($183.6 million) in the three years to 2008 to get the two reactors ready. British Energy is currently running the two plants at a reduced capacity of 60 percent after shutting them down last winter to repair boiler cracks. But it hopes to get them up to 70 percent over the next year, at which point it needs a power price of around 27 pounds per megawatt hour to make the life extensions economically viable.

The Earthshot Prize will award five one-million-pound ($1.29-million) prizes each year for the next 10 years under the categories of protecting and restoring nature, cleaner air, reviving oceans, waste-reduction and climate change. Nominations open on Nov 1 ahead of the first awards ceremony in the autumn next year. William, grandson of Queen Elizabeth and second-in-line to the throne, said change was critical in the next decade to help protect and restore the environment. "By 2030 we really hope to have made huge strides in fixing some of the biggest problems the Earth faces," Prince William, 38, will tell BBC Radio when he is interviewed on Thursday with naturalist David Attenborough. "I think that urgency with optimism really creates action. And so the Earthshot Prize is really about harnessing that optimism and that urgency to find solutions to some of the world’s greatest environmental problems." The British royal family have been vocal campaigners on a host of environmental issues, with William's father Prince Charles speaking out for decades about the impact of climate change and the importance of conservation. Kensington Palace said the prize drew its inspiration from US President John F Kennedy's Moonshot, which it said since the 1969 moon landing was synonymous with ambitious and ground-breaking goals. It said the prizes would provide at least 50 solutions to the world’s environmental problems by 2030. The Earthshot Prize Council will be set up to decide on the winners with its members to include names from the environmental, philanthropic, business, sporting and entertainment worlds. They will be announced later on Thursday. The project has more than 100 partners around the world who will submit nominations from Nov 1, said the statement. The 2021 awards ceremony will take place in London and then in different cities around the world. The Earthshot Prizes were first announced last December.

WASHINGTON, Sep 4, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - As the world's oceans get warmer, the strongest tropical storms get stronger, climate scientists reported on Wednesday as the remnants of Hurricane Gustav spun out over the central United States. "If the seas continue to warm, we can expect to see stronger storms in the future," James Elsner of Florida State University said. "As far as this year goes, as a season, we did see the oceans warm and I think there's some reason to believe that that's the reason we're seeing the amount of activity we are." Gustav made landfall on Monday just west of New Orleans; three more storms churned toward the US mainland on Wednesday. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicts 12 to 16 tropical storms between June 1 and November 30 this year, with six to nine hurricanes and two to five major hurricanes. Many climate scientists have linked stronger storms to rising sea surface temperatures in the North Atlantic and elsewhere, under the so-called heat engine theory: because warm tropical cyclones feed on warm water, the warmer the water, the more intense the storm. U.S. researchers looked at 26 years of satellite data, from 1981 to 2006, and determined that the strongest storms got stronger as a result of increasing ocean warmth. "It's almost like a survival-of-the-fittest argument," said Elsner, whose study is published in the journal Nature. Overall, tropical waters that breed cyclones have warmed by about 0.6 degrees F since 1981. The heat engine theory suggests all storms should strengthen as the ocean's surface gets hotter, but in reality, few tropical cyclones achieve their full maximum potential intensity. A cyclone's intensity can be cut by other factors, such as where they form, how close they are to land, El Nino patterns and solar activity, the researchers said. Strong storms seem able to overcome these factors and gather more fuel from warming waters, Elsner said. The study's findings are in line with projections made last year by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which said there may be more intense storms due to global warming. The panel said "more likely than not" that a trend of intense tropical cyclones and hurricanes was caused by human activity. Elsner's study made no reference to any human cause for rising temperatures in the world's oceans.

BONN, Germany, Tue Mar 31, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - The world is striving for a new UN climate "treaty" in December to succeed Kyoto. Or perhaps it will be a vaguer "agreement," "deal" or "decision." Delegates at 175-nation UN talks in Bonn on ways to step up the fight against global warming are locked in a semantic dispute -- but a vital one which will determine how ambitious a new deal is and how far it can be enforced in international law. "It certainly has big legal implications," Yvo de Boer, head of the UN Climate Change Secretariat, told Reuters Tuesday. He said he speaks broadly of a "deal," "agreement" or "pact." More than 190 nations launched a two-year push in 2007 in Bali, Indonesia, for what was described as an "agreed outcome" to fight global warming to be produced at a meeting in Copenhagen in December 2009. The idea of a new "protocol" or "treaty," favored by many developed nations, worries many poor nations since the words imply a legally binding deal backed by sanctions for non-compliance. But a non-binding "decision" in Copenhagen alarms many developed nations who want developing countries to take on tougher commitments to avert projected increases in heat waves, droughts, floods and rising seas. "It's impossible to say what the end result will be," de Boer said. The March 29-April 8 meeting in Bonn is looking at issues including the extent of curbs on greenhouse gas emissions needed by 2020. All developed nations except the United States already have binding commitments to cut emissions of greenhouse gases, mainly from burning fossil fuels, by an average of 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12 under the Kyoto Protocol. Many are far over target but de Boer said most Kyoto countries looked capable of reaching the goals with their planned measures to curb emissions. And recession is curbing use of fossil fuels. CHINA Kyoto countries have already agreed to make deeper curbs beyond 2012 and many want developing countries, such as China and India, to take on legally binding commitments. China, the United States, Russia and India are the leading emitters. Australia, for instance, has outlined two options for what it calls a "post-2012 treaty" for all nations. Most poor nations favor non-binding goals for themselves. President Barack Obama has said the United States will cap emissions in what the Washington generally refers to as an "agreement." "But some say 'what's the meaning of legally binding?'" de Boer added. "Is someone going to arrest (US) President Barack Obama if he doesn't reach his target?" Under Kyoto, countries that fail to make the agreed cuts will have to make extra cuts in a planned new period. Former President George W. Bush kept the United States out of Kyoto, saying it wrongly omitted goals for poor nations and would damage the U.S. economy. Environmentalists fear that the global economic crisis will deflect attention from efforts to fight climate change.

The journalists, Maria Ressa of the Philippines and Dmitry Muratov of Russia, were recognised for “their courageous fight for freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace.” “They are representatives of all journalists who stand up for this ideal in a world in which democracy and freedom of the press face increasingly adverse conditions,” the committee said in a statement released after the announcement in Oslo. Ressa — a Fulbright scholar, who was also named a Time magazine Person of the Year in 2018 for her crusading work against disinformation — has been a constant thorn in the side of Rodrigo Duterte, her country’s authoritarian president. The digital media company for investigative journalism that she co-founded, Rappler, has exposed government corruption and researched the financial holdings and potential conflicts of interest of top political figures. It has also done groundbreaking work on the Duterte government’s violent anti-drug campaign. “The number of deaths is so high that the campaign resembles a war waged against the country’s own population,” the committee said. “Ressa and Rappler have also documented how social media is being used to spread fake news, harass opponents and manipulate public discourse.” She is only the 18th woman to win the Peace Prize in its 120-year history. Speaking on Rappler’s Facebook Live platform, Ressa said she hoped the award was a “recognition of how difficult it is to be a journalist today.” “This is for you, Rappler,” she said, her voice breaking slightly, adding that she hopes for “energy for all of us to continue the battle for facts.” Muratov has defended freedom of speech in Russia for decades, working under increasingly difficult conditions. Within hours of news of the award breaking, the Kremlin stepped up its crackdown on critics, labelling nine journalists and activists as “foreign agents,” a designation that imposes onerous requirements on them. One of the founders of independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta in 1993, Muratov has been its editor-in-chief since 1995. Despite a continual barrage of harassment, threats, violence and even murders, the newspaper has continued to publish. Since its start, six of the newspaper’s journalists have been killed, the committee noted, citing Anna Politkovskaya, who wrote revealing articles about the war in Chechnya. “Despite the killings and threats, editor-in-chief Muratov has refused to abandon the newspaper’s independent policy,” the committee wrote. “He has consistently defended the right of journalists to write anything they want about whatever they want, as long as they comply with the professional and ethical standards of journalism.” Many Russian dissidents had hoped and expected that the prize would go to Alexei Navalny, the imprisoned opposition leader, expressing anger and disappointment that he was passed over. Muratov said the award had come as a surprise — and that he, too, would have given it to Navalny. He told Russian media that he ignored several unidentified calls from Norway on Friday while arguing with one of his journalists; in the end, his press secretary gave him a heads-up seconds before the announcement. He said he would donate some of the prize money to the fight against spinal muscular atrophy, a cause for which he has long advocated, and to support journalism against pressure from Russian authorities. “The fight against the media is not a fight against the media,” Muratov said in a radio interview Friday. “It is a fight against the people.” This year was only the third time in the 120-year history of the prize that journalists were honoured for contributions to the cause of peace. Ernesto Moneta, a newspaper editor and leader of the Italian peace movement, won in 1907. And Carl von Ossietzky, a German journalist, pacifist and opponent of Nazism, who was imprisoned by Hitler, won the 1935 prize. The Nobel committee chose from 329 candidates, one of the largest pools ever considered. Those who had been regarded as favourites included climate-change activists, political dissidents and scientists whose work helped fight the COVID-19 pandemic. In its citation, the committee said that “free, independent and fact-based journalism serves to protect against abuse of power, lies and war propaganda.” “Without freedom of expression and freedom of the press,” the committee said, “it will be difficult to successfully promote fraternity between nations, disarmament and a better world order to succeed in our time.” © 2021 The New York Times Company

Rushanara Ali, who was born in Sylhet and became the first member of the UK House of Commons of Bangladesh origin, will pressure her government to enact a law that requires the country to provide 0.7 percent of its national income as development aid. The shadow minister for international development from the British Labour Party told bdnews24.com in an exclusive interview on Monday that she, and her party, would call upon the Conservative Party-led government to demonstrate its seriousness about attaining the target of 0.7 percent of GNI (gross national income). "When Labour was in power, it was on track to introduce legislation so that this is a legally binding requirement to increase aid to 0.7 percent of GNI by 2013." "We're calling for the Conservative-led government to honour that commitment and demonstrate its seriousness by introducing a law towards the goal." "We must do it to send a clear signal about our commitment and in the process allay the prevailing scepticism that it's not merely a pledge and that we really mean it." The Bethnal Green and Bow MP from London agreed that development aid from rich countries should not be diverted to programmes for addressing climate change. "I agree that funding should be available that is not recycled or diverted away from other important issues like tackling poverty and health. But in some cases these will overlap," Ali said in reference to European Union's international climate pledge from recycled funds, which resulted from the demand of poor countries that climate aid must be over and beyond development assistance. "But these will overlap in some cases, so you have to be pragmatic. And that is why there is the ceiling of 10 percent." Ali explained that the Labour Party's position has been that climate funds should not exceed over 10 percent of development aid. She also referred to the international commitments made at the Copenhagen climate summit. Speaking at her hotel in Dhaka, fresh from hearing the testimonies of victims at a shadow climate tribunal organised by the Oxfam-managed Campaign for Sustainable Rural Livelihoods, Ali said she hoped to raise awareness about the climate issue and how it was crucial for Bangladesh. With a third of her constituency originally from Bangladesh, the British MP said, "What I hope to do is to raise awareness about the adverse impacts of climate change. It's already a huge issue and it will get worse if action is not taken now." She seemed particularly concerned about the prospect of millions of people getting displaced and becoming homeless due to sea-level rise in the next couple of decades. Having heard climate victims from coastal villages and their predicament, Ali said she had been moved by the emotional testimonies and how their lives were so dramatically affected by extreme weather conditions. Regarding the Labour Party's target of 10 percent automobile fuel coming from biofuels, Ali indirectly admitted that it been a mistake. "I think a lot of countries realised that there are unintended consequences of going down that track, for instance the impact it would have on food prices." The food crisis of 2008 is partially attributed to the surge of biofuels caused by substantial subsidies both in the US and EU. However, reducing carbon emissions was very important in Britain under Labour, she said. Ali said that Britain introduced a law for legally binding emission cuts. "It showed that we want to change our behaviour and know that it was for our own good." "It was also an admission that we are polluters."

There is a bright side to the plunge in solar panel prices that has brought down some US and German manufacturers which relied too heavily on subsidies for green energy - solar power costs have fallen faster than anyone thought possible. The falls in prices for photovoltaic components, pushed down by economies of scale and fierce competition from China, have made solar nearly as cheap as conventional sources in Germany's electricity grid. The boom in Germany, the world's biggest photovoltaic market with 24,000 megawatts of installed capacity, has also helped to drive down costs worldwide, making solar a more viable and accessible alternative to fossil fuels in places ranging from India and the Middle East to Africa and North America. The unexpectedly rapid drop in global solar prices has nevertheless hit some equipment makers hard - producers like Solyndra in the United States and Solon (SOOG.DE: Quote, Profile, Research) in Germany that failed to keep pace and ended up in bankruptcy protection. The demise of Solyndra, which had got $535 million in loans from the U.S. government, is sometimes cited by sceptics as evidence of the dangers associated with supporting the industry with incentives. They argue subsidies waste public money. "Everyone's missing the real story and it's amazing how brain dead some people are," said Jeremy Rifkin, an adviser to the German government and European Union on climate change and energy security. "It's absolutely a positive thing that solar prices are dropping faster than anyone thought they could. "It's actually a great success," the US economist told Reuters. "Those criticising solar for that are being ignorant or disingenuous. It's a winnowing out process similar to what the computer and communications sectors went through. More companies that can't stay ahead of the curve will go belly up." CHEAP SOLAR POWER Germany is the biggest market for solar power despite its heavy clouds and northern latitude. A robust legal framework that forces utilities to buy solar power at above-market rates has more than negated these disadvantages, turning Germany into the world's top testing ground for photovoltaic energy. Yet due to plunging prices for components, solar power prices in Germany have been halved in the last five years and solar now generates electricity at levels only a few cents above what consumers pay. The subsidies will disappear entirely within a few years, the German BSW solar association says, when solar will be as cheap as conventional fossil fuels. Germany has added 14,000 megawatts capacity in the last two years alone and now has 24,000 MW in total - enough green electricity to meet nearly 4 percent of the country's power demand. That is expected to rise to 10 percent by 2020. Germany now has almost 10 times more installed capacity than the United States. Germany's government-mandated "feed-in tariff" (FIT) is the engine of growth. The FIT is the guaranteed fee utilities are obligated to pay a million producers of solar power for a period of 20 years. It fell to 24 euro cents per kWh for new plants in 2012 from 57 cents in 2004. Since 2010 semi-annual cuts in the incentives have accelerated, dropping the FIT from 43 cents. "The growth of solar in Germany in the last few years has been just incredible," said Martin Jaenicke, head of environment policy research at Berlin's Free University, noting solar power is the world's most abundant source of energy. "People sometimes call solar power expensive. But once the capital equipment is paid off, it's an unbelievably cheap source of energy. Ideally, subsidies eventually eliminate themselves and that is exactly what is happening in Germany." Yet solar remains a relatively expensive source of power, even in Germany where consumers are forced to pay a surcharge of some 7 billion euros annually on their electricity bill to pay for the above-market rates that solar power producers get. The incentives pay for the costs of the 1 million rooftop power plants installed in the last decade. The German government that wrote the Renewable Energy Act in 2000 had had more modest ambitions. They hoped to have 100,000 rooftop power plants. "It's important that electricity remains affordable," said Economy Minister Philip Roesler, who argues new installations should be capped at 1,000 MW per year. "We need to tackle the causes of rising costs and it is above all photovoltaic." Tom Mayer, chief economist of Deutsche Bank, said it was reasonable to support the sector before but it's now "high time" to cut the subsidies by 30 to 40 percent with prices falling to about 15 cents per kWh -- 8 cents below the retail price. "Now that the technology is mature, high subsidies are no longer needed," Mayer said in a research note. Even if some firms will perish, he said: "Leading producers on the world market can cope with (lower) prices." SURVIVAL OF FITTEST "It's remarkable how fast photovoltaic prices fell towards grid parity," said Peter Ahmels, head of renewable energy at the German Environmental Aid Association (DUH). "Germany will hit grid power parity next year -- three years faster than thought." As solar gained popularity in Germany and market prices for components fell, the government reacted by speeding up cuts in the FIT and is now mulling plans to cut the incentives faster to under 20 cents later this year. Claudia Kemfert, an energy expert at the DIW economic think-tank, said economies of scale from Germany's boom and technology innovations are behind the fall in solar prices. But she agreed Germany's FIT should fall faster. "The competition is getting tougher all the time," she said. "That's why some German solar companies might not survive." Falling prices for solar power have hit the earnings and the stocks of many solar firms. Along with Solon and Solyndra, Solar Millennium (S2MG.DE: Quote, Profile, Research), Evergreen Solar and SpectraWatt have sunk into insolvency. Rifkin, the US economist, said more firms that cannot keep up will fail. "This is disruptive but it's a success and it's moving so quickly," he said. "Germany is leading the way. Solar prices will keep falling. Grid parity is going to be reached in many countries between now and 2015 and that's a good thing. I don't think the world will need any more subsidies for solar by 2020."

Energy storage is an unglamorous pillar of an expected revolution to clean up the world's energy supply but will soon vie for investors attention with more alluring sources of energy like solar panels, manufacturers say. "It's been in the background until now. It's not sexy. It's the enabler, not a source of energy," said Tim Hennessy, chief executive of Canadian battery makers VRB Power, speaking on the sidelines of a "CleanEquity" technologies conference in Monaco. VRB will start mass production this year of a longer-lasting rival to the lead acid battery currently used to store energy for example produced by solar panel, Hennessy said. Low carbon-emitting renewable energy is in vogue, driven by fears over climate change, spiraling oil prices and fears over energy supply and security. While the supply of the wind and sun far exceeds humanity's needs it doesn't necessarily match the time when people need it: the sun may not be shining nor the wind blowing when we need to cook dinner or have a shower. Soaring production of solar panel and wind turbines is now spurring a race to develop the winning energy storage technologies which will drive the electric cars and appliances of the future. The race is heating up as manufacturers with entirely different solutions near the moment of commercial production. For example, UK-based ITM Power sees the future of energy storage in the explosive gas hydrogen. The company is developing a piece of kit called an electrolyzer which uses solar or wind power to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen is then stored in a pressurized container until it is needed, whether to drive a car, produce electricity or for cooking. "With batteries you're taking enormous quantities of basic raw materials," said Chief Executive Jim Heathcote, referring to cadmium in nickel cadmium varieties. His company won an award for research at the Monaco conference, organized by corporate finance advisers Innovator Capital. "Two things we're confident of is the supply of renewable energy and water," he said. ITM Power aims to start production later this year of electrolyzers and next year of hydrogen fuel cells which generate electricity. "The one problem everyone's had is how to store. The ability to take (surplus) renewable energy and make useful fuel out of it is almost priceless," Heathcote said. RICH The economic opportunities are highlighted by a third company, U.S.-based EnerDel, which aims to supply batteries for the "Th!nk City" electric vehicle, manufactured by Norway's Think Global. In the case of electric cars, cheap, lightweight batteries are needed to power motors, and will eliminate carbon emissions if the batteries are charged using renewable power sources. EnerDel has patented a lithium-ion battery which it says is lighter and cheaper than the nickel metal hydride batteries currently used in hybrid electric cars such as the Toyota Prius. "I think energy storage is the next frontier," said Charles Gassenheimer, chairman of EnerDel's owners Ener1 Inc. The "Th!nk" car could be the world's first mass production electric vehicle, starting in earnest in 2009. It will go from 0 to 60 miles an hour in about 8 seconds and have a range of up to 100 miles, said Gassenheimer. Investors have given their thumbs up to Ener1, which now has a market capitalization of around $700 million, a ten-fold increase over two years ago.

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd celebrated his first 100 days in office by publishing a booklet on his achievements on Friday, and dismissed critics who said nothing much has changed since he took office. Rudd's centre-left Labor Party won elections 97 days ago on Nov. 24, 2007, ending almost 12 years of conservative rule. Rudd officially took power on Dec. 3. But newspapers have begun rolling out stories about Rudd's first 100 days, with some critical that Rudd's government has set up dozens of committees, reviews and inquiries, but has made few hard decisions. "If a camel is a horse designed by a committee, then Australia is at risk of growing humps," Sydney Morning Herald Political Correspondent Phillip Coorey wrote on Friday, in a swipe at Rudd's fondness for setting up committees. Rudd's 55-page book cites his decision to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on climate, the deployment of extra troops to East Timor, and preparing to pull Australian combat forces out of Iraq, as key achievements. But Rudd told reporters the biggest change to Australia since his election win was his government's apology to Aborigines for historic mistreatment. "When we undertook the apology to parliament ... we were doing something I believe was of long-term and enduring value to the nation," Rudd said. The Sydney Morning Herald said Rudd had averaged one new committee or inquiry every four days since he won office, while the Herald Sun newspaper said Rudd had commissioned at least 47 committees, with 50 more promised during the election campaign. Rudd defended his actions on Friday, saying the former conservative government set up 495 inquiries and reviews in 2005-06 alone. "It is a responsible course of action for an incoming government to say, here are areas where you need to review the future direction," Rudd said. Political analyst Nick Economou, from Melbourne's Monash University, said Rudd had made a good start to government, and had deliberately set out to find some kind of national consensus for his agenda. "I think he is going quite well," Economou said. "He handled the apology stuff with aplomb. He could be sacked tomorrow and he's already carved out a big place for himself in Australian political history -- a good place." He said Rudd's fascination with committees and reviews, including his plans for an ideas summit of 1,000 people in April, were all designed to help the government deliver its plans. "He's got an agenda for what he wants to achieve, but he wants to bring people on board in doing it," he said. "Rudd actually knows where he wants to go, but he wants to find the process to get there, the process that will lead to consensus."

Redistricting and West Virginia’s shrinking population forced the state’s Republican Legislature to pit McKinley, a six-term Republican with a pragmatic bent, against Mooney, who has served four terms marked more by conservative rhetoric than legislative achievements. McKinley has the backing of much of the state’s power structure, including its governor, Jim Justice, and, in recent days, its Democratic senator, Joe Manchin. Mooney, however, may have the endorsement that matters most: Trump’s — in a state that gave the former president 69% of the vote in 2020. Neither candidate could exactly be called a moderate Republican, but McKinley thought his primary bid would be framed around his technocratic accomplishments, his support for the bipartisan infrastructure bill that was co-written by Manchin and his attentiveness to a state used to — and still in need of — federal attention. On Thursday, he and Justice were in the state’s northern panhandle, not for a campaign rally but to visit a high-tech metal alloy plant. Mooney’s campaign does not go for nuance. His is built around one thing: Trump’s endorsement. The former president sided with Mooney after McKinley voted for the infrastructure bill as well as for legislation to create a bipartisan commission to examine the Jan 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol — legislation that was filibustered by Republicans in the Senate. “Alex is the only candidate in this race that has my complete and total endorsement,” Trump says in a radio advertisement blanketing the state. The former president goes on to blast McKinley as a “RINO” — “Republican in name only” — “who supported the fake infrastructure bill that wasted hundreds of billions of dollars on the Green New Deal” and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s “phony narrative” on Jan 6 that went “against the interests of West Virginia.” A television advertisement also featuring Trump tells viewers that Mooney defended the former president from Pelosi’s “Jan 6 witch hunt.” Sensing that any high-minded campaign on accomplishments was simply not going to work, McKinley has hit back at “Maryland Mooney” as a carpetbagger — he once headed the Maryland Republican Party and ran for office in New Hampshire — who is under investigation by the House Ethics Committee for charges that he improperly used campaign dollars and staff for personal gain. Most remarkably, McKinley has turned to a Democrat, Manchin, for his closing argument. “Alex Mooney has proven he’s all about Alex Mooney, but West Virginians know that David McKinley is all about us,” Manchin says in a McKinley campaign ad. He also calls Mooney a liar for suggesting that McKinley supported the far-reaching climate change and social welfare bill that Manchin killed. All of this is somewhat extraordinary in a state where federal largess has made politicians like the now-deceased Sen. Robert Byrd and his protégé, Manchin, folk heroes. But the state has changed in the Trump era, and loyalties have hardened, said Scott Widmeyer, co-founder of the Stubblefield Institute for Civil Political Communications at Shepherd University in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. “We’ve seen heated political races, but I don’t think anything has been as nasty and down and dirty as this one,” he said. “Republicans are eating their own.” Institute officials invited both candidates to a debate, but only McKinley accepted. They then suggested that the candidates come separately to town hall meetings. Only McKinley accepted. Mooney is the one evincing confidence, however. McKinley entered the race at a structural advantage. The state’s newly drawn district includes 19 of the 20 counties McKinley previously represented and only eight of the 17 counties in Mooney’s current district. Mooney’s biggest population centre, the capital in Charleston, was sent to Rep Carol Miller, the only other West Virginian in the House. But Trump is popular in every West Virginia county, and on the power of his name, Mooney has been posting polls from national and local outfits showing him up by double digits before Tuesday’s primary. Aides close to McKinley say the race will be close, and as long as Trump does not swoop into the state at the last minute for a get-out-the-vote rally, either candidate could still win a low-turnout affair. One campaign official said many voters who long ago abandoned the Democrats but not their Democratic Party registration have been re-registering as independents or Republicans to vote against Mooney. Jonathan Kott, a former spokesperson and adviser to Manchin, said the Democratic senator has “a genuine friendship and working relationship” with McKinley, a point Manchin made during a local radio interview last week. But what seems to have really pushed the Democratic senator to intervene in a Republican primary was not his friendship with McKinley but his anger over Mooney’s opposition to the infrastructure bill. “Mooney’s vote against the infrastructure bill shows he isn’t interested in what’s best for West Virginia,” Kott said. In the interview, Manchin also took a swipe at “Maryland Mooney.” “Alex came here, I think, for political opportunity. I can’t figure any other reason,” he told radio host Hoppy Kercheval. It is only one House seat in a very particular state, but the narrative of the West Virginia race has caught the attention of a wider audience trying to divine how firmly Trump has the Republican Party in his grip. “I think we’ll all be watching the returns Tuesday night,” Widmeyer said, alluding to the author JD Vance’s come-from-behind victory in the Republican Senate primary in Ohio after Trump endorsed him. “This will be the second week where we’re watching the influence of Trump on one candidate.”   © 2022 The New York Times Company

Britain's landmark Climate Change Bill, which for the first time sets a legal requirement on a government to cut carbon emissions, is expected to pass its first parliamentary hurdle on Monday but has a rocky ride ahead. The House of Lords is expected to vote in its third reading on Monday on the bill which, in a departure from normal practice, was introduced in the upper house of parliament before the House of Commons to try to speed up the legislative process. The government had hoped to get the bill into law by May, but amendments forced through in its passage through the House of Lords against strong government opposition could now delay that until October or November, climate campaigners said. "It will be very tight to get it through this parliamentary session," said Friends of the Earth campaigner Martin Williams. "It is possible. But it is more likely it will be the Autumn." The bill forces the government to cut climate changing carbon dioxide emissions by 28-32 percent by 2020 and 60 percent by 2050 with five year rolling "carbon budgets". Climate campaigners have pushed for the end target to be raised to 80 percent, a figure the government has said it will ask a special climate committee set up by the bill to look at by the end of the year. In its passage through the House of Lords environmentalists managed to get several amendments put in to strengthen the legislation. "This is a much better bill than it was when it was introduced," said Williams. "But that also means it may face a rough ride when it goes to the House of Commons." But the almost certain rejection of many of the amendments by the Commons means it will have to come back again. The amendments shift in part the burden of responsibility for compliance from the environment minister to the prime minister and set annual indicative targets within the five year carbon budgets. Campaigners have failed to get the 2050 target raised to 80 percent but claimed partial victory with the inclusion of a clause committing the government to hold temperature rises to two degrees -- a goal they say is equivalent to 80 percent. In what they hailed as a major victory the amended bill also sets a strict limit on how many carbon emission permits the government can buy in from abroad to cover any shortfall in the national reduction performance. The government had fought against a limit on foreign carbon credits which would give it broad leeway to underperform its own legal targets. "The Lords' amendments do improve the bill, which means many won't make it through the Commons," said Greenpeace climate campaigner Charlie Kronick. The European Union's Emissions Trading Scheme has turned carbon into a commodity through issuing emission permits which can be bought and sold by companies. Also under the Kyoto climate change accord's Clean Development Mechanism countries and companies can buy into low emission developments to offset their own emission overshoots. Scientists say global average temperatures will rise by between 1.8 and 4.0 degrees Celsius this century due to carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels for power and transport, causing floods and famines and putting millions at risk.

Pakistan is facing a "raging" water crisis that if managed poorly could mean Pakistan would run out of water in several decades, experts say, leading to mass starvation and possibly war. The reliance on a single river basin, one of the most inefficient agricultural systems in world, climate change and a lack of a coherent water policy means that as Pakistan's population expands, its ability to feed it is shrinking. "Pakistan faces a raging water crisis," said Michael Kugelman, program associate for South and Southeast Asia Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington. "It has some of the lowest per capita water availability in Asia, and in the world as a whole." The vast majority -- between 90 and 95 percent -- of Pakistan's water is used for agriculture, the U.S. undersecretary for democracy and global affairs, Maria Otero, told Reuters. The average use in developing countries is between 70 and 75 percent. The remaining trickle is used for drinking water and sanitation for Pakistan's 180 million people. According to Kugelman, more than 55 million Pakistanis lack access to clean water and 30,000 die each year just in in Karachi, Pakistan's largest city, from unsafe water. "Of the available water today, 40 percent of it gets used," Otero said. "The rest is wasted through seepage and other means." Otero was in Islamabad as part of the first meeting of the U.S.-Pakistan Strategic Dialogue Water Working Group. Pakistan's Indus river basin is supplied by melting snow and glaciers from the Himalayas. A recent report in the journal Science by Walter W. Immerzeel of Utrecht University in the Netherlands said the Indus could lose large amounts of its flow because of climate change. Both India and Pakistan make use of the Indus, with the river managed under a 1960 water treaty. Pakistan has lately begun accusing India of taking more than its fair share from the headwaters by building a number of dams and waging water war against its downstream neighbour. India denies this. If the current rate of climate change continues and Pakistan continues to rely on the inefficient flood system of irrigation, by 2050, it will be able to feed between 23-29 million fewer people than it can today with approximately double its current population. The United States hopes to encourage Pakistan to modernise its agricultural system and plant less water-thirsty crops. Otero said Pakistan and the United States are also exploring ways to improve the storage of water and Pakistan must look at ways to charge more for water as a way of encouraging conservation. Such measures would likely be unpopular in the desperately poor nation. Measures to reduce subsidies on electricity, as mandated by the International Monetary Fund, amid chronic power shortages have battered the already unsteady civilian government. Pakistan needs to either pass land reform or a series of laws to govern proper water allocation, Kugelman said. "If nothing is done, the water crisis will continue, no matter how many canals are repaired or dams constructed," he said.

US relations in Latin America, energy cooperation and two upcoming summits of world leaders will top the agenda of President Barack Obama's meeting with his Brazilian counterpart on Saturday. Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva meets Obama at the White House at 11:00 a.m. (1500 GMT), making him one of a small handful of foreign leaders to visit the Democratic president in Washington since his inauguration on Jan. 20. The meeting comes against a backdrop of global economic and financial crises, which will dominate two gatherings of world leaders next month that both men will attend: the G20 meeting of old and emerging economic powers on April 2, and the Summit of the Americas on April 17-19. Officials said Obama and Lula would discuss the economic crisis and preparation for those summits while touching on climate change, biofuels and US policy toward Brazil's neighbors in Latin America. "The two presidents will use this opportunity to discuss strengthening our cooperation on bilateral, hemispheric and global issues, including how to address the financial crisis in the lead up to the upcoming G20 meeting," said Mike Hammer, spokesman for the White House National Security Council. Divisions between the United States and Europe over how best to address the financial crises have arisen ahead of the G20 meeting. Washington is pushing for increased government spending while countries such as France favor more emphasis on tough market regulation. A senior administration official said Obama would ask for Lula's position but not push him to join the US side. RAPPROCHEMENT For his part, Lula is expected to use Brazil's leverage as a regional heavyweight to press Obama for more engagement and fewer sanctions in dealing with Latin America's deep-seated social disparities and economic problems. "What I want is for the United States to look at Latin America and South America with a friendly eye," Lula said last week. "We are a democratic and peaceful continent and the United States should look at production and development, not only drug-trafficking and organized crime." Lula will also urge Obama to end the long-standing trade embargo on Cuba and seek a rapprochement with Venezuela's Socialist President Hugo Chavez, one of Washington's fiercest critics. Thomas Shannon, US Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, said the United States appreciated Brazil's efforts to promote regional dialogue. "Our willingness to engage constructively with countries around the region depends on a reciprocal willingness on their part to engage with us," he told reporters on Friday. Observers said Lula's early visit to the White House illustrated US recognition of Brazil's importance. "The US is quite aware that Brazil is becoming a major player on the world stage," said Leonardo Martinez-Diaz, a fellow at the Washington-based Brookings Institution. Though energy policy and efforts to fight climate change would come up, Lula will likely struggle with his demand that the United States cut import tariffs on Brazilian ethanol. "At this point biofuels have receded on the agenda," said Martinez-Diaz, noting the current low price of oil.

Owners of gas-guzzling cars will have to pay 25 pounds ($50) a day to drive them in central London from October in a push to cut carbon emissions, mayor Ken Livingstone said on Tuesday. Livingstone admitted it would have little immediate impact on emissions but said the lifestyle signal and other moves such as recycling initiatives and new building rules would help cut London's carbon emissions by 60 percent by 2025. "I believe that this ground-breaking initiative will have an impact throughout the world with other cities following suit as they step up their efforts to halt the slide towards catastrophic climate change," he told a news conference. London, which generates 7 percent of Britain's climate-warming carbon emissions, is one of 40 world cities pooling their knowledge to fight climate change. Livingstone said the new scheme would raise 30 million to 50 million pounds ($60 million to $100 million) a year and cover most of the cost of a major cycling initiative he unveiled on Monday that will include a Paris-style roadside bicycle hire scheme in the city centre. Environmentalists welcomed Tuesday's move as a step in the right direction, but said far more was needed. "We now know that we face an emergency situation on planet Earth that requires us to bring down carbon dioxide emissions very quickly indeed," said Friends of the Earth's Tony Juniper. But motoring organisations were not so keen. "We welcome incentives for cleaner, greener cars. However, larger families who do low mileage will be clobbered by this new tax," said Automobile Association president Edmund King. Livingstone, who has made the environment a central plank of his tenure, is facing a tough re-election battle in May. If he loses, his emissions policy is likely to go with him. The 25 pound daily tax on vehicles emitting 225 grams of carbon dioxide per km would apply in the same way as the normal 8 pounds ($16) daily charge does to all but the cleanest cars. "I have every sympathy with a Scottish hill farmer who needs his 4x4 to get around. But there is absolutely no justification for cars producing high amounts of pollution being driven in central London," Livingstone said.

But Trump's COVID-19 infection, and his and Biden's advanced age, made it perhaps the most consequential US vice presidential debate in living memory. Here are a few standout moments from the debate: PACKING THE COURT? Frustrated that Trump and the Republican-controlled Senate may soon cement a 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court, some on the left have called on Biden to expand the nine-member court to 11 or 13 seats. Harris declined to say whether she supported that idea. Seeking to push that idea, Pence posed questions about Biden's and Harris' plans, which he also answered for her: "The straight answer is they are going to pack the Supreme Court if they somehow win this election." POLICY TO THE FORE The relatively sedate atmosphere allowed stark policy differences to come to the fore. On global warming, for example, Pence declined to say that it was caused by human activity - the overwhelming scientific consensus - and said Biden's proposed fixes would be too expensive. He also inaccurately said that Biden would ban hydraulic fracturing. Biden, in fact, has said repeatedly he would not pursue a fracking ban, although he would oppose new permits for drilling on federal land. It is a key issue in electoral backgrounds like western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio, where the technique has led to a boom in energy production over the past decade. A FLY IN THE OINTMENT Pence's left eye was noticeably bloodshot for much of the debate. More than an hour in, a black housefly sat for several minutes on Pence's white hair, hanging on as he shook his head and parried with Harris over race and criminal justice. The hashtag #fly2024 surfaced on Twitter. "Three debaters are now on the stage: Harris, Pence, and a very political fly that has nested in the Veep’s head," Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, wrote on Twitter. COLORING INSIDE THE LINES Following last week's chaotic, insult-laden debate between Biden and Trump, moderator Susan Page warned both candidates that she would strictly enforce rules designed to ensure decorum. "We want a debate that is lively. But Americans also deserve a discussion that is civil," she said. Pence opened by saying it was a "privilege" to be on stage with Harris - even after she said the administration's coronavirus response was "the greatest failure of any presidential administration in the history of our country." Things eventually heated up, but only to a simmer, not a boil. Pence repeatedly interrupted Harris and the moderator, leaving Harris to plead: "Mr Vice President, I'm speaking." SPEAK NOT OF THE AGED In 2008, when he was Barack Obama's running mate, Biden said that "no one decides who they're going to vote for based on the vice president." Yet this debate has outsized importance. Biden, 77, would be the oldest president in US history if he were to win the election, and he has hinted he might only serve one term. Trump, only slightly younger at 74, spent the weekend at a military hospital outside Washington after contracting the novel coronavirus. From purely an actuarial standpoint, Pence, 61, and Harris, 55, would be more likely to step into the presidency than other vice presidential candidates. Pence also carries an additional burden as he has been tasked with campaigning for the ticket as Trump has been sidelined because of his COVID-19 infection. Yet both candidates avoided the topic. When asked whether they had a firm plan of succession in place, Pence used his time to talk about vaccines, while Harris talked up her biography as a child of immigrants who went on to serve as California attorney general. Likewise, neither answered directly when asked why their elderly running mates had not released detailed health information. Pence thanked those who had wished for Trump's recovery, while Harris criticised Trump for not releasing his tax returns. DINGING BIDEN ON PLAGIARISM Candidates typically show up with a quiver of prepared one-liners, and Pence loosed one early. He accused Biden of copying the Trump administration's plan to fight the coronavirus, dredging up charges of plagiarism that helped sink Biden's first presidential run in 1988. "It looks a little bit like plagiarism, which is something Joe Biden knows a little bit about," he said. ‘We have seen a pattern with this administration, which is they don't believe in science’: Senator Kamala Harris criticized Trump’s record on climate change during the #VPDebate https://t.co/i075izFnb5 pic.twitter.com/ZnBORTqrdI— Reuters (@Reuters) October 8, 2020   ‘We have seen a pattern with this administration, which is they don't believe in science’: Senator Kamala Harris criticized Trump’s record on climate change during the #VPDebate https://t.co/i075izFnb5 pic.twitter.com/ZnBORTqrdI

OSLO, Fri Oct 31,(bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Climate change is likely to disrupt food chains by favoring animals with short lifespans over often bigger rivals that are worse at tolerating temperature swings, scientists said on Thursday. The researchers in Germany and Canada said that studies of the physical characteristics of animals showed that all have widely differing "thermal windows" -- a range of temperatures in which they best feed, grow and reproduce. That meant that climate change would not affect all equally. "Climate change will favor species with wide thermal windows, short life spans, and a large gene pool amongst its population," the journal Science said of the findings. Big fish such as cod, which have narrow thermal windows, were moving north in the Atlantic, for instance, partly because the food chain was disrupted by a shift to smaller plankton, reducing the amount of prey on which large fish can feed. A shift to smaller plankton meant that juvenile cod in the Atlantic had to use more energy to feed, slowing their growth. Female cod tolerate only a narrow "thermal window" when they produce eggs, part of a strategy evolved to cut energy use. The study focused on the oceans but the scientists said the findings may also apply to land creatures. "Each species covers a certain range. The ranges overlap, but their (thermal) windows are not the same," Hans Poertner, of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, who was one of the authors, told Reuters. Knowledge of the differences could help predict the reactions to climate change, widely blamed on human emissions of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels. In the German Wadden Sea, larger eelpout fish, a long and thin species that grows up to about 500 grammes (1 lb), suffered more quickly than smaller specimens when summer temperatures rose above normal. "In the Japan Sea, different thermal windows between sardines and anchovies ... caused a regime shift to anchovies in the late 1990s," they wrote.

To address the "crises" of the pandemic, the economy, climate change and racial inequity, Biden will sign the executive orders and memorandums in the Oval Office in the afternoon, and ask agencies to take steps in two additional areas, said incoming Press Secretary Jen Psaki. The actions include a mask mandate on federal property and for federal employees, an order to establish a new White House office coordinating response to the coronavirus, and halting the process of withdrawing from the World Health Organization.   Biden will also begin the process of re-entering the Paris climate accord and issue a sweeping order tackling climate change, including revoking the presidential permit granted to the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline. Among a raft of orders addressing immigration, Biden will revoke Trump's emergency declaration that helped fund the construction of a border wall and end a travel ban on some majority-Muslim countries. The Day One plans were just the start of a flurry of executive actions Biden would take soon after taking office, Psaki added. "In the coming days and weeks we will be announcing additional executive actions that confront these challenges and deliver on the President-elect's promises to the American people," said Psaki. Further actions will include revoking the ban on military service by transgender Americans, and reversing a policy that blocks US funding for programs overseas linked to abortion. On the economic front, Biden will ask the Centres for Disease Control to extend moratoriums on evictions and foreclosures until the end of March, and the Department of Education to suspend student loan payments until the end of September.

Floodwater swamped a new area of Thailand's capital on Wednesday as some shops started rationing food and the prime minister warned that parts of Bangkok could be flooded for up to a month. Residents of Bang Phlad, a riverside district some way from Bangkok's three swamped northern districts, were told to urgently evacuate as floods hit the capital on a second front, deepening anxiety in the city of at least 12 million people, many of whom were expected to flee ahead of a special five-day holiday. "After assessing the situation, we expect floodwater to remain in Bangkok for around two weeks to one month before going into the sea," Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra told reporters. "However ... we shouldn't face water as high as two or three metres staying for two or three months as we've seen in other provinces." Thailand's worst flooding in half a century has killed at least 366 people since mid-July and disrupted the lives of nearly 2.5 million, with more than 113,000 in shelters and 720,000 people seeking medical attention. Bangkok residents scrambled to stock up on food, but bottled water was nowhere to be seen and some shops restricted customers to small quantities of food to prevent hoarding. With high tide approaching in the Gulf of Thailand, Seri Supharatid, director of Rangsit University's Centre on Climate Change and Disaster, said the city's fate rested with river dykes holding. "In the worst-case scenario, if all the dykes break, all parts of Bangkok would be more or less flooded," Seri said. The economic damage is difficult to quantify, but the central bank has revised its growth forecast for Southeast Asia's second-biggest economy to 3.1 percent this year from 4.1 percent. The finance minister's projection was a gloomier 2 percent. Flooding has forced the closure of seven industrial estates in Ayutthaya, Nonthaburi and Pathum Thani provinces bordering Bangkok, causing billions of dollars of damage and disrupting international supply chains for industry and putting about 650,000 people temporarily out of work. The cabinet on Tuesday agreed on a 325 billion baht ($6.6 billion pound) budget to rebuild the country, while city authorities and the Commerce Ministry were meeting with industrial estate operators, hotels and food producers to try to minimise the damage and kick-start a recovery. SWELLING RIVER Authorities have called a holiday from Thursday until Monday to allow people to get out Bangkok, although financial markets will remain open. The rising tide could complicate efforts to drive water from the swelling Chao Phraya river out to the sea, putting more pressure on a city that accounts for 41 percent of Thailand's gross domestic product. Heavy rain could also deepen the crisis and thunderstorms were forecast for Wednesday. The floods are expected to take a toll on Thailand's tourism industry, which employs more than 2 million people and makes up 6 percent of GDP. Tourism Minister Chumphol Silpa-archa said arrivals could be 500,000 to 1 million below the government's target of 19 million this year. Three northern districts of Bangkok have been under water since Saturday, with army vehicles driving at a snail's pace through 1.5 metres of water, ferrying evacuees away. Some people were being evacuated for a second time, with 4,000 sheltering in Don Muang moving to the province of Chon Buri. Evacuees at a university in Pathum Thani province also had to move on as floodwater engulfed the campus. To tackle the flooding, the authorities have pumped an estimated 8 billion cubic metres of water daily through canals and a river around Bangkok's east and west towards the sea. But the large volume of water flowing through the city remains a concern, with the vast Chao Phraya river at record levels and running past high-end hotels, embassies and the Sathorn and Silom areas of the city's business district. Water has engulfed two areas, with levels climbing higher than half a metre in the densely populated Bang Phlad district near to the Chao Phraya and closer to the commercial heart. Bangkok Governor Sukhumbhand Paribatra said the situation was "critical" in Bang Phlad. Overloaded trucks shuttled out evacuees, gas stations were inundated and shop owners pulled down shutters and added sandbags to makeshift defence walls. "My shop is damaged. I've prepared for this, but it's not enough -- there's too much water," said grocery store owner Vichit Pookmaitree. As panic mounted, shoppers at a central Bangkok hypermarket run by Big C Supercenter Pcl were being restricted to one packet of rice and one tray of eggs. Toilet paper was also being rationed. Bottled water had run out. In some areas, people are already complaining about a deterioration in the quality of normally drinkable tap water. The Metropolitan Waterworks Authority said floodwater had got into raw canal water used for its supply. Chemicals were being used to purify it. Shares in Thai beverage firm Haad Thip Pcl surged more than 6 percent on Wednesday on expectations the company would benefit from the huge demand.

The IMF issued the report on Jan 28 at the conclusion of a routine country surveillance mission to Tokyo to review Japan's economic policies. The published concluding statement from IMF staff focused on Japan's need to scale back pandemic-relief measures as its economy recovers. It included a section entitled "Shifting to a Low-carbon Economy" that made no mention of coal but said meeting carbon emissions reduction goals would be especially challenging for Japan given its heavy reliance on fossil fuels for energy since a 2011 earthquake and tsunami. A Jan 26 draft of the document included this sentence: "While the Japanese government pledged to end new unabated coal financing, ending exceptions from the pledge and phasing out of existing commitments to support coal projects abroad would further contribute to the global efforts on climate policy." It was not immediately clear who directed deletion of the passage. The review was the first of Japan's economy since the IMF board voted last year to increase climate coverage in its surveillance activities. As part of the normal country review process, the IMF is due to issue an Executive Board statement on Japan's review - known as an Article IV review - and a detailed staff report in coming weeks. An IMF spokesperson declined to comment on the draft seen by Reuters, adding that the global lender - as a matter of policy - does not comment on its communications with members. "Japan's government is not in a position to comment on the process" in which the IMF crafted the Article IV statement based on discussion with Tokyo, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno, the government's top spokesperson, told a regular press conference on Thursday, answering a question on the matter. The Japanese government, which has backed exports of coal power plants to Indonesia, Vietnam and Bangladesh, adopted stricter rules for such projects in 2018 and 2020. However, it has resisted divestments of such projects, and has continued to grant exceptions to a June 2021 policy pledge to stop backing coal projects that lack measures to reduce carbon emissions. Kate Mackenzie, an independent climate finance consultant and researcher based in Australia, said the change in the Japan report was disappointing given that the fund had only belatedly committed to including climate risk in its Article IV reports. "For the fund to be already pulling its punches on climate mitigation, especially in regard to to one its most influential member countries and a long time funder of coal-fired power, is very disappointing," she said. Kevin Gallagher, who heads Boston University's Global Development Policy Center, said it was great to see IMF staff initially sided "with science and climate ambition," and the incident could still prove useful. "Given the IMF's uneven track record, it is important for member states to have a say on the final outcomes of Article IV reports, but let's hope this has opened up a dialogue between Japan and the IMF on this very important issue," he said. The change in the Japan statement follows controversy unleashed last year after changes made to an IMF report on Brazil's economy removed language related to climate change. In that case, nearly 200 IMF staff signed a petition asking whether IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva or her office had asked or advised staff to remove the specific language before it was sent to the IMF board and after objections from Brazil's representative on the board. The issue boiled over after Georgieva won the IMF executive board's backing despite allegations that she had applied "undue pressure" on World Bank staff to alter data to favour China in 2017 while serving as the bank's CEO.

But there is nothing he likes less than feeling belittled. Learning that he could not have his large security detail at Glasgow — security has been an obsession since a failed coup against him in 2016 — when the American president was allowed one seems to have enraged Erdogan enough for him to cancel his appearance abruptly. Not going to the climate talks, known as COP26, might have seemed self-defeating, given his recent green pivot, but Erdogan tried to play to his home base and cast his turnaround as a matter of honour. “We never allow our country’s reputation or honour to be damaged anywhere,” he said in remarks to journalists on the flight home from Europe. “One more time we showed that we can establish a fair world only with a more equitable approach.” Unpredictable, combative, politically astute, Erdogan has been in power for 18 years by always knowing which buttons to push. Yet he is politically vulnerable these days, more so perhaps than at any time in his career. The president is sliding in the polls as the economy stumbles. Last month, the lira hit a new low against the dollar. Unemployment among his supporters is rising. Inflation is galloping at nearly 20%. Increasingly, Erdogan finds himself on his back foot in the face of a vibrant, unified opposition. Determined to become modern Turkey’s longest-serving ruler by winning reelection in 2023, Erdogan is showing signs of growing frustration, as his usual tactics are not working, and voters, especially young people eager for a change, grow restless. “I think he is worried and afraid of losing power, and it seems to be a plausibility, even to him, for the first time in many years,” said Soner Cagaptay, director of the Turkish research program at the Washington Institute. “He has been in office for too long, nearly two decades,” Cagaptay added. “He is suffering from establishment fatigue, simply too tired to be on top of his game and of the opposition all the time.” As Erdogan’s grip on power turns shaky, some analysts warn that the Turkish president may become even more unpredictable as elections approach. In particular over the past decade, Erdogan has used foreign policy as a tool to burnish his image at home, said Sinan Ulgen, chair of the Centre for Economics and Foreign Policy Studies in Istanbul. He has in turn insulted foreign leaders, presented himself as a champion of the Turkish diaspora and of Muslims worldwide, and notably last year projected Turkey’s military muscle in a series of interventions abroad. He pursued military operations in Syria, Libya and Azerbaijan and stirred tensions with Greece in the Eastern Mediterranean by sending out drilling ships to explore for gas. Since last November, however, when he fired his son-in-law as finance minister, the dire state of the Turkish economy has led Erdogan to soften his stance internationally, dialling back on the rhetoric, Ulgen said. “The main issue now is to prevent or preempt tension so the economy can rebound,” he said. But Erdogan has accumulated so many powers that his whims carry the day, and he seems not always to be able to help himself. He reverted to his old tactics in the last couple of weeks, ignoring his closest advisers and threatening a diplomatic crisis in a show of strength for his supporters. When 10 Western ambassadors issued a statement calling for the release of a jailed Turkish philanthropist, Erdogan railed against them for interference in Turkey’s affairs and threatened to expel them all. Then, just as suddenly, he backed down. “He went against his own best interests and also against the best counsel from his most trusted advisers, and that’s what makes me think that he is not on top of his game anymore,” Cagaptay said. The expulsion of the ambassadors was narrowly averted after frantic diplomacy, in time for Erdogan to meet President Joe Biden on the sidelines of the Group of 20 meeting in Rome, only to have Erdogan create another fuss over security protocol at Glasgow. It was yet another display of the impetuousness that has become a hallmark of Erdogan’s relations with the world, risking major upsets with international partners in a sometimes dubious, increasingly desperate effort to lift his domestic standing. Sensing political opportunity, Erdogan had recently made a startling climate conversion after years in which Turkey stood out as an environmental laggard. He renamed his environment ministry as the Ministry of Environment, Urbanization and Climate Change and offered Biden a copy of a book on the green revolution for which he had written the introduction. He had allowed the Paris climate agreement to languish but then had the Turkish Parliament ratify it Oct 6, and he was prepared to announce to the gathering of world leaders that Turkey would aim to be carbon neutral by 2053. “Climate change is a reality and threatens the future of humanity, so Turkey naturally will have a leading role in such a vital matter,” he said in a televised address in Turkey before the COP26 summit. Erdogan’s conversion came after Turkey suffered a bruising summer. The worst forest fires in recorded memory scorched a swath of coastal forestland eight times the size of average annual fires, killing at least eight people. Flash floods killed at least 82 people in the northeast in the heaviest rains seen in hundreds of years. And an outbreak of slime choked sea life in the Marmara Sea. The disasters gave fresh momentum to support for climate action that had been steadily building — in public opinion, in business circles, among civil society groups and across the political spectrum — over the last year or so. “All the public opinion polls are showing that now the political parties in Turkey in the next elections will have to address this issue very seriously,” said Bahadir Kaleagasi, president of the Institut du Bosphore, a French association that encourages Turkish relations with France and Europe. In the end, though, the climate summit went begging. Erdogan apparently saw more benefit in kicking up a diplomatic fuss over the security protocol than in addressing the gathering. Or, as rumours flew about his health, he needed a rest. He had, in any case, already obtained what analysts said he really wanted from the weekend: an hour with Biden on the sidelines of the Group of 20 meeting, a sign of potential improvement in US-Turkish relations that might lift Turkey’s standing in international markets. After Erdogan had failed to secure a meeting with Biden in New York in September during the United Nations General Assembly, a meeting this month with the American president “became the No. 1 issue of the Turkey-US relations,” said Aydin Sezer, a political analyst and former trade official. The Biden administration, while maintaining pressure on Erdogan over human rights and the rule of law — Turkey has notably not been invited to Biden’s democracy summit in December — has made clear that it regards the country as an important NATO ally and strategic partner. “We may have differences, but we never lose sight of the strategic importance we and our partners hold each to the other,” David Satterfield, the American ambassador to Turkey, said at a reception aboard the command ship Mount Whitney, which called in to Istanbul on Wednesday. But an overriding US concern will be to keep relations with the unpredictable Erdogan on an even keel, said Asli Aydintasbas, a senior fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. That has meant dialling back the close, if stormy, personal relationship that former President Donald Trump had with Erdogan in favour of something a bit more at arm’s length. “Ankara is simultaneously vulnerable and bellicose,” she said. “Washington’s way of dealing with this duality is distancing itself from Turkey. “There is a desire to keep this at this stable level — at least for another year — but given that this is an election year, it may not be so easy,” she added. © 2021 The New York Times Company

Climate change, high water demand and even tourism are putting unprecedented pressures on the world's desert ecosystems, according to a new report. The Global Deserts Outlook, produced by the UN's Environment Programme, is described as the most authoritative assessment to date of desert regions. Its authors say too much water is being frittered away on water-intensive agricultural crops. But, they add, deserts have huge economic benefits if managed sensibly. Far from being barren wastelands, deserts are biologically, economically and culturally dynamic, the report says. Desertification is the theme of World Environment Day on Monday when ecologists plan to plant trees to slow erosion, or deliver talks in schools. A group in Mauritius plans to plant vegetation on dunes to protect beaches from erosion Activists in Churchill, Australia, is collecting computer parts for recycling A group in Zambia holds a "Miss Environment" beauty pageant. Activists in Vadodara, India, encourage local schools both to plant trees and build sandcastles to "get a closer connection to the topic of deserts and desertification". "Across the planet, poverty, unsustainable land management and climate change are turning drylands into deserts, and desertification in turn exacerbates and leads to poverty," UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said in a statement. According to the report, while many changes are likely to occur in the next 50 years, some are surprisingly positive. There are new economic opportunities such as shrimp and fish farms in Arizona and in the Negev Desert in Israel offering environmentally friendly livelihoods for local people. Similarly, desert plants and animals are being seen as positive sources of new drugs and crops. Even the problems of global warming could be tackled by better use of deserts: Some experts say that an area of the Sahara 800km by 800km could capture enough solar energy to meet the entire world's electricity needs. However, most of the 12 desert regions whose climate has been modelled are facing a drier future. There are also problems caused by the melting of the glaciers whose waters sustain deserts in South America. The impact of humans continues to cause difficulties. In the United States and in the United Arab Emirates more and more people are choosing to live in desert cities creating further pressures on scarce water resources. Mountainous areas in deserts face particular threats to their wildlife and ecosystems - all of which could be lost in 50 years without urgent action.

ROME, Nov 16, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - The United Nations opened its world food summit on Monday by saying that a climate change deal in Copenhagen next month is crucial to fighting global hunger as rising temperatures threaten farm output in poor countries. Government leaders and officials met in Rome for a three-day UN summit on how to help developing countries to feed themselves, but anti-poverty campaigners were already writing off the event as a missed opportunity. The sense of scepticism deepened at the weekend, when US President Barack Obama and other leaders supported delaying a legally binding climate pact until 2010 or even later, though European negotiators said the move did not imply weaker action. "There can be no food security without climate security," UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the Rome summit. "Next month in Copenhagen, we need a comprehensive agreement that will provide a firm foundation for a legally binding treaty on climate change," he said. Africa, Asia and Latin America could see a decline of between 20 and 40 percent in potential agricultural productivity if temperatures rise more than 2 degrees Celsius, the FAO says. Sub-Saharan Africa is expected to be the hardest hit from global warming as its agriculture is almost entirely rain-fed. With the number of world's hungry topping 1 billion for the first time, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation had called the summit in the hope that leaders would commit to raising the share of official aid spent on agriculture to 17 percent of the total -- its 1980 level -- from 5 percent now. That would amount to $44 billion a year against $7.9 billion now. Farmers in rich countries receive $365 billion of support every year. TARGETS DILUTED But a draft of the final declaration to be adopted on Monday includes only a general promise to pour more money into agricultural aid, with no target or timeframe for action. A pledge to eliminate malnutrition by 2025 was also taken off the draft, which now states that world leaders commit to eradicate hunger "at the earliest possible date". Last year's spike in the price of food staples such as rice and wheat sparked riots in as many as 60 countries. Rich food importers have rushed to buy foreign farmland, pushing food shortages and hunger up the political agenda. Food prices have fallen back since, but they remain high in poor countries. The FAO says sudden price rises are very likely. A summit of the Group of Eight leading powers in July pledged $20 billion over the next three years to boost agricultural development, in a big policy shift towards long-term strategies and away from emergency food aid. But, apart from Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, G8 leaders are skipping the food summit, which is looking more like a gathering of Latin American and African heads of state. Brazil's Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe and Libya's Muammar Gaddafi and are among those attending. UN officials said those dismissing the summit because G8 leaders are not taking part were wrong, arguing the aim was to get poorer countries on board in the fight against hunger. Still, the absence of many heavyweights means that another divisive issue -- who should manage donors' funds to boost agriculture in poor countries -- will not be resolved. The draft declaration urges a reform of the UN Committee on Food Security, which groups 124 nations, to give it a monitoring role and ensure that aid money goes to agriculture. But the United States, the world's biggest food aid donor, is looking to the World Bank rather than the United Nations to manage at least part of the money. While governments dither, food companies are stepping up their own investments in sustainable farming to counter price volatility and to secure long-term supplies.

NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen was quoted on Wednesday as calling for an "open-minded and unprecedented dialogue" with Russia to reduce security tensions in Europe and confront common threats. Rasmussen, who took over as NATO chief last month, said in an interview with Britain's Financial Times he would ask senior officials to visit Moscow to hear the Kremlin's views on how NATO should develop strategically in the long term. "We should engage Russia and listen to Russian positions," said the former Danish prime minister, who has made boosting ties with Russia a top priority since taking office. Rasmussen acknowledged differences remained between NATO and Russia on issues including the aftermath of last year's conflict in Georgia and the alliance's possible enlargement to Georgia and Ukraine, both former Soviet republics. But Rasmussen said he wanted to begin an "open and frank conversation (with the Kremlin) that creates a new atmosphere." He said he had a "vision" of a "true strategic partnership" in which both sides collaborated on Afghanistan, terrorism and piracy. "Russia should realize that NATO is here and that NATO is a framework for our transatlantic relationship. But we should also take into account that Russia has legitimate security concerns," said Rasmussen. He said he was prepared to discuss a proposal from Russian President Dmitry Medvedev for a new security architecture in Europe. NATO's relations with Russia were damaged by the five-day Russia-Georgia war last year. The 28-member alliance has put the subject of Georgian and Ukrainian NATO membership on the back burner in the interest of getting relations with Moscow back on track, but says membership remains open to countries that meet NATO standards. Rasmussen said climate change "could lead to battles over scarce resources, notably a lack of drinking water and a lack of food, leading to armed conflicts." "We will see an increase in climate refugees and that will destabilize the situation in regions that are already unstable," he said. Rasmussen said there would be security implications for the Arctic. "In a few years' time, polar sea routes will be open to navigation. We will see new access to energy resources and it will increase competition in this part of the world. That might lead to conflict," he said.

US President Barack Obama laid out his vision for the 21st century in the heart of Europe on Sunday in a speech that called to mind those of two famous forerunners. Where John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan came to show solidarity with a divided Europe living in the shadow of a nuclear arms race, Obama held out the prospect of consigning those weapons to history and entering a new era. His speech in Prague, its medieval castle rising behind him, carved out his own place in the tradition laid down by both men in their West Berlin speeches of 1963 and 1987. "No nuclear war was fought between the United States and the Soviet Union, but generations lived with the knowledge that their world could be erased in a single flash of light. Cities like Prague that had existed for centuries would have ceased to exist," Obama declared. "Today, the Cold War has disappeared but thousands of those weapons have not." By pledging that the United States would take concrete steps towards a world without nuclear weapons, Obama dedicated himself to a goal that Reagan had once articulated. "Just as we stood for freedom in the 20th century, we must stand together for the right of people everywhere to live free from fear in the 21st," he said. While Kennedy memorably declared "Ich bin ein Berliner", Obama confined his venture into the local language to a mention of "Sametova revoluce", the Czechoslovak "Velvet Revolution" of 1989 that brought down communist rule. That event, he said, "proved that moral leadership is more powerful than any weapon". "That is why I am speaking to you in the centre of a Europe that is peaceful, united and free, because ordinary people believed that divisions could be bridged ... They believed that walls could come down, that peace could prevail," Obama told an audience of tens of thousands. Besides evoking the nuclear theme, in a country where Washington plans to station an anti-missile radar to protect against the threat it sees from Iran, Obama sought European solidarity on the global economic crisis and climate change. Tomas Sedlacek, a 31-year-old Prague-based economist who was in the crowd, said the speech worked for him. "It was great. It was the most stately speech I've heard in a very long time," he said. "It made me proud to be Czech."

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina left for New York on Saturday night on a nine-day official visit to the USA to attend the 67th United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). An Emirates flight carrying the Prime Minister and members of her entourage took off from Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport at 9.30 pm. The flight is expected to reach the John F Kennedy (JFK) International Airport in New York at 8.15am (New York time) on Sunday. On their way to New York, Hasina and members of her entourage would make a stopover at Dubai International Airport for two hours. From the JFK Airport the Prime Minister will straight drive to the Hotel Grand Hayatt in New York where she will be staying during her visit to the city. Foreign Minister Dipu Moni, Environment and Forest Minister Hasan Mahmud, Ambassador-At-Large M Ziauddin, Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister Shaikh Mohammad Wahid-Uz- Zaman and Press Secretary Abul Kalam Azad, among others, would accompany Hasina during her visit to the USA. A 23-member high-level business delegation led by AK Azad, president of the Federation of Bangladesh Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FBCCI), will accompany the Prime Minister to explore new areas of trade and business in the USA. The Prime Minister will attend a high-level event on 'Rule of Law' on Sept 24 at the General Assembly Hall at the UN headquarters. On the same day, she will join a reception to be hosted by the US President Barak Obama and the First Lady Michelle Obama. On Sep 25, Hasina will attend the reception to be hosted by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. She will also join the opening session of the 67th UN General Assembly on the same day. On the next day, the Prime Minister will launch an event titled 'Second Edition of the Climate Vulnerability Monitor'. Expatriate Bangladeshis will give her a reception at Marriott Marquis Hotel adjacent to the Times Square in New York. On Sep 27, Hasina will attend a meeting on autism to be arranged by the US First Lady at the Roosevelt House. She is also scheduled to join the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) initiative. She will deliver a speech at the General Assembly at 8pm local time on Sep 27. The theme for this year's session is "Bringing about adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations by peaceful means". Before leaving New York for home on Sep 30, Hasina will attend a press conference at 4pm. She is expected to reach Dhaka in the morning on Oct 2.

If Barack Obama were a corporate chief executive, the incoming US president already would be winning high marks for his management style, experts say. The president-elect's steady hand and calm demeanor that have earned him the moniker "No Drama Obama" are traits business leaders could well learn from, according to management experts. "What he's doing is masterful," said Paul Reagan, a management consultant and senior lecturer at Wayne State University in Detroit. "His value system is clear, and he spends a tremendous amount of time reinforcing that he does what he says he will do. "His credibility right now is so high most people already see him as the corporate head," Reagan said. There's one particular aspect of Obama's style that business leaders likely do not share -- an acute awareness of his own strengths and weakness, said Paul Copcutt, a personal brand strategist based in Dundas, Ontario. That awareness is evident in his cabinet selections, in which Obama has chosen veterans to provide the expertise or experience he lacks, he said. "In corporate, we're brought up to look at our weaknesses and how can you improve those and what can you work on," Copcutt said. "Really good leaders should be focusing on what they're good at and either delegating or finding other ways to achieve what they're not good at." From Hillary Clinton, a former campaign rival, to Robert Gates, a holdover from the administration of Republican President George W. Bush, Obama's cabinet choices show an effort to build a coalition with voices that may disagree with his own, Reagan said. Chief executives, on the other hand, often build a "go-to team" of supportive advisors who "don't bring in all of the voices that they really need to lead all of the organization," he said. 'JURY IS STILL OUT' Obama's demonstration of skill is still in its early days, however. All he has done so far is pick some key cabinet members and urge Congress to act swiftly on an economic stimulus plan when it takes office in early January. "The jury is still out," said Nancy Koehn, a business historian and professor at Harvard Business School. The tougher tests come once Obama moves into the White House on January 20. On the downside, a management style that appeals to so many constituencies, such as Obama's, poses the risk of broad disappointment, Reagan said. "He may have oversold change," he said. "If there is a vulnerability, it will be in a lack of clarity or, because it was so general, an inability to make good on what everyone interpreted was something for them." Chief executives could borrow a page from Obama's responses to two hurdles in his path to the U.S. presidency -- his loss in the New Hampshire primary and the maelstrom over his controversial former pastor Jeremiah Wright, said Koehn. In each case, Obama responded with an "emotional competence" that leaders could use, especially in today's troubled financial climate, to cope with currents such as fear of job losses or anxiety over poor performance at their organizations, she said. "Business leaders need to be very conscious of those aspects to their people and their organization that are more than just, 'What are our tangible resources?' 'What's our head count?' 'What's our market?' 'What's our customer?'" she said. CEO coach Deb Dib can tick off a list of traits she sees in Obama -- caring, confident, consistent, commanding, calm and more -- traits she tries to teach business executives. "If you look at any really effective CEO, they almost all share in one way or another almost every one of those attributes," said Dib from her office in Medford, New York. "It transcends politics. You really have to look at him and say, 'Wow, I can learn something from this."

The two-day annual gathering will be a major test for the Group of 20 industrialized nations, whose leaders first met in 2008 to help rescue the global economy from the worst financial crisis in seven decades, but which now faces questions over its relevance to deal with the latest round of crises. Overhanging the summit in Buenos Aires, the Argentine capital, is a bitter trade dispute between the United States and China, the world’s two largest economies, which have imposed tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars of each other’s imports. All eyes will be on a planned meeting between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping on Saturday to see whether they can find a way to calm the waters and make progress toward resolving differences that threaten the global economy. On the eve of the summit, G20 member nations were still racing to reach agreement on major issues including trade, migration and climate change that in past years have been worked out well in advance. Those divisions have highlighted the fractures in the grouping. In fact, Trump’s skepticism that global warming is caused by human activity has even raised questions about whether the countries will be able to reach enough consensus on the issue to include it in the summit’s final communique. Further clouding the summit is the escalation of conflict between Russia and Ukraine – a topic that will be on many leaders’ minds when they see Russian President Vladimir Putin. There are also questions about how to handle the awkward presence of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler arrived under swirling controversy over the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October. Uncertainty prevailed about how Trump, known for his unpredictability, would behave at what was shaping up as one of the group’s most consequential summits. Earlier this month, officials from countries attending a major Asia-Pacific summit failed to agree on a joint statement for the first time as the US delegation, led by Vice President Mike Pence, clashed with China over trade and security. In May, Trump rejected a statement by fellow leaders of the G7 industrialized economies after a tense gathering ended in acrimony, again over tariffs and trade. Before heading for Buenos Aires on Thursday, Trump said he was open to a trade deal with China, but added, “I don’t know that I want to do it.” After initial plans for him to stay away from the summit, Trump’s hardline trade adviser, Peter Navarro, was added to the US delegation at the last minute and is expected to attend the meeting between Trump and Xi, a US official and a source familiar with the situation told Reuters. The official said it was meant to send a message to China of US resolve on trade. China, for its part, is hoping for “positive results” in resolving the trade dispute with the United States, the Commerce Ministry said on Thursday. A slowdown in the global economy will worsen if Trump presses ahead with plans to further increase tariffs on some $200 billion of Chinese imports to 25 percent, OECD Secretary General Angel Gurria told Reuters. While Trump’s meeting with Xi is all but certain to go ahead, the US president on Thursday abruptly scrapped his planned talks with Putin, citing Russia’s recent seizure of Ukrainian vessels. Trump has often voiced a desire for better relations with Putin, and many critics at home slammed him in July for appearing to disregard US intelligence agencies’ conclusion that Moscow meddled in the 2016 US presidential election, while giving credence to the Russian president’s assertion that it did not. One potential bright spot at the summit could be the signing of a revised US-Mexico-Canada trade pact. But a day before the three neighbors were due to formalize the agreement on Friday, negotiators were still thrashing out what exactly they will be putting their names to, officials said on Thursday. The three countries agreed a deal in principle to govern their trillion dollars of mutual trade after a year and a half of contentious talks concluded with a late-night bargain just an hour before a deadline on Sept. 30.

Bird enthusiasts are reporting rising numbers of snowy owls from the Arctic winging into the lower 48 states this winter in a mass southern migration that a leading owl researcher called "unbelievable." Thousands of the snow-white birds, which stand 2 feet tall with 5-foot wingspans, have been spotted from coast to coast, feeding in farmlands in Idaho, roosting on rooftops in Montana, gliding over golf courses in Missouri and soaring over shorelines in Massachusetts. A certain number of the iconic owls fly south from their Arctic breeding grounds each winter but rarely do so many venture so far away even amid large-scale, periodic southern migrations known as irruptions. "What we're seeing now -- it's unbelievable," said Denver Holt, head of the Owl Research Institute in Montana. "This is the most significant wildlife event in decades," added Holt, who has studied snowy owls in their Arctic tundra ecosystem for two decades. Holt and other owl experts say the phenomenon is likely linked to lemmings, a rodent that accounts for 90 percent of the diet of snowy owls during breeding months that stretch from May into September. The largely nocturnal birds also prey on a host of other animals, from voles to geese. An especially plentiful supply of lemmings last season likely led to a population boom among owls that resulted in each breeding pair hatching as many as seven offspring. That compares to a typical clutch size of no more than two, Holt said. Greater competition this year for food in the Far North by the booming bird population may have then driven mostly younger, male owls much farther south than normal. Research on the animals is scarce because of the remoteness and extreme conditions of the terrain the owls occupy, including northern Russia and Scandinavia, he said. The surge in snowy owl sightings has brought birders flocking from Texas, Arizona and Utah to the Northern Rockies and Pacific Northwest, pouring tourist dollars into local economies and crowding parks and wildlife areas. The irruption has triggered widespread public fascination that appears to span ages and interests. "For the last couple months, every other visitor asks if we've seen a snowy owl today," said Frances Tanaka, a volunteer for the Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge northeast of Olympia, Washington. But accounts of emaciated owls at some sites -- including a food-starved bird that dropped dead in a farmer's field in Wisconsin -- suggest the migration has a darker side. And Holt said an owl that landed at an airport in Hawaii in November was shot and killed to avoid collisions with planes. He said snowy owl populations are believed to be in an overall decline, possibly because a changing climate has lessened the abundance of vegetation like grasses that lemmings rely on. This winter's snowy owl outbreak, with multiple sightings as far south as Oklahoma, remains largely a mystery of nature. "There's a lot of speculation. As far as hard evidence, we really don't know," Holt said.

Australia's Prime Minister John Howard, tipped to ask voters for a fifth term within days, faces an election drubbing, with voters ranking his opponent as more trustworthy and visionary, a new poll showed on Monday. With his youthful opponent Kevin Rudd promising generational change taking the country into the future, the Labor Party had a 56 percent cent to 44 lead over Howard's conservatives on preferences, the AC Nielsen poll in Fairfax newspapers showed. Rudd, 50, also maintained a strong 52 percent to 39 lead over Howard as preferred prime minister. It was the 18th straight monthly lead for the opposition in the closely-watched survey. "A point must come when John Howard leaps out of the aeroplane and hopes that a miracle opens the parachute," veteran politician analyst Michelle Grattan wrote in the Age newspaper. Howard, 68, known as "Honest John" by many conservative political supporters, is expected to call an election next weekend, with voters going to ballot boxes on November 17 or 24. Howard used a weekly radio message on Monday to highlight his economic credentials, which is the one area he has maintained a steady lead over Rudd. Rudd's support has come from his promises to re-shape education, health and employment laws. "I want Australia to become a full employment economy where anyone who wants a job and is able to work has a meaningful job that leads to a lasting career," Howard said, highlighting unemployment at 33-year lows. But Howard's pitch has been blunted by successive central bank interest rate rises to a decade high of 6.5 percent, denting traditional conservative support in outer city mortgage belts. "At the moment these people don't really care about the economy at they're saying they intend to vote Labor or Greens," AC Nielsen pollster John Stirton told the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper. The survey showed Rudd had a 43 percent to 32 lead over Howard on trustworthiness, while Rudd had a 48 to 38 percent lead on the question of who had a better vision for Australia. "The polls, it seems, are not going to provide any greater security before the jump," Grattan wrote. Adding to Howard's woes, public opposition to the war in Iraq and Australia's military deployment there and in Afghanistan is eroding his usual strengths in defence and security. A long-running drought has also lifted the importance of climate change as a major issue for 8 in 10 voters, polls show. That made Howard's backing last week for a new A$2 billion timber pulp mill in the divided island state of Tasmania a political gamble. Howard, unlike Rudd, has refused to ratify the Kyoto climate pact, angering environmentalists. The candidate for Howard's Liberal Party resigned at the weekend in protest at the mill decision, although leaked government polling on Monday showed the plant would boost Howard's stocks in electorates outside the one hosting the mill. Opposition environment spokesman Peter Garrett said voters, jaded by months of government advertising in an as-yet undeclared campaign, were more occupied by Australia's shock weekend 12-10 loss to England in the Rugby World Cup in France. "Given that we've had this devastating result in the football, and we're all feeling it this morning, why doesn't he just get on and call the election," Garrett said. ($1=A$1.11)

“It was a little scary to, you know, rely on it and to just, you know, sit back and let it drive,” he told a US investigator about Tesla’s Autopilot system, describing his initial feelings about the technology. Geoulla made the comments to the investigator in January 2018, days after his Tesla, with Autopilot engaged, slammed into the back of an unoccupied fire truck parked on a California interstate highway. Reuters could not reach him for additional comment. Over time, Geoulla's initial doubts about Autopilot softened, and he found it reliable when tracking a vehicle in front of him. But he noticed the system sometimes seemed confused when faced with direct sunlight or a vehicle in front of him changing lanes, according to a transcript of his interview with a National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigator. He was driving into the sun before he rear-ended the fire truck, he told the investigator. Autopilot’s design allowed Geoulla to disengage from driving during his trip, and his hands were off the wheel for almost the entire period of roughly 30 minutes when the technology was activated, the NTSB found. The US agency, which makes recommendations but lacks enforcement powers, has previously urged regulators at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to investigate Autopilot's limitations, potential for driver misuse and possible safety risks following a series of crashes involving the technology, some of them fatal. "The past has shown the focus has been on innovation over safety and I’m hoping we’re at a point where that tide is turning," the NTSB's new chair, Jennifer Homendy, told Reuters in an interview. She said there is no comparison between Tesla's Autopilot and the more rigorous autopilot systems used in aviation that involve trained pilots, rules addressing fatigue and testing for drugs and alcohol. Tesla did not respond to written questions for this story. Autopilot is an advanced driver-assistance feature whose current version does not render vehicles autonomous, the company says on its website. Tesla says that drivers must agree to keep hands on the wheel and maintain control of their vehicles before enabling the system. LIMITED VISIBILITY Geoulla’s 2018 crash is one of 12 accidents involving Autopilot that NHTSA officials are scrutinising as part of the agency’s farthest-reaching investigation since Tesla Inc introduced the semi-autonomous driving system in 2015. Most of the crashes under investigation occurred after dark or in conditions creating limited visibility such as glaring sunlight, according to a NHTSA statement, NTSB documents and police reports reviewed by Reuters. That raises questions about Autopilot’s capabilities during challenging driving conditions, according to autonomous driving experts. "NHTSA’s enforcement and defect authority is broad, and we will act when we detect an unreasonable risk to public safety," a NHTSA spokesperson said in a statement to Reuters. Since 2016, US auto safety regulators have separately sent 33 special crash investigation teams to review Tesla crashes involving 11 deaths in which advanced driver assistance systems were suspected of being in use. NHTSA has ruled out Autopilot use in three of those nonfatal crashes. The current NHTSA investigation of Autopilot in effect reopens the question of whether the technology is safe. It represents the latest significant challenge for Elon Musk, the Tesla chief executive whose advocacy of driverless cars has helped his company become the world's most valuable automaker. A photo provided by the Monroe County Sheriff’s Department shows emergency responders examining a Chevrolet Tahoe that was struck by a Tesla Model S as it was operating on Autopilot in Key Largo, Fla, in 2019. The crash highlights how gaps in Tesla’s driver-assistance system and distractions can have tragic consequences. (Monroe County Sheriff's Department via The New York Times) Tesla charges customers up to $10,000 for advanced driver assistance features such as lane changing, with a promise to eventually deliver autonomous driving capability to their cars using only cameras and advanced software. Other carmakers and self-driving firms use not only cameras but more expensive hardware including radar and lidar in their current and upcoming vehicles. A photo provided by the Monroe County Sheriff’s Department shows emergency responders examining a Chevrolet Tahoe that was struck by a Tesla Model S as it was operating on Autopilot in Key Largo, Fla, in 2019. The crash highlights how gaps in Tesla’s driver-assistance system and distractions can have tragic consequences. (Monroe County Sheriff's Department via The New York Times) Musk has said a Tesla with eight cameras will be far safer than human drivers. But the camera technology is affected by darkness and sun glare as well as inclement weather conditions such as heavy rain, snow and fog, experts and industry executives say. "Today's computer vision is far from perfect and will be for the foreseeable future," said Raj Rajkumar, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. In the first known fatal US crash involving Tesla’s semi-autonomous driving technology, which occurred in 2016 west of Williston, Florida, the company said both the driver and Autopilot failed to see the white side of a tractor trailer against a brightly lit sky. Instead of braking, the Tesla collided with the 18-wheel truck. DRIVER MISUSE, FAILED BRAKING NHTSA in January 2017 closed an investigation of Autopilot stemming from that fatal crash, finding no defect in the Autopilot performance after some contentious exchanges with Tesla officials, according to documents reviewed by Reuters. In December 2016, as part of that probe, the agency asked Tesla to provide details on the company's response to any internal safety concerns raised about Autopilot, including the potential for driver misuse or abuse, according to a special order sent by regulators to the automaker. After a NHTSA lawyer found Tesla's initial response lacking, Tesla's then-general counsel, Todd Maron, tried again. He told regulators the request was "grossly overbroad" and that it would be impossible to catalog all concerns raised during Autopilot's development, according to correspondence reviewed by Reuters. Nevertheless, Tesla wanted to co-operate, Maron told regulators. During Autopilot’s development, company employees or contractors had raised concerns that Tesla addressed regarding the potential for unintended or failed braking and acceleration; undesired or failed steering; and certain kinds of misuse and abuse by drivers, Maron said, without providing further details. Maron did not respond to messages seeking comment. It is not clear how regulators responded. One former US official said Tesla generally co-operated with the probe and produced requested materials promptly. Regulators closed the investigation just before former US president Donald Trump's inauguration, finding Autopilot performed as designed and that Tesla took steps to prevent it from being misused. LEADERSHIP VACUUM IN NHTSA NHTSA has been without a Senate-confirmed chief for nearly five years. President Joe Biden has yet to nominate anyone to run the agency. NHTSA documents show that regulators want to know how Tesla vehicles attempt to see flashing lights on emergency vehicles, or detect the presence of fire trucks, ambulances and police cars in their path. The agency has sought similar information from 12 rival automakers as well. "Tesla has been asked to produce and validate data as well as their interpretation of that data. NHTSA will conduct our own independent validation and analysis of all information," NHTSA told Reuters. Musk, the electric-car pioneer, has fought hard to defend Autopilot from critics and regulators. Tesla has used Autopilot’s ability to update vehicle software over the air to outpace and sidestep the traditional vehicle-recall process. Musk has repeatedly promoted Autopilot’s capabilities, sometimes in ways that critics say mislead customers into believing Teslas can drive themselves - despite warnings to the contrary in owner's manuals that tell drivers to remain engaged and outline the technology's limitations. Musk has also continued to launch what Tesla calls beta - or unfinished - versions of a "Full Self-Driving" system via over-the-air software upgrades. "Some manufacturers are going to do what they want to do to sell a car and it’s up the government to rein that in," the NTSB's Homendy said.

US technology and other companies flooded the government on Tuesday with an estimated 200,000 visa applications for highly skilled foreign workers in what has become an annual lottery for just 65,000 visas. The competition is for so-called H-1B visas, which allow U.S. companies to employ foreign guest workers in highly specialized jobs for three years. The visas can be extended for an additional three years. The U.S. government last year was overwhelmed with about 120,000 applications on the first day that applications were accepted for H-1B visas, leaving many job candidates out of luck. One of those applicants left out in the cold last year was Sven, a German national working as a civil engineer in San Diego. Sven, who asked for his last name to be withheld due to privacy concerns, will try his luck again at the H-1B visa lottery this year but he understands that the odds are long. "It would be like the hitting the jackpot," said the 33-year-old, who studied at a German university for eight years to get a civil engineering degree. "When I found out how many people applied in two days last year, I was shocked." The company he works for has supported his efforts, paying attorney's fees and providing information to the government. Sven is frustrated, however, that the decision about whether he works in America or not comes is determined by luck. This year, the odds of getting an H-1B visa could be even slimmer. Experts said they expected about 200,000 applications on Tuesday, the first day U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) begins accepting the visa petitions for the fiscal year starting Oct. 1, 2008. "The people we've offered jobs to are really subject to the whims of a lottery," said Jack Krumholtz, managing director of federal government affairs for Microsoft Corp. Last year, the USCIS closed the application window after two days and pooled the petitions, granting the visas by a computerized lottery system. The agency said the applicants got the same shot at getting selected. But tech companies say the huge demand for the visas shows the need for the industry to tap into foreign resources. "This leaves Cisco and other U.S. companies at a competitive disadvantage if we cannot access the best and the brightest workers," said Heather Dickinson, a spokeswoman for network equipment maker Cisco Systems Inc. Companies who specialize in science, technology, engineering and technology fields say the current system is a Catch 22: the United States is not producing enough homegrown job candidates and won't let companies bring them in, either. "Getting this right is important for the U.S. to maintain competitiveness," Krumholtz said. "It goes to our economic well-being." "A BAD JOKE" Jacob Sapochnick, a San Diego immigration lawyer, said he's submitting about 150 applications this year on behalf of employers and workers in the high tech, scientific and marketing fields, and even one for an executive chef. Last year, Sapochnick submitted about 200 applications and about half were granted visas. This year the situation is even more unknown, he said, because the USCIS has said it won't close the application window for five business days. He said he expects about 300,000 applications to be submitted over the five days. "It's almost like a bad joke," Sapochnick said. The National Association of Manufacturers called for "a permanent fix" to address the need for highly skilled employees in manufacturing and other sectors. There wasn't always such a mismatch in supply and demand. In 2000, the quota for H-1B visas was raised to 195,000 per year and was rarely reached, but as the tech boom faded, the quota was reduced to 65,000. Tech companies have lobbied Congress to raise the quota but labor groups oppose a change, arguing that doing so would hurt U.S. employees' job prospects. Krumholtz said roughly one-third of Microsoft's U.S.-based employees have required some form of visa assistance. Last year, Microsoft submitted about 1,200 applications for H-1B visas and was granted about 900, he said. This year, Microsoft is trying to improve its chances in the lottery by filing about 1,600 applications. "We've got between 3,000 and 4,000 core openings at Microsoft we're trying to find people for," Krumholtz said. But he said the company's internal immigration staff expects it will "at best" get about 40 percent, or 640 visas, approved. Bob Gaynor, a Boston-based attorney who specializes in immigration law, said his clients applying for H-1B visas this year are worried about their chances in the computer selection process. Gaynor, who represents dentists, intellectual property experts, engineers and accountants from India, Australia and Germany, among other countries, said he expected about 200,000 applications to flood the system on Tuesday. "It's sad," Gaynor said. "These people really contribute to the business climate of the country."

Global warming was impossible to avoid on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, with a trio of hearings on the consequences or cures for climate change and another on the related question of endangered wildlife. But even as the climate change issue spurred debate among US lawmakers, a demographer said that while Americans take this matter seriously, they are lukewarm about taking any tough action to control it. "It's real, it's serious -- impressions of that are certainly growing," said Karlyn Bowman, who watches polling data at the pro-business American Enterprise Institute. "But in terms of what people are willing to do: They're willing to do things that are easy ... It just isn't a top-tier issue." Global warming has been a top-tier issue in Congress since Democratic leaders took over in January, including members of a new committee dedicated to energy independence and climate change. That panel heard testimony about the trials of rising gasoline prices, and its chairman, Rep Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, blamed dependence on foreign oil, warning of environmental consequences. "Our oil dependence has too many costs -- to our national security, to entrepreneurs, to our environment, and to American families -- for us to delay taking action on this important problem any longer," Markey said. Across the Hill, a Senate panel that deals with climate change heard about possible technological ways to limit the emissions of climate-warming greenhouse gas emissions. "I believe we must fight global warming to protect our economy as well as our planet," said Sen Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat. "... If we do nothing, the cost can't even be calculated. But Sen John Warner, a Virginia Republican, cautioned against rushing to action with the wrong plan: "If we make a false start ... and it just proves to have been wrong, I don't know when we'll get an opportunity like the one before us now." Meantime, the Senate Foreign Relations committee heard from former military leaders who warned of potential national security risks from climate change. Sen Richard Lugar, an Indiana Republican, said he has urged the Bush administration and others in Congress to return to an international leadership role on global warming. "Many nations and businesses across the globe are moving to respond to climate change in innovative ways," Lugar said. "How the United States participates in these efforts will profoundly affect our diplomatic standing, our economic potential, and our national security." A House of Representatives panel on natural resources took aim at the Interior Department over its handling of endangered species, and while this was not framed as an outgrowth of global warming, it added to the chorus of environmental voices in Washington. This seemed in sync with what recent polling suggests Americans feel about climate change, Bowman said by telephone. "They (Americans) don't necessarily think it's a problem for them now. But everybody says it's going to be a threat to their grandchildren," Bowman said.

Peru plans to start desalinating water from the Pacific Ocean to make up for declining supplies from fast-melting glaciers affected by climate change, President Alan Garcia said on Tuesday. The Andean nation relies for fresh water mostly on rivers, some of which descend the dry western slopes of the Andes and are partly fed by large tropical glaciers that are melting at an unprecedented rate. Garcia said Peru must develop an alternate, more secure source by pumping water from the ocean and desalinating it. "We can't think about the future with yesterday's plans. We must use modern technology and this will happen as we treat ocean water," Garcia said at the opening of a conference on desalination. Treating sea water would be cheaper than pumping water over the Andes or from the Amazon rain forest to the coast, where most people live. Lima, Peru's capital and home to 9 million people, is located in a coastal desert. Doosan Hydro Technology, a unit of South Korea's Doosan Heavy Industries & Construction Co Ltd that specializes in desalination, may build two plants on Peru's coast to supply water to more than a million people, the government said. Companies and cities in South America are increasingly looking to the ocean for a solution to the problem declining water supplies due to climate change. Mines in Chile and Peru, both major mineral producers, have started relying on desalination plants.

Australia's ruling Labor party is heading for a narrow election victory on Saturday, with a lead of just 2-4 percent over the conservative opposition, according to exit polls by two broadcasters. The vote, which has ended in eastern Australia but is still underway in some states, is shaping up as the closest election in decades with Australians divided on whether to give Labor a second term or opt for conservative rule, raising a real risk of a minority government unpopular with investors. An early exit poll by Sky News showed Labor on 51 percent to the opposition's 49 percent, on a two-party preferred basis, while another by Nine Network indicated a 52-48 result. "The poll says a narrow Labor win...," said John Armitage of Auspoll which conducted the exit poll. He said he could not rule out an opposition victory, given the tight margin. At stake was not only the political future of Prime Minister Julia Gillard and the opposition's Tony Abbott, both new and untested leaders, but also Labor's plans for a 30 percent resource tax and a $38 billion (24 billion pounds) broadband network. From surf club polling booths along Australia's coast to dusty outback voting stations, where political banners swayed in the hot breeze, Australians stood in line to vote. But even after five weeks of campaigning, many Australians remained undecided as to whom they wanted to run their country. "I will get fined if I don't vote. I don't think it makes any difference who is in power...," said one disgruntled voter. Voting is compulsory in Australia. Financial markets were unsettled on Friday by the prospect that no major party would win enough votes to form government --- a scenario which would see the Australian dollar sold off and possibly result in policy gridlock and investment paralysis. Investors are also worried about the likelihood the Greens party will win the balance of power in the upper house Senate and stifle policy and force the next government to increase spending. The poll may be determined in marginal seats in mortgage-belt areas of Sydney and Melbourne, where there are worries over immigration, as well as in resource states of Queensland and Western Australia, where there is bitterness over the mining tax. "It will be tough. Let's just get through the day and see how the vote goes tonight," said Gillard after casting her ballot at a polling booth in a Melbourne school. Conservative leader Abbott, who cooked sausages at his local surf club in Sydney before voting, said: "This is a big day for our country, a day when we can vote out a bad government." The first polls have closed in the big, populous states of New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria, which are expected to decide the election. Voting in other states continues with Western Australia the last to close at 11:00 a.m. British time. About 40 percent of the local share market is owned by foreign investors and one analyst has tipped a fall of 2-5 percent in the Australian dollar if a minority government is elected. Without a clear winner, the next government would have to rely on a handful of independent or Green MPs to rule. AFGHANISTAN DEATHS OVERSHADOW VOTING Abbott's Liberal-National coalition, which ruled for 12 years before Labor won the last election in 2007, has pledged to scrap Labor's three key policies: a new mine tax, fibre-optic broadband network and a future carbon price to tackle climate change. But with no dominant election theme, the election is expected to be decided on various issues in important marginal seats, mainly in the resource states of Queensland and Western Australia and the mortgage belts of Sydney and Melbourne. A uniform swing of only 1.7 percent would unseat Labor. The deaths of two Australian soldiers in Afghanistan cast a shadow over polling, with both leaders stopping to reiterate a bipartisan commitment to Afghanistan. Abbott was regarded as unelectable nine months ago when he became opposition leader and with the poll so close, the result may come down to whether voters like Gillard or Abbott better. Gillard, Australia's first female prime minister, is unmarried, childless, and does not believe in God. Abbott is a former seminarian, who is now married with daughters.

U.S. President George W. Bush's plan to halt a rise in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 2025 could undermine, rather than support, efforts to combat climate change, German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel said. "Gabriel criticises Bush's Neanderthal speech" was the title of a news release from the Environment Ministry on Thursday. "Without binding limits and reduction targets for industrial countries, climate change will not be stopped," said Sigmar Gabriel, adding the United States and Europe had to lead the way in cutting greenhouse gas emissions. "The motto of his speech is: losing instead of leading," said Gabriel, a Social Democrat in conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition government. Bush on Wednesday unveiled plans to cap U.S. emissions by 2025, toughening an existing target to slow the growth of emissions by 2012 but critics say the world needs tougher action to combat global warming. The United States is the world's top greenhouse gas emitter. Germany is the world's sixth largest CO2 emitter and its efforts to reduce emissions have stagnated since the mid-1990s.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on Thursday for swifter work on a climate treaty, saying inaction could spell economic disaster and a rise in sea levels of up to 2 meters (6.5 ft) by 2100. "We cannot afford limited progress. We need rapid progress," he told a 155-nation climate conference in Geneva of negotiations on a new United Nations deal to combat global warming that is due to be agreed in December in Copenhagen. "Climate change could spell widespread economic disaster," Ban said, urging action to promote greener growth. "By the end of this century, sea levels may rise between half a meter and two meters," he said. That would threaten small island states, river deltas and cities such as Tokyo, New Orleans or Shanghai, he said. His sea level projection is above the range of 18 to 59 cms (7-24 inches) given in 2007 by the U.N.'s own panel of experts. Their estimates did not include the possibility of an accelerated melt of vast ice sheets in Antarctica or Greenland. Ban said greenhouse gas emissions, mainly from burning fossil fuels, were still rising fast. "Our foot is stuck on the accelerator and we are heading toward an abyss," he said. Just back from a trip to see thinning Arctic sea ice off Norway, Ban said he hoped a summit of world leaders he will host in New York on September 22 would give a new push to Copenhagen. "I am really trying to raise a sense of urgency," he told a news conference after speaking to an audience including about 20 leaders, mostly of developing nations such as Tanzania, Bangladesh and Mozambique, and ministers from up to 80 nations. He reiterated calls for developed nations to agree "more ambitious" targets for cuts in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 than promised so far and more aid. Rich nations want clearer pledges from the poor that they will slow rising emissions. AID "China faces enormous tasks in developing its economy, eradicating poverty and improving people's livelihood, but it still attaches great importance to climate change," Chinese Vice Premier Hui Liangyu said in a speech. The Geneva August 31-September 4 conference, gathering about 1,500 delegates, also formally approved a new system to improve monitoring and early warning systems about the climate to help everyone from farmers to investors in renewable energies. Delegates said the "Global Framework for Climate Services" would mainly help developing nations adapt to changes such as more floods, wildfires, droughts, rising seas or more disease. Many Asian farmers, for instance, want to know how a projected thaw of Himalayan glaciers will disrupt water flows in rivers. Investors in wind farms can benefit from information on future wind patterns, rather than historical data. The U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) would set up a "task force" of advisers within four months who would then have a year to report back with proposals about how it would work in sectors such as health, energy and agriculture. "For us, it is a success," Michel Jarraud, head of the WMO, said of the conference. Tanzania's Vice President Ali Mohamed Shein said the impact of disasters, such as droughts or floods, could be averted with better information. He also said the snows of Mount Kilimanjaro would vanish in coming decades at current rates. The Geneva talks are the third world climate conference. Meetings in 1979 and 1990 helped pave the way to a U.N. Climate Panel and a U.N. 1992 Climate Convention.

Europe expects to overcome a dispute with the United States blocking the launch of negotiations on a new climate treaty beyond 2012 at UN talks in Bali, Germany said on the final day on Friday. "All parties are willing to be flexible, to search for a compromise," said German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel, playing down a long-running clash with the United States over how far rich nations should cut greenhouse gases by 2020. "I think that the situation is good, the climate in the climate conference is good, that we will have success in the end," he said. "I don't know when we will come to an end." Indonesia, hosting the Dec. 3-14 talks in Bali, had suggested dropping an ambition for rich nations to make stiff cuts in emissions of between 25 to 40 percent by 2020 in a bid to overcome Washington's opposition to a draft text. The United States, the world's top emitter of greenhouse gases and the only developed nation outside the 37-country Kyoto, has repeatedly said that setting a 2020 goal would prejudge the outcome of coming negotiations. Earlier, the EU insisted the rich should lead the way in curbing emissions to persuade developing nations, such as China and India, to agree in Bali to launch two years of negotiations on a global climate pact to succeed the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol. "We continue to insist on including a reference to an indicative emissions reduction range for developed countries for 2020," European Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas said. "Let me underline once again that the Bali 'roadmap' must have a clear destination," he said. Reading a statement, he did not, however, repeat the 25 to 40 percent demand. Gabriel would not say what had caused his more optimistic tone. One compromise draft by Indonesia retains an ambition for global greenhouse gas emissions to peak in the next 10-15 years and to fall well below half of 2000 levels by 2050. But it drops the 25-40 percent range for rich nations by 2020. It was not clear if the United States and other countries would agree to the text. Indonesia presented an alternative with the 2020 goals, as part of a drive to avert climate changes such as more heatwaves, floods, rising seas and melting glaciers. BAN RETURN The United States did not want to distinguish between climate efforts by rich and poor countries, isolating it from the G77 group of developing nations and the European Union. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon decided warned of the risks of failure in Bali. "That would be very serious," he said, but added: "I think there will be an agreement." Organisers say the talks may last overnight into Saturday. Ban, on a visit to East Timor after attending the Bali talks, would make an unscheduled return on Saturday morning to give a news conference, his spokeswoman Michelle Montas said. Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, said most nations considered it vital to include the United States in a new climate treaty. "The general sense of everyone here is that it doesn't make a lot of sense to begin crafting a post-2012 climate change regime without the major economy and the major emitter," he said. Outside the conference centre, activists wearing red t-shirts reading "Kyoto - just do it" chanted "breakthrough, breakthrough". Developing nations are exempt from Kyoto's 2008-2012 first phase. Despite opposition to Kyoto, the United States plans to join a new treaty, meant to be agreed in Copenhagen in late 2009 with participation of developing nations led by China and India. On other issues, the Bali talks agreed steps on Friday to slow deforestation. Trees store carbon dioxide as they grow. "The agreement on deforestation is a good balance between different countries views and is one of the substantial achievements of this conference," Dimas said. He said the agreement launched pilot projects, which would tackle deforestation and forest degradation, and contribute to harder proposals in a broader climate pact in 2009.

Researchers from University of Nebraska-Lincoln in the US warn that humans can expect more such illnesses to emerge in the future as climate change shifts habitats and brings wildlife, crops, livestock, and humans into contact with pathogens to which they are susceptible but to which they have never been exposed before.“It is not that there is going to be one 'Andromeda Strain' that will wipe everybody out on the planet. There are going to be a lot of localised outbreaks putting pressure on medical and veterinary health systems,” said noted zoologist Daniel Brooks.Brooks and co-author Eric Hoberg, zoologist with the US National Parasite Collection of the USDA's Agricultural Research Service, have observed how climate change has affected very different ecosystems.They have witnessed the arrival of species that had not previously lived in that area and the departure of others.“Over the last 30 years, the places we have been working have been heavily impacted by climate change," Brooks said.“Even though I was in the tropics and he (Hoberg) was in the Arctic, we could see something was happening. Changes in habitat mean animals are exposed to new parasites and pathogens,” he noted.Brooks calls it the “parasite paradox”.Over time, hosts and pathogens become more tightly adapted to one another.According to previous theories, this should make emerging diseases rare because they have to wait for the right random mutation to occur.However, such jumps happen more quickly than anticipated.Even pathogens that are highly adapted to one host are able to shift to new ones under the right circumstances.“Even though a parasite might have a very specialised relationship with one particular host in one particular place, there are other hosts that may be as susceptible,” Brooks pointed out.In fact, the new hosts are more susceptible to infection and get sicker from it, Brooks said, because they have not yet developed resistance.The article was published online in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B.

During a speech on his first foreign visit since winning re-election, he told the Maldivian parliament in Male that "terrorism is not just a threat for a country, but to the entire civilisation". "The international community has actively arranged for global convention and many conferences on the threat of climate change. Why not on the issue of terrorism?" Modi said. He called for a global conference "so that there can be meaningful and result-oriented discussions for plugging the loopholes that terrorists and their supporters exploit". India is pursuing what it calls a "neighbourhood first" foreign policy centred on its allies in South Asia, although there is little sign of a warming in relations with arch rival Pakistan. His trip to the Maldives is being viewed as a statement of intent to counter the rise of China, which has been making strategic inroads in the Indian Ocean in recent years and seeking closer military ties, to the alarm of New Delhi. "In the neighbourhood, Maldives is priority," Modi said in his speech. During the visit, Modi has signed a slew of agreements with the island nation encompassing ferry services, port terminals and a new national cricket stadium. His next stop is Sri Lanka's capital, Colombo, where security is likely to be high on the agenda. A wave of bombings on Easter Sunday killed more than 250 people across Sri Lanka despite repeated warnings from Indian intelligence services about a militant plot.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government has turned the spotlight on foreign charities since he took office last year, accusing some of trying to hamper projects on social and environmental grounds. Last year, Modi government withdrew permission to Greenpeace to receive foreign funding, saying the money was used to block industrial projects. Under the latest order issued by authorities in Tamil Nadu where Greenpeace is registered, the government said it had found that the organisation had violated the provisions of law by engaging in fraudulent dealings. Greenpeace denied any wrongdoing and said the closure was a "clumsy tactic" to silence dissent. "This is an extension of the deep intolerance for differing viewpoints that sections of this government seem to harbour," Vinuta Gopal, the interim executive director of Greenpeace, said in a statement. A government official confirmed that the closure order had been issued on Wednesday but did not elaborate. Greenpeace India has campaigned against coal mines in forests, genetically modified crops, nuclear power and toxic waste management. In recent months the federal government has toughened rules governing charities and cancelled the registration of nearly 9,000 groups for failing to declare details of overseas donations.

"India irrigates its deserts and dumps extra water on Pakistan without any warning," the bearded Saeed told Reuters, as he surveyed a vast expanse of muddy water from a rescue boat just outside the central city of Multan. "If we don't stop India now, Pakistan will continue to face this danger." His comments will surprise few in India, where Saeed is suspected of helping mastermind the 2008 Mumbai massacre which killed 166 people, a few of them Americans. Saeed, who also has a $10 million US bounty on his head, denies involvement. But his presence in the flood-hit area is part of a push by Pakistani Islamists, militants and organisations linked to them to fill the vacuum left by struggling local authorities and turn people against a neighbour long viewed with deep mistrust. Water is an emotive issue in Pakistan, whose rapidly rising population depends on snow-fed Himalayan rivers for everything from drinking water to agriculture. Many Pakistanis believe that rival India uses its upstream dams to manipulate how much water flows down to Pakistani wheat and cotton fields, with some describing it as a "water bomb" designed to weaken its neighbour. There is no evidence to prove that, and India has long dismissed such accusations as nonsense. Experts say this month's floods, which also hit India's part of the disputed Kashmir region, were caused by the sheer volume of rainfall. In fact, some Pakistanis accuse their own government of failing to invest in dams and other infrastructure needed to regulate water levels through wet and dry seasons. But others agree with the narrative pushed by Saeed and Syed Salahuddin, head of the militant anti-Indian Hizbul Mujahideen group and also one of India's most wanted men. "India wants to turn Pakistan into an arid desert," Salahuddin told Reuters in a telephone interview, describing another scenario feared by some Pakistanis - that India will cut off supplies of water in times of shortage. "If this continues, a new Jihad will begin. Our fighters and all of Pakistan's fighters are ready to avenge Indian brutality in whatever form." CHARITY BRINGS FOOD, IDEOLOGY Saeed's charity, Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), has sent hundreds of workers to areas of Pakistan worst affected by the floods, where they distribute food and medicine at the same time as spreading the organisation's hardline ideology against India. JuD is believed by many experts to be a front for Lashkar-e-Taiba, the militant group which India says carried out the Mumbai attack. Saeed was a co-founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba, but he has played down his links to the group in recent years. "This is a premeditated plan by India to make Pakistan suffer," Abdur Rauf, who has worked as a JuD volunteer for 16 years, told Reuters, as he prepared to distribute medicine and syringes at a relief camp near Multan. "Don't be fooled. This water bomb is no different from the atom bomb. It's worse." Officials in India's water resources ministry this week declined to respond to charges of "water terrorism", saying they were being stoked by militants, not the Pakistani government. Much of the Indian-held side of Kashmir has also been hit by flooding, the worst in that region for more than a century, and officials have put the death toll there at more than 200. However, in a country rife with conspiracy theories, large numbers of Pakistanis buy into the idea of sabotage. "This is not a mistake: this is a deliberate act to destroy Pakistan and make its people suffer," said Syed Ali, a farmer, as he looked forlornly at the murky waters covering his village of Sher Shah in central Pakistan. Disagreement over how to share the waters of the Indus river, which flows from India into Pakistan, has dogged the nuclear-armed rivals since independence in 1947. The neighbours have fought two of their three wars over the disputed Himalayan territory of Kashmir and observers are worried that the next conflict could be over water. CLAIMS ARE "DOWNRIGHT ABSURD" The lives of more than two million people were affected by this month's floods in Pakistan, and more than 300 were killed. Some are critical of their own government, saying the mass devastation caused by the latest floods was a result of Pakistan's own inefficiencies. "Some people will say India released the waters," Yousaf Raza Gillani, a former Pakistani prime minister, told Reuters. "But my question is: even if there was a timely warning from India that this was about to happen, would we have heeded it? Would this government have taken the right steps? I doubt it." Husain Haqqani, a former Pakistan ambassador to the United States and now a director at the Hudson Institute in Washington D.C., said that water issues are being exploited to keep relations between the two countries tense. "The Pakistani militants' claims about floods in Pakistan being the result of India releasing torrents of water are downright absurd," he said. "It is part of propaganda rooted in the belief that Pakistanis must be made to see India as their permanent enemy. Blaming India also covers up for Pakistan's own failure in water management." CLIMATE CHANGE Disputes over water-sharing are a global phenomenon, stoked by rapidly growing populations and increasingly unpredictable climate patterns. In South Asia, home to a fifth of humanity, the problem is particularly acute. "Regional flooding in South Asia is certainly linked to climate change effects. In recent years there has been major glacial recession on Pakistani mountains, and monsoon rains have been unusually and even unprecedentedly intense," said Michael Kugelman at the Woodrow Wilson International Center. "At the same time, I’d argue that ... human-made actions are making things even worse. Deforestation in Pakistan, for example, has caused floodwaters to rage even more," he said. The region's three major rivers - the Indus, the Ganges and the Brahmaputra - sustain both countries' breadbasket states and many of their major cities, including New Delhi and Islamabad. In Pakistan, agriculture contributes to about a quarter of its gross domestic product, and the country still relies on a network of irrigation canals built by the British. Hoping to resolve the issue once and for all, the two countries signed the Indus Water Treaty in 1960, but India's ambitious irrigation plans and construction of thousands of upstream dams continued to irk Pakistan. India says its use of upstream water is strictly in line with the 1960 agreement. According to a 2012 Indian government report, the country operates 4,846 dams in the region - a huge number compared with just a few dozen on the Pakistani side of the disputed border. "We can't blame India for our own mistakes," said Malik Abdul Ghaffar Dogar, the ruling party lawmaker from Multan. "We turn every dam project into a political deadlock and a stick to beat our political opponents with, but the truth is this country needs dams and it's just not building any."

Barack Obama this week makes his first trip to Asia as president, leaving behind a host of domestic problems with a visit that recognizes the region's economic and diplomatic importance to the United States. The trip, which starts on Thursday, will take Obama to an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Singapore. But the critical leg will come in China, where Obama will have to navigate an increasingly complex relationship with the country that is the largest holder of U.S. foreign debt and its second-largest trading partner. "I see China as a vital partner, as well as a competitor," Obama told Reuters in an interview before the trip. "The key is for us to make sure that that competition is friendly, and it's competition for customers and markets, it's within the bounds of well-defined international rules of the road that both China and the United States are party to, but also that together we are encouraging responsible behavior around the world," he said. He will also visit Japan and South Korea. "The overarching theme is that America is a Pacific nation, it understands the importance of Asia in the 21st century, and it's going to be very engaged in a very comprehensive way to make progress on a whole series of issues that are critical for our prosperity and our security," said Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser. North Korea, Iran, the global economy and trade, climate change, energy, human rights, Afghanistan and Pakistan are likely to get the most attention. Obama will also use a stop in Tokyo to speak broadly about his view of U.S. engagement with Asia. In China from November 15-18, Obama will visit Shanghai and Beijing, hold bilateral meetings with President Hu Jintao -- their third -- and Premier Wen Jiabao. DEEPLY ENGAGED The trip is intended to make the point that the United States is deeply engaged with Asia, after years of focusing on the threat of Islamic militancy in the region. But the issues dominating U.S. politics -- his fight to reform the healthcare system, joblessness and the pressing question of how many more troops to send to Afghanistan -- are likely to dog Obama on his Asian trip. Those domestic worries could make it more difficult to make progress on climate change and trade, on which he faces stiff opposition from U.S. groups whose support he needs on healthcare and other issues. Many businesses, for example, are wary of new rules on climate change they say could be costly and labor unions worry about free trade agreements they fear could cost jobs, so Obama is unlikely to push hard for deals such as a free trade pact with South Korea. "I think the administration has been sending pretty careful signals that, hey, we're not gone on trade ... we'll be back to the table on trade on some of these regional agreements and some of the bilateral agreements," said Ernie Bower, director of the Southeast Asia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "Do Asian leaders believe that? I'm not sure," he said. With Obama enjoying sky-high popularity ratings in the countries he is visiting, concrete results may be beside the point. Noting that Obama has been in office only since January, analysts and administration officials point to this trip as mostly laying the groundwork for future cooperation. "President Obama is enormously popular in all the countries that he's visiting. I haven't seen the latest polls, but the numbers I have seen are staggering," said Jeffrey Bader, senior director for East Asian affairs at the National Security Council. "When we have someone who has that degree of respect and affection and admiration, the message that he is bringing is much more likely to resonate than when you come in with a five percent approval rating," he said.

Several thousand protesters demanding urgent action on global warming marched through the streets of London, Berlin and Stockholm on Saturday. German authorities turned off the lights for five minutes at 8:00 p.m. (1900 GMT) at tourist sites including Berlin's Brandenburg Gate as part of a government-backed campaign to raise awareness of environmental issues. Carrying banners with slogans like "cut carbon not forests" and "actions speak louder than words" protesters in London marched in torrential rain past parliament and through Trafalgar Square to rally in front of the US embassy. Some posters carried a picture of US President George W Bush and the words "Wanted for crimes against the planet". The United States is the world's biggest emitter of carbon gases. British police said 2,000 people took part in the march. Organisers said they estimated the number at 7,000. In Sweden, police said about 1,000 protesters marched through Stockholm in the rain carrying banners reading "make love, not CO2", "kids for the climate" and "flying kills" in Swedish and English. "I've never seen so many people come to a demonstration in Stockholm," said Susanna Ahlfors, 34, marching with her two children. "If we don't act now, things will go really bad. I'm worried about their future." The protesters urged the world to stop driving and start biking and admonished Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt for "staying quiet while the water is rising". Around 1,500 people paraded through Berlin, German police said. About 10,000 people joined protests across the country, according to German environmental groups. The marches were among a series planned around the world and timed to coincide with a meeting of UN environment officials and ministers on the Indonesian island of Bali to discuss a successor to the Kyoto Protocol on cutting carbon emissions. "This march is a direct message for Bali, indeed for all governments around the world, to take action now," said Andy Wimbush, one of the London march organisers. "We can't wait." Kyoto, which has not been ratified by the United States, expires in 2012 and as yet there is nothing on the table to replace it. The UN hopes the meeting in Bali will produce a negotiating mandate that will lead in two years to a new global emissions cutting deal. A draft proposal on Saturday said all nations must do more to fight climate change and rich countries must make deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions to avoid the worst impacts. The four-page draft was written by delegates from Indonesia, Australia and South Africa as an unofficial guide for delegates from 190 nations at the Dec. 3-14 Bali talks.

The alliance, the first at federal level between the ideologically disparate Greens, the libertarian Free Democrats, orFDP and Scholz's centre-left SPD, ends 16 years of Merkel-led conservative governments. The three parties enjoy a majority in the lower house of parliament and hope the government will be sworn in early next month after they ratify the 177-page coalition pact. Named after the parties' respective colours, the traffic lightalliance will usher in a new era of relations with Europe, and plans to speed up digitalisation of the continent's biggest economy while maintaining fiscal discipline. At a news conference in Berlin, flanked by the FDP and Greens leaders, Scholz recalled that when the first traffic light was erected at the city's Potsdamer Platz in 1924, many questioned whether it could work. "Today, the traffic light is indispensable when it comes to regulating things clearly and providing the right orientation and ensuring that everyone moves forward safely and smoothly, " he said. "My ambition as chancellor is that this traffic light alliance will play a similarly groundbreaking role for Germany." Merkel leaves big shoes to fill. She has navigated Germany and Europe through multiple crises and been a champion of liberal democracy in the face of rising authoritarianism worldwide. Her critics say she has managed rather than solved problems and leaves her successor tough decisions on many fronts. PACKED AGENDA The incoming government faces immediate challenges, with Europe grappling with the fallout from Brexit, a crisis on the European Union's border with Belarus and surging COVID-19 cases. Scholz, 63, an experienced politician who was finance minister in the outgoing "grand coalition" of the SPD and conservatives, said that fighting the COVID-19 pandemic would be his top priority. But his coalition also has ambitious medium- and long-term plans, including a faster expansion of renewables, an accelerated exit from polluting coal and a hike in the minimum wage, according to its pact. Underscoring its socially liberal bent, the coalition also agreed to allow multiple citizenship, increase regular immigration, reduce the voting age to 16 and make Germany the first European country to legalise the sale of cannabis for recreational use. Greens co-leader Annalena Baerbock, 40, is expected to become Germany's first female foreign minister and Scholz has said he wants a gender-equal government. While Germany's electoral campaign was largely focused on domestic issues, the parties signalled in the coalition pact an openness to reform the bloc's fiscal rules, also known as the Stability and Growth Pact. They also agreed Germany would remain part of NATO's nuclear sharing agreement, a move that will prevent a rift in the Western military alliance at a time of rising tensions with Russia. The incoming coalition will have to balance the Greens' calls for a tougher line on Russia and China on human rights with Scholz's likely preference to avoid confrontation over Taiwan and Ukraine. FDP leader Christian Lindner, 42, is set to take over at the finance ministry and Greens co-leader Robert Habeck, 52, is widely expected to take on a newly expanded economy and climate change ministry. AUF WIEDERSEHEN, ANGELA Presiding over what could be her final cabinet meeting, Merkel bade her colleagues farewell earlier in the day, and Scholz presented the EU's longest-serving leader with a tree to plant in her garden. Merkel, who did not seek re-election after four terms as chancellor, retains a high personal popularity rating but her conservative party is in disarray. It faces a leadership contest after a gaffe-prone campaign by its candidate for chancellor saw it record its lowest ever vote in a federal election. Germany's incoming leader is seen as a competent rather than a charismatic politician who, like Merkel, has moderate views and is adept at dialogue. During the campaign Scholz positioned himself as Merkel's natural successor, even imitating her trademark pose. The challenge will be to build and maintain a consensus between the Greens and SPD, widely seen as natural centre-left partners, and the fiscally hawkish FDP which has historically been closer to Germany's conservatives. The speed with which the parties struck the coalition deal was taken by some market watchers as a good early sign. "If this professional approach continues once the government is actually in office, the country could finally get the reforms and investments it really needs," said Carsten Brzeski, chief economist at ING Germany.

India is one of the last major economies still to submit its plans to tackle global warming ahead of a United Nations summit in December where more than 190 countries will seek a deal to halt a damaging rise in temperatures.Despite its low per-capita emissions, India is already the world's third-largest carbon emitter. Its huge population of 1.2 billion, a fast-growing economy and rising use of coal make its role crucial if the UN summit is to succeed.Prakash Javadekar said India was in the final stages of preparing its submissions to the UN, and that he was confident a global deal could be reached at the summit in Paris.But, he added, the rich world had so far failed to make sufficient money and cutting-edge technology available to help poorer countries that were not to blame for global warming."Historical responsibility is a fact. It cannot be wished away. We are just 2.4 percent of the world's historical emissions," he told reporters in New Delhi.Unlike other large emitters like the United States and China, India has said it will not commit to a "peak year" for its own emissions, arguing that doing so would hamper its drive to beat poverty through economic growth.

His wife, Sherry, said the cause was brain cancer. Out in the wild, knowing how to treat a venomous snakebite or a gangrenous infection can mean the difference between life and death. In the 1970s, however, the specialised field of health care known as wilderness medicine was still in its infancy. Then Auerbach showed up. A medical student at Duke University at the time, he went to work in 1975 with the Indian Health Service on a Native American reservation in Montana, and the experience was revelatory. “We saw all kinds of cases that I would have never seen at Duke or frankly anywhere else except on the reservation,” Auerbach said in a recent interview given to Stanford University, where he worked for many years. “Snakebites. Drowning. Lightning strike.” “And I just thoroughly enjoyed it,” he continued. “Taking care of people with very limited resources.” Back at Duke, he tried to learn more about outdoor medicine, but he struggled to find resource material. “I kept going back to literature to read, but there was no literature,” he said. “If I wanted to read about snakebites, I was all over the place. If I wanted to read about heat illness, I was all over the place. So I thought, ‘Huh, maybe I’ll do a book on wilderness medicine.’” Auerbach started researching material for the book in 1978, when he began his medical residency at UCLA, finding the time to do so despite gruelling 12-hour hospital shifts. He collected information about how to treat burn wounds, hypothermia, frostbite and lighting injuries. He interviewed hikers, skiers and divers. And he assigned chapters to doctors who were passionate about the outdoors. The resulting book, “Management of Wilderness and Environmental Emergencies,” which he edited with a colleague, Edward Geehr, was published in 1983 and is widely considered the definitive textbook in the field, with sections such as “Protection From Blood-Feeding Arthropods” and “Aerospace Medicine: The Vertical Frontier.” Updated by Auerbach over 30 years, it is in its seventh edition and now titled “Auerbach’s Wilderness Medicine.” “Paul literally conceived of this subspecialty of medicine,” said Dr Andra Blomkalns, chair of emergency medicine at Stanford. “At the time, there wasn’t a recognition that things happen when you’re out doing things. He developed this notion of ‘Things happen to people all the time.’ Which is now a big part of our identity in emergency medicine.” In the early 1980s, hearing from doctors and nurses with similar interests in outdoor medicine, Auerbach founded the Wilderness Medical Society with Geehr and Dr Ken Kizer. The group is now the largest-membership organisation in its field and has hosted events such as a trek to a Mount Everest base camp and a trip to a station in the Utah desert that simulates life on Mars. Auerbach joined Stanford as chief of its emergency medicine division in 1991. He left the university four years later to work in the private health care sector before returning to the university in 2005 and remaining there until his retirement this year. He became an elder statesman in his field. He spoke at conferences around the world, in one case describing how the erectile-dysfunction pill Viagra can be used to treat high-altitude pulmonary edema because it reduces artery pressure. At Stanford, Auerbach encouraged his students, foremost, to respect the outdoors. “When house staff and residents and young doctors say, ‘How do I learn wilderness medicine?’ My very first answer to them always is, ‘Learn the wilderness first,'” he said in the Stanford interview. “Because you can’t help anybody if you’re just scrambling to keep yourself alive.” In 2010, when an earthquake devastated Haiti, Auerbach travelled to the country with a team of emergency medical workers, and despite his years of experience, he found the trip harrowing. A few years later, when an earthquake hit Nepal, he went there to assist with emergency care and later helped establish a hospital there. Auerbach said it was imperative never to get too comfortable when dealing with the whims of nature. “You have to be afraid when you go into work,” he said. “You have to stay humble.” Paul Stuart Auerbach was born Jan 4, 1951, in Plainfield, New Jersey. His father, Victor, was a patents manager for Union Carbide. His mother, Leona (Fishkin) Auerbach, was a teacher. Paul was on his high school wrestling team and grew up spending summers on the Jersey Shore. He graduated from Duke in 1973 with a bachelor’s degree in religion and then enrolled in Duke’s medical school. He met Sherry Steindorf at UCLA, and they were married in 1982. (In the 1980s, he worked part time as a sportswear model.) Auerbach studied at Stanford’s business school shortly before joining the university’s medical faculty in 1991. In addition to his wife, he is survived by two sons, Brian and Daniel; a daughter, Lauren Auerbach Dixon; his mother; a brother, Burt; and a sister, Jan Sherman. As he grew older, Auerbach became increasingly devoted to expanding the field of wilderness medicine to account for the uncertainties of a new world. In revising his textbook, he added sections about handling environmental disasters, and, with Jay Lemery, he wrote “Enviromedics: The Impact of Climate Change on Human Health” (2017). Last year, shortly before he received his cancer diagnosis, the coronavirus pandemic began to take hold, and Auerbach decided to act. “The minute it all first happened, he started working on disaster response,” his wife said. “Hospitals were running out of [personal protective equipment]. He was calling this person and that person to learn as much as he could. He wanted to find out how to design better masks and better ventilators. He never stopped.” © 2021 The New York Times Company

A year and a half ago, the reservoir in their town, Euchareena, went dry, leaving the family and some other residents without running water. “I didn’t think I’d be in this position, trying to fight for water for basic human needs in Australia,” Magick Dennis said. As a crippling drought and mismanagement have left more than a dozen Australian towns and villages without a reliable source of water, the country is beginning to confront a question that strikes at its very identity: Is life in Australia’s vast interior compatible with the age of climate change? In the outback — a landscape central to Australian lore, far removed in distance and spirit from the coastal metropolises — rivers and lakes are disappearing, amplifying fears that wide swaths of rural territory may eventually have to be abandoned. A zoo keeper sprays a hippopotamus with water at the zoo in the town of Dubbo in New South Wales, Australia, Oct 10, 2019. At the zoo, one of the largest in Australia, water is recycled and some garden beds have been replaced with synthetic turf. The New York Times Euchareena and Australian towns like it are far from alone. One-quarter of humanity lives in countries that are using almost all the water they have, according to data published by the World Resources Institute in August. Shortages have plagued places from California to Cape Town, South Africa, which narrowly escaped running out of water last year. A zoo keeper sprays a hippopotamus with water at the zoo in the town of Dubbo in New South Wales, Australia, Oct 10, 2019. At the zoo, one of the largest in Australia, water is recycled and some garden beds have been replaced with synthetic turf. The New York Times But Australia, the most arid inhabited continent, is unique among developed nations in its vulnerability to the effects of climate change, scientists said. With the country’s driest spring on record just concluded and another hot, parched summer likely to be ahead, the challenge of keeping Australia hydrated is only becoming more urgent. “People think about climate change as this very faraway prospect, but in fact, it’s here now,” said Joelle Gergis, a senior lecturer in climate science at the Australian National University in Canberra and an author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “We’re starting to glimpse what the future is going to be like,” Gergis added. “It’s possible that parts of Australia will become uninhabitable.” Australia’s cities — which rely on expansive dams and, increasingly, plants that transform seawater into drinking water — may be able to sustain themselves even in the driest conditions, policy experts said. A dust storm near Trangie in New South Wales, Australia, Oct 8, 2019. The New York Times However, “as soon as you go inland and you don’t have the ocean, we’re not going to be fine, and I don’t think anyone knows what the solution is,” said Ian Wright, a senior lecturer in environmental science at Western Sydney University, who worked with Sydney’s water utility for more than a decade. A dust storm near Trangie in New South Wales, Australia, Oct 8, 2019. The New York Times “It is so dire right now, I’d say it’s an absolute crisis,” Wright added. “It’s beyond desperate.” Farming families and indigenous communities, which in their different ways have carefully managed the land’s scarce resources, may have to relocate. Australia’s tourism industry, which has always heavily promoted the outback as a destination, could also suffer. And with fire season off to a ferocious start, towns like Euchareena live in fear that they might not be able to stop any blazes that ignite. We’re a “tinderbox waiting to go up,” Magick Dennis, 40, said as she waited on her porch for a water truck to reach the village, a dusty strip of homes in a region of fewer than 200 residents that is a four-hour drive from Sydney. Atop a hill sits a 20,000-gallon tank, the only resource residents have to fight a fire. It hasn’t always been like this in Euchareena. Magick Dennis and her children used to enjoy swimming at the village dam in the summer. Now, though, the creek bed is littered with dead reeds and mussel shells; the surrounding eucalyptus trees are exposed at the roots. “It’s beyond going, ‘Oh, it’s going to rain soon and it will get better,’” said Magick Dennis, who has considered moving. “The ecosystem is really damaged.” In rural Australia, that damage often results from a complex interplay of mismanagement, drought and climate change. Antique farming relics, once submerged under water, at the Burrendong Dam reservoir in New South Wales, the state hit hardest by a drought that began in 2017, in Australia, Oct 6, 2019. In Australia’s vast interior, rivers and lakes are disappearing. The New York Times The conservative Australian government has approved water-intensive mining projects and made contentious deals with agribusiness — agreements that are often blamed for the degradation of the country’s waterways, which sustain dozens of communities and hundreds of native plant and animal species. Antique farming relics, once submerged under water, at the Burrendong Dam reservoir in New South Wales, the state hit hardest by a drought that began in 2017, in Australia, Oct 6, 2019. In Australia’s vast interior, rivers and lakes are disappearing. The New York Times A lack of investment has also put the country behind nations like the United States and China in its ability to model future climate and water scenarios, said Andy Pitman, director of the ARC Center of Excellence for Climate Extremes in Sydney. At the same time, Australia’s dry and variable climate is becoming even drier and more unpredictable. Parts of the country are experiencing less rain, and the floods that usually fill rivers, lakes and dams are decreasing, scientists said. This is happening as the country’s growing population puts increasing demands on its water. “That’s not a very good set of circumstances to find yourself in,” Pitman said. Across New South Wales, the state where the drought that began in 2017 has hit hardest, plots of abandoned, parched land stretch for miles. The occasional green pasture is a sign of a farmer battling the elements — and probably wealthy enough to irrigate. “If the drought went on for another four years, that would be Armageddon for Australia,” said James Hamilton, who farms land about 270 miles inland from Sydney. He, like many others, has not planted any crops this year and plans to sell off his remaining livestock. The reservoir on Hamilton’s 6,000-acre property is empty, and the land where knee-high wheat should be flourishing this time of year is desiccated. Farmers are used to harsh conditions, but Hamilton worries that businesses in small towns are less likely to bounce back from the drought, given the cascading economic effects. “Nothing is sustainable without water,” he said. The largest nearby town, Dubbo, which has a population of about 40,000, relies on water from the Macquarie River, which could stop flowing by May, according to the local council. The Burrendong Dam reservoir, which feeds the river, is currently at about 3% of its capacity. Already, the town — where temperatures can reach 115 degrees in the summer — has stopped watering some public spaces, and each resident is restricted to 280 liters of water per day, about 74 gallons. (Residents pushed back against tighter limits that included turning off evaporate air-conditioning between midnight and 7 a.m.) Fleur Magick Dennis and her son, James, carry drinking water home from the town hall in Euchareena, New South Wales, Australia, Oct 10, 2019. The New York Times The local zoo, one of the largest in Australia, is recycling water and has replaced some garden beds with synthetic turf. The fire station is exploring alternative means to smother blazes, like sand and foam. Fleur Magick Dennis and her son, James, carry drinking water home from the town hall in Euchareena, New South Wales, Australia, Oct 10, 2019. The New York Times If the river runs dry, Dubbo would have to rely on its wells, which currently supply just a portion of its water. But in some parts of Australia, low-quality groundwater has caused problems. In towns north of Dubbo, residents have reported foul-smelling, metallic-tasting water as well as medical problems like high blood pressure and skin conditions. Some said they had received no warning that the water might be unsafe to drink. “At the worst, it tastes like you bit your cheek and it was bleeding,” said Fleur Thompson, a resident of Bourke, a town in the state’s northwest. In Australia’s cities, the picture is somewhat less bleak, but even there, water supplies are running short. The reservoir at Sydney’s dam is less than half-full, and the city has employed “water officers” to educate citizens and enforce restrictions. The government of Victoria has ruled out building more dams to serve rural areas and the city of Melbourne because river flow in that state is expected to drop by half by 2065. Possible solutions include recycling water and relying on desalination plants, which are often criticised for their high energy use and the potential environmental harm of ejecting brine back into the ocean. These methods are crucial, though, if Australia is to remain livable under dire climate change scenarios, policy experts said. “We can’t let ourselves off the hook; no matter what the impact of climate change, we need to plan,” said Stuart White, director of the Institute for Sustainable Futures at the University of Technology in Sydney. In early November, rain finally fell across parts of New South Wales, providing some relief and hope as people revelled in the puddles. But the drought is far from over, and the question of whether Australia will learn and adapt will linger on. © 2019 New York Times News

TOKYO, Fri Jan 23,(bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Japan launched a satellite on Friday to monitor greenhouse gases along with seven smaller satellites in a mission that could boost business for the country's cash-hungry space programme. The H-2A rocket, carrying the biggest number of satellites ever for a Japanese rocket, took off from the tiny island of Tanegashima 1,000 km (620 miles) south of Tokyo, after a delay of two days because of poor weather. The main satellite will enable scientists to calculate the density of carbon dioxide and methane from 56,000 locations on the Earth's surface, which Japanese officials hope will contribute to global efforts to tackle climate change. The mission is also a test for Japan as it sets its sights on the satellite-launch business in the face of competition from Europe, the United States and Russia, as well as newer entrants such as China and India.

Scientists studying remote Arctic seas north of Siberia have found high levels of the powerful greenhouse gas methane, in some places bubbling up from the seabed. But is it new (extremely alarming as a possible sign of climate change), impossible to know how long it's been going on (still worrying), or might it have been happening for a long time (less alarming)? Even the scientists involved seem unsure. The University of Alaska, where some of the scientists are based, put out two embargoed press releases. The original said the seabed is "starting to leak" (very alarming) The second one, which replaced the first about a day before the embargo was lifted, changed the second paragraph to drop the word "starting" and merely say the seabed "is leaking" (worrying). The article in the journal Science also makes clear that you can't tell whether it's new or not – more monitoring is urgently needed. In the worst case, the leaks are recent and caused by global warming — a thaw of the seabed permafrost linked to rising sea temperatures that could go on to release vast buried stores of the heat-trapping gas that would further stoke global warming. In the best case, it may have been going on for thousands of years in an inaccessible area where no one has taken measurements before. Either way, it's worrying because a projected rise in temperatures could further erode the permafrost that had previously been considered an impermeable cap and so lead to more releases of methane.

China went on the global warming offensive on Monday, unveiling a climate change action plan while stressing it will not sacrifice economic ambitions to international demands to cut greenhouse gas pollution. The official launching the plan said emissions caps that dented growth in poor nations would do more damage than climate change itself -- despite the storms, droughts and rising sea levels that global warming threatens to generate. "The ramifications of limiting the development of developing countries would be even more serious than those from climate change," said Ma Kai, director of the National Development and Reform Commission, which steers climate change policy. "China will not commit to any quantified emissions reduction targets, but that does not mean we will not assume responsibilities in responding to climate change," he told reporters. China's first national plan on climate change vows to combat global warming through energy saving, agricultural adaptation and forest planting. But the document will also serve as a shield for tough international talks ahead. Beijing faces rising calls to sign up to quotas for taming greenhouse gas emissions trapping more heat in the atmosphere. The plan appeared two days before President Hu Jintao attends a meeting of Group of Eight leaders in Germany which will focus on global warming. "This is more of a mobilisation rally to draw the battle line as the G8 approaches. Beijing wants to make sure that China is not the target of world opinion on global warming issues," said Wenran Jiang, an energy expert at the University of Alberta. The plan says wealthy powers produced most of the gases currently heating the globe and still have far higher per capita emissions than China, so they should fund clean development rather than forcing poor countries to accept emission limits. Rich countries had shifted manufacturing to poor nations like China and then blamed them for rising pollution, while dragging their feet over promises to share clean technology, he said. "We feel that there's been lots of thunder but little rain, lots of talk but little action," he told the news conference when asked if China was satisfied with technology transfers. Ma said that in 2004 his nation's average per capita emissions were about one fifth of US levels for the same year. Contention over greenhouse gases is set to intensify as negotiations open on extending a UN treaty on global warming beyond 2012, when the 1997 Kyoto Protocol's first phase ends. China on Monday welcomed US President George Bush's recent proposals on global warming as a "positive change", but joined several European leaders in calling for a single global approach. Bush aims to convene 15 top polluting nations, including China, to develop long-term goals to combat global warming. Some critics fear Bush's proposal for separate talks could rival UN efforts. Ma said they should be a "helpful complement, not a substitute". But he disputed an EU target of limiting temperature rises to 2 degrees Celsius, calling for further studies on the social and economic impacts of the target. "I think that as yet there is no scientific basis for that," Ma said. The national plan spells out the threats China sees from global warming in coming decades -- intensified droughts and floods, rising sea levels, melting glaciers, and declines in grain yields unless counter steps are taken. It promises to support clean transport, wind and solar power, recycling in industry, "stress-resistant" crops, and shore walls to withstand rising seas. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao will head a "national leading group" to orchestrate climate change policy, the plan said. The creation of the group "indicates increased seriousness about the climate change issue", said Gorild Heggelund, who analyses Chinese global warming policy at the Fridjof Nansen Institute in Norway. Beijing now had in place broad goals to navigate climate politics in years ahead, said Zou Ji of the People's University of China, who advised the government on the plan. He said resistance to emissions quotas would not shift. "But that doesn't mean there's not room for cooperation or negotiation," he added. "It does mean that cooperation has to be on the basis that economic development has to continue."

The meeting in downtown Omaha, Nebraska was Berkshire's first welcoming shareholders since 2019, before COVID-19 derailed America's largest corporate gathering for two years. It allowed shareholders to ask five hours of questions directly to Buffett and Vice Chairman Charlie Munger, and some questions to Vice Chairmen Greg Abel, who would become chief executive if Buffett could not serve, and Ajit Jain. Buffett said Berkshire, long faulted for holding too much cash, boosted its combined stakes in oil company Chevron Corp and "Call of Duty" game maker Activision Blizzard Inc nearly six-fold to more than $31 billion. Berkshire also said first-quarter operating profit was little changed at $7.04 billion, as many of its dozens of businesses withstood supply chain disruptions caused by COVID-19 variants, the Ukraine invasion and rising costs from inflation. Buffett, 91, said it "really feels good" to address shareholders in person, after holding the last two meetings without them. Attendees included JPMorgan Chase & Co Chief Executive Jamie Dimon and the actor Bill Murray. 'I THINK WE'RE SANE Buffett had in his annual shareholder letter in February bemoaned the lack of investment opportunities. That prompted a shareholder to ask what changed in March, when Berkshire bought 14.6% of Occidental Petroleum Corp and agreed to buy insurer Alleghany Corp for $11.6 billion. Buffett said it was simple: he turned to Occidental after reading an analyst report, and to Alleghany after its chief executive, who once led Berkshire's General Re business, wrote to him. "Markets do crazy things, and occasionally Berkshire gets a chance to do something," he said. "It's not because we're smart.... I think we're sane." Berkshire spent $51 billion on equities in the quarter, and its cash stake sank more than $40 billion to $106 billion. But the conglomerate has many cash-generating resources, including its insurance operations, and Buffett assured that reserves won't run dry. "We will always have a lot of cash," he said. "It's like oxygen, it's there all the time but if it disappears for a few minutes, it's all over." 'FLIPPING A COIN' Buffett and Jain stumbled for answers when asked about whether the Ukraine conflict could degenerate into nuclear war. Jain, who has drawn Buffett's praise for decades, said he had a "lack of ability" to estimate Berkshire's insurance exposure. Buffett added that there was a "very, very, very low" risk of a nuclear attack, though the world had "come close" during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. "The world is flipping a coin every day," Buffett said. "Berkshire does not have an answer." Buffett also picked on a favoured target in saying stock markets sometimes resembled a casino or gambling partner. "That existed to an extraordinary degree in the last couple of years, encouraged by Wall Street," he said. For his part, Munger, 98, echoed Nancy Reagan in criticizing bitcoin, saying that if an advisor suggested you put your retirement account there, "just say no." Munger also criticised trading firm Robinhood Markets Inc. He and Buffett munched their familiar candies from See's, which Berkshire owns, and drank soda from Coca-Cola, a big Berkshire investment, at the meeting. Abel defended Berkshire's BNSF railroad, saying there was "more to be done" to improve operations and customer service, and compete against rival Union Pacific Corp. Buffett also said Berkshire is designed to assure shareholders that the company and its business culture will survive his and Munger's departures. "Berkshire is built forever," he said. EARLY WAKE-UPS Shareholders also rejected proposals requiring Berkshire to disclose more about how its businesses promote diversity and address climate risks, and install an independent chairman to replace Buffett in that role. Read full story Buffett has run Berkshire since 1965, and Mario Gabelli, chairman of Gamco Advisors and a prominent Berkshire investor, opposed ending his chairmanship. "It's not inappropriate for companies to look at separating the chair and CEO," he said. "It doesn't make sense in the case of Berkshire Hathaway because this guy has done a fantastic job for 50 years. We like the idea, but not here." Thousands of people massed outside the downtown arena housing the meeting before doors opened at 7 am. Berkshire had projected lower attendance than in 2019, and about 10% to 15% of seats in the normally-full arena were empty. As at other Berkshire-sponsored events this weekend, nearly all attendees did not wear masks, though all needed proof of COVID-19 vaccination. CNBC.com webcast the meeting. "I bought a chair from Walmart so I could sit down," said Tom Spain, founder of Henry Spain Investment Services in Market Harborough, England, who arrived at 3:15 a.m. for his third meeting. "Everyone has been using it. Next year I might bring a massive container of coffee and give it out." Lauritz Fenselau, a 23-year-old owner of a software startup from Frankfurt, Germany, showed up at 4 a.m. for his first meeting. "It's like a pilgrimage," he said. Also sleep-deprived was Andres Avila, who arrived in Omaha from Boston just five hours before getting in line at 4:45 am, carrying an umbrella to fend off the rain. "I have a bunch of my idols here," he said.

WASHINGTON, Fri Jul 10, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - US President Barack Obama suffered a double-barreled setback in Congress on Thursday when members of his own party moved to apply the brakes on his top legislative priorities, healthcare and climate change. Obama has demanded urgent and simultaneous attention to overhauling healthcare and addressing climate change, saying both were necessary to boost the US economy, which is in a deep recession. He has demanded that Congress send him a bill by October to cut healthcare costs and provide medical coverage to most of the 46 million uninsured Americans. The president wants climate change legislation before year's end. While Obama was in Italy on Thursday encouraging world leaders to intensify the fight against global warming, legislation to cut US emissions of greenhouse gases suffered a delay in the Senate. The leading Senate committee responsible for developing the climate change legislation put off for at least a month work on a bill, leaving less time for Congress to fulfill Obama's desire to enact a law this year. "We'll do it as soon as we get back" in September from a month-long break, Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Barbara Boxer, a Democrat, announced. Earlier this week, Boxer said her committee had planned to complete work on a bill by early August. A White House spokesman, who asked not to be identified, said: "The administration is continuing to work with the Senate to pass comprehensive energy legislation and believes it's on track." He declined to discuss timetables. The House of Representatives last month narrowly passed its version of a bill to cut carbon dioxide emissions from 2005 levels by 17 percent by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050. The Senate delay came as senators continued to bicker over how to reduce industrial emissions of carbon dioxide without putting US businesses and consumers at a disadvantage. Congress, which is controlled by Obama's Democrats, also was preoccupied with healthcare reform as lawmakers in both chambers worked on draft proposals to revamp the bureaucratic US healthcare system. Supporters of the healthcare overhaul are searching for ways to bring down the plan's price tag of at least $1 trillion and pay for it without raising taxes on the middle class and poor. Some of the US Senate's main players on climate change also are central to the healthcare reform debate in Congress. The House of Representatives' healthcare plan faced a possible delay after a group of fiscally conservative Democrats let it be known that they were not happy with the cost and direction of the draft. The so-called Blue Dog Democrats put their concerns in a letter released after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi reaffirmed that she intends to win House passage by Congress's August recess of a comprehensive healthcare bill. In the letter to Pelosi and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, the Blue Dog faction said that the House should "pare back some of the cost-drivers to produce a bill that we can afford." "Paying for health care reform must start with finding savings within the current delivery system and maximizing the value of our health care dollar before we ask the public to pay more," the letter said. The group complained that the House bill failed to reform payments to doctors, hospitals and insurers and lacked provisions to shield small businesses from excessive costs. With rapidly dwindling legislative time until the House and Senate take their August break, the conservative Democrats also insisted there must be sufficient time to review any legislation and discuss it before a floor vote. Separately on Thursday, Democratic senators crafting their version of a healthcare reform bill said they were trying to wring billions of dollars more in savings out of proposals to reform Medicare payments to doctors, hospitals and insurers.

The additional forms, customs charges and health safety checks needed for goods to cross Britain’s border are particularly arduous for businesses moving small quantities. That includes specialist food importers buying from small suppliers across the European continent who have helped make London one of the world’s best cities for dining. It has “minimised our ability to discover and import unusual products,” said Yannos Hadjiioannou, the owner of Maltby & Greek, which for the past decade has imported food and wine from Greece and its islands, prising itself on products rarely found in Britain. On Saturdays, under the arches, customers can peruse goat-milk butter; Mastelo cheese, a kind of halloumi made from cow’s milk from the island of Chios; bunches of mountain tea; and pale Gigantes beans from Feneos, in the northern Peloponnese. Getting each of those items here became more complicated just over two weeks ago. After a yearlong delay, on Jan. 1, Britain stepped up its enforcement of customs requirements for goods coming from the European Union, which in 2020 accounted for half of all imports into the country. Now, the goods must be accompanied by customs declarations. (Last year, British importers could delay reporting by about six months.) And businesses importing animal and plant products — most food, for example — must notify the government of shipments in advance. At the border, the introduction of the new rules has gone relatively smoothly. DFDS, a Danish logistics company that runs ferry services to Britain, said some customers had incorrectly filled out the paperwork, and some food shipments were stopped. On one day, shipments from the Netherlands had to be halted to deal with a backlog from the previous day. “Everybody involved tried to learn from what happened a year ago,” said Torben Carlsen, the chief executive of DFDS. Last year, the European Union introduced customs rules as soon as Brexit went into effect and immediately the problems piled up: deliveries were delayed; trucking companies stopped serving Ireland; and food spoiled in ports. It took more than a month before most of the problems were resolved. Britain couldn’t afford the same import issues this year. About a quarter of the country’s food is imported from the European Union, according to data from 2019, a figure that jumps substantially in winter for fresh fruit and vegetables. But there are challenges — unseen, away from the border. Some British businesses are taking on the export costs of their European suppliers to avoid losing them. Others are just importing less, reducing the choices for customers. Still others are restricting purchases to bulk orders and forgoing trying new products. The decline was noticeable even before the latest import rules began. In the first nine months of 2021, food and drink imports fell by about 11% from 2019, according to the Food and Drink Federation. After Britain left the EU’s customs union at the start of 2021, Hadjiioannou kept business going as normal, he said. Within six months, however, the additional customs costs and associated price increases became prohibitive. He stopped getting weekly deliveries of anthotyro, a soft fresh sheep’s milk cheese from Crete, and traditionally strained sheep or goat yoghurt, leaving the popular products regularly out of stock. Sausages from Crete now come frozen instead of fresh, so they can be sent in larger, less frequent deliveries. “Most of the perishable products have suffered, particularly the ones which were small volume but important for a lot of the restaurateurs and delis,” Hadjiioannou said. The biggest disruption from Brexit has been the loss of flexibility, he added. Maltby & Greek’s warehouse is at Spa Terminus, a long strip of railway arches housing food producers, wholesalers and wine importers. At this time of year, fresh produce at its markets includes Sicilian citrus, Italian leafy greens and French root vegetables. At the opposite end to Maltby & Greek, Rachel Sills sells cheese made in Switzerland and the Netherlands. While her experience exporting from Switzerland softened the blow of Brexit’s trade rules, it hasn’t insulated her from the extra cost. She buys cheese from four small producers in the Netherlands — so small that not all of them have an email address. Now each one is required to have an Economic Operator’s Registration and Identification number, as well as customs agents to do export and tax paperwork, and they must complete more detailed invoices, which include tariff codes. Sills said she had taken on the extra costs for export clearances for the cheesemakers. Recently she was able to combine the orders to pay only 65 euros ($74.50) for each invoice, on top of her own import fees. “So they, to this stage, haven’t started paying for the real costs of the export charges,” she said. “I have.” “It’s not that the paperwork or the cost is actually that onerous,” Sills said. But for companies with lots of suppliers, “when you add up the cost of each one, then it becomes insane,” she said, especially if buying small volumes. And that is so far what Brexit has boiled down to for these businesses: extra costs. “We are past the point of having wild shortages,” said David Henig, a trade policy expert based in London. The customs systems work, but the damage will be more like a “slow boiling frog.” The extra costs will eat away at Britain’s economy, with independent forecasts indicating a long-run shortfall of about 4% of gross domestic product. For customers, the overall effect is likely to be less choice, Henig added. It also continues to diminish the incentives for companies to invest in Britain. “We are less U.K.-centric than we were a couple of years ago,” said Franco Fubini, the founder of Natoora, which began in London in 2004 and now supplies fresh produce from hundreds of small farms in Europe and North America to about 1,600 restaurants globally and shops including Selfridges and Whole Foods, with outposts in the United States. Natoora reorganised its internal processes so that the British arm of the company no longer imports anything directly from the farms in Italy, France, Spain and Greece. Instead more employees were hired in Paris and Milan so the produce could be bought by the hubs in the continent and then sold to the London office. This consolidation means there is only one invoice, saving money on trucks and customs. Even though Natoora found a workaround, Fubini said Brexit had dented Britain’s international reputation, making him reconsider his company’s future. “For the first time in 15 or 16 years, I really started to question how much we should continue to invest in the U.K,” he said. When Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced the new trade deal with the European Union on Christmas Eve 2020, he said the agreement “if anything, should allow our companies and our exporters to do even more business with our European friends.” In reality, it has made it harder, not easier. Brexit might free Britain from Brussels bureaucracy but it has tied businesses up in other red tape. While the promises of Brexit were varied — from opening up new markets and deregulation — the slowness in realising the benefits has frustrated even its supporters. The other fresh produce market at Spa Terminus, Puntarelle & Co, is run by Elena Deminska, who said Brexit could be a great opportunity for British farmers to produce some of the food that is mostly imported from the European Union. The country has the climate for bitter winter lettuce or broccoli raab or, “with a little bit of effort,” apricots, Deminska said. Instead she complains that the farmers are “not flexible.” About four years ago, with great foresight, Deminska outsourced her customs work to an external company. Still she despairs at the Brexit-induced paperwork. “It’s just not helpful,” she said. “There is already enough paperwork.” For all of these businesses there are more hurdles ahead. Beginning in July, food imports will need to be accompanied by health certificates signed off by inspectors in the European Union, and could be picked for spot checks at the border. Those changes “are just going to add complexity, add cost,” Fubini said. “It is disruptive.” ©2022 The New York Times Company

Clarissa Poon was one of an estimated 50 million people who contracted mosquito-borne dengue fever last year. She spent an agonising week on a drip in a Bangkok hospital as she battled the potentially deadly disease. "There was not a single moment when I wasn't aching everywhere, dizzy and nauseous. I was so weak I couldn't even stand," said Poon, who caught the illness during a family holiday at a beach resort in Thailand. "My kids were very worried because the mother of one of their friends died," she added. From Africa to Asia to Latin America, around 2.5 billion people live in areas that are at risk of dengue fever, a viral disease spread by the Aedes aegypti mosquito. There is no vaccine or drugs to treat the illness which killed an estimated 22,000 people last year, most of them children. Due to international travel and climate change, the Aedes aegypti mosquito's habitat is spreading. In January, health officials warned that the disease was poised to move across the United States. It has been spreading aggressively in Latin America and the Caribbean, reaching epidemic levels last year. Dengue is endemic in Southeast Asia where a tropical climate and monsoon rains provide ideal conditions. Strategies developed in places such as Singapore might provide vital information for other countries seeking to combat the virus and the mosquitoes that spread it. Family doctors in Singapore look out for patients with suspicious symptoms. When cases are confirmed, researchers try to nail down the specific dengue virus subtype, of which there are four, and the location of the outbreak. "You need to monitor what (subtype) is going around ... You want to limit the damage, the fatalities," the World Health Organisation's advisor in Asia, John Ehrenberg, told Reuters. While dengue and malaria share geographical patterns, dengue is more dangerous because its mosquito carriers thrive indoors. Mosquitoes that carry malaria are rarely found in urban areas. Dengue fever is endemic in more than 100 countries in Africa, the Americas, eastern Mediterranean, Southeast Asia and western Pacific. Of the 50 million people who contract the disease every year, about one percent get potentially deadly severe dengue haemorrhagic fever (DHF), which requires hospitalisation. There is no cure or vaccination for dengue fever. Sufferers such as Poon, face an increased likelihood of developing DHF if they contract the disease again, which is not uncommon for those living in the tropics where the mosquito carriers flourish. NO STOPPING IT? International travel has made the spread of dengue inevitable, experts say. "There is always a risk for the borders ... In central America, you have a lot of people moving up north," Ehrenberg said. "There is a risk of people moving in with dengue." Ehrenberg says there is little to stop dengue from spreading. He compares it to West Nile virus which appeared in New York in 1999 and then spread across the United States, Canada and Mexico. West Nile killed 98 people in the United States last year. "As you can see with West Nile virus, there is hardly anything you can do to control its spread in the U.S. It's all over the place now. There's always the risk of introducing, when the climatic conditions are right," Ehrenberg said. Both dengue and West Nile are spread by mosquitoes. "It's a neglected disease because no one pays attention in between outbreaks, except in places like Singapore, where there is very good surveillance," Ehrenberg said. In Singapore, health workers aggressively control breeding sites by regularly spraying pesticides in parks and gardens. Government inspectors fine people for allowing water to build up in flower pots which is a favourite breeding site. Singapore reported 14,000 dengue cases in 2005, but that fell to 3,597 cases in the first half of 2007, according to the WHO. With 42,456 cases in 2006 and 45,893 in 2005, Thailand figures near the top of the dengue list. Fanned out across the country are 500,000 volunteers who educate villagers on mosquito control, chiefly by removing stagnant pools of water. Kitti Pramathphol, head of Thailand's dengue control, said more inspections would be made to remove potential breeding sites before the rainy season in June and July, when the disease peaks. "Its eggs can hide in crevices and survive for a year without water in tropical climates and in normal temperatures. Once there is rain or water, they will hatch into larvae," he said. Compared to its cousin, the Culex mosquito, the Aedes aegypti is considered a weaker species. "It is slender and has thin wings. Culex likes to breed in drain water, but Aedes will die in such dirty water. It likes rain water, relatively clean water," Pramathpol said. "It is usually indoors and has problems surviving outdoors," Pramathphol said, adding that another strategy was to trap it indoors with insecticide-laced curtains. Drugmaker Novartis AG has designed a drug which it hopes can combat all four dengue viruses. "If the safety is acceptable, we hope to go into human testing, hopefully next year," Paul Herrling, head of corporate research, said in a telephone interview.

BRUSSELS, Fri Jun 19, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Europe will next week start moves to help China and India develop technology to trap and bury carbon dioxide underground in the fight against global warming, according to a draft European Commission document. Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), a process of burying harmful gases, is seen by some as a potential silver bullet to curb emissions from coal-fired power plants, which are multiplying rapidly worldwide and threaten to heat the atmosphere to dangerous levels. The European Union will start a consultation process on how finance and technology should be delivered to China and later India. This could be critical in securing their commitment to a new global deal on climate change at talks in Copenhagen in December. "China builds, every year, as much coal-fired power plant as the entire UK generating capacity," said a report prepared for consultations with industry and seen by Reuters on Friday. "Unless a way can be found of making this climate-compatible, we can never meet our climate objectives, regardless of what action we take in Europe," it added. While the technologies exist, utilities are reluctant to build CCS power stations without public funding because the CCS component adds over $1 billion to the cost of each plant. INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY "A project of this size has never been done before," said Eric Drosin, a spokesman for ZEP, a European coalition of industry, scientists and those environmentalists that back CCS. "Knowledge sharing is crucial to the rapid deployment of CCS in China," he added. "We are willing to share all information except that which is covered by intellectual property rights." Many environmentalists oppose spending public money on the technology, saying it is untested and utilities already make massive profits while driving the planet towards irreversible climate damage. "Rather than trying to persuade China to bet on a technology that might not even work...the EU should help China invest in renewables and efficiency and leapfrog the fossil fuel-based energy model of the West," said Greenpeace campaigner Frauke Thies. The Commission's EU-China Near Zero Emissions Coal (NZEC) proposal will initially tap into about 60 million euros ($84 million) of existing EU development funding, but will also seek support from industry and taxpayers. "It is likely that the CCS component of the Chinese NZEC demonstration project alone will cost in total around 300 million euros," said the report. "We will seek to garner financial support from member states for this initiative, which in the first instance will affect China, then India, South Africa, OPEC and other emerging economies and developing countries," it added. In 2050, almost 60 percent of CO2 emissions from the power sector are projected to be captured, compared to virtually none today and almost 30 percent in 2030, said the report.

Barack Obama said on Tuesday the United States would "engage vigorously" in climate change talks when he is president, and he pledged to work to reduce emissions sharply by 2020, despite the financial crisis. The Democratic president-elect, who regularly criticized the Bush administration's attitude toward global warming, reiterated his plans to start a "cap and trade" system that limits carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from big industries. "We will establish strong annual targets that set us on a course to reduce emissions to their 1990 levels by 2020 and reduce them by an additional 80 percent by 2050," he said in a video address to a global warming summit in California attended by US governors and representatives from other nations. "My presidency will mark a new chapter in America's leadership on climate change that will strengthen our security and create millions of new jobs in the process," he said. Obama said he would not attend UN-sponsored climate talks in Poland in December as President George W. Bush will still be in office. But he sent a message to international delegates who have spent years battling Bush representatives over targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and halt global warming. "Once I take office, you can be sure that the United States will once again engage vigorously in these negotiations and help lead the world toward a new era of global cooperation on climate change," Obama said. The president-elect said he asked members of the U.S. Congress who would be present in Poland to report back to him. European nations have pushed the United States for years to show more leadership on climate change so that China and India, developing nations whose emissions are outpacing the developed world's, will follow suit. PAINFUL ACTION Though Obama's remarks were a reiteration of his campaign promises, the timing signaled his commitment to potentially painful environmental objectives despite a teetering auto industry and a financial crisis. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who hosted the conference, praised Obama's climate goals. Schwarzenegger backed Republican John McCain in the Nov. 4 election. "This new administration is very much interested in adopting the same kind of regulations that we have adopted here in California," Schwarzenegger said, noting the state's landmark 2006 law to cap greenhouse gas emissions. Obama promised during his White House campaign to create an emissions trading system, similar to the European Union's, which sets limits on the amount of CO2 factories can emit and lets companies trade permits that allow them to pollute more. That system is known as "cap and trade." The president-elect said his plans to invest $15 billion every year in solar power, wind power and other renewable fuels would reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil and improve national security while helping the planet. "It will also help us transform our industries and steer our country out of this economic crisis," he said, citing a frequently mentioned estimate of 5 million jobs that could be created in "green" or environment-related industries. Environmentalists welcomed his approach and saw significance in the timing of his words. "As world leaders gather in the coming weeks in Poland to negotiate a pathway out of the climate crisis, the eyes of the world will be upon America and our newfound resolve to rejoin global efforts," National Wildlife Federation president Larry Schweiger said in a statement. "With today's call for action on global warming, President-elect Obama has kicked the gears of change into motion."

China led calls by developing nations for deeper emissions cuts from the United States, Japan and Europe at UN climate talks on Tuesday, as a study showed that this decade will be the warmest on record. The first decade of this century was the hottest since records began, the World Meteorological Organisation said, underscoring the threat scientists say the planet faces from rising temperatures. Negotiators from nearly 200 countries are trying to seal the outlines of a climate pact to combat rising seas, desertification, floods and cyclones that could devastate economies and ruin the livelihoods of millions of people. Yvo de Boer, head of the UN Climate Change Secretariat, said the Dec 7-18 talks in Copenhagen were "off to a good start." The EU said it was positive that no one had walked out of negotiation sessions. But a rich-poor rift continued to cloud negotiations on finance and emissions cuts. Recession-hit rich countries have not yet made concrete offers to aid developing nations who also want the industrialised world to act faster to curb emissions. China and many other developing nations urged the rich to make deeper cuts in emissions and Beijing scoffed at a fast-start fund of $10 billion (£6.1 billion) a year meant to help developing countries from 2010 that rich countries are expected to approve. China, the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, criticised goals set by the United States, the European Union and Japan for cuts in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. Su Wei, a senior Chinese climate official at UN climate talks in Copenhagen, said the targets broadly fell short of the emissions cuts recommended by a U.N. panel of scientists. The panel has said cuts of 25 to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 were needed to avoid the worst of global warming. He said a US offer, equal to 3 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, "cannot be regarded as remarkable or notable." An EU cut of 20 percent was also not enough and Japan was setting impossible conditions on its offer of a 25 percent cut by 2020. "LIFE AND DEATH" "This $10 billion if divided by the world population, it is less than $2 per person," he said, adding it was not even enough to buy a cup of coffee in Copenhagen or a coffin in poorer parts of the world. "Climate change is a matter of life and death," he said. Brazil's climate change ambassador said his country did not want to sign up for a long-term goal of halving global emissions by 2050 unless rich nations took on firm shorter-term targets -- which the Danish hosts view as a core outcome for the talks. Copenhagen was meant to seal a legally binding climate deal to broaden the fight against climate change by expanding or replacing the Kyoto Protocol from 2013. While that now looks out of reach, host Denmark wants leaders to at least agree on a "politically binding" deal. The Danish government has said this would be 5 to 8 pages with annexes from all countries describing pledged actions. Negotiators are also trying to whittle down almost 200 pages of draft text that is expected to form the basis of an eventual post-2012 climate treaty. While negotiators have made progress refining the text, it is still full of blanks and options. African civil groups led a protest inside the main conference centre in Copenhagen, urging more aid to prepare for global warming. "Africans are suffering. We will not die in silence," said Augustine Njamnshi of Christian Aid. "PLEASING THE RICH" A draft 9-page Danish text with annexes seen by Reuters last week drew criticism by environmental activists, who said it undermined the negotiations. "Focus on the Danish text right now is a distraction from the negotiations," said Kim Carstensen, head of conservation group WWF's global climate initiative, adding the text did not lay out what would happen to the Kyoto Protocol. He called the Danish text a weak attempt to accommodate the United States. De Boer described the text as an informal paper for the purposes of consultation and not an official part of the negotiations. Much is riding on what US President Barack Obama can bring to the table in Copenhagen when he joins more than 100 other world leaders during a high-level summit on Dec 17-18. Washington's provisional offer is to cut emissions by 17 percent by 2020 from 2005 levels, or 3 percent below the UN's 1990 baseline. The US Environmental Protection Agency ruled on Monday that greenhouse gases endanger human health, allowing it to regulate them without legislation from the Senate, where a bill to cut US emissions by 2020 is stalled. Delegates cautiously welcomed the step as a boost for Obama.

The map was in the prospectus of a British firm seeking to raise money to build a coal-fired power plant in Bangladesh. Not only was Campanale angry that a company would pump more carbon emissions into the air from a low-lying country vulnerable to climate change in the form of rising sea levels; he was also mystified that investors didn't see the financial risks that went with it. "I was offended that the markets weren’t picking up the risks, given what we knew about coal and climate change," Campanale recalls. "I thought: 'This is mad'." More than a decade later, Campanale's eureka moment has grown into a powerful - and vigorously contested - theory: that energy investors are sitting on a $2 trillion "carbon bubble" because vast amounts of coal, oil and gas companies' reserves will never be extracted if the world is to limit itself to a rise in global temperatures of 2 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels. The concept has rippled out from that Bangladeshi map to become part of the climate change lexicon. It has formed the basis for warnings about "stranded assets" by Bank of England Governor Mark Carney and inspired groups like Norway's sovereign wealth fund to divest billions in fossil fuel holdings. It has also been embraced by green activists usually hostile to market solutions for climate change, igniting a global campaign to get investors to divest from fossil fuels. It has resonated across global climate change talks in Paris this week, even if it has not yet entered the formal agenda. Money not morality The concept "shifted the argument fundamentally from an ethical or moral issue into one which has an impact on risk to portfolios", says Charlie Thomas, manager of Jupiter Asset Management's Ecology Fund, valued at 429 million pounds ($648 million). Fossil fuel companies vigorously dispute the claim that their assets will ever be stranded, many saying the phrase is a political lever for radical green activists, not a lens for serious financial analysis. Oil and gas firms bristle at being lumped into the debate alongside carbon-intensive coal. But Campanale maintains the pioneering work he and his colleagues conducted was never about politics. “We weren’t thinking of a political narrative at all,” he says. “We said there are risks riddled across the system, and that the answer to the carbon bubble was to address the regulatory challenges.” In the years following the Bangladeshi prospectus, Campanale began honing the issue with Nick Robins, a former HSBC analyst, and Jeremy Leggett, an oil and gas consultant-turned-environmental-activist. In the early days, they called the phenomenon "unusable reserves". It didn't stick. After the failed 2009 climate summit in Copenhagen, Leggett wrote an opinion piece in Britain's Guardian newspaper highlighting long-term risks to coal investments. The article caught the attention of Joanna Messing, executive director of the Growald Family Fund, a philanthropic fund co-founded by the youngest child of David Rockefeller. Messing made a cold call to Leggett, asking about his theory and "whether he had an idea about how to take action”, she said. Funding from the Rockefellers and others quickly followed, allowing Campanale, Leggett and ex-WWF policy adviser James Leaton in 2010 to launch Carbon Tracker, a London-based think tank focused on the financial impact of climate change. The bubble surfaces Their breakthrough was a 2011 report called "Unburnable Carbon - are the world's financial markets carrying a carbon bubble?", which concluded that 80 percent of world's reserves would have to stay in the ground if the world was to meet its 2 degree target. Carbon Tracker printed only a hundred or so copies, distributing them to London investment managers and analysts. "I did think at the time that, once we'd launched the research, it was 'job done'," Campanale said. But they pushed the concept at financial gatherings, lobbying executives at the annual Davos Economic Forum and wooing Bank of England chief economist Andrew Haldane with the idea of a sub-prime mortgage-style threat to the financial system. It was their Rockefeller connection that introduced the concept to American activist circles. A programme director at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund gave one of the copies to Canadian author and activist Naomi Klein, who passed it along to prominent US environmentalist Bill McKibben. McKibben, a long-time writer on climate change who converted his network of readers into the powerful 350.org grassroots movement, says it took him some time to work out the report's significance. But the following summer, his article "Global Warming's Terrifying New Math", published in Rolling Stone magazine, introduced the carbon bubble to a new audience of students and church groups, grist for their nascent campaigns to get investors to divest from fossil fuels. From rolling stone to snowball It was "maybe the most-shared thing I'd written since my original book on climate change way back in 1989," McKibben said. The religious Sisters of St. Dominic of Caldwell, New Jersey, got the message. In April 2013, they proposed a resolution at ExxonMobil's shareholder meeting arguing that "sooner or later, restrictions on carbon emissions will be necessary", according to Exxon's SEC filing. "This has led economists to fear a ‘carbon bubble’ as current investments may be stranded," they wrote. The motion was rejected by 73.3 percent, but the phrase had been used in a US disclosure for the first time. In the last few months alone, New York's attorney general has forced one coal concern, Peabody, to disclose its own assessments of the risks it faces from any increased regulation of greenhouse gas emissions, and begun investigating oil giant Exxon Mobil Corp on similar grounds. After first ignoring the issue, the energy industry has begun to fight back, though splits have appeared in the process. Oil and gas companies, especially in Europe, increasingly distance themselves from coal, which they regard as far more vulnerable to the bubble argument. "Of the 2.8 trillion tonnes of carbon bubble, two-thirds of it is coal," Royal Dutch Shell's chief financial officer Simon Henry told Reuters. He says only 1.5 percent of the total is held by international oil and gas companies. "This idea of stranded assets is just arithmetic nonsense." Indeed, coal is suffering most. On the eve of the Paris conference, a $34 billion state pension fund in Sweden pulled out of 28 coal companies, and Allianz, Europe's biggest insurance firm, said it would cease investing in coal-heavy mining and utility firms. "What was an obscure report three years ago is now the talking points of the World Bank, the IMF and so on," says McKibben. "It's become clear we simply have to keep the carbon in the ground."

LONDON, Wed Nov 12, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - A global economic downturn caused by the financial crisis is the biggest threat to world security because it will make many hundreds of millions of people poorer and more resentful, a think-tank report said on Thursday. Job losses and collapsing markets will increase poverty, ill-health and malnutrition in developing countries without effective welfare systems, the Oxford Research Group (ORG) says in its annual security assessment. This is likely to fuel bitterness and lead to the rise of radical and violent social movements, which will be controlled by the use of force, it says. Early indicators include social unrest in China and India's intensifying Maoist rebellion. "We are facing the deepest economic crisis for two generations," said author Paul Rogers, ORG consultant and professor at the University of Bradford. "We can either respond as a global community or as a narrow group of rich and powerful countries." The report says wealthy states have so far concentrated on measures to improve financial cooperation, which have little relevance to poorer countries. "Instead, the opportunity should be taken to introduce fundamental economic reforms which reverse the wealth-poverty divisions that have got so much worse in the past three decades," Rogers said. Other major factors making the world less secure are climate change, competition over energy resources and the tendency of powerful elites to maintain security often by military force, the report says. Avoiding a more divided global system requires a commitment to "emancipation and social justice," including fair trade, debt cancellation, a radical cut in carbon emissions and investment in renewable energy resources, ORG says. The will to implement these policies could be weakened by tight government finances over the next several years. But if wealthy countries do decide to put more emphasis on helping the world's poor people and tackling climate change, the coming year could be a tipping point toward greater global stability, according to the report. "The choice we make in the next few months will do much to decide whether the world becomes more or less peaceful over the next ten years," Rogers said. On Iraq, the report says an increased pace of US troop withdrawals next year under US President-elect Barack Obama and greater regional engagement by Washington could be positive trends. But the Obama administration may reinforce US military commitments in Afghanistan, which is likely to lead to an intensified war, it says.

CAPE TOWN, Mon Sep 22,(bdnews24.com/Reuters) - The ruling African National Congress will name party deputy head Kgalema Motlanthe as South Africa's caretaker leader after the ousting of President Thabo Mbeki, ANC members of parliament said on Monday. ANC leader Jacob Zuma made clear his backing for Motlanthe as he pledged that the party would ensure a smooth transition and economic policy continuity despite the biggest political crisis since the end of apartheid in 1994. "We have in cabinet many experienced ministers, including the deputy president of the ANC, Kgalema Motlanthe. I'm convinced that if given that responsibility, he would be equal to the task," said Zuma, in his first public remarks since Mbeki announced he would resign in the face of ANC demands to quit. Motlanthe is a left-leaning intellectual, widely respected by both the radical leftists and business tycoons within the ANC. He is seen as a figure who could help heal the deepest divisions in the party's history. "He's a very solid person and if you've read his statements he always avoids wild rhetoric. He seems to also avoid making enemies and in the present political climate that's a good thing," said Keith Gottschalk, a political analyst at the University of the Western Cape said. "Certainly, most would regard him as presidential material." ANC militants led the charge to force out Mbeki after a judge threw out graft charges against his rival Zuma and suggested there was high-level political meddling in the case. African National Congress parliament members told Reuters the party would name Motlanthe to replace Mbeki until the poll expected around April, which the ANC is widely expected to win. The opposition Democratic Alliance said parliament would elect Mbeki's successor on Thursday. FORMER PRISONER Motlanthe is a former student activist, a trade unionist and a former soldier in the ANC's disbanded military wing UmKhonto we Sizwe. In 1977 he was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment and was jailed on Robben Island with Nelson Mandela and Zuma under the racist apartheid regime. Policy changes under Motlanthe in the short interim period would be unlikely but foreign investors eager for stability and a continuity of policy in Africa's biggest economy will be watching closely for clues on the ANC's future policy. "In the short term, uncertainty will remain as the new political regime settles in, with some cabinet changes likely in coming weeks," said Mike Davies, Middle East and Africa analyst at Eurasia Group. The rand currency fell after Mbeki's resignation, but it recovered some losses on Monday and bonds and equities firmed. Zuma sought again to reassure markets that he will not give in to pressure from leftist union and Communist Party allies to shift away from Mbeki's business-friendly policies if he becomes president in 2009. Motlanthe's appointment is almost certain to be officially approved by the ANC-dominated assembly. But Archbishop Desmond Tutu said he was "deeply disturbed" by the ANC's ouster of Mbeki. "It is good old-fashioned tit-for-tat. Our country deserves better. The way of retribution leads to a banana republic," the Nobel Peace Prize laureate told reporters. Uncertainty may still deepen if Mbeki supporters split from the ANC and contest elections as a breakaway party in 2009, as media reports suggest they will. Seeking to ease concerns that an exodus of pro-Mbeki ministers would hurt the country, Zuma said the party wanted all current cabinet ministers to remain in their posts. That suggests widely respected Finance Minister Trevor Manuel -- a key figure for foreign investors -- will remain. Manuel indicted on Saturday he will not resign and has repeatedly said he will serve at the request of any president.

It was 2016, and a deal had been struck by the Arizona-based mining giant Freeport-McMoRan to sell the site, located in Congo, which figures prominently in China’s grip on the global cobalt supply. The metal has been among several essential raw materials needed for the production of electric car batteries — and is critical to retiring the combustion engine and weaning the world off climate-changing fossil fuels. Perriello, a top US diplomat in Africa at the time, sounded alarms in the State Department. Kapanga, then the mine’s Congolese general manager, all but begged the American ambassador in Congo to intercede. “This is a mistake,” Kapanga recalled warning him, suggesting the Americans were squandering generations of relationship building in Congo, the source of more than two-thirds of the world’s cobalt. Presidents starting with Dwight D Eisenhower had sent hundreds of millions of dollars in aid, including transport planes and other military equipment, to the mineral-rich nation. Richard Nixon intervened, as did the State Department under Hillary Clinton, to sustain the relationship. And Freeport-McMoRan had invested billions of its own — before it sold the mine to a Chinese company. Not only did the Chinese purchase of the mine, known as Tenke Fungurume, go through uninterrupted during the final months of the Obama administration, but four years later, during the twilight of the Trump presidency, so did the purchase of an even more impressive cobalt reserve that Freeport-McMoRan put on the market. The buyer was the same company, China Molybdenum. China’s pursuit of Congo’s cobalt wealth is part of a disciplined playbook that has given it an enormous head start over the United States in the race to dominate the electrification of the auto industry. But an investigation by The New York Times revealed a hidden history of the cobalt acquisitions in which the United States essentially surrendered the resources to China, failing to safeguard decades of diplomatic and financial investments in Congo. Perriello, who has since left government, said he learned of the plan in 2016 to sell Tenke Fungurume not long after touring the mine. The owner had a tarnished reputation for its operations in other countries. But he was convinced that American ownership was good not only for the United States but for the people of Congo. Freeport-McMoRan got largely favourable reviews on the ground, was employing thousands of Congolese and had built schools and health care clinics and provided drinking water. “What can we do?” Perriello recalled asking Linda Thomas-Greenfield — who was then an assistant secretary of state with responsibility for Africa and is now President Joe Biden’s ambassador to the United Nations — about keeping the mine under American control. Perriello said he raised the issue with the National Security Council as well. (A spokesperson for Thomas-Greenfield said she remembered the sale of the mine but not the conversation with Perriello, and several members of the NSC also said they could not recall such a conversation.) The only serious bidders were Chinese companies, leaving no doubt about the consequences of standing by. “They were able to move swiftly and quicker than anybody else could,” Kathleen L Quirk, Freeport-McMoRan’s president, said in an interview. “So we got the deal done.” Freeport-McMoRan had been determined to sell. The company, one of the world’s largest copper-mining outfits, had made a catastrophically bad bet on the oil and gas industry just before oil prices tanked and the world began to shift to renewable energy. With debt piling up, the company saw no option but to unload its Congo operations. The American response, in essence, was nothing because it was a straight financial transaction. The country has no oversight of transactions by American companies abroad. The crisis, exposing significant blind spots of US leaders, was just the kind of opportunity the Chinese government excels at exploiting, according to previously unreported documents and emails and interviews with diplomats, mining executives, government officials and others in China, Congo and the United States. Over the past year, as the clean energy transition has accelerated, the US government and the private sector have moved more rapidly to recover from past mistakes, scouring the world for new cobalt supplies and deploying cobalt-free batteries in some shorter-range electric cars. But all that falls far short of Chinese efforts to take over resources critical to a green future, including cobalt, lithium and others. Cold War Gamesmanship Nixon stood outside the White House with the first lady one morning in August 1970. President Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire was about to pay a visit. It had been a decade since Zaire, now Congo, had secured independence from Belgium, and as the leader of a country abundant in natural resources, Mobutu found himself with considerable global clout. Not only did he control those resources, but he had emerged as a key intermediary for the United States in its efforts to keep the Soviet Union from making inroads in Africa. Access to minerals and metals in Congo had been a top priority for the United States since at least World War II. Albert Einstein wrote to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1939 urging him to stockpile Congolese uranium, used in the first atomic bombs. By the mid-1960s, the CIA had set up one of its most extensive operations in the country, secretly bankrolling a small army of mercenaries and Congolese troops. The agency ran missions with the help of US warplanes to suppress Soviet-backed rebels. Mobutu, a former army sergeant who would become a corrupt dictator, saw the Americans as an ideal partner in his bid to grow the country’s mining wealth. With an eye to developing Tenke Fungurume, he reached out to a prominent New York diamond merchant named Maurice Tempelsman, according to a series of now declassified cables, to discuss giving him mining rights in the area. But just before his trip to Washington in August 1970, Mobutu made a surprise announcement: He had decided to contract a Belgian company to develop the mine. Washington went into crisis mode as it tried to wrestle back the concession, and its generosity knew no bounds. “Whatever Mobutu wants, give it to him,” Herman J Cohen, an American diplomat in Congo at the time, recalled Nixon signalling to his administration. Hundreds of millions of dollars in US aid had been sent to Mobutu. Now Nixon agreed to give him several C-130 transport planes. The campaign reached a tipping point at a black-tie dinner for Mobutu at the White House, according to Cohen. After the meal, Tempelsman took Mobutu for a private boat ride on the Potomac. Word soon came that the Americans were getting the mining concession. A ‘Grand Reopening’ Mark Mollison, a mining engineer from New York City, climbed into a Toyota Land Cruiser in southeastern Congo, where he had traveled to visit Tenke Fungurume. It was by then an abandoned construction site. Mollison was amazed. He saw hilltops with bald spots where copper and cobalt poked through the surface. “The ore was 10 times as rich as what we were mining in Arizona,” Mollison recalled. It was the late 1990s, and Mollison belonged to a new wave of mining executives who had arrived to pick up the pieces left by the Tempelsman group two decades earlier. After spending $250 million, the group had pulled out when it ran into a series of hurdles, including anti-government rebels who shut down a railroad needed to ship the cobalt and copper to the sea. Kissinger, the secretary of state, helped craft a cable to apologize to the Congolese government in January 1976, explaining that the United States “deeply regrets” the “mothballing” of the project. Interest rekindled many years later after Mobutu was overthrown. The rebel leader, Laurent-Désiré Kabila, had recently seized valuable land near Tenke and Fungurume, the two towns that gave the mine its name. “Everybody thought, 'Boy, this is the grand reopening, a new awakening of Congo,'” Mollison said. Western mining executives and their Wall Street bankers arrived in the region. The investors gathered at a hotel as Kabila’s representatives secured financial commitments for mining access. A memo written by one banker summed up Kabila’s perspective: “Rules of the game: you give and I give.” Lundin Group, a Canadian mining company, was so determined to seal a deal that it agreed to give the rebels $50 million. Mollison’s job, when he arrived several months later, was to evaluate if his company, now called Freeport-McMoRan, should partner with Lundin to finish what Tempelsman had started at Tenke Fungurume. Freeport-McMoRan would later publicise that undertaking as the biggest private investment ever in Congo. “What’s this place going to need?” Mollison recalled wondering. “Electric power. Lots of it. Roads. Plenty of water.” Freeport-McMoRan eventually landed a controlling 57.75% stake in the mine, while Lundin got 24.75%. Congo’s state mining enterprise, Gécamines, kept 17.5%. By the end of 2007, after yet another civil war in Congo, the project got fully underway. Freeport-McMoRan went on a building spree. It helped construct a highway so cobalt and copper could be exported to other parts of Africa. It spent $215 million to refurbish an aging hydroelectric plant. “It was very impressive,” said Pierrot Kitobo Sambisaya, who worked as a metallurgist at the mine for a decade. Freeport-McMoRan had developed one of the most modern and productive cobalt and copper mines in the world. But Freeport-McMoRan made a monumental blunder. Instead of doubling down on mining, it ventured into fossil fuels, spending $20 billion in 2012 to buy two oil and gas companies. When oil prices plummeted, Freeport-McMoRan found itself mired in debt. “It breaks my heart to do it,” Richard Adkerson, Freeport-McMoRan’s CEO, told Wall Street analysts in May 2016 when he announced the company would sell Tenke Fungurume. The top bidder was China Molybdenum, which offered $2.65 billion. The news troubled executives at the mine, including Kapanga, the general manager, who had also worked as a Congolese presidential adviser and diplomat. He phoned the American ambassador, James Swan. “Tenke Fungurume is the jewel in the crown,” Kapanga said he told Swan, worried the United States was inexplicably letting go of its biggest private investment in Congo. Swan declined to comment when contacted by The New York Times. The focus at the time for American diplomats in Congo centred on trying to urge President Joseph Kabila out of office. He had taken over after his father was assassinated in 2001 and spent much of the next 15 years looting millions of dollars from the public treasury. No Lessons Learned The sale of Tenke Fungurume closed in November 2016. It drew little attention in the United States outside the financial news media. Early in his administration, President Donald Trump signalled that challenging China’s efforts to dominate mineral supplies might be a major focus. His administration issued reports on cobalt and the potential for supply shortfalls, taking note of the Tenke Fungurume sale. Nonetheless, history repeated itself. Freeport-McMoRan still owned an undeveloped site that contains one of the world’s most important untapped sources of cobalt. When the company indicated late last year that it intended to sell the site, known as Kisanfu, there was next to no reaction from the US government. “Nobody even talked about this,” said Nazak Nikakhtar, who until January served as the Commerce Department assistant secretary in charge of tracking critical mineral supplies. “It is horrible.” The sale, to China Molybdenum for $550 million, went ahead as announced, a month before Trump left office. With it, the last major US investment in Congo’s cobalt and copper mines evaporated.   © 2021 The New York Times Company

The flood of crude will arrive even as concerns about climate change are growing and worldwide oil demand is slowing. And it is not coming from the usual producers, but from Brazil, Canada, Norway and Guyana — countries that are either not known for oil or whose production has been lackluster in recent years. This looming new supply may be a key reason Saudi Arabia’s giant oil producer, Aramco, pushed ahead on Sunday with plans for what could be the world’s largest initial stock offering ever. Together, the four countries stand to add nearly a million barrels a day to the market in 2020 and nearly a million more in 2021, on top of the current world crude output of 80 million barrels a day. That boost in production, along with global efforts to lower emissions, will almost certainly push oil prices down. The Bob Douglas drill shop operated by Noble Energy for Exxon Mobil off Guyana, Jun 30, 2018. The South American country’s entry into the ranks of oil producers follows a string of major discoveries. The New York Times Lower prices could prove damaging for Aramco and many other oil companies, reducing profits and limiting new exploration and drilling, while also reshaping the politics of the nations that rely on oil income. The Bob Douglas drill shop operated by Noble Energy for Exxon Mobil off Guyana, Jun 30, 2018. The South American country’s entry into the ranks of oil producers follows a string of major discoveries. The New York Times The new rise in production is likely to bring cheaper oil, which may complicate efforts to combat global warming and wean consumers and industries off their dependence on fossil fuels, because lower gasoline prices could, for example, slow the adoption of electric vehicles. Canada, Norway, Brazil and Guyana are all relatively stable at a time of turbulence for traditional producers like Venezuela and Libya and tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Their oil riches should undercut efforts by the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and Russia to support prices with cuts in production and give American and other Western policymakers an added cushion in case there are renewed attacks on oil tankers or processing facilities in the Persian Gulf. Daniel Yergin, the energy historian who wrote “The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Power and Money,” compared the impact of the new production to the advent of the shale oil boom in Texas and North Dakota a decade ago. “Since all four of these countries are largely insulated from traditional geopolitical turmoil, they will add to global energy security,” Yergin said. © 2019 New York Times News Service

In an indication that Bolsonaro, a far-right conservative, is forging closer ties with neighbouring countries than with European nations, he accepted Chile's offer of four aircraft to help fight the fires sweeping through the world's largest rain forest. Speaking to reporters after a meeting with Chilean President Sebastian Pinera in Brasilia, Bolsonaro said a meeting with regional neighbours except Venezuela to discuss the Amazon would be held on Sept 6 in Leticia, Colombia. In a statement, the two leaders said environmental challenges must be met while respecting "national sovereignty." Each country, it added, should have control over the "rational and sustainable use of their natural resources, in line with their environmental obligations and needs of their citizens, including indigenous peoples." Pinera, who has a close relationship with Bolsonaro, is an increasingly important figure in the environmental crisis triggered by the Amazon fires, and visited Brasilia on his return from a G7 summit in France where he attended as the rotating representative for Latin America. Chile will hold the COP25 climate summit in December, having taken it over from the original host, Brazil, after Bolsonaro was elected. Following a meeting with Paraguayan President Mario Abdo later on Wednesday, Pinera spoke of the need to build out regionwide infrastructure to fight increasingly prevalent forest fires in South America. Pinera said new regional bloc Prosur could contribute to the effort. Bolsonaro waded back into a spat with France, saying Brazil's sovereignty had "no price, not even $20 trillion," a reference to an offer of $20 million aid announced by French President Emmanuel Macron at the Group of Seven summit of wealthy nations over the weekend. Bolsonaro dismissed the offer as an insulting attempt to "buy" Brazil's sovereignty. Macron has accused Bolsonaro, a longtime skeptic of environmental concerns, of lying about climate change. "Only after it the French government has recanted what it said about my person, which represents Brazil ... can we talk again," Bolsonaro said. 'NOT THE VILLAIN' In an interview with Reuters, Brazilian Foreign Minister Ernesto Araujo said the country supported Bolsonaro in his dispute with Macron. He also said that Brazil was fighting forest fires like never before and that he hoped "people who legitimately care about the environment see that Brazil is the hero and not the villain." A Reuters report on Wednesday found that Bolsonaro's government had weakened the federal agency charged with protecting the rain forest through budget cuts, restrictions on destroying equipment used in environmental crime, and the sidelining of an elite force of enforcement agents. Brazil’s federal government is preparing a presidential decree forbidding fires to clear land in the country during the dry season, the presidency said on Wednesday. According to one source, Bolsonaro had already agreed to the main terms of the decree. Environment Minister Ricardo Salles, 44, was admitted to a hospital unit on Tuesday after complaining of feeling unwell. The Armed Forces Hospital in Brasilia said on Wednesday that the minister was given the all-clear after some medical tests and told to rest for five days.

US President Barack Obama told world leaders on Wednesday to stop blaming America and join him in confronting challenges like Iran and North Korea's nuclear programs and the war in Afghanistan. Leaders of Libya and Brazil, speaking at the annual UN General Assembly gathering, both questioned the world's political and economic balance, reflecting deep unease exacerbated by the global economic crisis. Obama, in his first speech to the assembly since taking office in January, pledged US global engagement but said the United States could not shoulder the responsibility alone. "Those who used to chastise America for acting alone in the world cannot now stand by and wait for America to solve the world's problems alone," Obama said. The US leader, enjoying a global spotlight, urged international leaders to move beyond "an almost reflexive anti-Americanism, which too often has served as an excuse for collective inaction." Obama, who will host a Group of 20 nations summit in Pittsburgh this week, also pledged to work with allies to strengthen financial regulation to "put an end to the greed, excess and abuse that led us into disaster." Obama was among the first major speakers at the gathering, which brings more than 100 heads of state and government together to air issues ranging from nuclear proliferation and international terrorism to climate change and global poverty. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe -- all critics of US foreign policy -- are due to address the meeting, guaranteeing a challenge to Obama's world view. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, opening the meeting, urged delegates to put their differences behind them. "If ever there were a time to act in a spirit of renewed multilateralism -- a moment to create a United Nations of genuine collective action -- it is now," he said. Obama has brought a new tone in US foreign policy, stressing cooperation and consultation over the unilateralism of his predecessor, George W. Bush. But while the applause he received at the United Nations was testament to Obama's global popularity, the new approach has delivered few concrete foreign policy achievements. NUCLEAR STANDOFFS Obama used his speech to sketch out his foreign policy wish list, ranging from encouraging support for the US stance on the war in Afghanistan and nuclear standoffs with Iran and North Korea to Middle East peacemaking, all issues on which he has made little headway so far. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas are both attending this week's UN meetings. But they have already denied Obama a diplomatic coup he had hoped for -- rebuffing his efforts to reinvigorate stalled Middle East peace talks in time for the US leader's UN debut. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, expected to be a key player at the G-20 Pittsburgh meeting, said it was time to rethink the global economic balance of power. "A senseless way of thinking and acting, which dominated the world for decades, has proved itself bankrupt," Lula said of economic models that discourage regulation. Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi made his own UN debut amid raw US emotions over the Lockerbie bombing after Scotland's release of a Libyan official convicted in the 1988 attack. But Gaddafi's rambling 1-1/2 hour speech, which touched on everything from the UN charter to the 1963 assassination of former US President John F. Kennedy, ended up driving some delegates from the room in boredom. More excitement was expected from Iran's Ahmadinejad, whose speech later on Wednesday will likely be the sharpest counterpoint to Obama's address. Ahmadinejad recently drew fresh international condemnation for calling the Holocaust a lie and repeating Tehran's vow never to bargain away its nuclear program ahead of talks next month with the United States and other powers concerned about Iran's nuclear ambitions. A senior Russian official said Moscow is ready to discuss further sanctions against Iran if UN nuclear inspectors declare it has not fulfilled its commitments.

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton warned rich countries on Friday that they should not learn the wrong lesson from the financial crisis and said it can be profitable to help the poor. While Congress debated a $700 billion bailout to save the U.S. financial system, Clinton said as he wrapped up his philanthropic summit that the turmoil could also be seen as an opportunity to invest in developing nations. He warned governments to avoid just "looking inward" as they sought to fix the financial system. "The people who have these microcredit operations, who are investing in poor people around the world where there was no market and you create one because there are smart people, they are not the cause of these financial problems," he said. "They are all making money in the old-fashioned way, with a real economy based on real people doing real things for a real rate of return," Clinton said to applause at his fourth annual Clinton Global Initiative meeting. Microfinance initiatives, which grant tiny loans to the poor, are separate from national economic and market trends. They have also been much less affected than conventional lenders by the global credit crunch. "Poor people in poor countries, well governed, are good investments," Clinton said. More than 130 chief executives have spent the past three days mixing with world leaders, humanitarians and celebrities at the summit, which addresses global issues in education, energy and climate change, health care and poverty. Experts have said the financial crisis would likely pressure charitable efforts by individuals and corporations. Clinton said 250 new commitments to address some of the world's problems were made at his 2008 summit. This takes the total number made during the past four years to nearly 1,200, which Clinton said were valued at a total of $46 billion and would improve more than 200 million lives in 150 countries.

Combined, over 5 million acres have burned in California, Oregon and Washington so far. Thousands of buildings have been destroyed by some of the largest fires ever recorded. More than two dozen people have died. Millions up and down the coast have spent weeks living under thick clouds of smoke and ash. “We’ve broken almost every record there is to break,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, referring to his home state, where catastrophic fires have become an almost-yearly occurrence. Many fires that erupted in California in August were sparked by lightning strikes, including the August Complex, which has become the state’s largest. It has burned over 850,000 acres — an area larger than Yosemite National Park — in the northern part of the state. The deadly Almeda fire in Oregon is being investigated as possible arson. But outdated forest management practices and climate change — which brings hotter, drier conditions — have provided the kindling for infernos of such immense scale. Data from two NASA satellites that can detect heat shows that 2020 fire activity on the West Coast has already eclipsed even the worst previous year. Major fires exploded in California, Oregon and Washington this month, adding up to the worst fire season on record. In California, some of this year’s largest blazes encroached on areas that had previously burned in recent years, again threatening lives and homes, and putting fragile ecosystems back at risk. The town of Paradise, which was nearly destroyed by the Camp Fire just two years ago, has faced evacuation warnings in recent weeks. Emergency crews are still battling nearby fires, which are among the largest in the state this year. Major fires exploded in California, Oregon and Washington this month, adding up to the worst fire season on record. In Oregon and Washington, fires have burned areas untouched for decades. Several towns have been “substantially destroyed,” according to Gov. Kate Brown of Oregon. Nearly 20% of fires this year are burning in areas that were scarred by fires as recently as 2000, data from the National Interagency Fire Center shows. “Reburn,” as Swain called it, can happen after a year or two under “sufficiently extreme climate and weather conditions.” Vegetation that grows back after forest fires may also look differently than what grew before. New growth, including more flammable brush and grasses, could fuel fires and put homes and lives at risk again, he said. As the climate has warmed, fire season, which traditionally peaks in late summer and into the fall, has been expanding — sometimes starting as early as the spring, and lasting into late fall. Wildfires in the Sierra Nevada region and the Pacific Northwest have also gotten larger and more frequent in recent years. In the last 20 years, on average, the number of square miles burned annually across California, Oregon and Washington has increased sixfold compared with the average between 1950 and 2000. Fires have also become more destructive over time, especially as people have moved further into fire-prone areas. A majority of the fires that have destroyed the most buildings and structures have occurred in the past five years, according to a New York Times analysis of state data through the end of last week. Five fires this year are among the most destructive on record. A look at how air quality has been affected by the wildfires in the west. The fires this year have not, however, been as deadly as some in the recent past. The Camp Fire, which claimed more than 80 lives in 2018, remains the deadliest in modern California history. A look at how air quality has been affected by the wildfires in the west. As wind fueled many of the fires in the last month, it also spread a thick blanket of smoke and soot across the region. Far beyond the fire zones, millions of West Coast residents lived under darkened skies and breathed polluted air. Major cities saw harmful particle pollution known as PM2.5 skyrocket, reaching levels considered dangerous for human health. In Oregon, several cities, including Portland and Eugene, smashed previous daily records for poor air quality during wildfire season. Breathing in high concentrations of particulate pollution can worsen asthma and other respiratory problems in the short term, and can even lead to strokes or heart attacks. Oregon hospitals reported a 10% increase in emergency room visits for breathing problems during this month’s fires. Wildfire smoke has also been linked to longer-term consequences, like lower birth weight for babies and impaired lung function in adults. “Unfortunately, it looks like we’re going to have these occurrences for the foreseeable future,” said Linda George, a professor of environmental science at Portland State University. “Policymakers need to make guidelines for people on how to protect themselves if this is what we’re going to see every summer or every other summer,” she said. Daniel Jaffe, a professor at the University of Washington who studies the impact of wildfires on air quality, said the only way to reduce the frequency of such “airpocalypse” events was to reduce the frequency of large fires. “If we could bar people from going into the forests and starting fires, that would help. If we could stop climate change, that would help. Better forest management would help,” he said. “But right now, it combined into the perfect storm.”   © 2020 The New York Times Company

BEIJING, Sun Apr 19, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - The global financial crisis is unlikely to deter growing long-term demand for new nuclear power plants, international atomic agency officials said on Sunday, ahead of a conference to discuss the future of atomic power. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) officials and national and international energy representatives are gathering in Beijing to discuss prospects for atomic power during a global slowdown, climate change and energy worries, and tensions over the nuclear programmes of North Korea and Iran. Thierry Dujardin, a deputy director of the OECD's Nuclear Energy Agency, said that although the financial crisis was making it more difficult to fund some proposed nuclear power plants, longer-term worries about energy security and global warming were likely to buffer the impact of the crisis on the sector. "In the short term, it's obvious that it will be more difficult to find the funding for new investments, heavy investment, in energy infrastructure, such as nuclear power plants," Dujardin told a news conference. "There is a chance that nuclear energy as such will not be so strongly impacted by the current economic crisis, because the need for energy will be there." Dong Batong, of the China's atomic energy industry association, said his country was committed to dramatically expanding nuclear power, despite the slowdown in growth. "We've made nuclear power an important measure for stimulating domestic [economic] demand," Dong told the news conference, noting that dozens of new nuclear units are being built or planned across the country. Nuclear power provides 14 percent of global electricity supplies, according to the Vienna-based IAEA, and that proportion is set to grow as nations seek to contain fuel bills and the greenhouse gas emissions dangerously warming the planet. Much of the expected expansion is in Asia. As of the end of August 2008, China topped the list of countries with nuclear power plants under construction, with 5,220 megawatts (MW), followed by India at 2,910 MW and South Korea at 2,880 MW, according to the International Energy Agency. But the ambitious plans for nuclear power growth across the developing world also risk straining safety standards and safeguards against weapons proliferation. Yuri Sokolov, deputy director-general of the IAEA, said governments looking to expand nuclear energy had to ensure regulators were backed by effective legislation and properly trained staff. But even North Korea, facing international censure for recently launching a long-range rocket and abandoning nuclear disarmament talks, has the right to nuclear power stations, said Sokolov. "Each country is entitled to have a civilian nuclear programme," he said, calling North Korea a "difficult situation." "If it's ready to cooperate with the international community, I think that the international community will be able to provide the support for civil nuclear power development in North Korea." North Korea renounced its membership of the IAEA years ago, and last week expelled IAEA officials who had been invited back to monitor a shuttered nuclear complex that Pyongyang has said it will restart. The director-general of the IAEA, Mohamed ElBaradei, will give an opening speech to the nuclear energy meeting on Monday.

But now Johnson finds himself back in crosswinds of the kind Trump used to stir up. His refusal to condemn crowds who booed England’s national football team for kneeling to protest racial injustice carries a distinct echo of Trump’s targeting of NFL players who knelt for the same cause in the United States. One of his Cabinet ministers criticised the players for engaging in “gesture politics,” while his spokesperson said of the jeering spectators that the prime minister “fully respects the right of those who choose to peacefully protest and make their feelings known.” In Johnson’s case, it was less what he said than what he failed to say. But in England, as in the United States, the mix of sports, politics and racial justice has proved volatile, boomeranging on a prime minister whose populist instincts on cultural issues have often served him well. England’s inspiring run in the European soccer championship captivated the nation. When three of its Black players were subjected to racist abuse after their crushing loss last weekend in the final, it put Johnson’s silence and the gibes of other Conservative politicians under a harsh spotlight. Suddenly, they were on the wrong side of a team that symbolized England’s racial diversity. “This was the Trump playbook, and it worked for Trump until George Floyd,” said Frank Luntz, an American pollster, referring to the killing of an unarmed man by the police last year in Minneapolis. That crime ignited enormous protests against racism and police violence, overwhelming Trump’s campaign to fire football players who refused to stand during the national anthem. Luntz, who has advised many Republican candidates, is now working with the Center for Policy Studies, a London research institute with historic ties to the Conservative Party, to survey voter attitudes in Britain. A classmate of Johnson’s at Oxford University, Luntz rejects the comparisons of the prime minister to Trump. (The better analog, he said, is Ronald Reagan.) But Luntz said there were other alarming parallels between Britain and the United States. The deep polarisation of voters, he said, has led to an exploitation of some issues — whether the populist appeals of Johnson’s Conservatives or the political correctness of the left — that threaten to corrode British politics as badly as they have US politics. “We’ve crossed the Rubicon in the United States,” he said. “They’re getting perilously close to crossing it here.” While Trump eventually dropped the NFL campaign, Johnson is in full-fledged retreat. Under questioning by the opposition Labour Party leader, Keir Starmer, this week in Parliament, a rattled prime minister insisted he wholeheartedly supported the England team. “I support them in the way they show support with their friends who face racism,” Johnson added. That did not mollify Starmer, who declared, “The government has been trying to stoke a culture war, and they have realised they are on the wrong side. And now they hope that nobody has noticed.” The bigger threat to Johnson comes not from politicians but the players, some of whom have struck back at the eruption of racist gibes on social media after the team lost to Italy in a penalty shootout. Bukayo Saka, one of three young Black players who missed their kicks, posted on Twitter that “there is no place for racism or hate of any kind in football or in any area of society.” Tyrone Mings, a defender who is Black, drew a direct link between the abuse and the government, tweeting, “You don’t get to stoke the fire at the beginning of the tournament by labelling our anti-racism message as ‘Gesture Politics’ & then pretend to be disgusted when the very thing we’re campaigning against, happens.” His reference was to Johnson’s home secretary, Priti Patel, who said the team’s practice of kneeling was “gesture politics” and refused to condemn fans for jeering it. Lee Anderson, a Conservative member of Parliament who was elected in 2019 in a surge of pro-Brexit support for Johnson’s party, vowed not to watch England games as long as the players knelt. Patel, who is one of the most hard-line Cabinet ministers on immigration issues, played a supporting role in this drama, not unlike that of Vice President Mike Pence in Trump’s NFL crusade. In October 2017, under orders from the president, Pence conspicuously walked out of a game in Indianapolis. Johnson has been more subtle than was Trump, who once described a protesting player as a “son of a bitch.” The prime minister never openly criticised the team, leaving it to a spokesperson to respond to questions about booing fans. There are several reasons for Johnson to tread carefully. England’s team represents the nation, not the interests of wealthy private owners, like a typical NFL franchise. England’s players sing “God Save the Queen” and kneel for only a few moments before kickoff. That makes them less vulnerable to charges of being unpatriotic than players sitting out the “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Most important, under its manager, Gareth Southgate, the England team has found rare success on and off the field. It reached the first final of a major tournament in 55 years, vanquishing Germany and Denmark. And its players have used their fame effectively in pursuit of social justice — completing a decadeslong transformation in the team’s image from the days in which some viewed it uncomfortably as symbolizing a strain of English nationalism linked to the right. Another of its Black players, Marcus Rashford, led a campaign that forced Johnson to reverse plans to end a free-lunch program for poor families during the pandemic. After Rashford also missed his penalty kick in the final, vandals defaced a mural of him in his native Manchester with racist graffiti. Within hours, the slurs had been covered with hearts, letters and English flags. Southgate, in an eloquent “Dear England” letter, steadfastly supported his players’ rights to get involved in political issues. He said it was natural they would have different views of being English than people of his generation — a distinct contrast to the messages that were delivered by the NFL and its owners. The league’s commissioner, Roger Goodell, first required players to stand for the anthem before reversing himself amid the Black Lives Matter protests. All of this left Johnson wrong-footed. Only a few months ago, he stridently opposed plans to form an elite European superleague, presenting himself as a champion of football’s working-class fans. Now, though, Johnson’s gestures — wearing an England “Three Lions” jersey or flying an English flag outside No 10 Downing St. — struck many as belated and inauthentic. “It’s confused the Tories; they don’t know how to run with this,” said John M Williams, a sports sociologist at the University of Leicester, referring to the governing Conservatives. “They have their own right-wing constituency, so they feel they have to go after the taking of the knee. But they’re afraid that the England team is doing politics better than they are.” As in the United States, Williams said, social issues in Britain are part of a deeper debate — between a liberal, inclusive, multiracial society and its opposite. “Weirdly,” he said, “the England national team is at the heart of this debate.” © 2021 The New York Times Company

In Gwinnett County, Georgia, four precincts — out of 156 — suffered prolonged technical delays, while some voting machines in South Carolina lacked power or the devices needed to activate them. There was also some confusion in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, which includes Pittsburgh, where at least four polling places were changed in the past two days. Voters who went to a polling place in Chandler, Arizona, a Phoenix suburb, found the doors locked and a legal notice announcing that the building had been closed overnight for failure to pay rent. (Officials later reopened the location.) In Houston, a worker was removed from a polling site and faced an assault charge amid a racially charged dispute with a voter, The Houston Chronicle reported. Problems with casting ballots are a regular feature of election day, and making sense of them could take days and weeks. But the number of calls to voting hotlines maintained by a collection of advocacy groups quickly outpaced those received in the last midterm election of 2014. The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a nonprofit group that oversees 20 election call centres, said that as of 5 pm Tuesday, it had received 24,000 phone calls, compared with 14,000 at the same time four years ago. Four states — Arizona, Florida, Georgia and Texas — stood out as particularly problematic, said Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee. Any issues experienced this year are more likely to jangle an electorate already unnerved by the fraught 2016 election, whose aftermath has been picked over amid concerns of Russian interference and President Donald Trump’s repeated warnings, without evidence, of widespread voter fraud. Tensions have also been exacerbated amid a fierce battle over how easily Americans can register, vote early and gain access to polling sites. Election experts point to declining enforcement of rights for minority voters since the Supreme Court struck down the core of the 1965 Voting Rights Act five years ago. Various problems led to extended hours at locations in several states. In Texas, a judge ordered nine polling locations in Harris County to remain open an extra hour after civil rights organisations complained. A coalition of groups was seeking the same in Maricopa County, Arizona. And, in Georgia, a local judge kept several sites in Gwinnett County open, including the Annistown Elementary School, where voting was extended by more than two hours. A handful of precincts were also held open for several hours in Fulton County, which includes much of Atlanta. One of the precincts was Forbes Arena, which hosted a rally last Friday featuring Democratic candidate for governor Stacey Abrams and former President Barack Obama. Georgia’s elections system was a highly contentious issue during the campaign between Abrams, who was seeking to become the first African-American woman elected governor in any state, and Brian Kemp, her Republican opponent, who is also the secretary of state and thus the state’s chief elections administrator. Abrams and her allies accused Kemp of trying to suppress the vote through overzealous interpretations of state laws and procedures. Kemp argued that he was simply trying to make it “hard to cheat,” and called accusations of voter suppression a “farce.” Although long lines were reported at some polling places, other Georgia voters moved in and out with ease. “It’s been very smooth all day long,” Kemp said Tuesday afternoon, adding: “We’re getting the normal questions of people calling asking where do they go vote, are they registered. Nothing unusual at all.” But some Georgia voters had a much different experience. At Annistown Elementary School in Snellville, Georgia, in Gwinnett County, voters reported standing in line for hours amid problems with voting machines. One resident, Ontaria Woods, said it took her nearly five hours to vote after arriving around 7 am, when the polls opened. After about 30 to 45 minutes, poll workers alerted those standing in line to an issue with the ExpressPoll voting machines, she said. “People were not surprised,” she said. “Of course, the term ‘voter suppression’ was used many, many times.” Several voters declined provisional ballots after worrying that they would not be counted, she said, and some left to buy food and water from a Walmart. The machines were finally fixed around 11 am, and Woods cast her ballot about 45 minutes later before heading to work — hours late. Gwinnett, a rapidly diversifying patchwork of suburbs near Atlanta, has long been a Republican stronghold, but Hillary Clinton carried the county in 2016. A spokesman for the county government, Joe Sorenson, said the four problematic precincts reported issues with the system that creates voter access cards for Georgia’s electronic polling system. A judge extended hours at several locations in the county, including one that was to remain open until 9:25 pm, well past the planned 7 pm close. Bradford Berry, the general counsel of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, said, “We need to make sure that the machines that are breaking down in Georgia are not in certain parts of town, and not in others.” Although county elections officials appeared at fault for some of the issues in Georgia, a spokeswoman for Abrams’ campaign, Abigail Collazo, put the blame on Kemp. “We’re incredibly inspired by how many Georgians are turning out to vote and are staying in line to cast their ballot, despite the fact that some polling locations were not properly prepared by the secretary of state’s office,” Collazo said in a text message. In Arizona, voting-rights monitors reported major delays at some sites because of problems with printing ballots. The complaints centered in Maricopa County, the state’s most populous county, where a shift from local polling places to regional voting centers caused chaos two years ago. Voters at the regional centres were being turned away or endured long waits after printers that produce ballots tailored to their home precincts malfunctioned, according to Common Cause, which was monitoring polling problems. Clarke said the Maricopa County problems were “among the most significant we’ve seen today” and involved unusually large numbers of minority voters. In four of the afflicted voting centres, registered minority voters — Latinos, African-Americans and Native Americans — outnumbered white voters by roughly 15,700 to 2,800. In South Carolina, a spokesman for the State Election Commission said problems with malfunctioning voting machines were limited. “These issues were attributable to human error in preparation of the system, and in most cases, were resolved earlier this morning,” the spokesman, Chris Whitmire, said in an email. The Justice Department deployed election monitors to 35 jurisdictions in 19 states, but Jeff Sessions, the attorney general, drew concern among Democrats for emphasising fraud as well as civil rights. “We are dealing with a very different climate in 2018,” said Karen Flynn, the president of Common Cause. “We do not have a Department of Justice that is working hand in hand with our network to be solving these problems, we don’t have the protections of the Voting Rights Act, and we have a president that is putting out messages that can feel threatening to many voters.” In El Paso, Texas, the federal Border and Customs Protection agency abruptly cancelled an exercise along the Mexico border Tuesday morning after civil-rights groups and Democratic leaders complained of voter intimidation. The crowd-control exercise would have taken place near a border crossing adjacent to the heavily Latino Chihuahuita neighborhood, and less than a half-mile from a polling station used by Latino voters. “It was just really ham-handed and insensitive at the minimum — and possibly worse,” said Nina Perales, the voting rights legal director at the Mexican American Legal Defence and Educational Fund. Not all problems were as sinister as some feared. A viral video at a polling site in Columbus, Ohio, showed a voter casting an electronic ballot for the Republican candidate for governor, Mike DeWine. But the paper record in the video shows a vote cast for DeWine’s Democratic opponent, Richard Cordray. The account that posted the video on Facebook claimed it showed a “rigged” machine. A spokesman for the Franklin County Board of Elections, Aaron Sellers, said that the machine in question had been experiencing a paper jam, which caused a previous voter’s paper record to print. The voter was allowed to recast her ballot on a working machine, but the video was shared thousands of times on Twitter, often by people referring in their profiles to QAnon, a sprawling pro-Trump conspiracy theory.   c.2018 New York Times News Service

April 2 (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - A group of scientists is fighting a rearguard action to challenge mainstream evidence that humans are to blame for climate change. They point to natural shifts in the sun's heat, a cooling of the planet in the mid-20th century and an apparent slowdown of temperature rises in the past decade. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said in February that it was "very likely" -- more than 90 percent -- that human activities, namely fossil fuel burning, explained most of an "unequivocal" warming in the past 50 years. The panel said temperatures will likely rise by between 1.8 and 4.0 Celsius (3.2 and 7.8 Fahrenheit) this century. The IPCC, made up of about 2,500 scientists, is endorsed by governments. "There is always a bit of room for doubt...it's in the nature of science," said Rajendra Pachauri, head of the UN climate panel. "But I cannot think of any tangible reasons for doubt." The "sceptics" who doubt some IPCC claims include meteorology professor Richard Lindzen of the Massachussets Institutue of Technology, Professor Paul Reiter from the medical entomology department at the the Pasteur Institute in Paris and author Michael Crichton. Many scientists also say US President George W Bush has exaggerated the uncertainties about scientific findings to appease powerful business and oil lobbies. Here are some of the arguments of those who cast doubt on mankind's responsibility for climate change, and beneath each a response by the Hadley Centre of Britain's Meteorological Office, its official centre for climate change research. 1. Temperatures dropped for several decades after 1945, despite rising carbon dioxide emissions *** Along with carbon dioxide, fossil fuels also release particles called aerosols, which cool the climate by reflecting sunlight. Aerosols dominated the warming effect of CO2 prior to clean-air acts of the 1960s and 1970s. 2. Carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere lag temperature rises in an ice core record dating back 600,000 years. *** Over the past several hundred thousand years, changes in the earth's orbit around the sun led to temperature changes, which in turn affected CO2 levels. Concentrations of C02 are higher than they had been during the past 600,000 years. The counter-effect is that human-induced increases of C02, such as factory emissions, have enhanced the greenhouse effect and led to warming. 3. Changes in solar activity also produce good correlations with temperature change. *** There are many factors which may contribute to climate change. Satellite measurements showed no big change in solar heating in the last three decades of the 20th century. CO2 has been shown to have caused most warming in the past 50 years. 4. Rising temperatures in the second half of the last century have plateaued in the past 10 years. *** 1998 was extremely warm due to a warning of the weather anomaly El Nino warming in the Pacific Ocean, and subsequent years were colder. Ten years is too short a period to see long-term trends. While the World Meteorological Organization says 1998 was the warmest year since records began 150 years ago, NASA says 2005 was warmer.

The program, "Countering Violent Extremism," or CVE, would be changed to "Countering Islamic Extremism" or "Countering Radical Islamic Extremism," the sources said, and would no longer target groups such as white supremacists who have also carried out bombings and shootings in the United States. Such a change would reflect Trump's election campaign rhetoric and criticism of former President Barack Obama for being weak in the fight against Islamic State and for refusing to use the phrase "radical Islam" in describing it. Islamic State has claimed responsibility for attacks on civilians in several countries. The CVE program aims to deter groups or potential lone attackers through community partnerships and educational programs or counter-messaging campaigns in cooperation with companies such as Google and Facebook. Some proponents of the program fear that rebranding it could make it more difficult for the government to work with Muslims already hesitant to trust the new administration, particularly after Trump issued an executive order last Friday temporarily blocking travel to the United States from seven predominantly Muslim countries. Still, the CVE program, which focuses on US residents and is separate from a military effort to fight extremism online, has been criticised even by some supporters as ineffective. A source who has worked closely with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on the program said Trump transition team members first met with a CVE task force in December and floated the idea of changing the name and focus. In a meeting last Thursday attended by senior staff for DHS Secretary John Kelly, government employees were asked to defend why they chose certain community organisations as recipients of CVE program grants, said the source, who requested anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the discussions. Although CVE funding has been appropriated by Congress and the grant recipients were notified in the final days of the Obama administration, the money still may not go out the door, the source said, adding that Kelly is reviewing the matter. The department declined comment. The White House did not respond to a request for comment. Program criticised Some Republicans in Congress have long assailed the program as politically correct and ineffective, asserting that singling out and using the term "radical Islam" as the trigger for many violent attacks would help focus deterrence efforts. Others counter that branding the problem as "radical Islam" would only serve to alienate more than three million Americans who practice Islam peacefully. Many community groups, meanwhile, had already been cautious about the program, partly over concerns that it could double as a surveillance tool for law enforcement. Hoda Hawa, director of policy for the Muslim Public Affairs Council, said she was told last week by people within DHS that there was a push to refocus the CVE effort from tackling all violent ideology to only Islamist extremism. "That is concerning for us because they are targeting a faith group and casting it under a net of suspicion," she said. Another source familiar with the matter was told last week by a DHS official that a name change would take place. Three other sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said such plans had been discussed but were unable to attest whether they had been finalised. The Obama administration sought to foster relationships with community groups to engage them in the counterterrorism effort. In 2016, Congress appropriated $10 million in grants for CVE efforts and DHS awarded the first round of grants on Jan. 13, a week before Trump was inaugurated. Among those approved were local governments, city police departments, universities and non-profit organisations. In addition to organisations dedicated to combating Islamic State's recruitment in the United States, grants also went to Life After Hate, which rehabilitates former neo-Nazis and other domestic extremists. Just in the past two years, authorities blamed radical and violent ideologies as the motives for a white supremacist's shooting rampage inside a historic African-American church in Charleston, South Carolina and Islamist militants for shootings and bombings in California, Florida and New York. One grant recipient, Leaders Advancing & Helping Communities, a Michigan-based group led by Lebanese-Americans, has declined a $500,000 DHS grant it had sought, according to an email the group sent that was seen by Reuters. A representative for the group confirmed the grant had been rejected but declined further comment. "Given the current political climate and cause for concern, LAHC has chosen to decline the award," said the email, which was sent last Thursday, a day before Trump issued his immigration order, which was condemned at home and abroad as discriminating against Muslims while the White House said it was to "to protect the American people from terrorist attacks by foreign nationals."

At the start of the second and final week of the UN climate talks in Glasgow known as COP26 - ministers got down to the detail of trying to honour promises to pay for climate-linked losses and damages, and to address how to help nations adapt to the devastating effects of climate change. "We have to act now to help with adaptation and resilience," Obama told a meeting of island nations at the summit, adding that his views on the immediacy of the threat had been shaped by his experience growing up in Hawaii. Obama said too little progress had been made since the 2015 Paris Agreement to try to curb warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and lambasted China and Russia for a lack of commitment in making the Glasgow talks a success. "It was particularly discouraging to see the leaders of two of the world's largest emitters, China and Russia, declined to even attend the proceedings," he said. Their "national plans so far reflect what appears to be a dangerous lack of urgency and willingness to maintain the status quo on the part of those governments, and that's a shame". The failure of rich nations to make good on promises to provide help for developing countries has fuelled mistrust, and is seen as a major obstacle to progress in cutting emissions to limit the impact of rising temperatures. Vanessa Nakate, a 24-year-old Ugandan climate activist attending the Glasgow conference published a video showing Obama had made the same call for action, not words, to help poor nations as long ago as 2009, but with few results in the ensuing years. "Everyone knows what is to be done," said Kenya's Environment Minister Keriako Tobiko. "There have been too much and too many workshops, retreats and conferences. And it is always 'the time is now', 'the time has come'. Actually there's no more time, let's put the money on the table." At a U.N. climate summit 12 years ago in Copenhagen, rich nations promised to hand developing countries $100 billion a year by 2020 to help them adapt to climate change. The target was missed, and at COP26 richer nations have said they will meet the goal in 2023 at the latest, with some hoping it could be delivered a year earlier. In recent weeks and months, rich nations including the United States, Japan, Spain and Italy have raised their "climate financing" pledges, but some still fall short of what international bodies say is a fair contribution. The head of Ghana's Environmental Protection Agency Henry Kokofu said negotiations over funds for adaption and resilience in the nations hardest-hit by climate change were not reflecting the levels of ambition publicly voiced by developed countries. "It's very unfortunate and sad indeed," he said. DIFFERENT PRIORITIES While developing countries want more money to help them adapt to higher temperatures that have caused more frequent droughts, floods and wildfires, developed nations have been focused on channelling finance towards cutting emissions. The cost of both is huge, but it will be even higher unless the Glasgow talks can keep alive the Paris goal of capping global temperatures at 1.5C (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. Beyond this level the world risks catastrophic climate impacts. "We are nowhere near where we need to be," Obama told the audience, lamenting the lack of progress since Paris. Aside from China and Russia, the Democratic former president also took aim at U.S. lawmakers from the Republican Party, which he said had expressed "active hostility toward climate science" and made climate change a partisan issue. "For those listening back home in the US, let me say this: It doesn't matter if you're a Republican or a Democrat if your Florida house is flooded by rising seas, or your crops fail in the Dakotas or your California house is burning down," he said. With activist Greta Thunberg already dismissing the Glasgow talks as a "failure", richer nations need to firm up and make good on the many pledges they delivered in the first week of the conference, which is scheduled to finish on Friday. Underlining the difficulties, COP26 President Alok Sharma said there was a desire among parties "to continue technical work with a renewed urgency to make progress" on climate finance where there were "a large number of outstanding issues". "My priority now is pace," he added. "There needs to be a sense of urgency in all our negotiations." Potentially more problematic for rich nations than meeting the $100 billion goal is how they should compensate less developed countries for loss and damages caused by historic emissions, an area where concrete pledges have yet to be made. Sharma acknowledged that this was a historically polarising issue, but said he believed "the mood music has changed somewhat. "There is now a practical recognition that action is needed on this topic in the face of growing impacts," he said.

Halfway through, optimistic reviews of its progress noted that heads of state and titans of industry showed up in force to start the gathering with splashy new climate promises, a sign that momentum was building in the right direction. The pessimistic outlook? Gauzy promises mean little without concrete plans to follow through. Swedish activist Greta Thunberg accused the conference, held in Glasgow, of consisting of a lot of “blah, blah, blah.” On Saturday, diplomats from nearly 200 countries struck a major agreement aimed at intensifying efforts to fight climate change, by calling on governments to return next year with stronger plans to curb their planet-warming emissions and urging wealthy nations to “at least double” funding by 2025 to protect the most-vulnerable nations from the hazards of a hotter planet. Here’s a look at some key takeaways from the 26th annual UN climate change summit. Time for action is running out The agreement established a clear consensus that all nations need to do much more, immediately, to prevent a catastrophic rise in global temperatures. When the conference opened, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said the top priority must be to limit the rise in global temperatures to just 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels. That’s the threshold, scientists have warned, beyond which the risk of calamities such as deadly heat waves, water shortages and ecosystem collapse grows immensely. (The world has already warmed 1.1 degrees Celsius.) “The reality is you’ve got two different truths going on,” Helen Mountford, vice president for climate and economics at the World Resources Institute, said last week. “We’ve made much more progress than we ever could’ve imagined a couple years ago. But it’s still nowhere near enough.” The agreement outlines specific steps the world should take, from slashing global carbon dioxide emissions nearly in half by 2030 to curbing emissions of methane, another potent greenhouse gas. And it sets up new rules to hold countries accountable for the progress they make — or fail to make. The environment minister of the Maldives, Shauna Aminath, said the latest text lacked the “urgency” that vulnerable countries like hers required. “What looks balanced and pragmatic to other parties will not help the Maldives adapt in time,” she said. Who needs to cut and how much? The final agreement leaves unresolved the crucial question of how much and how quickly each nation should cut its emissions over the next decade. Rich countries, including the United States, Canada, Japan and much of western Europe, account for just 12% of the global population today but are responsible for 50% of all the planet-warming greenhouse gases released from fossil fuels and industry over the past 170 years. US President Joe Biden and European leaders have insisted that countries such as India, Indonesia and South Africa need to accelerate their shift away from coal power and other fossil fuels. But those countries counter that they lack the financial resources to do so, and that rich countries have been stingy with aid. A decade ago, the world’s wealthiest economies pledged to mobilise $100 billion per year in climate finance for poorer countries by 2020. But they have fallen short by tens of billions of dollars annually. The COP26 agreement still leaves many developing countries without the funds they need to build cleaner energy and cope with increasingly extreme weather disasters. The call for disaster aid and regulation increases One of the biggest fights at the summit revolved around whether — and how — the world’s wealthiest nations, which are disproportionately responsible for global warming to date, should compensate poorer nations for the damages caused by rising temperatures. Calls for this fund, an issue called “loss and damage,” is separate from money to help poorer countries adapt to a changing climate. "Loss and damage" is a matter of historic responsibility, its proponents say, and would pay for irreparable losses, such as the disappearance of national territory, culture and ecosystems. The Paris agreement in 2015 urged clearer rules on how to allow polluting companies and countries to buy and trade permits to lower global emissions, but the extremely dense and technical subject continued as a topic of discussion well into Saturday in Glasgow. Negotiators announced a major deal on how to regulate the fast-growing global market in carbon offsets, in which one company or country compensates for its own emissions by paying someone else to reduce theirs. One of the thorniest technical issues is how to properly account for these global trades so that any reductions in emissions aren’t overestimated or double-counted. Vulnerable countries insist that rich nations should grant them a share of proceeds from carbon market transactions to help them build resilience to climate change. The United States and the European Union have opposed doing so, but island nations in particular want a mechanism to ensure that carbon trading leads to an overall reduction in global emissions. “We want a credible market that will deliver reductions in emissions, not just a free pass for countries to buy cheap credits offshore to meet their national requirements,” said Ian Fry, a negotiator for the Solomon Islands, an archipelago in the southwest Pacific Ocean. Other international agreements came out of the summit US AND CHINA: The two countries announced a joint agreement to do more to cut emissions this decade, and China committed for the first time to develop a plan to reduce methane, a potent greenhouse gas. The pact between the rivals, which are the world’s two biggest polluters, surprised delegates to the summit. The agreement was short on specifics, and although China agreed to “phase down” coal starting in 2026, it did not specify by how much or over what period of time. DEFORESTATION: Leaders of more than 100 countries, including Brazil, China, Russia and the United States, vowed to end deforestation by 2030. The agreement covers about 85% of the world’s forests, which are crucial to absorbing carbon dioxide and slowing the pace of global warming. Some advocacy groups criticised the agreement as lacking teeth, noting that similar efforts have failed in the past. METHANE: More than 100 countries agreed to cut emissions of methane, a potent planet-warming gas, 30% by the end of this decade. The pledge was part of a push by the Biden administration, which also announced that the Environmental Protection Agency would limit the methane coming from about 1 million oil and gas rigs across the United States. INDIA: India joined the growing chorus of nations pledging to reach “net zero” emissions, setting a 2070 deadline to stop adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. One of the world’s largest consumers of coal, India also said that it would significantly expand the portion of its total energy mix that comes from renewable sources and that half its energy would come from sources other than fossil fuels by 2030. The different faces of climate action There was a clear gender and generation gap at the Glasgow talks. Those with the power to make decisions about how much the world warms in the coming decades are mostly old and male. Those who are angriest about the pace of climate action are mostly young and female. Malik Amin Aslam, an adviser to the prime minister of Pakistan, scoffed at some of the distant net zero goals being announced during the conference, including India’s: “With an average age of 60, I don’t think anyone in the negotiating room would live to experience that net zero in 2070,” he said. On the first day of the conference, Thunberg joined scores of protesters on the streets outside. Throughout the two-week conference, she and other young climate activists — including Vanessa Nakate, Dominika Lasota and Mitzi Tan — made numerous appearances at protests. Thunberg told the BBC in an interview before the summit that she had not been officially invited to speak. She added that she thought the organisers had not invited a lot of young speakers because they “might be scared that if they invite too many ‘radical’ young people then that might make them look bad,” she said, using air quotations. Just holding the talks during the pandemic posed a challenge The climate summit, which was delayed last year, is one of the biggest international gatherings held during the coronavirus pandemic. Many summit participants travelled from countries where vaccines are still not widely available. Globally, fewer than half of all adults have been vaccinated against COVID-19, illustrating the inequities of vaccination. Travel and quarantine restrictions meant additional costs in both time and money for lodging, which made the trip impossible for some. And some participants, including Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, decided against traveling at all. Partway through, conference organisers issued a letter of apology to participants for the long lines and video difficulties, saying that planning around COVID restrictions has been challenging. Patricia Espinosa, executive secretary of the UN climate body, asked attendees to “bear with us” as organisers grappled with the complex arrangements, such as ensuring that all those entering the venue tested negative for the coronavirus, and enforcing controls on the number of people in meeting rooms. © 2021 The New York Times Company

Negotiators from 190 countries meeting in Bali to discuss climate change have "a political and historical responsibility" to reach a deal, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said on Friday. Asked about the consequences of not reaching a deal, Ban said "that would be very serious". The UN Secretary General said he felt all countries, including the United States, wanted an agreement. The United States, as well as Japan, Canada and Australia, have been disputing a guideline for rich nations to cut emissions of greenhouse gases by 25 to 40 percent below 1990 levels. "I think there will be an agreement," he told reporters on board a flight from the Indonesian resort island of Bali, where the summit is taking place, to East Timor's capital Dili. He warned against countries becoming fixated on emission targets. "That will have to be negotiated down the road" he said. Ban said he would be prepared to make an unscheduled return to Bali on Saturday if the talks were still deadlocked. "I think the negotiators and particularly the ministers and the senior leaders have a political and historical responsibility" to conclude the talks successfully, he said. "Climate change, global warming doesn't care where you're from," he said.

The black-tie gathering was the closing event to the city's six-day fashion extravaganza, a week after London's fashion week declared itself fur-free for the first time. Fashion brands have begun paying more attention to their companies' impact on the environment and their production methods as customers are becoming increasingly ecologically aware in their choices. A total of 13 awards were handed out at the second edition of the 'Green Carpet fashion Awards', promoted by Italy's national fashion association, CNMI, and sustainability consultancy Eco-Age, founded and directed by Italian film producer Livia Firth, the wife of Colin Firth. "Fashion can be very beautiful and lucrative, but to be here for a real purpose for me is important," model Elle Macpherson said. Winners, who have demonstrated commitment to and investment in change, included McPherson and the cobblers of fashion house Salvatore Ferragamo SpA. Colin Firth told Reuters that the event, held at Milan's La Scala opera house, meant that the message could spread and "inspire all sorts of other people". Moore said she was impressed by the commitment of everyone in the fashion industry towards sustainability, with people "really taking responsibility." "No one industry can tackle climate change and the sustainability issue by itself," Blanchett said, adding the fashion industry, however, was influential enough to spearhead change. CNMI President Carlo Capasa said sustainability was not just about fur but upgrading rules on the use of chemicals, recycling, production methods and work conditions. The CNMI is drawing up a set of guidelines, some of which are already published on its website. A growing number of luxury groups, including Versace, Gucci and Armani, have given up fur in their collections. Others are finding new techniques to make their supply chains more green, including dying techniques and recycling. "Sustainability is important as it is the future. There is only one way forward", Livia Firth said, adding that fashion companies had to look to sustainability to be profitable in the long run. But brands, producers, designers and industry experts agreed the process was initially costly and would take time. "You have to start somewhere ... (it) takes years (and) you can't change overnight, but you have to start, be courageous and have a vision," Livia Firth added.

The 2007 Nobel Peace Prize could go to a climate campaigner such as ex-US Vice-President Al Gore or Inuit activist Sheila Watt-Cloutier, reinforcing a view that global warming is a threat to world security, experts say. The winner of the $1.5 million prize, perhaps the world's top accolade, will be announced in Oslo on Oct. 12 from a field of 181 candidates. The prize can be split up to three ways. "There are reasonably good chances that the peace prize will be awarded to someone working to stop the dramatic climate problems the world is facing," said Boerge Brende, a former Norwegian environment minister. He noted that the UN Security Council, the top forum for debating war and peace, held a first debate in April about how far climate changes such as droughts, heatwaves or rising seas will be a spur to conflicts. "We have many good candidates for the prize and we are approaching a decision," said Geir Lundestad, director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute where the five-member committee meets. Kenya's Wangari Maathai won the 2004 peace prize for her campaign to plant 30 million trees across Africa, the first Nobel for an environmental campaigner. Lundestad declined to say whether fighting climate change could justify a peace prize. Brende and another Norwegian parliamentarian nominated Gore for his Oscar-winning movie about climate change "An Inconvenient Truth" and Watt-Cloutier, who has highlighted the plight of indigenous cultures facing a quickening Arctic thaw. Arctic sea ice has shrunk to record lows this year. The head of the Nobel committee, Ole Danbolt Mjoes, has praised Gore's movie and lives in the Norwegian Arctic city of Tromsoe. PEOPLE TO BLAME Others suggested candidates include the UN Climate Panel and its leader, Rajendra Pachauri. The panel said this year that it was more than 90 percent likely that mankind's activities were the main cause of warming in the past 50 years. And Yvo de Boer, the UN's top climate change official, said that U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon could be a good candidate, or German Chancellor Angela Merkel for "her leadership role in Europe" in confronting climate change. But there are objections to all of them. "Since the 2004 Peace Prize was given to an environmentalist (Maathai) it may not be repeated this year," said Shirin Ebadi, an Iranian human rights lawyer who won the Nobel Prize in 2003. "Unfortunately there are several other issues in the world that need to be addressed," she said. Non-environmental nominees range from former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari for peace-broking work to Bolivian President Evo Morales. Others say climate change is an overwhelming issue in 2007. "The greatest challenge in modern history for humankind may be climate change," said Norway's Jostein Gaarder, who funds an annual $100,000 environmental prize from sales of his 1990s best-selling philosophy guide "Sophie's World". "It would be a very good initiative to give the Nobel Prize to a climate candidate," he said. Among signs of growing concern, about 70 world leaders will meet on Monday at U.N. headquarters in New York for the largest meeting ever on climate change. President George W. Bush, often criticised even by his allies for doing too little, has invited major carbob emitters to talks in Washington on Sept. 27-28. A prize to Gore would make him the second Democrat laureate since ex-President Jimmy Carter in 2002 -- two Democrats during Bush's presidency might be too much of a slap to Republicans. Canada's Watt-Cloutier, meanwhile, has stepped down from a former role as head of the main Inuit group. And one member of the Nobel Committee is from Norway's populist right-wing Progress Party that is highly sceptical about Gore. Still, the Nobel committee often seeks to link prizes to current affairs. The world's environment ministers will meet in Bali, Indonesia, from Dec. 3-14 to discuss ways to slow global warming. the Nobel Peace Prize is presented on Dec. 10.

What you won’t hear mentioned is the word "sanctions". Or "punishment". For all their efforts to get 200 governments to commit to the toughest possible cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, climate negotiators have all but given up on creating a way to penalise those who fall short. The overwhelming view of member states, says Christiana Figueres, head of the UN Climate Change Secretariat, is that any agreement "has to be much more collaborative than punitive", if it is to happen at all. "Even if you do have a punitive system, that doesn't guarantee that it is going to be imposed or would lead to any better action," Figueres said. To critics, the absence of a legal stick to enforce compliance is a deep - if not fatal - flaw in the Paris process, especially after all countries agreed in 2011 that an agreement would have some form of "legal force". They warn that a deal already built upon sometimes vague promises from member states could end up as a toothless addition to the stack of more than 500 global and regional environmental treaties, while the rise in global temperatures mounts inexorably past a UN ceiling of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit), with the prospect of ever more floods, droughts and heatwaves. International climate court? That fear finds its sharpest expression in a proposal from Bolivia’s socialist government for an International Climate Justice Tribunal with powers to penalise countries that break commitments. Diego Pacheco, Bolivia’s chief negotiator, said anything less would be "dangerous to Mother Earth". But the idea is a non-starter with almost every other country going to the Paris talks, from Nov 30-Dec 11. Even the European Union, which has long argued for a strong, legally binding deal, is increasingly talking about a “pledge and review” system under which national commitments would be re-assessed every five years against a goal of halving world emissions by 2050. Elina Bardram, head of the European Commission delegation, insisted that strong compliance mechanisms were vital. "Weak rules would undermine the whole structure," she said. However, many developing nations oppose reviews of their goals, wanting oversight to be limited to the rich. Nick Mabey, chief executive of the E3G think-tank in London, says a Paris deal is likely to be more like international agreements limiting nuclear weapons than accords under the World Trade Organization, which can impose sanctions. A watchword of nuclear non-proliferation - "trust but verify" - could be the basis, he said. Yvo de Boer, the United Nations' former top climate official, said he remembers the moment when he realised that the principle of sanctioning countries for non-compliance was dead. In 2001, as a senior member of the Dutch delegation, de Boer attended a closed-door meeting of environment ministers in Bonn, Germany, that was designing rules to enforce the UN's 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which obliged about 40 rich nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Empty Act He recalled being struck by the strength of objections, even from once-supportive countries such as Australia and Japan, to any attempt to punish those who fell short of emissions commitments. "The agreement was to be legally binding, but it became very clear that a lot of countries didn't want sanctions," he said. Despite the opposition, a sanctions regime was agreed later in 2001. It required any developed country that missed its greenhouse gas targets between 2008 and 2012 to make even deeper cuts in the future. But even those sanctions were an empty act of bravado by rich nations angered by US President George W Bush's decision in March 2001 to stay out of Kyoto, said Jan Pronk, a former Dutch environment minister who chaired the Bonn meeting. "There was a political feeling that the United States cannot just kill something that is so important internationally," Pronk recalled. But now that even the flawed Kyoto agreement had expired, he added, "sanctions don't mean anything any more". He noted that Japan, Russia and Canada - which was set to break its pledge - have simply abandoned Kyoto in recent years, without suffering sanctions. "Kyoto was the high-water mark for the idea of sanctions in climate agreements," said Alex Hanafi of the US Environmental Defense Fund. "Race to the top"? Both China and the United States, the two top carbon emitters crucial to any effective agreement, made clear from the start of the current negotiations they would not agree to any form of international oversight. The US position instead speaks of a collective "race to the top", in which countries push each other to see who can be the greenest. Nor do the loose commitments being made by countries lend themselves to easy enforcement. Russia's pledge, for example, says only that limiting emissions to somewhere between 70 and 75 percent of 1990 levels by 2030 "might be a long-term indicator". All countries agree that the emissions curbs pledged so far are too small to get the world on track to limit warming to 2 degrees Celsius. That means a strong mechanism will be needed for ratcheting up pledges after Paris. Critics say that simply shaming outliers will not ensure compliance and that, unless there are costs for non-compliance, any country can share in the global benefits of reduced temperature rises while leaving the hard work of emissions cuts to others. But Figueres, the UN climate chief, believes that cuts in greenhouse gases can serve countries' economic self-interests. China, for instance, can improve the health of millions by shifting from coal-fired power plants that cause air pollution. And sharp falls in the costs of solar and wind power also mean that greener technologies can help, rather than hinder, economic growth, benefits that were not so evident under Kyoto, she said. The Paris accord also holds out carrots for participation by developing nations, including a new mechanism to fund loss and damage from hurricanes, droughts or rising sea levels. De Boer, who now works for the Global Green Growth Institute in South Korea, said that ditching sanctions was, ultimately, part of the price of getting a broad, global agreement. "The sting has been taken out of the process ... That means the chances of a deal are much better."

The links between the blazes and climate change caused by carbon emissions are complex and as the driest inhabited landmass on earth, deadly wildfires have been a perennial problem for Australia.But a series of record-busting hot, dry conditions across the continent and an early start to the Southern Hemisphere summer has rekindled arguments on mankind's impact on climate and what can be done to mitigate it.Abbott was elected in September on the back of plans to repeal Australia's scheme to price the carbon emissions responsible for global warming. He has promised to dissolve both the lower house and the Senate if his plan to scrap the scheme is blocked.But as the fires spread, the pressure is mounting on Abbott, who once described the science around climate change as "absolute crap"."Reducing emissions is not a free lunch, but neither is climate change," said John Conner, the Chief Executive of independent research organisation The Climate Institute. "If we're serious about reducing the risks of climate change and climate impacts like these bushfires, then we need to have a serious climate policy which is credible."More than 200 homes have been destroyed since last Thursday as scores of fires burned through thousands of hectares of bush, farms and rural communities outside Sydney. A state of emergency has been declared in New South Wales (NSW) state, Australia's most populous.Forecasts for a return of hot, windy weather later this week has raised fears that three of the most dangerous blazes in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney could join up to form a massive "mega-fire", according to the New South Wales Rural Fire Service.CARBON PRICING BATTLEThe previous Labor government's carbon pricing plan was aimed at reducing emissions by taxing major polluters with the world's highest carbon price of A$23 ($22.23) a tonne before moving to a market cap and trade system by mid-2014.Abbott, a volunteer NSW firefighter himself, now faces a tough test to convince opposition politicians to repeal it when parliament resumes next month, with the Greens and Labor vowing to fight changes.Abbott has a clear majority in the lower house, but if he fails to get the legislation through a hostile Senate, he has promised to call a double dissolution to break the deadlock. Such a move, last called in 1987, would mean elections to both the lower house and the upper house.After earlier rubbishing climate change, Abbott has subsequently acknowledged that it is happening and has proposed a "direct action policy" that would fund some projects that reduce or avoid greenhouse gas emissions and punish businesses which exceed their "business as usual" emission baselines.But just days after taking over as prime minister on Sept 18, Abbott dismantled the Climate Commission and the Climate Change Authority, the two main government bodies for reporting the science of climate change and providing advice on carbon pricing and emissions reduction targets.Before being disbanded, the Climate Commission had reported that climate change had increased the incidence of bushfires in many regions, with heat waves more frequent and severe and the number of hot days in Australia doubling since the 1960s.Last month, leading global climate scientists said they were more certain that human activity was the main cause of global warming, which would bring more heatwaves and droughts, as well as more floods and rising sea-levels.Scientists and most politicians are loath to link single weather or fire events to climate change, and Australian Greens deputy leader Adam Bandt was heavily criticized by some government ministers and media for "political point-scoring" when he did that after last week's blazes.But the fires and persistent hot weather would increase public pressure on Abbott to come up with a strong alternative to carbon pricing, said Tristan Edis, a former research fellow at the Grattan Institute and now editor of Climate Spectator."It's not just about axing something. He's got to replace it with something that credible and in that respect, (the fires) help people that are concerned about climate change and want to see government action on it, it helps their cause to keep this top of mind." ($1 = 1.0348 Australian dollars)

- had urged delegates to move the deadline for phasing out production and use of hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFC) for developed countries to 2020 from 2030 and to 2030 from 2040 for developing nations. "A deal which UNEP believes is historic has been reached on the accelerated freezing and phase-out of HCFCs," said UNEP spokesman Nick Nuttall. He said details of the deal would be unveiled at a news conference in Montreal at 10 a.m. (1400 GMT) on Saturday. HCFCs are used in air conditioners and refrigerators. Holes in the ozone layer are blamed for increased risk of cancer and cataracts in humans. Nuttall said the deal still had to be approved by a plenary session of the conference, adding that he did not expect there to be any problems or delays. Washington says the faster phase-out of HCFCs would be twice as effective as the Kyoto protocol in fighting climate change.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown told China on Friday he was taking their relationship to a new level and that he wanted Britain to be the number one choice for Chinese trade and investment. Brown arrived in a snowy Beijing on a short trip to the heart of the world's fastest-growing major economy on which he said he would also bring up human rights and democracy. "Britain will welcome substantial new investment from China in our country in the years to come," Brown told a news conference alongside Premier Wen Jiabao. "We want Britain to be the number one destination of choice for Chinese business as it invests in the rest of the world." The two leaders agreed to expand trade to a value of $60 billion by 2010, compared with about $40 billion last year, as they watched the signing of agreements on education cooperation, climate change, sustainable cities and several involving BP and clean energy development. "I believe by 2010 we will see 100 new Chinese companies investing in the UK, we will see 100 partnerships between our universities and Chinese universities and we will double the number of firms listed on the London Stock Exchange and thousands of jobs will be created," Brown said, adding that he welcomed investment from Beijing's huge sovereign wealth fund. "We are now able to sell to China not just financial and business services and environmental technologies, but also a whole range of British brands that are now becoming very popular among the rising number of Chinese consumers. "...We are moving our partnership with China to a higher level." Wen greeted Brown at the Great Hall of the People, the iconic heart of Communist Party rule, where he assured reporters China was committed to eventual introduction of democracy. "China will remain committed to advancing democracy -- that is to say out people will gradually exercise greater democratic elections and participation in political affairs," he said. HUMAN RIGHTS While Britain is keen to promote trade, the two countries do not always see eye-to-eye on Iran, Myanmar or the conflict in Sudan's Darfur province. Brown said he would discuss human rights and democracy during his visit. Human Rights Watch said in an open letter to Brown that he should use his visit to press Beijing on rights in the run-up to the Olympics. A Chinese diplomat said it was important for Britain and China, as permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, to sit down regularly and discuss international issues such as Iran, Darfur, Myanmar and the Middle East. Western politicians and rights groups have accused China in the past of selling Sudan arms that end up in Darfur and of fending off stronger U.N. Security Council resolutions. Wen said he and Brown agreed to press for a negotiated settlement in Darfur. On Iran, Britain has supported its ally, the United States, in pressing for new sanctions against Tehran's nuclear activities, but China wants a negotiated solution. And unlike Britain, China has been reluctant to criticise Myanmar's military rulers publicly. Britain has been the biggest EU investor in China over the past few years but it has been less successful than European rivals in exporting to China. Wen said it was a good omen that Brown arrived a day after the year's first snowfall in the capital. "China has an old saying that snow augurs a successful year, and this symbolises a fresh start in Sino-British relations in the new year and even greater development," he said.

“Iraq is between friends who are 5,000 miles away from us and a neighbour we’ve had for 5,000 years,” Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi said in a New Year’s Day telephone call with Trump, according to a close adviser, Abdul Hussain al-Hunain. “We cannot change geography and we cannot change history, and this is the reality in Iraq.” Iraq is caught in a vise. Many Iraqis were furious that the United States violated their country's sovereignty by carrying out airstrikes on Iraqi soil. A spate of strikes in December killed at least two dozen members of a pro-Iranian Iraqi military unit, provoking the assault on the US Embassy. A separate strike last week killed Iran’s top military commander, the deputy chief of a coalition of Iraqi militias and eight other people, leading to a vote by Iraq’s Parliament to expel US forces from the country and a counterstrike by Iran on two US military posts in Iraq early Wednesday. But acceding to the political pressure to rid the country of US troops would be a “disaster” for Iraq, militarily and economically, a senior Iraqi official said. The main mission of the roughly 5,200 US troops stationed at a handful of bases around Iraq is to help the country fight the Islamic State group. If they leave, the official said, it would not only hamper that battle but also have a host of knock-on effects, from the departure of troops from other coalition countries to dire financial hardship if, as Trump has threatened, the United States imposed economic sanctions. Mourners, some standing on the flags of Israel and the United States, gather for the funeral of the funeral ceremony of Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, a commander in the Popular Mobilization Forces, at a mosque in Baghdad on Tuesday, Jan 7, 2020. He appears on the banner in the background together with Iranian Maj Qasem Soleimani, top. (Sergey Ponomarev/The New York Times) “Yes, there is big pressure from our people to have the troops leave,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters. “But we can bear this big pressure much better than we can bear the departure of the Americans.” Mourners, some standing on the flags of Israel and the United States, gather for the funeral of the funeral ceremony of Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, a commander in the Popular Mobilization Forces, at a mosque in Baghdad on Tuesday, Jan 7, 2020. He appears on the banner in the background together with Iranian Maj Qasem Soleimani, top. (Sergey Ponomarev/The New York Times) For now, however, Abdul-Mahdi seems to be moving ahead with plans to implement Parliament’s will. On Friday, he said that he had asked Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to send a delegation from the United States to discuss steps for withdrawal. Pompeo fired back that the United States would do no such thing, despite the military’s frequent refrain that it is a guest of the Iraqi government and will comply with its host’s demands. “We are happy to continue the conversation with the Iraqis about what the right structure is,” he said at a news conference Friday. But the US mission in Iraq is to train Iraqi forces to fight the Islamic State, he said, and “we’re going to continue that mission.” After the Iraqi Parliament vote Sunday, Trump threatened to impose “very big sanctions” on Iraq if it ousted US forces — “sanctions like they’ve never seen before.” He also said that Iraq would have to reimburse the United States for billions of dollars it had invested in a major air base there. But for many Iraqis, booting out the Americans was long overdue. Although many remain grateful that the United States ousted longtime dictator Saddam Hussein and fought alongside Iraqi forces to drive out the Islamic State, they are still pained by US military mistakes and decisions, including massive civilian casualties during the war that followed the US invasion and the humiliating abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. The recent US airstrikes killed Iranian proxy fighters who were also members of the Iraqi security forces — and considered heroes by many Iraqis for their role in helping fight the Islamic State. The final straw appears to have been the US drone strike last week that killed the Iranian military leader, Gen Qassem Soleimani, and the deputy chief of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces, the armed groups that have fought against the Islamic State. Graffiti on the walls surrounding the US Embassy in Baghdad on Thursday, Jan 9, 2020. As US-Iran tensions flare, Iraq is caught in the middle. (Sergey Ponomarev/The New York Times) “We are in a state of enthusiasm in Iraq,” al-Hunain said. “The process of the US withdrawal reclaims a part of Iraq’s dignity after the airstrikes and violations of Iraqi sovereignty.” Graffiti on the walls surrounding the US Embassy in Baghdad on Thursday, Jan 9, 2020. As US-Iran tensions flare, Iraq is caught in the middle. (Sergey Ponomarev/The New York Times) The feeling is especially strong among Shiite Muslims, who make up a majority in Iraq; many have ties to Iran’s Shiite theocracy. Iran has long sought the ouster of US troops, which it views as a threat on its border. But the unanimous vote in Parliament — taken in the heat of the moment, with no consideration of the potential consequences and costs to the country — suggests more unity than may be the case. Only 170 out of 328 members voted, with most Sunni Muslim and Kurdish members refusing to attend. One of the few Sunni members who did attend the session, Ahmed al-Jarba, raised a red flag, saying that the departure of US troops might benefit Iran. After the Americans leave, he asked, “Are our neighbors our friends or our masters?” referring to Iran. “Are we going to hand the country’s wealth and decisions into the hands of neighboring countries?” Al-Hunain, the senior adviser to the prime minister, said that Abdul-Mahdi’s hope was that if the US forces left, Iran would no longer have security concerns about them and would leave Iraq alone. Senior Iraqi government officials, diplomats and scholars laid out the opposite scenario: Iraq, they said, could be forced into the arms of Iran, deprived of US dollars, and isolated from the West. As worrying — even for Iran — is the risk that the Islamic State might return if there are no Americans to help fight it. The Sunni extremist group no longer controls territory in Iraq and is much diminished, but it still launches near-daily attacks. A second senior Iraqi official and a senior Western diplomat said that if the Americans left, so would European and other coalition forces because they depend on US logistical and technical support. The US hospital at the Baghdad International Airport, for instance, treats the personnel of all 30 countries in the international coalition. The economic sanctions that Trump threatened would be intended not only to punish Iraq but also to effectively extend the administration’s pressure campaign against Iran. The two countries’ economies are closely entwined. Iraq would risk being cut off from its main source of dollars because its account at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York could be frozen. Iraq deposits the proceeds of its oil sales there, withdrawing them to pay government salaries and contracts. The United States could also end the waivers that allow Iraq to buy Iranian gas to fuel its electricity generators in the south, which supply at least 35% of the country’s power. Iraq could seek another source, but it could be difficult to find one on short notice. The other option — making do with less electricity — could spawn unrest in the south as soon as the weather heats up, as electrical shortages did in 2018. American and other foreign companies might reduce or suspend operations if they become concerned about safety. A number of American contractors left in the days after Soleimani’s death because they wanted to stay out of the line of fire. So far, Abdul-Mahdi appears willing to face those potential consequences. If he harbors any thoughts of compromise, he has kept them to himself, perhaps wary of the anti-American political climate. “It looks like the decision making and opinion in the prime minister’s office is turning eastward,” a senior Iraqi official said. “They are almost in denial about what a drastic path they are going down.” The problem, said Joost Hiltermann, the Middle East and North Africa program director for the International Crisis Group, is that no one in the government is seriously considering possible compromises. “The Iraqis don’t want either the United States or Iran, but if they have to have one, they would rather have both because they balance each other out,” he said. “The US is a counterweight to Iran.” There are a few glimmers of potential ways out. Abdul-Mahdi’s adviser, al-Hunain, said that while the US forces are not welcome now, the government does want other international forces to stay. Talks with other coalition countries could open the door to keeping at least some Americans, those arguably needed to sustain the coalition and help fight the Islamic State. The Europeans, for their part, would like to preserve the ability to fight the Islamic State in Iraq, fearing that any relaxing of pressure would allow the group to reconstitute. A senior Western diplomat said the British and French were working to outline an alternative mission for the international forces relying on a smaller number of troops focused on ensuring that “the gains made against ISIS are not lost.” Perhaps the most promising sign that Abdul-Mahdi might be open to compromise was his request for a briefing paper from Iraq’s National Security Council on the options for proceeding with the parliamentary mandate. Abdul-Mahdi is an economist and has served as finance minister, a background that gives him an understanding of the price of economic isolation even if he now seems more swayed by political concerns. The council provided three options, according to a senior official who works closely with the council: The first was to require US troops to leave as quickly as possible, an approach that could at least deter Iranian-backed armed groups from attacking them. The second option was a negotiated withdrawal, which would slow the drawdown and potentially allow the fight against the Islamic State to go on in some places even as troops were withdrawing from others. The third was a renegotiation of the agreement with the US-led coalition that might allow for some troops to stay, which would open the door to having other international forces stay as well. The National Security Council recommended Option 3. © 2020 The New York Times Company

President Barack Obama said on Tuesday "all of us" want an effective exit strategy from Afghanistan in which Afghan authorities are able to take more responsibilities. Obama made the comment after talks with Netherlands Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende that centered on the current situation in Afghanistan as well as the global economy and climate change. "All of us want to see an effective exit strategy where increasingly the Afghan army, Afghan police, Afghan courts, Afghan government are taking more responsibility for their own security," Obama said. Around 4,000 U.S. Marines and hundreds of NATO and Afghan forces are taking part in an offensive in various parts of Helmand province against the Taliban, the biggest by foreign troops since they ousted the Islamist group in 2001. The operation comes ahead of next month's presidential election, which is crucial both for Kabul and for a US administration that has identified Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan as its top foreign policy priority. "If we can get through a successful election in September and we continue to apply the training approach to the Afghan security forces and we combine that with a much more effective approach to economic development inside Afghanistan, then my hope is that we will be able to begin transitioning into a different phase in Afghanistan," Obama said.

But in the United States, neither of these men is determining the direction of the Catholic Church. It is now a conservative movement that decides how the Catholic Church asserts its power in America. That reality was unmistakably declared last week, when the country’s bishops voted overwhelmingly to draft guidelines for the Eucharist, advancing a conservative push to deny Biden Communion over his support for abortion rights. “There is a special obligation of those who are in leadership because of their public visibility,” Bishop Kevin Rhoades, who heads the diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend in Indiana, said after the vote. It was the most dramatic example of the conservative Catholic movement’s reach since Biden was elected. Now, American Catholics are facing an internal war over one of the church’s most sacred rituals, the Holy Eucharist, which represents the body and blood of Christ. Leading U.S. allies of the pope, including Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago, Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark, N.J., and Cardinal Wilton Gregory of Washington, D.C., sided with the Vatican’s warning against proceeding with the eucharistic document, but they were ultimately drowned out. The measure passed with a vote of 73% who approved it compared with 24% who opposed it. That 73% represents emerging conservative momentum, at odds with the pope's broader range of priorities on issues such as immigration, poverty and climate change, not only among bishops but in parishes across the country. Although the church has a hierarchical structure, bishops have significant autonomy in their own dioceses. The rightward shift comes as conservative movements are rising in Christianity, pushing back against increasing secularism and the overall decline of Christianity, both Protestant and Catholic. The sex abuse crisis has also pushed many parishioners away from the church. White Catholics are increasingly Republican: About 6 in 10 registered white Catholic voters are now Republican, compared with 4 in 10 in 2008, according to the Pew Research Center. By contrast, about two-thirds of Hispanic Catholic voters have remained Democrats over the past decade. © 2021 The New York Times Company

“A great red wave is coming,” Trump said at an Oct 31 rally in Pennsylvania, predicting a surge of Republican support would carry him to re-election. “There’s not a thing they can do about it.” Trump lost the White House, according to media outlets that called the tight race on Saturday morning for his Democratic opponent Joe Biden, the former vice president. And yet Trump clearly outperformed scores of polls that suggested he might lose in a landslide and proved his base of supporters was bigger and more loyal than many observers realized. Democrats had hoped that voters would hand Trump a stark repudiation of his often chaotic first term and his divisive campaign. Instead, Trump has captured about 7.3 million more votes than he did in 2016, preliminary returns show. Many Republican lawmakers who faced election stuck by Trump through an impeachment last year and, this year, his widely maligned handling of the pandemic and the civil unrest over police killings of Black people. Some of those allies were rewarded with Senate victories that may allow the party to maintain a narrow majority. Republicans also gained five seats in the US House of Representatives, which is controlled by Democrats. The Republican party’s strong showing, defying critics and pundits, came despite a massive fundraising advantage enjoyed by Democrats at the campaign’s end and, according to polls, a sharp turn of support toward Democrats in America’s suburbs. The tight race came down to late-counted mail-in ballots in Georgia and Pennsylvania, which tipped the election to Biden. Trump, however, has not conceded. The incumbent, who received more votes than any Republican candidate in history, has sought to de-legitimize the outcome by claiming, without evidence, that he was cheated. There will likely be recounts in several states. And Trump continues to wage legal fights to nullify the results. Still, Trump faces a formidable struggle to prevail in the Electoral College that decides US elections. Each state is allotted electoral votes based on its population. In most states, the candidate that wins the popular vote takes all its electoral votes, no matter how close the margin of victory. In the popular vote nationally, Biden has so far racked up 4.1 million more votes than Trump. The Trump campaign issued a statement Saturday morning saying the election was “far from over. Joe Biden has not been certified as the winner of any states, let alone any of the highly contested states.” Trump tweeted: “I WON THIS ELECTION, BY A LOT!” Even as states count the last ballots, the results have dashed Democrats’ hopes for the death of Trumpism. If Biden’s victory is certified and the Republicans retain the Senate, the new president may be handcuffed in his efforts to push legislation and win confirmations of judges and administration officials. Whatever the future for Trump himself, Democrats and Republicans alike said they will have to reckon with the continuing appeal of his brash brand of populist politics. Joe Gruters, chairman of the Florida Republican Party, said that Trump’s message about economic liberty, even during the pandemic, won over many voters. “People voted for the president of the United States because of his positive messaging on the future and his going out of the way to put America first,” Gruters said. “People don’t want taxes; they don’t want to be locked down. They want freedom and liberty. And they don’t want to see their communities burned to the ground,” he said, referring to incidents of looting and fire-setting during protests against killings by police this year. U.S President Donald Trump returns to the White House after news media declared Democratic U.S. presidential nominee Joe Biden to be the winner of the 2020 U.S. presidential election, in Washington, Nov 7, 2020. REUTERS Stu Rothenberg, a non-partisan political analyst, said the race underscored the resilience of Trump, who turned out legions of supporters from his base of white, often working-class voters and made inroads with Hispanic voters vital to the Democratic coalition. U.S President Donald Trump returns to the White House after news media declared Democratic U.S. presidential nominee Joe Biden to be the winner of the 2020 U.S. presidential election, in Washington, Nov 7, 2020. REUTERS The election was hardly the “smashing defeat” Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans wanted, Rothenberg said. “In some respects, the outcome wasn’t that different than four years ago, despite his failure to deal with the coronavirus and the economy,” Rothenberg said of Trump. The tight election means Democrats will be asking themselves why “Trump is still with us,” said Karen Finney, a veteran Democratic strategist who was a spokesperson for Democrat Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. She said Trump continued to score successes with “dog whistle” politics - using veiled or coded rhetoric to inflame racial and cultural tensions. The close election, Finney said, proves “we are still a very, very divided country.” The Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee did not respond to questions about Trump and the party’s performance in the election. DEFYING THE EXPERTS After four years of shunning experts on issues ranging from climate change to foreign policy to the coronavirus pandemic, Trump wasn’t about to listen to the pollsters, pundits and politicians who said he needed to steer his flagging campaign toward the moderate middle. Instead, Trump went all-in on a divisive excite-the-base strategy - railing against liberal “anarchists,” his own administration’s public health experts and the legitimacy of the election itself. He finished the campaign with a string of rallies packed with mostly maskless supporters in a still-raging pandemic. The preliminary election results underscored the depth of the nation’s partisan divide. After a year of the pandemic, an economic crash and widespread social unrest over police killings of black people, exit polls showed that few people crossed party lines. Exit polls conducted by Edison Research showed that Trump retained the support of a solid majority of white voters, about 55%, a slight decline from his numbers in 2016. White non-college graduates who form the heart of Trump’s base still backed Trump over Biden by more than 20 points, but his margin in that group shrunk by about four points, according to the data. Mike Madrid, a co-founder of the Lincoln Project - a group of former Republican political operatives who campaigned to defeat Trump and elect Biden - said he thinks Trumpism will remain the heart of the Republican Party. “Trumpism, popular nationalism, white identity grievance politics will continue,” he said, noting the vast majority of elected Republicans had little appetite for anything different. And yet Trump’s support rose by about four percentage points among African-Americans, Hispanics and Asian-Americans, compared with four years ago, the polling suggests. About 39% of older Hispanics cast ballots for Trump, up 14 points from 2016, while 19% of black voters between ages 30 and 44 backed the president, which is up 12 points from the last election. Meanwhile, Trump’s level of support slipped by about 2 points among older white voters. In Florida, a 12-point surge towards Trump among Latino voters, compared with 2016, played an important role in handing him the big battleground state’s electoral votes. Such gains flummoxed Trump’s opponents, who have long hammered the president for what they describe as his racist comments and harsh immigration policies. Notably, the president boosted his support in heavily Latino areas in Texas, overperforming Clinton’s totals by 11 to 27 points in counties along the state’s southern border with Mexico. In Hidalgo County, which is more than 90% Hispanic, Trump won 40,000 more votes than he did four years ago, increasing his vote share from 28% to 41%. Biden’s low-profile campaign, which avoided the flesh-and-blood rallies that Trump thrived on, undoubtedly gave the president an upper hand with some Latino voters, one political scientist said. “The Rio Grande Valley, like other Latino-heavy places like Florida, is very much an old-school, grassroots place that needs a high-touch political approach,” said Victoria De Francesco Soto, assistant dean at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. She said Trump helped himself with Latinos by not using what she called the racist rhetoric that he used in his campaign in 2016 when calling an immigration crackdown. She said it’s not surprising that voters shrugged off Trump’s stance on immigration because many Latinos who live near the border are fairly conservative on immigration issues. Richard Cortez - a Democrat and the county judge, a top elected official, in Hidalgo County - said Trump’s big gains in the Rio Grande Valley came down to the economy and religion for more conservative Latinos. The coronavirus pandemic has taken an intense toll on the region, where mobile morgues had to be brought in to handle a spike in deaths. Still, Cortez said, voters feared unemployment more than the virus, and embraced Trump’s call to open the U.S. economy, regardless of the pandemic. The largely Catholic population in the Valley also welcomed Trump’s anti-abortion stance and his success in placing on the U.S. Supreme Court three conservative justices who voters hope may strike down Roe v. Wade. Trump’s bravado, too, played well with Latinos, Cortez said. “Hispanic voters often like a tough, John Wayne-type politician - somebody who will fiercely stand up for their ideals,” he said. “Some voters just felt that Trump was tougher.” RALLIES, REGISTRATION AND RECRUITS Polls all year showed that suburban women and older voters had shifted away from the president. But Trump never lost his appeal among the faithful - including evangelicals, pocketbook Republicans who liked his tax cuts and the mostly white, non-college-educated voters who once were a natural constituency for Democrats. They continued to trust Trump on the economy and revelled in his ridicule of Biden, who many consider a moderate, as a doddering tool of the radical left. “Joe Biden - he’s not all there,” Trump told a crowd at a farm in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, on Oct. 31. At a rally in Opa-locka, Florida, on Sunday - Trump’s fifth of the day, stretching past midnight - the president riled up fans with his dystopian vision of Biden’s America: closed factories, banned oil fracking, quadrupled taxes, defunded police departments, destroyed suburbs, gun confiscations, and anti-American indoctrination of school children. (Biden advocated none of these things.) “Our opponents want to turn us into Communist Cuba or socialist Venezuela,” he said. But the rally strategy went well beyond whipping up enthusiasm, campaign officials said. It included a much larger effort to recruit and register new members of the Trump tribe - often infrequent voters, who may not be Republicans. To attend a Trump rally, an attendee had to sign up online or provide a cell phone number, used by the campaign to identify people who may not have voted in 2016, or ever. That meant every rally became what Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh called “an enormous data-gathering event” that pulled more people into the Trump camp. “It is not atypical for 30% of registrants for a rally to be non-Republican,” he said. The combination of rallies and data-mining proved to be a potent campaign weapon - and created a database of supporters that Republicans can continue to build even after a Trump White House. The campaign and the Republican Party invested heavily to grow the size of Trump’s base of support. Since the 2020 cycle began, the Republican Party has signed up 2.5 million volunteers who have performed 29.4 million door knocks and 128.9 million phone calls spread across battleground states, according to Rick Gorka, a Republican National Committee official involved in the effort. More than 2,000 paid staff have been spread across these states working for the president and the party, he said. In states the campaign considered strategically important, it pinpointed clusters of Trump supporters or swing voters and targeted them for door-knocks and digital advertising. “Those 2.5 million volunteers, that’s what they do,” Gorka said. “They would meet potential voters in their neighbourhoods, churches, bars, coffee shops; it didn’t matter.” The rallies, Gorka said, brought in “a network of individuals that we would never be able to identify.” Republicans quietly piled up strong margins in signing up new voters in swing states including North Carolina and Florida, helping to drive turnout even higher in some of the rural, mostly white and manufacturing-intensive counties where Trump enjoyed his deepest wells of support. But those numbers were offset by Democratic surges elsewhere. These new Trump voters might explain why many pollsters notched embarrassing underestimates of the president’s support in some key swing states in 2020. Another possible reason: a hidden reserve of Trump voters who kept their preference quiet. Ryan Landers, 46, waiting in line at the pre-election Trump rally in Pennsylvania’s Bucks County, said that some of his Trump-supporting friends got calls from pollsters and lied about their intention to vote for the president. “Some people kept it to themselves because of the left,” added Bill Karcher, 48, a floor installer who said he voted for Obama and Hillary Clinton, but supported Trump this year. “You can’t have an opinion if you are for Trump. If you have a Trump sign, you’re going to catch shit for it.” Trump’s rallies, however, brought out tens of thousands of loud-and-proud supporters. The gatherings had the feel of fan-filled music festivals, with a warmup playlist of baby boomer favourites and a video of the highlights of Trump’s first term. For the faithful, Trump represents something beyond a political figure. “He is us, in the White House,” said Suzanne Landis, a hairstylist from Montgomery County, near Philadelphia. “He speaks for us.” In closely fought Pinellas County, Florida, Tim Kennedy, 27, stood along a roadside last weekend waving flags for Trump - one of them showing an assault rifle with the words “Come and Take It.” Kennedy said the coronavirus crisis cost him his job as an engineering contractor for an arms manufacturer. But he doesn’t blame Trump. “He’s not a saint, but he’s not a normal politician,” Kennedy said of Trump. “I think he genuinely cares about people.”

Oregon, Washington and California are enduring a wildfire season of historic proportions, with the firefighting effort compounded by the coronavirus pandemic and misinformation online. But as residents readied themselves for more pain, they also looked to the skies and hoped that changing weather might help them this weekend in their fight. Doug Grafe, chief of fire protection for the Oregon Department of Forestry, said that the strong winds that had spread the fires had dissipated and that cooler temperatures and higher humidity would help fire crews move “from just life safety to the offense” in fighting the blazes. Gov. Gavin Newsom of California also noted the dying winds and said that a “modest amount” of precipitation could be on the way in his state. In her news conference, Gov. Kate Brown of Oregon noted that well over 1 million acres — over 1,500 square miles — had been burned in the state and that the state’s air quality ranks the worst in the world. “Almost anywhere in the state you can feel this right now,” she said. More than 40,000 Oregonians have already been evacuated, and about 500,000 are in zones that may be evacuated as the fires continue to grow. Mayor Ted Wheeler of Portland declared a state of emergency Thursday night, and residents of Molalla, about 30 miles to the south, packed highways as they fled from the approaching fires. But tragedy has already befallen some, with towns like Talent and Phoenix all but obliterated. Andrew Phelps, director of the Oregon Office of Emergency Management, said Friday that mass casualties were a possibility “based on what we know and the numbers of structures that have been lost.” In California, where more than 3 million acres have burned, Newsom held a surreal livestreamed news conference, speaking among charred trees in the midst of a yellowish, smoky haze left by the raging North Complex fires. To his west, the August Complex fire — which this week became the largest in the state’s history — had now burned across 747,000 acres, Newsom said. Ten people have died in the most recent California fires, and Newsom said he feared that more bodies would be found. He emphasized the unprecedented scale of the challenges facing firefighters, who have been strained by enormous blazes up and down the coast. “It’s just something we’ve never seen in our lifetime,” he said. Newsom said he spoke with President Donald Trump for about a half an hour Thursday about the fires and said the president “enforced his commitment” to sending aid for both businesses and individuals. While the governor acknowledged that poor forest management over decades had contributed to the severity of wildfires, he said that mega-droughts and record heat waves are evidence that the most dire predictions about climate change have already arrived. While California, he said, was investing in green technology and regulating vehicle emissions, the fires ravaging the entire West Coast were a grim preview of what the rest of the country may soon face if policies and priorities did not change nationally. “California is America in fast forward,” he said. “What we’re experiencing right now is coming to communities all across the country.” © 2020 The New York Times Company

Thousands of people made homeless by the deadliest cyclone in 16 years scrambled for cover after rumours spread that a tsunami was about to hit the devastated coastline, officials and reporters said Friday. "People squatting under the sky for a week after the cyclone killed thousands began running to and fro, looking for safe grounds on Thursday night to escape the unfounded tsunami," said a journalist in the coastal Barisal district. "No one knows who spread the false alarm, and why, that followed a rise in water levels at sea and rivers," journalist Aroop Talukder said. Weather officials said it was just a normal high tide, but it scared traumatised cyclone survivors many of whom are still not getting any relief a week after the Nov 15 cyclone, due to horrendous logistical difficulties and the scale of devastation. As the scare died down at dawn on Friday, thousands of people were seen lining up along highways waiting for relief trucks to come by, said Reuters cameraman Rafiqur Rahman in Swarankhola, an area badly mauled by the cyclone. "Men, women and children also crowded on the river banks and often ran into the water to grab food packets handed by government and private relief operators," he said on Friday. Cyclone Sidr killed around 3,500 people and left thousands injured or missing, officials said. In some areas, the survivors were still retrieving human and animal corpses, they said. Another 2 million people have been displaced, officials and aid workers say. COLD AND FOG A massive military-led relief operation is under way to provide food, medicine, clothes, blankets and safe water to survivors that has been pouring in from all over the world. Countries, institutions and charities have offered $200 million in aid so far. Survivors are collecting whatever they can from their devastated homes to build shelters, especially to protect them from early winter cold and fog, adding to their misery from hunger and disease. Bangladesh's army-backed interim government said two U.S. C-130 cargoes planes will help the Bangladesh air force deliver supplies to remote areas in a day or two, and two U.S. Navy ships carrying helicopters and marines will arrive over the weekend. "We are about to mount a very big and well-coordinated relief effort shortly," said one disaster management official. Cyclone Sidr was the strongest since a 1991 cyclone killed around 143,000 people. Officials and experts say a much better cyclone preparedness and advance warning system helped save thousands of lives this time. "As responses to disasters have improved, and as some shelter infrastructure has been put in place, death tolls have become smaller," said Xian Zhu, World Bank Country Director in Bangladesh. "But Bangladesh remains extremely vulnerable, the more so as climate change adds to its burden," Preliminary estimates show more than 5 million people in 30 districts were affected by the storm. Half of them need life-saving emergency assistance for the next two to three months, said Elisabeth Byrs, spokeswoman of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Dhaka, Mar 9 (bdnews24.com)—An international bankers' group has committed to reach financial products to a billion customers, most of who have been left out of traditional banking services. The Global Alliance for Banking on Values, an independent network of 11 sustainable banks, made the commitment on Tuesday at the end of a three-day conference in Dhaka. "The members of the GABV have committed to touch the lives of one billion people by 2020," Fazle Hasan Abed, founder-chairperson of BRAC and co-founder of the GABV, told a press conference. "This is a major new pledge that could transform lives on a truly global scale, and make a substantial difference in our efforts to combat climate change," he added. Representatives from the banks, from Asia to Latin America, gathered to try building a viable future for the financial industry through the three-day seminar that began on March 6. The GABV, initiated in March 2009, uses finance to deliver sustainable development instruments for the unserved people, communities and the environment. It represents around seven million customers in 20 countries, with a combined capital of over $14 billion. It has already announced a commitment to raise $250 million in new capital over three years to support the expansion of $2 billion in lending to green projects and unserved communities around the world. The money is expected to be raised by investors—including existing individual customers, institutions and new investors. The alliance expects that the serving more customers is possible through expansion of the network's membership and by creation of new such banks, according to the statement. The network's members plan to promote and demonstrate the impact of business models which focus on solutions to the world's most urgent social and environmental problems. Peter Blom, chair and co-founder of the GABV, said, "We need to raise more money and invest in the sustainable bankers of the future so we can use this finance to its full potential. "This commitment is an important line in the sand," he added. Blom is the CEO of a GABV member Triodos Bank, based in the Netherlands. "We believe values-led banking can and should make a positive difference to the lives of one in six people within ten years," Blom said. Extending this capital substantially in future years will help to reach the one billion targets, participants from the member banks observed.

Wildfires in New South Wales and Queensland states have killed four people, destroyed hundreds of homes and wiped out 2.5 million acres (1 million hectares) of farmland and bush over the past week. The fires have been fueled by tinder -dry conditions after three years of drought that experts say has been exacerbated by climate change, a factor that has sparked a sharp political debate in recent days. Firefighters have said the blazes will burn for weeks without significant rainfall. Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) said there is just a 25% chance that the country’s east coast will receive average rainfall between Dec. 1 and Feb. 28. Stoking the threat, BOM said there is more than 80% chance that temperatures will exceed average levels over the next three months. More immediately, Rural Fire Service NSW deputy commissioner Rob Rogers said fatigued firefighters face another challenging few days. “Conditions are starting to warm up tomorrow, into the weekend and then heating up early next week, a return to more gusty conditions. We’re in for the long haul,” Rogers told Australia’s Channel 7. The death toll from the fires rose to four on Thursday after police reported the body of a man was discovered in NSW bushland that had been ravaged by fire. CLIMATE POLITICS Bushfires are common in Australia’s hot, dry summers, but the ferocity and early arrival of the fires in the southern spring this year has caught many by surprise and stoked an increasingly acrimonious political debate about climate change. Prime Minister Scott Morrison has repeatedly batted away questions on that issue during the current crisis, drawing criticism from climate activists and opposition lawmakers. A group of former fire chiefs on Thursday said the government’s refusal to discuss climate change issues were impeding preparations for large-scale fires. Greg Mullins, a former Fire and Rescue NSW commissioner, said he and 23 other fire and emergency chiefs had been trying to have a meeting with Morrison since April because they “knew that a bushfire crisis was coming.” Instead, he said current fire chiefs had been locked out of discussions and were “not allowed” to mention climate change. “This government fundamentally doesn’t like talking about climate change,” Mullins told reporters in Sydney. Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack said earlier in the week that linking the fires to the government’s support of the coal industry was “the ravings of some pure, enlightened and woke capital city greenies”.

Australia unveiled its most sweeping economic reform in decades on Sunday with a plan to tax carbon emissions from the nation's worst polluters, reviving hopes of stronger global climate action with the largest emissions trade scheme outside Europe. Prime Minister Julia Gillard said 500 companies including steel and aluminum manufacturers would pay a A$23 ($24.70) per tonne carbon tax from next year, rising by 2.5 percent a year, moving to a market-based trading scheme in 2015. "It's time to get on with this, we are going to get this done," said Gillard after a bruising battle to win political support for the scheme, which has polarized voters and business. A parliamentary vote on the scheme is expected before year-end. Australia is the developed world's worst per-capita greenhouse gas emitter because of its heavy reliance on cheap coal for power generation. Emissions are set to rise in the booming economy without a carbon cost, the government says. The stakes are high for Gillard's Labor party, which relies on the support of Greens and independents for a one-seat lower house majority. Her popularity has slumped to record lows over the scheme. With the details now finally released after months of waiting, Gillard will now try to convince voters opposed to the plan ahead of a parliamentary vote, trying to deflect a campaign against it by the hardest hit businesses. "It is absolutely critical that the government sells this very effectively," said Tony Wood, director of the energy program at the Grattan Institute, a policy think tank. Australian retail and clean-energy stocks were expected to be among the winners, and airlines and miners among the plan's losers, but analysts said financial markets overall were tipped to take the policy in their stride. The scheme aims to cut national emissions by 5 percent of 2000 levels by 2020, which would mean a cut of about 160 million tonnes. The package already has the broad support of the Greens and independents, although crossbenchers said they had yet to support extra measures to protect steelmakers and jobs in the vital coal industry. Parliament twice rejected previous attempts to price carbon in 2009 and any fresh rebuff in a vote expected around October would seriously threaten Gillard's government. The danger is that a vigorous campaign by the conservative opposition and business groups opposed to the tax, could erode public support and frighten political backers ahead of elections due by 2013. "This tax is going to go up and up and up as time goes by. I think this package is going to compound the trust problem that has dogged the prime minister. This package certainly sets up the next election to be a referendum on the carbon tax," said conservative opposition leader Tony Abbott. Abbott has seized upon voter fears of a new tax and higher costs from a scheme that aims to transform how the nation generates and uses energy across the economy. To neutralize opposition, Gillard said more than A$24 billion to be raised from pollution permit sales over the next three years would go to households through generous tax cuts worth more than A$15 billion. SCHEME MAY BE LINKED TO OTHERS Australia's scheme will cover 60 percent of carbon pollution apart from exempted agricultural and light vehicle emissions, with Treasury models showing it would boost the consumer price index by 0.7 percent in its first year, in 2012-13 (July-June). It could also aid global efforts to fight carbon pollution, which have largely stalled since U.S. President Barack Obama last year ruled out a federal climate bill his present term. Outside the EU, only New Zealand has a national carbon scheme. "Other countries will look at one of the most carbon polluting economies on the planet that has made one huge stride forward toward putting a price on carbon," said John Connor, chief executive of The Climate Institute. Australia said it hoped to link its scheme, which would cost A$4.4 billion to implement after household and industry compensation, to other international carbon markets and land abatement schemes when its emissions market was running. Europe's system, which covers the 27 EU member states plus Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein, has forced power producers to pay for carbon emissions, driving cuts where power plants were forced to switch to cleaner natural gas or biomass. Gillard said her government would spend A$9.2 billion over the first three years of the scheme to ensure heavy polluting industries like steel and aluminum production were not killed off, and help close the oldest and dirtiest power stations. Assistance would come from free carbon permits covering 94.5 percent of carbon costs for companies in the most emissions-intensive and trade-exposed sectors, such as aluminum smelters and steel manufacturers, while moderate emitting exporters would get 66 percent of permits for free. Coal miners, including global giants Xstrata Ltd and the coal arms of BHP Billiton, would be eligible for a A$1.3 billion compensation package to help the most emissions intensive mines adjust to the tax, which would add an average A$1.80 per tonne to the cost of mining coal. "We support action on climate change but are disappointed at the government's lack of genuine consultation," said Xstrata Coal spokesman James Rickards in a statement. The Minerals Council of Australia criticized the scheme as a "dangerous experiment with the Australian economy." Australia, a major coal exporter, relies on coal for 80 percent of electricity generation, which in turn accounts for 37 percent of national emissions. The government would also set up loan guarantees for electricity generators through a new Energy Security Fund, to help the industry refinance loans of between A$9 billion and A$10 billion over the next five years. The government would fund the shut-down or partial closure of the dirtiest brown-coal generators in Victoria state and remove up to 2,000 megawatts of capacity by 2020, replacing them with cleaner gas, while short-term loans would help them re-finance debt and buy permits. Australia's booming liquefied natural gas (LNG) sector, which is due to decide on A$90 billion worth of new projects, would also be included in the scheme, despite calls for 100 percent protection. The sector will receive 50 percent assistance, Climate Change Minister Greg Combet said. Steelmakers, including Australia's largest, BlueScope and OneSteel Ltd, will receive 94.5 percent of free permits and A$300 million in grants to help support jobs. "GREATEST CHALLENGE" The scheme also set-up a A$10 billion Clean Energy Finance Corporation to fund new renewable and cleaner generation capacity, such as wind, solar, gas and wave power plants. "This is the moment where Australia turns its back on the fossil fuel age, and turns its face toward the greatest challenge of the 21st century, and that is addressing global warming," said Australian Greens deputy leader Christine Milne, whose party wields the balance of power in the Senate. To soothe voters, with polls showing 60 percent opposition to a carbon tax, the government has offered tax cuts to low and middle-income households, as well as increased state pension and welfare payments. Treasurer Wayne Swan said all taxpayers earning below A$80,000 a year would get tax cuts worth around A$300 a year, which analysts said could actually help boost the struggling retail sector, where spending has been sluggish.