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Tackling climate change, pollution and other environmental hazards is affordable and urgent action is needed to avoid irreversible damage, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said on Wednesday. "Climate change is mankind's most important long-term challenge," OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurria told Reuters after issuing a 520-page Environmental Outlook in Oslo. The 30-nation OECD said possible environmental safeguards might slow world growth by just 0.03 percent a year -- meaning that by 2030 the global economy would be 97 percent bigger than in 2005 instead of almost 99 percent larger with no measures. "Solutions are available, they are achievable and they are affordable," Gurria told a news conference. "The consequences and costs of inaction ... would be much higher." "If we want to avoid irreversible damage to our environment ... we'd better start working right away," he said. Global warming, losses of species of animals and plants, water scarcity, pollution and hazardous chemicals were all areas for urgent action, according to the study by the Paris-based OECD. The OECD called for an overhaul of sectors that cause most damage -- energy, transport, agriculture and fisheries. A first step should be a removal of environmentally harmful subsidies, particularly for fossil fuels and agricultural production. BIOFUELS A hypothetical policy package included a 50 percent cut in farm subsidies, a $25 per tonne tax on emissions of heat-trapping carbon dioxide phased in by region, new biofuels, measures to cut air pollution and improved sewerage systems. The measures would limit overall growth in greenhouse gas emissions to 13 percent rather than 37 percent by 2030. The study adds to evidence that curbing global warming, blamed mainly on use of fossil fuels, will not derail growth. Last year, the U.N. Climate Panel also said that measures to curb global warming would cost a tiny fraction of world gross domestic product a year to 2030. A 2006 report by former World Bank chief economist Nicholas Stern warned that unchecked warming would be as damaging as world wars or the Great Depression with more floods, droughts, heat waves and rising seas. The OECD study is wider than both the U.N. and Stern reports and looks at other environmental problems. Gurria said the environment needed urgent attention even in the worst case of a economic recession. "We would be making a very, very grave mistake" to put off action, he said. More than 190 governments agreed in Bali, Indonesia, in December to work out by the end of 2009 a new treaty to fight climate change and succeed the Kyoto Protocol, which binds 37 developed nations to cut emissions by 2012. The United States is outside Kyoto, with President George W. Bush reckoning it would damage the U.S. economy and saying it wrongly omitted 2012 curbs for developing nations. Gurria said that climate change would be a priority for Bush's successor. The OECD said that rich nations would have to work closely with other big economies -- "especially Brazil, Russia, India, Indonesia, China and South Africa". Without curbs, greenhouse gas emissions from China, India, Russia and Brazil alone "will grow by 46 percent to 2030, surpassing those of the 30 OECD countries combined," it said.

India's greenhouse gas emissions grew 58 percent between 1994 and 2007, official figures released on Tuesday showed, helped up by a largely coal-reliant power sector that nearly doubled its share in emissions. Total emissions rose to 1.9 billion tonnes in 2007 versus 1.2 billion in 1994, with industry and transport sectors also upping their share in Asia's third largest economy and confirming India's ranking among the world's top five carbon polluters. By way of comparison, between 1994 and 2007, India added more than the entire emissions produced annually by Australia. India is still low on per-capita emissions, about a tenth that of the United States. The power sector accounted for 719.30 million tonnes of emissions against 355.03 million tonnes in 1994, while the transport sector's share jumped to 142.04 million tonnes from 80.28 million tonnes during the same period. Industrial emissions rose a little more than 30 per cent during the same period. With agriculture's share in the Indian economy dropping over the past years, emissions from the sector dipped marginally during 1994-2007. The report highlights India's growing role as a key player in the U.N.-led climate negotiations on a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol and the need to include big developing nations in global efforts to fight climate change. Figures in the government report, released by Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh at a conference in New Delhi, show India closing in on Russia, now the world's third largest greenhouse gas emitter, at nearly 2.2 billion tonnes in 2007. China is the world's top emitter of greenhouse gases blamed for heating up the planet. The United States is second. Russia's emissions have been growing at a slower pace than those of India, whose energy-hungry economy has been expanding at about 8 percent a year as it tries to lift millions out of poverty. This has propelled investment in coal-fired power stations, steel mills, cement plants and mining, as well as renewable energy. "Interestingly, the emissions of the United States and China are almost four times that of India in 2007," Ramesh told the conference. "It is also noteworthy that the energy intensity of India's GDP declined by more than 30 percent during the period 1994-2007 due to the efforts and policies that we are proactively putting into place. This is a trend we intend to continue," he said. Energy intensity refers to the amount of energy used per unit of gross domestic product. COAL REMAINS CRUCIAL India has also set a carbon intensity reduction target of 20 to 25 percent by 2020 from 2005 levels. Data from 1994 was the last official report to the United Nations on India's emissions because, as a developing country, India is not obliged to make annual emissions declarations to the world body, unlike rich nations. The latest UN emissions data for industrialised nations date to 2007. Although India has announced a new climate plan which identifies renewable energy, such as solar power, as a key element, coal remains the backbone of energy supply in a country where almost half the 1.1 billion population has no access to electricity. The country has 10 percent of the world's coal reserves, and it plans to add 78.7 gigawatts of power generation during the five years ending March 2012, most of it from coal, which now accounts for about 60 percent of the nation's energy mix. Developing nations now emit more than half of mankind's greenhouse gas pollution and that figure is expected to accelerate in the short term even as poorer nations embrace renewable energy and greater energy efficiency. A government-backed report last year projected India's greenhouse gas emissions could jump to between 4 billion tonnes and 7.3 billion tonnes in 2031, but per-capita emissions would still be half the global average.

"I'm really thrilled by the game changing announcement that Joe Biden has made," Johnson said, praising Biden "for returning the United States to the front rank of the fight against climate change." "It's vital for all of us to show that this is not all about some expensive politically correct, green act of bunny hugging," Johnson said. "This is about growth and jobs." On Tuesday, Johnson said Britain would cut carbon emissions by 78% by 2035 in what he hailed as the world's most ambitious climate change target that would put the country on track to become a net zero producer. The new timetable, nearly 15 years ahead of the previous UK target, will require a fundamental restructuring in the way Britain powers its homes, cars and factories, how it feeds its people and what it does to dispose of carbon dioxide.

The joint Myanmar-Finland project, launched this week with funding of 8 million euros ($9 million), will monitor all types of forests in an exercise aimed at helping the country reduce emissions that fuel climate change and adapt to warming impacts. It will also serve as a basis to develop global guidelines for tracking and protecting forests in conflict zones. "For a lot of people, Myanmar is a country with still a lot of unknowns," said Julian Fox, team leader for national forest monitoring at the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Rome, which is managing the project. "There are huge areas of forests that have never been measured," Fox told the Thomson Reuters Foundation on Thursday. About 70% of Myanmar's population living in rural areas rely on its estimated 29 million hectares (72 million acres) of forests to provide for their basic needs and services. But Myanmar also has the third-highest deforestation rate in the world - after Brazil and Indonesia - according to the FAO, partly driven by agricultural expansion and logging activities. Although the authorities in colonial times made efforts to map parts of the country and its forests, Fox said there had never been a complete national forest inventory. "For accurate information on forests, you need to know many things underneath the canopy - the tree species, soil, even the social-political context," he said by phone. The project will measure trees - with the potential to discover new species - and monitor biodiversity and carbon-storage levels, he added. Starting in non-conflict forest zones, before expanding into less-secure areas such as the borders with China, Bangladesh and Thailand, the project will use modern tools like laser tree-measuring equipment and collect physical samples, Fox said. It will cover Rakhine, a state from which more than 730,000 Rohingya fled to neighbouring Bangladesh after a military crackdown in 2017 that the United Nations has said was executed with genocidal intent. Myanmar denies that charge. By engaging in sensitive talks with different ethnic groups and organisations on the ground, the FAO hopes to be able to monitor forest areas in higher-risk conflict zones. Myanmar has more than 100 different ethnic groups, each with its own history, culture and language or dialect. If methods developed and used here prove successful, they could be applied in other forested and remote conflict-affected areas worldwide seen as off limits up to now, Fox said. "It is important that conflict sensitivity and human rights remain in the core of the forest monitoring work in order to ensure that it benefits all people, including ethnic minorities," Finland's ambassador to Myanmar, Riikka Laatu, said in a statement. All results and data on Myanmar's forests will be made publicly available, allowing both the government and different ethnic groups to better manage and protect forests, Fox said. Nyi Nyi Kyaw, director-general of the forest department in Myanmar's Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Conservation, said the government was "in urgent need of better and updated data about the state of all the forests in Myanmar". The data would help plan and evaluate sustainable forest use and conservation with the involvement of different groups, he added in a statement.

"Concerning the timing of the 2022 Fifa World Cup, we have always reiterated that we bid on the parameters that we would host in the summer of 2022," the Qatar 2022 supreme committee said in a statement."Various figures from the world of football have raised preferences for hosting in the winter. We are ready to host the World Cup in summer or winter. Our planning isn't affected either way..."Fifa President Sepp Blatter said on Thursday that any request to change the timing of the event to cooler months would have to come from Qatar.Organisers plan to host the tournament in air-conditioned stadiums which will be dismantled after the competition and shipped to developing nations.Friday's statement said Qatar had committed ‘considerable resources’ to proving that the cooling technology would work in open-air stadiums and training grounds and they would press ahead with developing the systems regardless."Our commitment to this is grounded in the legacy it will offer for Qatar and countries with similar climates. It will enable sport to be played 12 months of the year," it added."The application of this technology is not limited to stadiums or sports venues. It can be applied in public spaces, so outdoor life can be enjoyed all year round, regardless of climate."

India and neighbouring Pakistan have been suffering from extreme heat waves this year, melting pavements, forcing school closures and triggering health and fire alerts. Northwest and central India recorded average maximum temperatures of 35.9 and 37.78 Celsius (96.6 and 100 Fahrenheit) respectively in April, the Director General of the Indian Meteorological Department told reporters. Those were the highest since it began keeping records 122 years ago, Mrutyunjay Mohapatra added. More than a billion people are at risk of heat-related impacts in the region, scientists have warned, linking the early onset of an intense summer to climate change. For the first time in decades, Pakistan went from winter to summer without the spring season, Pakistan's Federal Minister for Climate Change, Sherry Rehman, said on Saturday.

German car buyers have become sensitized to climate change and are increasingly turning to cars with reduced greenhouse gas emissions, the president of the German automotive industry association said on Wednesday. Matthias Wissmann said the VDA, Germany's powerful car lobby, was nevertheless still demanding the European parliament and European Union water down plans to levy fines on carmakers whose fleets break limits on carbon dioxide emissions. "There's been a huge increase in buyers' sensitivity for climate protection," Wissmann told a news conference, adding he had experienced the change in Germans' buying habits first hand while spending time in car showrooms recently. "Naturally it's a development we welcome," he said. German carmakers, who produce some of the fastest and most heavily polluting cars in the world, have resisted EU Commission plans to introduce fines from 2012 on manufacturers whose fleets exceed an average of 120 grams per kilometer of CO2. Wissmann said CO2 emissions of new German cars registered in 2007 fell by 1.7 percent to just under 170 grams per kilometer. That was above the 160 grams per kilometer for all new cars, including imports, that were registered in 2007. He said there are 388 different models made by German carmakers on the market that need less than 6.5 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers and 60 models that need less than 5 liters. "That shows that the new models with lower CO2 emissions are becoming popular among consumers," Wissmann said. But registrations of new cars in Germany, Europe's largest market, dropped by 20 percent to 243,000 vehicles in 2007. The VDA has blamed rising fuel prices, concerns about climate change and an increase in value-added tax for the plunge. The German government backs the car lobby's demands for changes to the proposals -- even though it portrays itself as a leader in the fight against global warming. It also rejects environmental groups' calls for speed limits on motorways. The government and car lobby say the EU proposals place an unfair burden on German carmakers while not challenging French and Italian carmakers to do more to reduce emissions. "We don't want Germany to became a nation of small car owners," Wissmann said. "We expect to see considerable movement on the EU's position." EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas has called upon Germany to embrace the proposed fines as an opportunity to make more fuel efficient cars. The BUND environmental group criticized Wissmann. "The car industry has to finally accept the challenges of climate protection and stop attacking the EU," said Werner Reh, a transport export at BUND. "Otherwise Germany is going to lose its credibility at future climate protection negotiations."

Gopinath, the IMF's first female chief economist, joined the fund in October 2018 and led new IMF analytical research on the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccination targets as well as on climate change mitigation. IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva cited Gopinath's "tremendous" impact on the IMF's work. "Gita also won the respect and admiration of colleagues in the Research Department, across the Fund, and throughout the membership for leading analytically rigorous work and policy-relevant projects with high impact and influence," Georgieva said in a statement. Gopinath won praise for drafting a $50 billion proposal on ending the pandemic by vaccinating at least 40% of the population in all countries by the end of 2021, a plan later endorsed by the World Bank, the World Trade Organization and the World Health Organization. Her departure from the global crisis lender is unrelated to the ethics scandal that had raised questions about Georgieva's future as the IMF's leader, according to a person familiar with the matter. Gopinath's leave from Harvard, already extended by one year, was ending, and her family had remained in Boston, the person said. She will remain at the IMF to oversee the release of the fund's next World Economic Outlook forecasts in January. The IMF executive board last week cleared Georgieva of any wrongdoing related to allegations that in 2017, as the World Bank's chief executive, she put undue pressure on bank staff to alter data to favour China. The US Treasury Department continues press for changes at the institutions to safeguard their integrity. Gopinath told a news conference last week that the IMF takes data integrity "incredibly seriously" and has robust systems in place but is always looking for ways to improve.

Russian voters have dealt Vladimir Putin's ruling party a heavy blow by cutting its parliamentary majority in an election that showed growing unease with his domination of the country as he prepares to reclaim the presidency. Incomplete results showed Putin's United Russia was struggling even to win 50 percent of the votes in Sunday's election, compared with more than 64 percent four years ago. Opposition parties said even that outcome was inflated by fraud. Although Putin is still likely to win a presidential election in March, Sunday's result could dent the authority of the man who has ruled for almost 12 years with a mixture of hardline security policies, political acumen and showmanship but was booed and jeered after a martial arts bout last month. United Russia had 49.94 percent of the votes after results were counted in 70 percent of voting districts for the election to the State Duma, the lower house of parliament. Exit polls had also put United Russia below 50 percent. "These elections are unprecedented because they were carried out against the background of a collapse in trust in Putin, (President Dmitry) Medvedev and the ruling party," said Vladimir Ryzhkov, a liberal opposition leader barred from running. "I think that the March (presidential) election will turn into an even bigger political crisis; disappointment, frustration, with even more dirt and disenchantment, and an even bigger protest vote." Putin made his mark restoring order in a country suffering from a decade of chaos following the collapse of the Soviet Union. He moved quickly to crush a separatist rebellion in the southern Muslim Chechen region, restored Kremlin control over wayward regions and presided over an economic revival. He has maintained a tough man image with stunts such as riding a horse bare chested, tracking tigers and flying a fighter plane. But the public appears to have wearied of the antics and his popularity, while still high, has fallen. Many voters, fed up with widespread corruption, refer to United Russia as the party of swindlers and thieves and resent the huge gap between the rich and poor. Some fear Putin's return to the presidency may herald economic and political stagnation. PUTIN SAYS OPTIMAL RESULT Putin and Medvedev, who took up the presidency in 2008 when Putin was forced to step down after serving a maximum two consecutive terms, made a brief appearance at a subdued meeting at United Russia headquarters. Medvedev said United Russia, which had previously held a two thirds majority allowing it to change the constitution without opposition support, was prepared to forge alliances on certain issues to secure backing for legislation. "This is an optimal result which reflects the real situation in the country," Putin, 59, said. "Based on this result we can guarantee stable development of our country." But there was little to cheer for the man who has dominated Russian politics since he became acting president when Boris Yeltsin quit at the end of 1999 and was elected head of state months later. His path back to the presidency may now be a little more complicated, with signs growing that voters feel cheated by his decision to swap jobs with Medvedev next year and dismayed by the prospect of more than a decade more of one man at the helm. "It's the beginning of the end," political analysts Andrei Piontkovsky said. "It (the result) shows a loss of prestige for the party and the country's leaders." COMMUNIST GAINS Two decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the communists were the main beneficiaries, their vote almost doubling to around 20 percent, according to the partial results. "Russia has a new political reality even if they rewrite everything," said Sergei Obukhov, a communist parliamentarian. Many of the votes were cast in protest against United Russia rather than in support of communist ideals because the Party is seen by some Russians as the only credible opposition force. "With sadness I remember how I passionately vowed to my grandfather I would never vote for the Communists," Yulia Serpikova, 27, a freelance location manager in the film industry, said. "It's sad that with the ballot in hand I had to tick the box for them to vote against it all." Opposition parties complained of election irregularities in parts of the country spanning 9,000 km (5,600 miles) and a Western-financed electoral watchdog and two liberal media outlets said their sites had been shut down by hackers intent on silencing allegations of violations. The sites of Ekho Moskvy radio station, online news portal Slon.ru and the watchdog Golos went down at around 8 a.m. even though Medvedev had dismissed talk of electoral fraud. Police said 70 people were detained in the second city of St Petersburg and dozens were held in Moscow in a series of protests against alleged fraud. Opposition parties say the election was unfair from the start because of authorities' support for United Russia with cash and television air time. Independent political analyst Dmitry Oreshkin said a separate analysis showed that United Russia fell even further in cities -- where it had between 30-35 percent of the votes and the Communist have 20-25 percent. "This is a bad climate for Putin. He has got used to the fact that he controls everything, but now how can he go into a presidential campaign when United Russia has embittered people against their leader?" he asked. Putin has as yet no serious personal rivals as Russia's leader. He remains the ultimate arbiter between the clans which control the world's biggest energy producer. The result is a blow also for Medvedev, who led United Russia into the election. His legitimacy as the next prime minister could now be in question. ($1 = 30.8947 Russian roubles)

In a joint award that turned the spotlight on a rapidly shifting global debate over the impact of climate change, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said the duo’s work was helping to answer basic questions over how to promote long-term, sustainable prosperity. Romer, of New York University’s Stern School of Business and best known for his work on endogenous growth - a theory rooted in investing in knowledge and human capital - said he had been taken by surprise by the award, but offered a positive message. “I think one of the problems with the current situation is that many people think that protecting (the) environment will be so costly and so hard that they just want to ignore them,” he told a news conference via telephone. “We can absolutely make substantial progress protecting the environment and do it without giving up the chance to sustain growth.” Hours before the award, the United Nations panel on climate change said society would have to radically alter the way it consumes energy, travels and builds to avoid the worst effects of global warming. The panel declined to comment on Monday’s award. US President Donald Trump has repeatedly called climate change a hoax, and last year announced that he would withdraw the United States from a global pact to combat it reached in 2015 - calling the deal’s demands for emissions cuts too costly. Nordhaus, a Professor of Economics at Yale University, was the first person to create a quantitative model that described the interplay between the economy and the climate, the Swedish academy said. “The key insight of my work was to put a price on carbon in order to hold back climate change,” Nordhaus was quoted as saying in a Yale publication this year. “The main recipe ...is to make sure governments, corporations and households face a high price on their carbon emissions.” BIG GLOBAL QUESTIONS Nobel committee chair Per Stromberg told Reuters Monday’s award was honoring research into “two big global questions”: how to deal with the negative effects of growth on the climate and “to make sure that this economic growth leaves prosperity for everyone.” Romer had shown how economic forces govern the willingness of firms to innovate, helping some societies grow many times faster than others. By understanding which market conditions favor the creation of profitable technologies, society can tailor policies to promote growth, the academy said. Romer’s career has taken him outside the academic world. While on leave from the Stern School, he served as chief economist and senior vice president at the World Bank until early this year. His work on endogenous growth theory is not universally admired. Fellow Nobel economics Laureate Paul Krugman told the New York Times in 2013 that too much of it involved “making assumptions about how unmeasurable things affected other unmeasurable things”. Monday’s award of the last of the 2018 Nobels took place less than a month after the 10th anniversary of the collapse of investment bank Lehman Brothers. That triggered an economic crisis from which the world’s financial system is arguably still recovering. Interest rates remain at or close to record lows in many major economies, including Sweden, where they have languished below zero since early 2015. Worth 9 million Swedish crowns ($1 million), the economics prize was established in 1968. It was not part of the original group of five awards set out in Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel’s 1895 will. This year’s proceedings have been overshadowed by the absence of the literature prize, postponed to give the Swedish Academy time to restore public trust after a sexual assault scandal.B

LONDON, Jun 26, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai issued a 24-hour deadline to President Robert Mugabe on Thursday to negotiate or face being shunned as an illegitimate leader responsible for the killing of civilians. From the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the top regional body, to former South African President Nelson Mandela, African leaders have piled increasing pressure on Mugabe to call off a presidential election on Friday. Mugabe, 84, who trailed Tsvangirai for the presidency in a first round election in March, has dismissed international condemnation of violence against the opposition and has vowed to extend his 28 years in power. Tsvangirai, who withdrew from Friday's run-off and has taken refuge in the Dutch embassy in Harare since Sunday, said in an interview with Britain's Times newspaper the time for talking to Mugabe would end if he went ahead with the election. "Negotiations will be over if Mr Mugabe declares himself the winner and considers himself the president. How can we negotiate?" said Tsvangirai, who insists Mugabe must go so Zimbabwe can end its political turmoil and economic meltdown. If Mugabe approached him afterwards, Tsvangirai said he had this message: "I made these offers, I made these overtures, I told you I would negotiate before the elections and not after -- because it's not about elections, it's about transition. "You disregarded that, you undertook violence against my supporters, you killed and maimed, you are still killing and maiming unarmed civilians, the army is still out there. "How can you call yourself an elected president? You are illegitimate and I will not speak to an illegitimate president." "PRIME TARGET" Tsvangirai said it was too early to say when he would leave the Dutch embassy. "I am the prime target. I am not going to take chances with my safety. It's not just about Mr Mugabe, it's about the people out there who could take the law into their own hands. There is no rule of law here," said Tsvangirai. His Movement for Democratic Change says nearly 90 of its supporters have been killed by militias loyal to Mugabe. On Wednesday, the SADC's security troika urged the postponement of Friday's election, saying the re-election of Mugabe could lack legitimacy in the current violent climate. Regional power South Africa added to the pressure, saying a top negotiator was in Harare mediating talks on options including postponement of the vote. The troika, comprising African Union chairman Tanzania, Swaziland and Angola, called at its meeting near the Swazi capital Mbabane for talks between Mugabe's government and the opposition before a new run-off date was set. It said the group had been briefed by South African President Thabo Mbeki, the designated SADC mediator on Zimbabwe. Mbeki has been widely criticized in the past for taking a soft line with Mugabe and for not using South Africa's powerful economic leverage with landlocked Zimbabwe. Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga called on Wednesday for a new mediator. Mandela, revered by many across the world for his role in ending apartheid in South Africa, rarely speaks on political issues these days but used a speech at a dinner in London to condemn a "tragic failure of leadership" in Zimbabwe. President George W. Bush said after meeting members of the UN Security Council at the White House Friday's poll had no credibility and that the "Mugabe government is intimidating people on the ground in Zimbabwe". But Zimbabwe's Electoral Commission ruled last Sunday's withdrawal from the election by Tsvangirai had no legal force and that the poll would go ahead. Mugabe has presided over a slide into economic chaos, including 80 percent unemployment and inflation estimated by experts at about 2 million percent. He blames sanctions by former colonial power Britain and other Western countries. Millions of Zimbabweans have fled to neighboring countries to escape the economic woes of their once prosperous homeland.

MANAUS, Brazil, Nov 27, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - The presidents of France and Brazil said on Thursday that rich countries must immediately boost aid for developing nations to fight global warming if they want to reach a climate accord in Copenhagen next month. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who hosted a climate summit of leaders from the Amazon region in Manaus, said progress had been made with pledges by China and the United States this week to curb greenhouse gas emissions. But he said poor countries needed more aid to cope with climate change and help meet their own targets. "The poor need to be supported without any country giving up its sovereignty," Lula said. Brazil has opened an investment fund to help conservation in the Amazon rainforest but insisted donor countries would have no say in it. So far, Norway has donated the largest amount. Climate negotiators have made little visible progress in sorting out the thorny issue of how rich countries should help poorer ones fight global warming. "We need numbers, not only to reduce the temperature. Copenhagen also needs to provide funds from developed countries for developing countries," said French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who was invited because French Guyana forms part of the Amazon basin. "That needs to happen now," he said through a translator. Sarkozy welcomed the target Washington announced this week to reduce emissions 17 percent by 2020. The European Union says the cost to help developing nations fight global warming is about $100 billion annually. But developing countries say rich countries should pay between 0.5 percent and 1 percent of their gross domestic product. Brazil, which has pledged to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by between 36.1 and 38.9 percent from projected 2020 levels, has been seeking a growing role in climate talks and wanted to forge a common position of Amazon countries to take to Copenhagen. But only one other South American president took part at the Manaus summit - Bharrat Jagdeo of Guyana.

European nations, Canada, Bolivia and Nepal raised backing for the 2015 Paris Agreement to countries representing 56.87 percent of world greenhouse gas emissions, above the 55 percent needed for implementation, a United Nations website showed. The deal will formally start in 30 days on Nov 4, four days before the US presidential election in which Republican Donald Trump opposes the accord and Democrat Hillary Clinton strongly supports it. China and the United States joined up last month in a joint step by the world's top emitters. Obama called Wednesday "a historic day in the fight to protect our planet for future generations" and he told reporters on the White House Rose Garden: "If we follow through on the commitments that this Paris agreement embodies, history may well judge it as a turning point for our planet." Germany, France, Austria, Hungary, Slovakia, Portugal and Malta - European Union nations which have completed domestic ratification and account for about four percent of emissions - formally signed up on Wednesday. In total, 73 countries out of 195 have ratified the agreement, according to the UN website. "Great job!" tweeted European Climate Commissioner Miguel Arias Canete. The Europeans brought forward a formal submission of documents to the United Nations from a ceremony planned on Friday, fearing that other nations might ratify and trigger entry into force without them. "We didn't want to be upstaged," an EU diplomat said. Many praised the rapid ratification of an agreement meant to cut global greenhouse gas emissions, mainly from burning fossil fuels, to limit floods, droughts, more powerful storms and rising ocean levels. "What once seemed unthinkable is now unstoppable," UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a statement. But all said more work was needed. "It is no exaggeration to say we are in a race against time," said Thoriq Ibrahim, Environment Minister for the Maldives and Chair of the Alliance of Small Island States which fears the impact of rising sea levels. By contrast, it took eight years for the previous UN climate deal, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, to gain enough backing to take effect. It obliged only rich nations to cut emissions and the United States stayed out of it. Opposition continues in the Republican-controlled US Congress to Democrat Obama's climate change policies.   "The Paris climate deal would be disastrous for the American economy," said House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan, a Republican. By contrast, Paul Polman, CEO of Unilever and Chairman of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, said ratification showed that a shift to a low-carbon economy is "urgent, inevitable, and accelerating faster than we ever believed possible". Still, current national pledges for cuts in emissions are insufficient to achieve a Paris goal of limiting a rise in world temperatures to "well below" two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times. UN studies project that average world temperatures are set to rise by 3 degrees or more by 2100, based on current trends. And this year is expected to prove the warmest since records began in the 19th century, beating 2015.

Do you have a big carbon footprint? Get out your cell phone and check. European scientists have devised an online application to measure how much greenhouse gas people emit from the way they travel, light their homes, choose dinner or watch television. "The idea is to help people be aware of the impact that their personal behavior can have," said Antonia Mochan, a spokeswoman for the European Commission, whose scientists came up with the new application. "Climate change seems such a big story, people think 'Where can I start?' This can help," she said. The application, which requires users to input information on their behavior, is available via Web site mobgas.jrc.ec.europa.eu and is free of charge.

The pope made his appeal as tens of thousands joined a third day of nationwide demonstrations in Myanmar against the military's removal of elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi a week ago. Francis, 84, remained standing for nearly two hours in a sign that a recent flare-up of his sciatica that had forced him to delay the annual meeting with world diplomats by two weeks had passed. His overview was dominated by the economic, social, medical, and political ramifications of the coronavirus pandemic and the need for global solidarity to overcome the crisis, including an equitable distribution of vaccines and guaranteed health care. Listing various conflicts, he spoke of his "affection and closeness" to the people of Myanmar, which he visited in 2017. "The path to democracy undertaken in recent years was brusquely interrupted by last week’s coup d’état," Francis said. "This has led to the imprisonment of different political leaders, who I hope will be promptly released as a sign of encouragement for a sincere dialogue aimed at the good of the country," he said. He noted that after a break of more than a year because of the pandemic, he would resume his international travels next month with a four-day trip to Iraq, where he is due to meet its top Shi'ite Muslim cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. Speaking of the pandemic, he said it had shone new light on the need to rethink peoples' relationships with economic structures and the planet and adequately address the dangers of climate change. The economic crisis had laid bare a system "based on the exploitation and waste of both people and natural resources," he said.

The oceans have continued to warm, pushing many commercial fish stocks towards the poles and raising the risk of extinction for some marine species, despite a slower pace of temperature rises in the atmosphere this century, it said."Risks to the ocean and the ecosystems it supports have been significantly underestimated," according to the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO), a non-governmental group of leading scientists."The scale and rate of the present day carbon perturbation, and resulting ocean acidification, is unprecedented in Earth's known history," according to the report, made with the International Union for Conservation of Nature.The oceans are warming because of heat from a build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Fertilisers and sewage that wash into the oceans can cause blooms of algae that reduce oxygen levels in the waters. And carbon dioxide in the air can form a weak acid when it reacts with sea water."The ‘deadly trio' of ... acidification, warming and deoxygenation is seriously affecting how productive and efficient the ocean is," the study said.Alex Rogers of Oxford University, scientific director of IPSO, told Reuters scientists were finding that threats to the oceans, from the impacts of carbon to over-fishing, were compounding one another."We are seeing impacts throughout the world," he said.ExtinctionsCurrent conditions in the oceans were similar to those 55 million years ago, known as the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum, that led to wide extinctions. And the current pace of change was much faster and meant greater stresses, Rogers said.Acidification, for instance, threatens marine organisms that use calcium carbonate to build their skeletons - such as reef-forming corals, crabs, oysters and some plankton vital to marine food webs.Corals might cease to grow if temperatures rose by 2 degrees Celsius (3.6F) and start to dissolve at 3 degrees (5.4F), the study said.Scientists said the findings added urgency to a plan by almost 200 governments to work out a deal by the end of 2015 to limit a rise in average world temperatures to less than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6F) above pre-industrial times.Temperatures have already risen by about 0.8 degree Celsius (1.4F). The report also urged tougher management of fish stocks including a ban on destructive bottom trawlers and granting more power to local communities in developing nations to set quotas.Last week, a report by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) raised the probability that mankind was the culprit for most global warming to 95 percent, from 90 in a report in 2007.The Global Ocean Commission, a group of politicians working to advise governments, urged stronger action."If the IPCC report was a wake-up call on climate change, IPSO is a deafening alarm bell on humanity's wider impacts on the global ocean," said Trevor Manuel, co-chair of the Commission and minister in the South African Presidency.

Former Cuban President Fidel Castro addressed the island's parliament for the first time in four years on Saturday and appealed to world leaders, including U.S. President Barack Obama, to avoid a nuclear war. The return of the veteran 83-year-old Cuban revolutionary to the National Assembly, transmitted live by Cuban state television, crowned a spate of recent public appearances after a long period of seclusion due to illness. Castro, dressed in a long-sleeved green military shirt without rank insignias, used it to expound again his recent warnings that U.S. pressure against Iran could trigger a nuclear conflagration that would destroy the world. It was the first time that the historic leader of Cuba's revolution had participated in a public government meeting since 2006, when he fell ill and underwent intestinal surgery. In 2008, he formally handed over the presidency of communist-ruled Cuba to his younger brother Raul Castro. Helped to walk in by aides, the bearded leader was greeted in the parliament by a standing ovation and shouts of "Viva Fidel." Castro opened the special assembly session, which had been requested by him, by delivering a 12-minute prepared speech in a firm, clear, but sometimes halting voice. He urged world leaders to persuade Obama not to unleash a nuclear strike against Iran, which he said could occur if Tehran resisted U.S. and Israeli efforts to enforce international sanctions against it for its nuclear activities. "Obama wouldn't give the order if we persuade him ... we're making a contribution to this positive effort," he said. He said he was sure that China and "the Soviets" -- an apparent reference to Russia, the former Soviet Union -- did not want a world nuclear war and would work to avoid it. Castro also referred to the case of one of five convicted Cuban spies jailed in the United States, Gerardo Hernandez, saying he hoped his wife would be allowed to visit him or that he could even be released. President Raul Castro also attended the assembly session, wearing a long-sleeved white shirt. Deputies made observations on Castro's speech, congratulating him and agreeing with him. But Castro later appeared to tire after exchanging views with the deputies, and Cuban parliament head Ricardo Alarcon suggested ending the session after 1-1/2 hours. "That's what I have to say, comrades, nothing more, I hope we can meet again at another time," Castro said in brief closing remarks in which he asked whether the parliamentarians had obtained copies of his new book, "The Strategic Victory," on the guerrilla war that brought him to power in 1959. The session finished with applause. INTENSE SPECULATION "He's been relatively absent. Having him here with us today is something surprising ... it's a rebirth. It'll give us strength to continue the struggle," Graciela Biscet, 43, an assembly deputy from Santiago de Cuba, told reporters. Following his 2006 illness, Fidel Castro disappeared from public view and was only seen occasionally in photographs and videos. But since July 7, he has emerged from four years of seclusion and has made several public appearances. This has ignited widespread speculation that Castro wants to be more active again in the day-to-day life of Cuba. Analysts and Cuba-watchers have given varied interpretations of what the recent spate of Fidel Castro appearances might mean. Some say the legendary comandante's influence has remained strong on the Cuban leadership, and that this has put a brake on more liberalizing reforms of Cuba's socialist system, or on any attempts to improve relations with the United States, which maintains a trade embargo against the island. But others argue his appearances are intended to show support for his younger brother Raul as the latter tries to revive the stagnated economy with cautious reforms and steer Cuba out of a severe economic crisis. Others say the veteran statesman may just want to get back into the limelight. Fidel Castro, who has also predicted a U.S. clash with North Korea, urged Obama on Wednesday to avoid a nuclear confrontation, which he described as "now virtually inevitable." The former president has met Cuban diplomats, economists and intellectuals over the last month, as well as visiting the national aquarium and launching his new book. But Fidel Castro has remained mute, at least in public, on the cautious domestic reform policies of his younger brother, which included a recent announcement that more self-employed workers would be allowed in the state-dominated economy. He has, however, kept up regular commentaries since 2007 on international affairs, published by state media. These focus especially on his favorite subjects, such as his views on the threat to humanity posed by U.S.-led capitalism and by global warming and climate change.

The world's booming tourism industry is both a contributor to and a victim of climate change but it must not be penalised as part of any solution, the head of the World Tourism Organisation said on Monday. Francesco Frangialli, secretary general of the United Nation's body, said tourism was an economic lifeline for many nations and simplistic moves to curb it could spell doom for millions of people. "Tourism helps poverty alleviation which is one of the millennium development goals, so tourism must be part of the solution," he told reporters on the eve of a meeting of tourism ministers in London. It is a message he will take to a meeting of UN environment ministers on the Indonesian island of Bali next month to discuss a possible successor to the Kyoto Protocol on cutting climate warming carbon emissions which expires in 2012. "People see tourism as a luxury, a leisure pursuit. They don't see it as a vital economic activity. Our goal is to make sure they see this side of it as well," Frangialli said. A multi-agency meeting of tourism and environment officials in the Swiss resort of Davos last month agreed a wide-ranging declaration which for the first time tied together tourism, the environment and development. This Davos declaration, calling for concerted government, industry and consumer action, will be the message Frangialli and his colleagues from the UN environment programme and the World Meteorological Organisation will be taking to Bali. HAPPENING NOW The latest figures from the Madrid-based UNWTO show that in the first eight months of 2007 there were 610 million international tourist arrivals worldwide -- a rise of 5.6 percent on the same period in 2006. Frangialli said if this continued, despite economic ills and booming oil prices, then 2007 total could be around 900 million. He also said that if expansion continued at anything like the current rate, international tourist arrivals could hit 1.1 billion by 2010 and 1.6 billion by 2020. Although air travel contributed a low single figure percentage to global emissions of carbon gases, this rate of expansion could change that radically. But at the same time, he said, global warming was starting to bleach corals, melt glaciers and raise sea levels -- causing problems in particular for small island states which were among the top tourist destinations. Scientists says carbon gases from burning fossil fuels for power and transport are causing the major changes now being seen in the global climate, and emissions from aircraft are up to four times worse than at ground level. "This is not something in the future, it is happening now," Frangialli said.

About 120 UN world leaders are aiming to end deadlock at the UN climate summit in Copenhagen to agree a new deal for fighting global warming. Following are possible scenarios: WHAT WOULD BE THE STRONGEST POSSIBLE OUTCOME? The most robust would have been legal texts including deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions by developed nations by 2020, actions by developing nations to slow their rising emissions, and a package for finance and technology to help poor nations. Almost all nations reckon that a legal text is out of reach. WHAT SORT OF DEAL IS MORE LIKELY? World leaders could agree only what they call a "politically binding" text and try to set a deadline for transforming it into a full legal text sometime in 2010. IF THERE IS A DEAL, WHAT WOULD IT SAY? The easiest global goal would be to agree to limit global warming to a maximum temperature rise of 2 Celsius above pre-industrial times. The poorest nations and small island states want a tougher limit of 1.5 Celsius. A big problem is that a temperature goal does not bind individual nations to act. A slightly firmer, but still distant, target is to agree to at least to halve world greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. But China and India and other developing nations have opposed such a goal in the past, saying rich nations first have to make far deeper cuts in their emissions by 2020. WHAT DO RICH NATIONS HAVE TO DO? They would have to set deeper cuts in greenhouse gas emissions in the years until 2020. A U.N. panel of climate scientists suggested in 2007 that emissions would have to fall by between 25 and 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 to help avert the worst of climate change, such as more droughts, species extinctions, floods and rising seas. Industrialized nations' offers of cuts by 2020 so far range from about 14 to 18 percent. HOW ABOUT DEVELOPING NATIONS? They would have to commit to a "substantial deviation" to slow the rise in their greenhouse gas emissions below projected growth rates by 2020, for instance by shifting to more use of solar or wind power and away from coal-fired power plants. HOW ABOUT MONEY TO HELP THE POOR? The latest text is blank on the amounts to be committed. The United Nations wants to raise at least $10 billion a year from 2010-2012 in new funds to help kickstart a deal to help developing nations. Many nations also speak of raising the amount to $100 billion a year from 2020 to help the poor. WHAT HAPPENS IF THE TALKS FAIL? One option if the talks end in deadlock is to "suspend" the meeting and reconvene sometime in 2010 -- a similar deadlock happened at talks in The Hague in November 2000. A full breakdown in talks could deepen mistrust between rich and poor nations and undermine confidence in the U.N. system. It would probably also halt consideration by the U.S. Senate of legislation to cap U.S. emissions -- other nations' goals might in turn unravel.

Merkel, once dubbed the "climate chancellor", hopes to revitalise her green credentials by getting the G7 industrial nations to agree specific emissions goals ahead of a larger year-end United Nations climate meeting in Paris. Climate change topped the agenda for Monday's sessions, at which the leaders were also set to discuss combating epidemics and other health issues, the fight against terrorism from Boko Haram to Islamic State, and African development. Merkel won support for her climate drive from French President Francois Hollande, who will host a UN summit on fighting climate change at the end of the year. Hollande was also looking for an ambitious G7 commitment to ending their dependence on fossil fuels by mid-century, and sought a financial commitment to help poorer countries transform their energy sectors so they can reduce carbon emissions. "Commitments must be made at this G7. For the moment, the communiqué is going in the right direction," the French president told reporters on the sidelines of the summit at the foot of Germany's highest mountain, the Zugspitze. The Europeans were pressing their G7 partners to sign up to legally binding targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. In a boost for Merkel's push to combat global warming, Japan said on Sunday it would favour the G7 countries setting their own target for reducing carbon dioxide emissions. US President Barack Obama kept his counsel on the climate issue on Sunday, the first day of the summit, when leaders presented a united front in facing Russian over the Ukraine conflict and discussed the global economy. Japan and Canada were regarded before the summit as potential hold-outs on the climate issue, diplomats and environmental campaigners said. It was not clear if Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper would accept a specific G7 goal. "Canada supports an agreement in Paris that includes all GHG (greenhouse gas) emitting countries," Stephen Lecce, spokesman for Harper, told Reuters in an email. The green lobby is hoping that Merkel will push for a pledge to phase out fossil fuels by 2050 ahead of the Paris meeting, which aims to agree on a successor to the Kyoto Protocol. Security focus A G7 official said France led discussion on climate while Italy took the lead on energy security during Monday morning's talks, before the leaders turned their attention to global threats to international security. The leaders of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United States and European Union discussed Islamist militant threats from groups such as Islamic State (or ISIS) and Boko Haram. "All G7 leaders are supporting military and or humanitarian support to counter the spread of ISIS and help stabilise the region," the G7 official said. The G7 leaders met so-called "outreach guests" – the leaders of Nigeria, Senegal, Ethiopia, Liberia, South Africa, Tunisia and Iraq – and will hold final news conferences later on Monday. On the economy, a topic addressed on Sunday, a senior US official denied a report that Obama had told the summit the strong dollar was a problem. Bloomberg News earlier quoted a French official as saying Obama had made the comment. "The President did not state that the strong dollar was a problem," the US official said. "He made a point that he has made previously, a number of times: that global demand is too weak and that G7 countries need to use all policy instruments, including fiscal policy as well as structural reforms and monetary policy, to promote growth."

Climate activist Greta Thunberg was approaching Lisbon aboard a catamaran on Tuesday after crossing the Atlantic from New York, Reuters Television footage showed, before her appearance at a summit in Madrid to demand urgent action on global warming. The boat, La Vagabonde, carried the Swedish campaigner, who refuses to travel by plane, across the ocean so she could attend the COP25 climate summit in Madrid. She will spend the day holding meetings with Portuguese climate activists and resting before her departure for Madrid. "Heading into Lisbon!" she posted on Twitter along with photographs aboard the vessel. Portugal’s environment minister Matos Fernandes thanked Greta for her activism in a letter last Thursday, having already departed for COP25. The country’s president, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, said it was a ‘great pleasure’ to have her in Lisbon but did not feel it was his place to personally greet the activist. Thunberg missed last Friday’s climate strike as heavy winds delayed her arrival to Lisbon but she is due to join thousands of activists marching in Madrid on Friday afternoon on the fringes of the COP25. The conference kicked off on Monday with UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres warning that the planet had reached a "point of no return". Top priorities include establishing a common time frame for countries to implement their national climate commitment plans, and resolving the issue of international carbon markets, the only aspect of the Paris rule book which delegates failed to agree on at last year’s COP24 in Poland.

With a deal now expected sometime on Saturday, there remained tough talking to be done on issues such as the phasing out of fossil fuel subsidies, carbon markets and financial help for poor countries to tackle climate change. A draft of the final deal, released early on Friday, requires countries to set tougher climate pledges next year - in an attempt to bridge the gap between current targets and the much deeper cuts scientists say are needed this decade to avert catastrophic climate change. "We have come a long way over the past two weeks and now we need that final injection of that 'can-do' spirit, which is present at this COP, so we get this shared endeavour over the line," said Britain's COP26 President Alok Sharma. Late on Friday Sharma announced that meetings would continue into Saturday, and that he expected a deal later in the day. A revised draft of the agreement would be released Saturday morning to kick off the last round of talks, he said. The meeting's overarching aim is to keep within reach the 2015 Paris Agreement's aspirational target to cap global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels, the limit scientists say would avert its worst effects. Under current national pledges to cut emissions this decade, researchers say the world's temperature would soar far beyond that limit, unleashing catastrophic sea level rises, droughts, storms and wildfires. The new draft is a balancing act - trying to take in the demands of the most climate-vulnerable nations such as low-lying islands, the world's biggest polluters, and countries whose exports of fossil fuels are vital to their economies. "China thinks the current draft still needs to go further to strengthen and enrich the parts about adaptation, finance, technology, and capacity building," said Zhao Yingmin, the climate negotiator for the world's largest greenhouse gas emitter. The draft retained its most significant demand for nations to set tougher climate pledges next year, but couched that request in weaker language than before, while failing to offer the rolling annual review of climate pledges that some developing countries have sought. Nations are currently required to revisit their pledges every five years. WEAKER LANGUAGE The latest proposal included slightly weaker language than a previous one in asking states to phase out subsidies of the fossil fuels - coal, oil and gas - that are the prime manmade cause of global warming. That dismayed some campaigners, while others were relieved that the first explicit reference to fossil fuels at any UN climate summit was in the text at all, and hoped it would survive the fierce negotiations to come. "It could be better, it should be better, and we have one day left to make it a lot, lot better," Greenpeace said. "Right now, the fingerprints of fossil fuel interests are still on the text and this is not the breakthrough deal that people hoped for in Glasgow." Some thinktanks were more upbeat, pointing to progress on financing to help developing countries deal with the ravages of an ever-hotter climate. Saudia Arabia, the world's second largest oil producer and considered among the nations most resistant to strong wording on fossil fuels, said the latest draft was "workable". A final deal will require the unanimous consent of the nearly 200 countries that signed the Paris accord. To increase pressure for a strong deal, protesters rallied outside the COP26 venue, where activists had hung ribbons with messages imploring delegates to protect the Earth. The latest draft acknowledged scientists say the world must cut carbon dioxide emissions by 45% from 2010 levels by 2030, and to net zero by "around mid-century" to hit the 1.5C target. This would effectively set the benchmark to measure future climate pledges. Currently, countries' pledges would see global emissions increase by nearly 14% by 2030 from 2010 levels, according to the UN 'INSANITY' Fossil fuel subsidies remain a bone of contention. Kerry told reporters that trying to curb global warming while governments spend hundreds of billions of euros supporting the fuels that cause it was "a definition of insanity". Financial support is also hotly debated, with developing countries pushing for tougher rules to ensure rich nations whose historical emissions are largely responsible for heating up the planet, offer more cash to help them adapt to its consequences. Rich countries have failed to meet a 12-year-old goal to provide $100 billion a year in so-called "climate finance" by 2020, undermining trust and making some developing countries more reluctant to curb their emissions. The sum, which falls far short of what the UN says countries would actually need, aims to address "mitigation", to help poor countries with their ecological transition, and "adaptation", to help them manage extreme climate events. The new draft said that, by 2025, rich countries should double from current levels the funding set aside for adaptation - a step forward from the previous version that did not set a date or a baseline. "This is a stronger and more balanced text than what we had two days ago," Helen Mountford of the World Resources Institute said of the current draft. "We need to see what stands, what holds and how it looks in the end - but at the moment it's looking in a positive direction." Of roughly $80 billion rich countries spent on climate finance for poor countries in 2019, only a quarter was for adaptation. A more contentious aspect, known as "loss and damage" would compensate them for the ravages they have already suffered from global warming, though this is outside the $100 billion and some rich countries do not acknowledge the claim. A group of vulnerable nations including the Marshall Islands in the central Pacific said the final deal needed to do more to address the question. "Loss and damage is too central for us to settle for workshops," said Tina Stege, the Marshall Islands' climate envoy.

Australia could have its first minority government in 70 years, a worst-case scenario for investors, with an election-eve poll showing the ruling Labor party drawing level with the conservative opposition. The vote looks so close, the result may have nothing to do with policy but simply come down to which leader, Prime Minister Julia Gillard or the opposition's Tony Abbott, voters like best. The uncertainty helped pressure the Australian dollar on Friday. The Aussie was quoted at $0.8910 by late afternoon, down 0.85 percent from late on Thursday, while the benchmark stock index fell 1 percent. One financial analyst has tipped a 2-5 percent fall in the currency if Australia has a minority government. Assistant Treasurer Chris Bowen said the election was so tight that a hung parliament was just a likely as either a re-elected Labor government or a victory for the conservative coalition. "It's just so close that any of those are eminently possible," he told Reuters in a telephone interview after a Newspoll survey showed Labor and the opposition even with 50 percent of the two-party vote. The latest poll by the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age newspapers showed Labor ahead. "The most likely outcome is ... a narrow Labor victory," said Herald political editor Peter Hartcher on Australian television, revealing that a Nielsen poll to be published on Saturday showed Julia Gillard's Labor ahead with 52 percent compared with 48 percent for Tony Abbott's opposition. Without a clear winner, the next government would have to rely on a handful of independent or Green MPs to form a government, leaving policies such as Labor's new mining tax in limbo and creating market uncertainty. "Given the fact that around 40 percent of Australia's market is owned by foreign investors, any uncertainty can have a detrimental impact on markets," CommSec equities economist Savanth Sebastian told Reuters. "If you start seeing a hung parliament or a minority victory, then the Aussie dollar could certainly come under some pressure, and likewise sharemarkets." Two of the three key independents, who may decide who takes office in the event of a hung parliament, have said they cannot guarantee passage of a minority government budget, leaving the possibility of a fiscal crisis or a short-lived government. Even a razor-thin win by Gillard would diminish her mandate to introduce the 30 percent resource tax, the cornerstone policy of her campaign, and leave her weakened as she seeks to have a hostile Senate pass the tax. Labor has also pledged to take action on climate change with a possible carbon trading scheme and to construct a $38 billion fibre-optic national broadband network. The Liberal-National opposition opposes these plans. SNAP POLL Gillard deposed former Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on June 24 in a desperate bid by the party to avoid electoral defeat, but she has struggled to woo voters, with many angry at the party coup that dumped Rudd. A Reuters Poll Trend published on Wednesday showed Labor was poised for a narrow win, and the Galaxy poll on Friday tipped a narrow win for Gillard. In a unique snap poll with an Australian twist in the city of Darwin, a 4.9 meter (16 ft) saltwater crocodile, which last month tipped Spain to win the World Cup, tipped a Gillard win by chomping on a chicken carcass dangled below her image. Betting agencies show the government is still favorite and opinion polls say Gillard remains preferred prime minister. "This is a tough, tight, close contest and in a tough, tight, close contest, the real risk is that Mr Abbott is prime minister on Sunday," said Gillard. "Tony Abbott is too great a risk to your family's future and to your local economy." Abbott said: "Why should Australians trust Julia Gillard and Labor when even Kevin Rudd couldn't? "A Labor win on Saturday will mean a mining tax that threatens jobs and investment. A carbon tax will drive up prices for Australian families and make our economy less competitive."

Coal is the most polluting fossil fuel and greenhouse gas emissions from burning it are the single biggest contributor to climate change. Weaning the world off coal is seen as vital to achieve globally agreed climate targets. Signatories of the COP26 agreement would commit on Thursday to shun investments in new coal plants at home and abroad, and phase out coal-fuelled power generation in the 2030s in richer countries, and the 2040s for poorer nations, the British government said. "The end of coal is in sight. The world is moving in the right direction, standing ready to seal coal’s fate and embrace the environmental and economic benefits of building a future that is powered by clean energy," British business and energy secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said. Separately, the Powering Past Coal Alliance - an international campaign aimed at phasing out the fuel - said it had secured 28 new members, including Ukraine, which pledged to quit the fuel by 2035. Coal produced roughly a third of Ukraine's power last year. Factors including concerns over planet-warming pollution and a worsening economic profile for coal-fuelled generation have curbed its share in wealthy western countries including Britain, Germany and Ireland over the last few decades. But coal still produced around 37% of the world's electricity in 2019, and a cheap, abundant local supply means the fuel dominates power production in countries including South Africa, Poland and India. These countries will require huge investments to shift their industries and energy sectors onto cleaner sources. The global pipeline for new coal power projects has shrivelled in recent years, although China, India, Vietnam and Indonesia are among those planning to build new coal plants. Britain did not confirm if those countries would be involved in the COP26 coal phase out pledge, or if Vietnman's pledge on Thursday would affect its pipeline of coal projects already in the pre-construction stage. China said in September it would stop funding overseas coal plants, although the pledge did not cover domestic projects. A raft of finance announcements are expected at COP26 on Thursday to accompany the coal pledges - both through new investments in clean power, and funds to support workers and regions that depend on the coal sector for their livelihoods. Countries including Britain and the United States announced a $8.5 billion partnership with South Africa at the COP26 conference on Tuesday, to help the country phase out coal faster.

Several companies, such as HSBC, Zurich Insurance , Bain & Company and S&P Global, have already announced plans to quickly cut business travel emissions by as much as 70%. Some are considering a "carbon budget" as they come under growing pressure from environmental advocates and investors to reduce indirect emissions that contribute to climate change. Flights account for about 90% of business travel emissions. That makes it the lowest-hanging fruit for companies setting reductions targets. The airline industry last week committed to reach "net zero" emissions by 2050 at a meeting in Boston, decades beyond the corporate travel emissions cut targets. "It's going to be hard on airlines and they're going to need to adapt," Kit Brennan, co-founder of London-based Thrust Carbon, which is advising S&P and other clients on setting up carbon budgets. "I think what we're going to see, funnily enough, is more of an unbundling of business class where you might get all perks of business class without the seat," he said, referring to airport lounges and nicer meals. "Because ultimately it all comes down to the area on the aircraft and it takes up." Flying business class emits about three times as much carbon as economy class because the seats take up more room and more of them are empty, according to a World Bank study. CHANGE ALREADY UNDER WAY Pre-pandemic, about 5% of international passengers globally flew in premium classes, accounting for 30% of international revenue, according to airline group IATA. The pandemic-related drop in travel and a switch to more virtual meetings have led many companies to save money by resetting travel policies. Sam Israelit, chief sustainability officer at consulting firm Bain, said his company was evaluating carbon budgets for offices or practice areas to help cut travel emissions per employee by 35% over the next five years. "I think more broadly, it's something that companies really will need to start to do if they're going to be successful in meeting the aggressive targets that everyone's putting out," he said. Companies and corporate travel agencies are also investing heavily in tools to measure flight emissions based on factors such as the type of plane, the routing and the class of service. "We're not seeing a lot of companies take a very draconian approach like simply cut travel because that impacts their bottom line," said Nora Lovell Marchant, vice president of sustainability at American Express Global Business Travel. "But we are seeing an increased ask for transparency so those travellers can make decisions." Global ratings agency S&P, which plans to reduce travel emissions by 25% by 2025, found that 42% of its business class use was for internal meetings, its global corporate travel leader, Ann Dery, said at a CAPA Centre for Aviation event last month. AIRLINES GOING GREEN US carrier JetBlue plans for about 30% of its jet fuel for flights in and out of New York to be sustainable within two to three years. "Businesses, of course, are going to want to address this climate change issue aggressively," JetBlue Chief Executive Robin Hayes said on the sidelines of the Boston meeting. "But we think they're going to be able to do it in a way that still enables business travel to take place." The emissions target airlines set last week relies on boosting use of sustainable aviation fuel from less than 0.1% today to 65% by 2050 as well as new engine technologies. "If we are getting to net zero carbon emissions by 2050 everybody has got to play their part here," said Air New Zealand Chief Executive Greg Foran. "It is not just the airlines. It is going to be fuel providers, it is going to be governments. And ultimately customers are going to have to buy into this as well." 

While the 2008 presidential campaign grabs most of the headlines, Republicans hope to buck the odds on another front -- the U.S. Senate, where last year they narrowly lost control to the Democrats. With a 51-49 Democratic majority and 34 seats up for grabs in November 2008, experts say the fight is the Democrats' to lose. They only have 12 seats to safeguard. President George W. Bush's Republicans have to defend 22. "I see all kinds of potential for Democrats out there, I just don't know if it's going to be realized," said Jennifer Duffy, an expert at the Cook Political Report who specializes in Senate races. "I don't think the majority is in play ... The Republicans' goal is to keep their losses at a minimum," she said. Control of the Senate will be crucial to the White House next year, no matter who succeeds Bush. A president's policies can live or die there because major bills routinely require 60 votes to clear potential hurdles and win passage. The prolonged Iraq war, an anemic economy, differences over tax cuts and squabbles over climate change will dominate Senate races, said Anthony Corrado, a government professor at Colby College in Maine. "This is going to be an election where the Republicans are on the defensive," he said, and arguments for change will dominate the political discussion. Duffy said it was by no means guaranteed that Democrats would pick up many seats. An ABC News/Washington Post poll showed support for Democrats dropping 10 points since April to 44 percent. Democrats were voted into power in 2006 largely on a pledge to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq but so far have been unable to deliver. A turning point could be September when Congress is due to consider several anti-war measures. Several Republicans are seen as ripe for knocking out to boost Democrats' lead: Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine and New Hampshire Sen. John Sununu. So is a seat being vacated by retiring Sen. Wayne Allard of Colorado. Democrats must also defend a few seats: Sen. Mary Landrieu in Louisiana, Arkansas Sen. Mark Pryor and South Dakota's Sen. Tim Johnson who is recovering from brain surgery last December. Republicans have yet to settle on a candidate for Landrieu's seat and political watchers are speculating that former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee could drop his presidential ambitions and instead challenge Pryor. Sen John Ensign, head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, thinks his party will do better than some think. "The odds makers would have given the Democrats almost no shot at taking the Senate two years ago and they would have been wrong," he said. "We're of the opinion that you run elections and you see what the results are." Ensign said the Democrats' call for reversing some tax cuts and their opposition to the Iraq war would aid Republicans, who lost six seats and Senate control in 2006. Ensign's Democratic counterpart, Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, counters that the Iraq war, now in its fifth year, would help his party and that Democrats had a history of balancing the budget, which should resonate with voters. "Republicans have lost touch and we're going to sweep in on a mandate of change," said Schumer, head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Republicans could face an even tougher fight if senators like John Warner of Virginia and Pete Domenici of New Mexico retire, putting more seats in play. Yet another hurdle is fund-raising. The Democratic campaign has raised twice the money of its Republican rival during the first four months of 2007, $18.3 million to $9.1 million. In a tight Minnesota race, comedian Al Franken, the leading Democratic challenger, has already raised $1.35 million in the first quarter, a strong showing against the $1.53 million raised by Coleman.

The United States, the European Union and emerging economic heavyweights will try again on Tuesday to line up the long-elusive trade-offs needed to save a deal to dismantle export barriers around the world. The United States resisted calls on Monday to announce a cut in its ceiling for farm subsidies as a critical week of talks opened, saying it was ready to act as long as others do likewise, especially developing economies like Brazil and China. The World Trade Organisation's Doha round of negotiations risks years of further delay without a breakthrough this week. But some top trade officials doubted that would be possible, given the range of issues to be resolved and the fundamental differences that still separate rich and poor countries. "I have to say that after today's meeting I am less optimistic than before," said Egyptian Trade Minister Rachid Mohamed Rachid after WTO chief Pascal Lamy summoned more than 30 ministers to spell out what they can do to secure a deal. He told Reuters more talks might have to be scheduled in the coming two weeks, before Europe shuts down for the summer. After that, the U.S. presidential election campaign is likely to put the Doha round on ice and it could be a year or two before it can be revived, officials say, dashing hopes for a rare piece of good news for the slowing global economy. The round was launched shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States to bolster the global economy and offer a chance to poor countries to export more and fight poverty. But the negotiations remain bogged down, largely because many poor countries insist their rich counterparts must bear the brunt of the concessions by scaling back farm protections while Brussels and Washington are leaning increasingly on big emerging nations to open up their economies. TRADE NOW, CLIMATE TOMORROW? The battle at the WTO is seen by many as a test of how other global deals can be done, notably next year on climate change, given the shifting balance of power as new heavyweights such as India and China grow in confidence. Many ministers in Geneva will be seeking a lead from the United States on Tuesday when it will again come under pressure to say how far it will lower its ceiling on farm subsidies. "I'm sure it will come tomorrow...Otherwise it will be difficult to move a bit forward," said European Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel. But U.S. trade chief Susan Schwab said Washington would not be rushing into playing its key card in the negotiations without signs that the big emerging economies were ready to move too. "When we address the...domestic support issue, it will address our desire to invite others to also participate in a 'can do' type of conversation, instead of a 'can't do' conversation," she told reporters. Latest WTO proposals would require the United States to cut trade-distorting farm subsidies to a range of $13 billion to $16.4 billion a year from a current ceiling of $48.2 billion. The range is above current U.S. spending on subsidies of about $7 billion although the handout figure is low because global foods prices are so high. The EU is under pressure to cut its farm tariffs and limit the number of "sensitive" products that would be shielded from the deepest tariff cuts. EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson said the EU's offer on farm tariff cuts now represented an average cut of about 60 percent which represented a "further iteration" on a previous estimate of a reduction of 54 percent.

China can become a powerful force to help developing nations fight both climate change and poverty with low-cost exports of wind or solar technologies, the head of the UN Development Programme (UNDP) said. "Climate change is not only the paramount environmental challenge of our time, it's also a huge development issue," Helen Clark told Reuters on the sidelines of a Dec. 7-18 U.N. conference trying to work out a new UN climate pact. "We have to aim for green and inclusive growth," she said. China could be a big part of the solution with new green technology exports, such as wind turbines, solar panels and other low-carbon technologies. "When (China) applies its mind to getting these goods out there at a competitive price I think it will be extremely powerful. They have already emerged as a major exporter of wind energy," she said. China had an ability to "do it cheaper and more widespread than before," Clark, a former New Zealand prime minister, said of production of green technology exports. Developing nations say they are most at risk from global warming that the U.N. panel of climate experts predicts will disrupt food and water supplies and cause more powerful storms, heatwaves, species extinctions and rising ocean levels. TOP EMITTER China, the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases ahead of the United States, could also work out models for greener cities in the developing world. "By 2030 it's estimated that China will have 350 million more people living in cities than it has today," Clark said. "The opportunity for planned urbanisation around sustainable city models is there." Developing countries say that they will do more to fight global warming under a new U.N. pact meant to be agreed at a summit of more than 110 leaders in Copenhagen on Friday. But they say that ending poverty remains their overriding concern. "You cannot divorce the climate change issues from poverty reduction," said Clark. "We believe fundamentally that you won't reduce poverty if the world is destroying ecosystsms on which we all depend." She said that a draft final text for Copenhagen should make more reference to the goal of ending poverty. "There's a bit of work to do on that," she said. "It has to have a reference to sustainable development and poverty reduction. It has to be a deal for development." "Developing countries have not come here to sign a deal that is just good for the environment," she added. She also said that planned start-up funds of $10 billion a year for 2010-12, requested by the United Nations, were a fraction of long-term needs to help the developing world combat climate change and adapt to harmful impacts.

The world's 7 billionth person will be born into a population more aware than ever of the challenges of sustaining life on a crowded planet but no closer to a consensus about what to do about it. To some demographers the milestone foreshadows turbulent times ahead: nations grappling with rapid urbanisation, environmental degradation and skyrocketing demand for healthcare, education, resources and jobs. To others, a shrinking population, not overpopulation, could be the longer-term challenge as fertility rates drop and a shrinking workforce is pushed to support social safety for an ageing populace. "There are parts of the world where the population is shrinking and in those parts of the world, they are worried about productivity, about being able to maintain a critical mass of people," Babatunde Osotimehin, executive director of the UN Population Fund, told Reuters. "Then there are parts of the world where the population is growing rapidly. Many of these countries face challenges in terms of migration, poverty, food security, water management and climate change and we need to call attention to it." The United Nations says the world's seven billionth baby will be born on Oct 31. No-one knows what circumstances the baby will be born into, but India's Uttar Pradesh -- a sugarcane-producing state with a population that combines that of Britain, France and Germany, in a country expected to overtake China as the world's most populous by 2030 -- provides a snapshot of the challenges it could face. Pinky Pawar, 25, is due to give birth in Uttar Pradesh at the end of the month and is hoping her firstborn will not join the estimated 3 billion people living on less than $2 a day, with little hope of an education or a job. "I want my child to be successful in life, so I must do my best to make this possible," she said, her hands over her swollen belly as she sat outside her mud and brick home in Sunhaida village. In Sunhaida, poverty, illiteracy and social prejudice mark a life dominated by the struggle for survival that mirrors millions of others across the world. RESOURCE CRUNCH With the number of people on earth more than doubling over the last half-century, resources are under more strain than ever before. First among the short-term worries is how to provide basic necessities for the additional 2-3 billion people expected to be added in the next 50 years. Water usage is set to increase by 50 percent between 2007 and 2025 in developing nations and 18 percent in developed ones, with much of the increased use in the poorest countries as rising rural populations move to towns and cities. "The problem is that 97.5 percent of it (water) is salty and ... of the 2.5 percent that's fresh, two-thirds of that is frozen," says Rob Renner, executive director of the Colorado-based Water Research Foundation. "So there's not a lot of fresh water to deal with in the world." Nutritious food is in short supply in many parts of the globe. The World Bank says 925 million people are hungry today, partly due to rising food prices since 1995, a succession of economic crises and the lack of access to modern farming techniques and products for poor farmers. To feed the two billion more mouths predicted by 2050, food production will have to increase by 70 percent, the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organisation says. But just as research, development and expansion of agricultural programs are critical, the public dollars pledged to this effort remain a pittance of what is needed, and are in fact in danger of sharp decline, experts say. "We have to raise productivity," Robert Thompson, who serves on the International Food & Agricultural Trade Policy Council and is former director of rural development for the World Bank. "I think we can do it all if we invest enough in research. But at the moment we aren't." Climate change could be the greatest impediment to meeting the food target as rising temperatures and droughts dry out farmlands which are then inundated by intense floods and storms. The way climate change has been handled offers a window on how tricky it is to tackle global, long-term problems, however. While it's clear what needs to be done, UN climate talks have largely stalled. "There is a reason why these negotiations are relatively slow," said Wendel Trio, director of Climate Action Network Europe, referring to the economic downturn and arguments between rich and poor nations over carbon cuts. "But if you compare it to the urgency and the fact that many governments clearly understand the urgency, it is a failure of governments that they can't move forward." CITIES BURSTING AT SEAMS Experts say demographic imbalances will also place serious strains on towns and cities across the world as mostly middle-class blue-collar migrants move from poorer rural areas to richer urban centres. China's capital Beijing -- with its almost 20 million inhabitants -- is now the world's 13th most populous city, its population almost doubling over the last decade, reflecting a trend mirrored worldwide, particularly in developing nations. Cities in Africa, Asia and South America are bursting at the seams from migrants seeking better jobs or as farmers flee droughts, floods and other environmental disasters. In 1950, about 730 million people lived in cities. By 2009, it was nearly 3.5 billion and in four decades it will be 6.3 billion, the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs said in a March 2010 report. That explosive growth stretches limited resources and infrastructure and places megacities on a collision course with a predicted increase in extreme flooding, storms and rising sea levels from climate change, UN Habitat says. Experts say the lack of coordinated planning is exacerbating the problem. "Any kind of plan for decentralising the population requires a series of policies that work together," said Wang Jianguo, a senior project officer on urbanisation at the Asian Development Bank's Beijing office. "If you only have a population policy without an employment policy, without an industry development policy, education, medical policy, it won't work." DEMOGRAPHIC ANOMALY One important policy tool to manage a growing population is to give women access to family planning, experts say, adding that 215 million women worldwide want it but do not get it. Access to education is also important as it motivates women to reduce their fertility and improve their children's health. A lack of such education has meant that while the overall populations continue to rise in countries such as China and India, the number of women is falling because of a preference for boys leading to deliberate abortions of female babies. The world is also seeing a demographic anomaly: a declining population in some richer countries has led to an imbalance between the working population and retirees who need expensive social safety nets. The global fertility rate -- the number of children born per couple -- is around 2.5, but in richer countries this number has already nosedived. And while exact predictions vary, most suggest the global population will peak at around 9 billion around 2070 and then start to fall, perhaps very fast. "We thought that overpopulation was going to force humanity to expand outward to the stars," says Jack Goldstone, professor of social science and a leading demographics expert at Washington's George Mason University. "That doesn't look like the problem at all. And the policy framework isn't set up at all to handle these longer-term issues."

The raw ingredients of the ready-to-eat-therapeutic food have leapt in price amid the global food crisis sparked by the war and pandemic, UNICEF said. Without further funding in the next six months, 600,000 more children may miss out on the essential treatment, which is a high-energy paste made of ingredients including peanuts, oil, sugar and added nutrients. UNICEF did not specify how much increased spending would be needed to maintain the program. It said a carton of the specialised nutrition containing 150 packets - enough for 6 to 8 weeks to bring a severely malnourished child back to health - goes for about $41 on average. Alongside the wider pressure on food security, including climate change, the price rise could lead to "catastrophic" levels of severe malnutrition, the children's agency warned in a statement. "The world is rapidly becoming a virtual tinderbox of preventable child deaths and child suffering from wasting," said UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell. Severe wasting, when children are too thin for their height, affects 13.6 million children under 5 years old, and results in 1-in-5 deaths among this age group. Even before the war and pandemic, 2-in-3 did not have access to the therapeutic food needed to save their lives, UNICEF said.

The US Environmental Protection Agency said on Tuesday it will reconsider a Bush administration rule to let new coal-fired power plants open without taking climate-warming carbon emissions into account. Environmental leaders, who had petitioned the agency to overturn the Bush rule, hailed EPA's move as a step toward the regulation of carbon dioxide emissions and a departure from the Bush administration's stand on climate change. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson granted the environmental groups' request for reconsideration of the rule, and in a letter to the petitioners, called for an unspecified period of public comment before a new rule is put in place. "This will be a fair, impartial and open process that will allow the American public and key stakeholders to review this ... to comment on its potential effects on communities across the country," Jackson said in a statement. "EPA's fundamental mission is to protect human health and the environment and we intend to do just that." In the letter, Jackson also cautioned companies aiming to start construction on power plants not to rely on the Bush administration rule in seeking permission to build. "Today's victory is yet another indication that change really has come to Washington, and to EPA in particular," said David Bookbinder of the Sierra Club, one of three groups that called for the reconsideration. "This decision stops the Bush administration's final, last-minute effort to saddle President Obama with its do-nothing policy on global warming," Bookbinder said in a statement. The Natural Resources Defense Council and the Environmental Defense Fund also called for the reconsideration. ANOTHER DEPARTURE FROM BUSH ERA It was the second time this month that the Obama administration has diverged from the Bush environmental position. On February 6, the EPA said it would reconsider whether to grant California and other states the authority to cut greenhouse gas emissions by new cars and light trucks, a request the Bush administration denied. EPA's decision on coal-fired power plants follows more than a year of bureaucratic maneuvering at the end of the Bush administration over whether new plants must limit emissions of carbon dioxide, which contributes to climate change. The maneuvering began soon after the April 2007 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that found EPA has the authority to regulate carbon emissions under the Clean Air Act. Since then, the Bush administration parried any attempts to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant. On November 13, 2008, EPA's own Environmental Appeals Board concluded that the agency "had not adequately explained why" a Clean Air Act provision on pollutants did not apply to carbon dioxide. On December 18, Bush administration EPA chief Stephen Johnson wrote a memorandum calling the appeals board's conclusions invalid. The environmental groups sued to overturn the Johnson memo. EPA's Jackson let the memo stand, but noted that it is not "the final word on the appropriate interpretation of the Clean Air Act requirements."

The collapse of the 450-square-mile Conger ice shelf in a part of the continent called Wilkes Land occurred in mid-March. It was first spotted by scientists with the Australian Bureau of Meteorology and appeared in satellite images taken March 17, according to the National Ice Center in the United States. Ice shelves are floating tongues of ice at the end of glaciers that in Antarctica serve as outlets for the continent’s massive ice sheets. Stresses cause cracks in the floating ice, and meltwater and other factors can cause the fissures to erode and grow to a point where the shelf disintegrates rapidly. According to the National Ice Center, the largest fragment of the Conger shelf after the collapse was an iceberg, named C-38, that was about 200 square miles in size. The loss of a shelf can allow faster movement of the glaciers behind it, which can lead to more rapid ice sheet loss and thus greater sea level rise. Ice shelf loss is a major concern in West Antarctica, where warming related to climate change is having a greater effect than in the east. Several very large glaciers in West Antarctica are already flowing faster, and if their ice shelves were to collapse completely, sea levels could rise on the order of 10 feet over centuries. But the two glaciers behind the Conger sheet are small, and even if they were to accelerate, they would have minimal effect on sea level, on the order of fractions of an inch over a century or two, said Ted Scambos, a senior researcher at the Earth Science and Observation Center at the University of Colorado Boulder. While some ice shelves have collapsed in West Antarctica — notably, the much larger Larsen B, in 2002 — the Conger collapse is the first observed in East Antarctica since the era of satellite imagery began in 1979, said Catherine Walker, a glaciologist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. Walker, who had been monitoring the ice shelf for a few months, said it had been retreating for several years. “It was an unhealthy little ice shelf to begin with,” she said. But it had appeared to become stabilised, she said, between the mainland and a small island. So while the collapse was not a complete surprise, it occurred sooner than expected, she said. She and Scambos agreed that recent weather in that part of Antarctica may have played a role. In mid-March, an atmospheric river, a plume of air heavy with water vapor, swept into East Antarctica from the ocean to the north. It resulted in record-setting warmth in some locations, with temperatures as much as 70 degrees Fahrenheit higher than normal for this time of year. The warmth could have led to more surface melting of the Conger ice shelf, helping to further erode its fissures and hastening its collapse. But Scambos said it was likely that the windy conditions resulting from the atmospheric river, combined with record-low sea ice around Antarctica this season, played a larger role. Sea ice serves as a buffer, damping the swells that roll in to the coast from the Southern Ocean. With little ice, and with the wind stirring the ocean even more, the floating shelf flexed more than it normally would. “The flexing probably weakened the more fixed parts of the ice that held the shelf together,” Scambos said. “The warm pulse probably didn’t do a lot,” he said, “but wind events and warm temperatures in the air and in the ocean certainly don’t help with ice shelf stability.” East Antarctica has been considered to be the more stable region of Antarctica, with less warming and even ice gains in some areas. The collapse of the Conger ice shelf does not really change that view, Walker said. “We don’t see any indication that this is going to happen in the rest of East Antarctica anytime soon,” she said. Scambos, who studies the more at-risk ice shelves and glaciers in West Antarctica, said it will be interesting to see what happens with the glaciers behind Conger. “Every time one of these things happens,” he said, “it tells us a little bit more about how bigger parts of Antarctica are going to respond when bigger events occur.” © 2022 The New York Times Company

The elephant deaths, which began in late August, come soon after hundreds of elephants died in neighbouring Botswana in mysterious circumstances. Officials in Botswana were initially at a loss to explain the elephant deaths there but have since blamed toxins produced by another type of bacterium. Experts say Botswana and Zimbabwe could be home to roughly half of the continent’s 400,000 elephants, often targeted by poachers. Elephants in Botswana and parts of Zimbabwe are at historically high levels, but elsewhere on the continent - especially in forested areas - many populations are severely depleted, said Chris Thouless, head of research at Save the Elephants. “Higher populations equal greater risk from infectious diseases,” Thouless told Reuters, adding that climate change could put pressure on elephant populations as water supplies diminish and temperatures rise, potentially increasing the probability of pathogen outbreaks. Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority Director-General Fulton Mangwanya told a parliamentary committee on Monday that so far 34 dead elephants had been counted. “It is unlikely that this disease alone will have any serious overall impact on the survival of the elephant population,” he said. “The northwest regions of Zimbabwe have an over-abundance of elephants and this outbreak of disease is probably a manifestation of that, ... particularly in the hot, dry season elephants are stressed by competition for water and food resources.” Post mortems on some of the dead elephants showed inflamed livers and other organs, Mangwanya said. The elephants were found lying on their stomachs, suggesting a sudden death. Vernon Booth, a Zimbabwe-based wildlife management consultant, told Reuters it was difficult to put a number on Zimbabwe’s current elephant population. He estimated it could be close to 90,000, up from 82,000 in 2014 when the last national survey was conducted, assuming that roughly 2,000-3,000 have died each year from all causes.

Posting a picture of herself with a backpack and pushing a bicycle, the Swedish 17-year-old tweeted: "My gap year from school is over, and it feels so great to finally be back in school again!" Thunberg, who sparked a global youth-led protest movement after striking outside the Swedish parliament in 2018, has spent the last year berating politicians about rising global temperatures and what she sees as their failure to live up to agreements enshrined in the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. Time Magazine's Person of the Year in 2019, Thunberg has spoken at the World Economic Forum in Davos and the COP25 climate summit in Madrid over the last 12 months, calling for urgent action to prevent a climate disaster. In a Reuters interview in July, Thunberg said people in power had practically given up on handing over a decent future to coming generations. With Europe beginning to emerge from coronavirus lockdowns, there have been calls for the EU's recovery fund to be used to promote a transition to a "green" economy. Meeting German Chancellor Angela Merkel last week, Thunberg called on her to step out of her "comfort zone" and speed up action to fight the climate emergency.

That was the question a cheerful Amazon employee posed when greeting me last week at the opening of a Whole Foods Market in Washington’s Glover Park neighbourhood. She blithely added, “You can also begin shopping by scanning the QR code in your Amazon app.” “Let’s go for the palm,” I said. In less than a minute, I scanned both hands on a kiosk and linked them to my Amazon account. Then I hovered my right palm over the turnstile reader to enter the nation’s most technologically sophisticated grocery store. For the next 30 minutes, I shopped. I picked up a bag of cauliflower florets, grapefruit sparkling water, a carton of strawberries and a package of organic chicken sausages. Cameras and sensors recorded each of my moves, creating a virtual shopping cart for me in real time. Then I simply walked out, no cashier necessary. Whole Foods — or rather Amazon — would bill my account later. More than four years ago, Amazon bought Whole Foods for $13 billion. Now the Amazon-ification of the grocery chain is physically complete, as showcased by the revamped Whole Foods store in Glover Park. For a long time, Amazon made only small steps toward putting its mark on the more than 500 Whole Foods stores in the United States and Britain. The main evidence of change were the discounts and free home delivery for Amazon Prime members. But this 21,000-square-foot Whole Foods just north of Georgetown has catapulted Amazon’s involvement forward. Along with another prototype Whole Foods store, which will open in Los Angeles this year, Amazon designed my local grocer to be almost completely run by tracking and robotic tools for the first time. The technology, known as Just Walk Out, consists of hundreds of cameras with a God’s-eye view of customers. Sensors are placed under each apple, carton of oatmeal and boule of multigrain bread. Behind the scenes, deep-learning software analyses the shopping activity to detect patterns and increase the accuracy of its charges. The technology is comparable to what’s in driverless cars. It identifies when we lift a product from a shelf, freezer or produce bin; automatically itemises the goods; and charges us when we leave the store. Anyone with an Amazon account, not just Prime members, can shop this way and skip a cash register since the bill shows up in our Amazon account. Amazon has tested such automation for more than four years, starting with 24 Amazon Go convenience stores and several Amazon Fresh grocery stores around the country. The palm-scanning technology, known as Amazon One, is also being licensed by others, such as a Hudson convenience store at Dallas Love Field Airport and Shaquille O’Neal’s Big Chicken restaurant at Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle. Those stores were valuable experiments, said Dilip Kumar, Amazon’s vice president of physical retail and technology. The company is treating Whole Foods as another step in its tech expansion into retail stores, he said. “We observed areas that caused friction for customers, and we diligently worked backward to figure out ways to alleviate that friction,” Kumar said. “We’ve always noticed that customers didn’t like standing in checkout lines. It’s not the most productive use of their time, which is how we came up with the idea to build Just Walk Out.” He declined to comment on whether Amazon planned to expand the technology to all Whole Foods stores. My New York Times colleague Karen Weise, who covers Amazon from Seattle, said the company operated on long time horizons, with the patience and money to execute slowly. That has allowed it to transform labour, retail and logistics over many years, she said. Groceries are just one piece of its ambitions. The Whole Foods in Glover Park has operated for more than 20 years, a cornerstone of a neighbourhood that is within walking distance of Embassy Row and the vice president’s Naval Observatory residence. Four years ago, the store closed over a dispute with the landlord and a rat infestation. Amazon announced last year that it would reopen the store as a Just Walk Out pilot project. The rats may be gone, but not the neighbourhood angst. The renovated store has sparked a spirited local debate, with residents sparring on the Nextdoor community app and a group neighbourhood email list over the store’s “dystopian” feeling versus its “impressive technology.” Some neighbours reminisced about how the store used to invite people to just hang out, with free samples and fluffy blueberry pancakes sold on weekends. Alex Levin, 55, an 18-year resident of Glover Park, said people should not reject the store’s changes. “We need to understand the benefits and downsides of the technology and use it to our advantage,” he said. He added that he had tried tricking the cameras and sensors by placing a box of chicken nuggets in his shopping bag and then putting the item back in a freezer. Amazon wasn’t fooled, and he wasn’t charged for the nuggets, he said. But others said they had found errors in their bills and complained about the end of produce by the pound. Everything is now offered per item, bundle or box. Some mourned the disappearance of the checkout line, where they perused magazines and last-minute grab bag items. Many were suspicious of the tracking tech. “It’s like George Orwell’s ‘1984,’” said Allen Hengst, 72, a retired librarian. Amazon said it didn’t plan to use video and other Whole Foods customer information for advertising or its recommendation engine. Shoppers who don’t want to participate in the experimental technology can enter the store without signing in and pay at self-checkout kiosks with a credit card or cash. As a longtime customer of Glover Park’s Whole Foods, I had missed the dark, cramped and often chaotic store and was excited to explore the changes. But somewhere between the palm scan and the six-pack banana bundles, I began to feel ambivalent. I noticed a sign near the entrance that forbade shoppers to take photos or videos inside. My eyes drifted toward the ceiling, where I noticed hundreds of small black plastic boxes hanging from the rafters. An employee jumped in. “Those are the cameras that will follow you during your shopping experience,” she explained, with no hint of irony. Several workers milled about the entrance to guide customers through check-in, while others stood behind the seafood counter, cheese station and produce areas. Kumar said the stores would always employ humans, but I wondered for how much longer. Amazon, under scrutiny for its labour practices, said employees’ roles might shift over time and become more focused on interacting with customers to answer questions. There were early signs of a more self-service future. At the bakery, I looked for someone to slice my $4.99 Harvest loaf and was directed to an industry-grade bread slicer for customers. A small label warned: Sharp blades. Keep hands clear of all moving parts. Kumar wouldn’t share data on the accuracy of Just Walk Out, so I tested the technology. I picked up an organic avocado and placed it on a pile of nonorganic avocados. After walking around the store, I went back and picked up the same organic avocado. If the cameras and sensors functioned properly, Amazon would be on top of my actions and charge me for the organic avocado that had been misplaced in the conventional bin. When I was ready to leave, I had the option of using a self-checkout kiosk or skipping the process. I decided on the latter and waved my palm again over an exit turnstile. The turnstile’s arms opened. “You should receive your receipt within two to three hours,” an employee at the exit said. I walked out. It felt discomfiting, like I might be mistaken for a shoplifter. An email from Amazon landed in my inbox an hour later. A link sent me to my Amazon account for details. It said my shopping experience had lasted 32 minutes, 26 seconds. My total bill was $34.35 — and I was correctly charged for the organic avocado. © 2022 The New York Times Company

He made the appeal after unveiling a research paper on CSR by Management and Research Development Initiative (MRDI) in Dhaka on Wednesday. Addressing bank officials, he said, “You can undertake long-term projects. Providing short-term aid with CSR is not enough; steps should be taken to eradicating poverty.” The Governor urged the scheduled banks to increase participation in confronting the effects of climate change. The resource paper has described the drastic changes in the lives of the inhabitant’s of the Sundarbans and its adjoining areas after cyclones Sidr and Aila increased the region’s salinity level. MRDI Executive Director Hasibur Rahman Mukur said Bangladeshi banks, which together disburse Tk 4.5 billion as CSR funds every year, should work in these areas. He added that if banks could disburse their CSR funds independently, Bangladesh would not need foreign financial assistance to fund social development work.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva arrived in India on Sunday, hoping to boost business and add more substance to the growing ties between two of the world's biggest developing nations. The three-day state visit is the latest in a series of high-level exchanges between the distant countries, which have forged a common stand in recent years on global trade and strategic issues. The two have been key partners within the G20 group of developing countries pushing rich nations for freer global farm trade and are also seeking a permanent seat in the UN Security Council along with Germany and Japan. "The meaning of my visit to India is to reiterate our readiness to forge a strategic alliance between our countries," Lula wrote in an article published in India's Hindu newspaper on Sunday. "The size of our respective populations, the economic vigour and the technological advances of both of our countries manifestly indicate how hard we still have to work in order to achieve our potential of cooperation and friendship," he said. Trade and business are expected to be on top of the agenda when Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh holds talks with Lula, who arrived with a delegation of about 100 businessmen. Lula is also due to address a conference of business leaders in the Indian capital on Monday. Although bilateral trade has grown steadily it is seen to be nowhere near its true potential, with Brazil unhappy about New Delhi's hesitation to further open its markets to farm imports despite slowing Indian agricultural output. While total trade touched $2.4 billion in 2006, Brazilian exports to India fell 15 percent to $937 million, and Lula's team is expected to push New Delhi for easing investment and trading norms. The two countries aim to quadruple trade to $10 billion by 2010. Increasing the use of bio-fuels, an area in which Brazil is a world leader, would be a key area to push cooperation for India, whose energy needs are surging with its scorching economic growth, an Indian foreign ministry official said. New Delhi would also seek Brazil's support at the Nuclear Suppliers Group, an organisation that governs global nuclear trade, which it needs to buy nuclear fuel and reactors after the conclusion of a civilian nuclear cooperation agreement with the United States, he said. In addition, the two sides would prepare to forge a common stance on issues such as climate change and global trade talks ahead of this week's G8 meeting in Germany, which both Lula and Singh are attending. Analysts were optimistic Lula's India visit would help build stronger bonds between the two emerging market giants. "I think both India and Brazil are beginning to recognise that distance should not matter and there should be greater trade between the two countries," said Rajiv Kumar, director of the Indian Council for Research in International Economic Relations. "It is also the coming together of intermediate or medium-sized countries for a greater role in global governance and international financial architecture," he said.

Republicans Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney battled on Monday for conservative support in Mississippi and Alabama ahead of presidential primaries that polls showed have turned into tense three-way ties. The stakes are high for all of the contenders in Tuesday's Deep South contests, with Gingrich fighting to keep his struggling campaign alive and Santorum hoping for a knockout blow that would consolidate conservative opposition to front-runner Mitt Romney. For Romney, a surprise win in either state would be a landmark breakthrough that would signal his ability to capture conservative support in the party's Deep South strongholds and put him on a path to the nomination. Public Policy Polling surveys showed a three-way jumble in each state. In Alabama, the three candidates were within 2 points of each other, inside the margin of error. In Mississippi, Gingrich led Romney by 33 percent to 31 percent, with Santorum at 27 percent. "I do need your help," Romney told supporters who turned out in a rainstorm to hear him in Mobile, Alabama. "This could be an election that comes down to a very small margin." Romney has opened a big lead over his presidential rivals in collecting delegates to the nominating convention but has not been able to capture the hearts of conservatives who distrust his moderate stances as governor of liberal Massachusetts. Romney's campaign argues his rivals cannot catch him in the chase for delegates, but Santorum raised the possibility that no one would manage to win the 1,144 delegates to clinch the Republican nomination before the party's convention in late August. "If this race continues on its current pace, it's going to be very difficult for anyone to get to the number of delegates that is necessary to win the majority at the convention," Santorum told reporters after an energy forum in Biloxi, Mississippi. He said a long, drawn-out primary race to find a challenger to President Barack Obama in the November 6 election would allow the conservative alternative to Romney to rise. "If we are successful here, it will have a very positive effect," Santorum said. "People in Mississippi and Alabama want a conservative for sure, they want a conservative nominee." Romney told CNBC that Republicans would be "signaling our doom" if the nominating fight lasts to the convention. "We need to select someone to become our nominee, get that person nominated, and get focused on President Obama," he said. A New York Times/CBS News poll released on Monday showed Obama's public approval rating falling sharply to 41 percent from 50 percent a month ago. The drop comes amid rising gasoline prices, setbacks in Afghanistan and talk of war with Iran. The poll found that in a hypothetical contest against Romney, Obama had the support of 47 percent to Romney's 44 percent - a statistical dead heat considering the survey's margin of error of 3 percentage points. Gingrich has vowed to stay in the race all the way to the convention but he will face growing pressure to drop out if he cannot pull out a win in the Deep South primaries on Tuesday. SPLITTING THE NON-ROMNEY VOTE Alabama and Mississippi, which together have 90 delegates, have big blocs of conservative and evangelical voters who have moved toward Santorum in recent contests. The states award delegates proportionally. Santorum beat Gingrich in Oklahoma and Tennessee last week, but Gingrich kept his campaign alive with a victory in his home state of Georgia, which he represented in Congress when he was speaker in the U.S. House of Representatives. "Clearly the non-Romney vote is split between Gingrich and Santorum and clearly the vast majority of Gingrich backers have Santorum as their second choice," said Quin Hillyer, a senior fellow at the Center for Individual Freedom and a Mobile resident. "If Gingrich were not in the race, Santorum would win Alabama by 15 points," he said. At the energy forum, Gingrich and Santorum criticized Obama for being unwilling to open more domestic areas and offshore sites for oil drilling. "If we exist in a world where there is not peak oil, and we exist in a world where the United States can become the No. 1 producer in the world, then you have a total new array of possible policy strategies," Gingrich said. He ignored his Republican rivals at the forum but Santorum took shots at both Romney and Gingrich, saying they had fallen for liberal views on climate change. Santorum criticized Gingrich for an advertisement he did with Democratic former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi where they sat on a couch together in front of the US Capitol calling for action on climate change. "We want to make sure we have a candidate going up against President Obama who can make the case about energy and our future, who can draw a sharp contrast about what's really at stake," Santorum said. At a later forum in Birmingham, Alabama, Gingrich said his two top rivals would not be able to beat Obama in November. "We have to win in a principled way, on a big enough agenda with enough momentum that we can actually change Washington decisively or we are not going to get this country back on the right track," he said. "I think I am the only candidate who can do that." Romney's campaign and his allied Super PAC have heavily outspent Santorum on the air in both states with negative attack ads, but Santorum said he was getting accustomed to the barrage. "We're used to being outgunned financially," he told reporters. "We're confident that we're going to do well here."

Beyond the measures announced by the German carmaker on Friday, VW executives, customers, investors and workers alike are struggling to divine what lies ahead. The new chief executive, 62-year-old Matthias Mueller, until now head of the Porsche sports-car division, faces a host of problems that had already been looming before the diesel scandal broke and may now be worsened by its repercussions. Not least among these is falling profitability at the VW brand, but the immediate priority will be to clean up the mess in the United States, whose potential impact on the company has been compared to the 2010 BP oil spill. First may come a sustained show of contrition in a US advertising campaign, said one VW manager, who asked not to be identified. "Humility will be the name of the game," he said. Following the crisis-management path taken by General Motors and News Corp, VW has tapped a US law firm to lead a thorough investigation. It promises to be a long and rough ride. VW faces dozens of public and private lawsuits, government investigations, compensation and recall expenses, the combined cost of which could exceed the 6.5 billion euros ($7.28 billion) it has put aside. The company's market value has plunged by 23 billion euros, or 30 percent, in the week since US authorities revealed that it had used a "defeat device" to mask illegal levels of nitrogen oxide pollution from diesel engines. Dealing with the fallout in the United States must override all other considerations, said a European fund manager who is among Volkswagen's 20 biggest shareholders. "Then we need to talk about strategic direction," the fund manager said, adding that VW could review its commitment to diesel because of a likely consumer and regulatory backlash. "This scandal has given them an opportunity to consider where they should go with their portfolio of models." Mueller should go further and abandon US diesel vehicles altogether, said Bernstein analyst Max Warburton, recommending that the company funnel cash into plug-in hybrids and other low-emissions technology instead. "VW needs to think big and bold," he said. Another big challenge for Mueller will be navigating a sharp downturn in China, where VW's bumper earnings have until recently more than offset its underperformance in Europe. Many insiders are calling for a change of corporate culture. VW's centralisation under Winterkorn and Ferdinand Piech - ousted as chairman in April - was ill-suited to a 12-brand empire with 119 plants in 31 countries. The "climate of fear" may have been a factor in the test-rigging, said one company official, just as it was two years earlier when Chinese customer complaints about defective gearboxes were suppressed for months. "We need to create an atmosphere in which problems can be communicated openly to superiors rather than concealed," labour chief Berndt Osterloh told staff on Thursday. A lot of phone calls The emissions trickery and its consequences are also spreading beyond North America. Germany's transport ministry said VW had also manipulated tests in Europe, with 2.8 million vehicles affected in Germany. Worst hit in reputational terms will be the VW brand itself, already struggling to find 5 billion euros in savings and lift profitability that has slumped below rivals such as Renault and PSA Peugeot Citroen. Under new boss Herbert Diess, the division had promised the first 1 billion euros in cuts this year, a goal reiterated three days before the diesel cheating emerged, in an investor presentation entitled "Stability in Volatile Times". Volkswagen's humiliation could weaken its European prices, further eroding the core brand's narrow margins and requiring still bigger cuts from unions. "The (US) disclosures may impact negatively on VW's ability to maintain its global premium pricing power," Morgan Stanley analyst Harald Hendrikse said in a note this week. To limit the damage, dealers are already urging VW to improve its communication with baffled customers. Sales staff said they were "getting a lot of phone calls" from clients but silence from Wolfsburg headquarters. One dealer in Cologne said he was eager to recall some 2,000 vehicles for the illegal engine software to be neutralised, generating 1.5 million euros in servicing revenue as well as opportunities to repair customer relationships - or even sell some more cars. "It's a tough market and we don't mind the extra business," he said, "as terrible as it is for the brand." But any silver linings look paper-thin to VW's 593,000 employees around the world - almost half of whom are in Germany. A groundsman articulated their bemusement as he mowed the lawn in Wolfsburg on Friday morning. "I just don't understand why VW did this," he said. ($1 = 0.8933 euros)

Loose regulation, now blamed for ills ranging from the US financial crisis to imports of tainted Chinese goods, is drawing increasing fire from opponents of the Bush administration's environment program. In the final months of President George W. Bush's two terms in office, criticism about the use of regulation instead of legislation to craft environmental policy has grown louder. That is amplified by the campaign for the U.S. presidential election on November 4, with both Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama staking out environmental positions at odds with the current administration. The environment is important to U.S. voters but ranks far below their top concern, the economy and jobs, according to a sampling on PollingReport.com. A CNN poll in July found 66 percent said the environment was important or very important in choosing a president, compared with 93 percent who said the same about the economy. On a broad range of environmental issues -- climate-warming carbon emissions, protecting endangered species, clean air and water preservation, the cleanup of toxic pollution -- opponents in and out of government have taken aim at the White House for failing to tighten some rules and loosening others. "The Bush administration's long-standing efforts to weaken environmental regulations to benefit narrow special interests come with a terrible cost," said Sen. Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat who has led the charge. "If you can't breathe because the air is polluted, you can't go to work. If your kids can't breathe, they can't go to school." Frank O'Donnell, of the advocacy group Clean Air Watch, agreed, saying that "the hallmark of Bush administration policy on the environment is a lack of regulation." One Capitol Hill staffer familiar with legislation on global warming accused the Bush administration of actively seeking to undermine measures to limit greenhouse gas emissions that spur climate change. "They were the biggest obstacle to progress," the staffer said. "They did everything possible to ensure that nothing would happen." James Connaughton, who heads the White House Council on Environmental Quality, vehemently disagreed, saying the Bush administration has equaled or exceeded the environmental accomplishments of its predecessors, sometimes through regulation and other times by the use of incentives. Connaughton took aim at states, notably California, for setting high environmental standards but failing to meet them. He specifically faulted Congress for failing to reinstate the Clean Air Interstate Rule, which would have curbed power plant pollution, after a federal appeals court rejected it in July. EMISSIONS AND POLAR BEARS Bush promised to regulate carbon emissions when he ran for president in 2000 but quickly reversed course once in the White House, saying any mandatory cap on greenhouse gases would cost U.S. jobs and give an unfair advantage to fast-developing economies like China and India. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in April 2007 that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had the power to regulate greenhouse gases as pollutants if they posed a danger to human health. The EPA delayed a decision on the so-called endangerment finding, making it highly likely that any regulatory action will be left to Obama or McCain when the winner of November's election takes office in January. The Bush administration's record on designating endangered species has drawn widespread scorn from conservation groups. So far, it has listed 58 species under the Endangered Species Act, compared with 522 under President Bill Clinton and 231 under President George H.W. Bush, the current president's father, who served only one term in office. For one high-profile species, the polar bear, the Bush administration waited until May 14, one day before a court-ordered deadline, to list the big white bears as threatened by climate change. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne said then that the listing would not curb climate change. He noted he was taking administrative and regulatory action to make sure the decision was not "abused to make global warming policy." The U.S. Chamber of Commerce praised the decision, calling it a "common sense balancing" between business and environmental concerns. At a hearing of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on September 24, Boxer accused the Bush administration of trying to undermine the mission of the EPA and the Interior Department to protect public health and the environment.

A summit of major powers in Germany will not agree to any firm targets for slashing greenhouse gas emissions, a senior US official said on Wednesday as G8 leaders gathered on the Baltic coast. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, chairing the annual meeting of the Group of Eight (G8), had hoped to secure US backing for a pledge to halve emissions by 2050 and limit warming of global temperatures to a key scientific threshold of 2 degrees Celsius. But she is now likely to settle for an expression of US support for United Nations efforts to combat climate change and an agreement to tackle emissions at a later date. "We have opposed the 2 degree temperature target, we are not alone in that -- Japan, Russia, Canada and most other countries that I have spoken with do not support that as an objective for a variety of reasons," James Connaughton, a senior climate adviser to US President George W Bush, told reporters. "At this moment in time on that one particular issue we do not yet have agreement," he added, referring to firm targets for cutting emissions that scientists say will swell sea levels and cause droughts and floods. Separately, French Environment Minister Alain Juppe said G8 powers -- Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States -- were far from a final climate deal despite months of negotiations. "We are far from a deal because Germany, supported by France, wants to go further, to lay the groundwork for post-Kyoto and to agree quantifiable targets," Juppe told French television. Europeans are still hoping the summit can send a signal about leaders' desire to come up with a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, the global climate deal which runs until 2012 and which the US is not a part of. Merkel was expected to press Bush on the climate issue when she lunches with him on Wednesday. She will later meet with Russia's Vladimir Putin before holding a dinner and reception for all the G8 leaders in Heiligendamm, a seaside resort founded in 1793 as an exclusive summer spa for European nobility. On the eve of the meeting, Bush criticised Russia on democracy, escalating a war of words with Putin that Merkel fears could overshadow other key themes like climate change and aid for Africa. "In Russia reforms that once promised to empower citizens have been derailed, with troubling implications for democratic development," Bush said during a visit to Prague on Tuesday. Differences between Washington and Russia centre on US plans to deploy parts of a missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic. Moscow is also resisting a push by Washington and European countries to grant independence to the breakaway Serbian province Kosovo. Leaders from the G8 are expected to discuss other foreign policy issues including Iran's nuclear programme, Sudan and the Israel-Palestinian conflict. The world's top industrial powers first gathered in 1975 in Rambouillet, France, to coordinate economic policy following a global oil crisis and the collapse of the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates. Recently, the club has come under pressure to adapt to shifts in global economic power. Merkel has invited leaders from Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa to address those concerns. A number of African leaders have also been invited for an "outreach" session on Friday. It was unclear on the eve of the summit whether G8 countries would make ambitious pledges on development aid and AIDS funding for Africa. Some 16,000 security personnel are in the area for the summit. The leaders will be shielded from thousands of demonstrators by a 12-km (7.5-mile) fence topped with barbed wire. Almost 1,000 people were injured on Saturday when violence broke out at an anti-G8 protest in the nearby city of Rostock.

Malaysia said on Thursday Australia and the United States should not hijack next week's summit of Asia-Pacific leaders to discuss climate change, saying it was not the right forum. Host Australia has written to leaders of the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum to put climate change at the top of the agenda at the Sept. 8-9 summit in Sydney. But fellow APEC member Malaysia said Australia and the United States lacked credentials to lead discussions on the subject. "It is unfortunate that people who are talking about climate change like America are not even members of the Kyoto Protocol," Malaysia's outspoken Trade Minister Rafidah Aziz said. "If you want to talk about climate change, please join in with the rest of the global community to make commitments about managing climate change," she told reporters. "So there's no point talking outside of the (Kyoto Protocol) forum," said Rafidah, who is due to attend APEC ministerial talks on Sept. 6 ahead of the summit. A visiting U.S. trade official brushed aside Rafidah's criticism, saying that climate change was key to APEC as the issue has both political and economic dimensions. "An issue like climate change...is the kind of thing that APEC can usefully help address," Deputy U.S. Trade Representative Karan Bhatia told Reuters. "President Bush's administration remained focused on pushing forward in that area." Australian Prime Minister John Howard said on Monday that APEC leaders would be asked to back practical ways for their nations to save energy. The United States and Australia have refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol setting greenhouse emissions targets for developed countries. Howard has long been a critic of the pact because it does not include major developing economies and unfairly punishes energy-rich countries such as Australia, a major coal exporter. Rafidah also said Malaysia would back a project to study the idea of setting up a pan-APEC free-trade pact but said any decision should not be binding on the member economies. APEC members account for nearly half of world trade, 40 percent of the world's population and 56 percent of the world's gross domestic product. While trade is a major focus for the group, the subject is often pushed down the agenda during annual summits by more pressing issues of the day, such as bird flu and the North Korean nuclear crisis.

Developing nations will need at least $267 billion a year by 2020 to fight climate change and adapt to droughts, heat waves and rising seas, according to African nations. The figure, part of a new African text for negotiations on a U.N. climate treaty, is more than double current development aid from recession-hit rich nations which totaled a record $120 billion in 2008. "Africa is one of the most vulnerable continents to climate change, with major development and poverty eradication challenges and limited capacity for adaptation," according to the text submitted to the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat. It set a 2020 goal of $200 billion in investments to help all developing nations curb their rising greenhouse gas emissions -- for instance via energy efficiency or shifting from use of coal or oil toward renewable wind or solar power. The African Group, comprising more than 50 nations, said those flows totaled about 0.5 percent of the gross domestic product of developed nations. Cash needed to help developing nations adapt to climate change, such as building stronger defenses against rising sea levels or developing drought-resistant crops, needs to be at least $67 billion a year by 2020. The numbers are above levels of aid discussed by rich nations to curb greenhouse gas emissions, mainly from burning fossil fuels. A report by the European Commission in January said the worldwide costs of fighting climate change would be around 175 billion euros ($227.1 billion) a year by 2020. "It shows the scale of what's needed," Kathrin Gutmann, head of policy of the WWF environmental group's global climate initiative, said of the African text. "We're not talking about tens of billions of dollars -- it's far more." CHICKEN AND EGG "There's a very strange chicken and egg situation," Gutmann said. Rich nations want the poor to lay out their plans for fighting climate change before promising cash. The poor want funds pledged first before deciding what is achievable. The next U.N. climate talks, part of a series meant to end in Copenhagen in December with a new pact to succeed the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol, are set for June 1-12 in Bonn, Germany. The African group also said developed nations should cut emissions by at least 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 and by 80-95 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. The numbers are beyond goals by almost all developed countries. "At lower stabilization levels, the additional climate impacts are unacceptable to Africa," it said. The U.N. Climate Panel projects that up to 250 million people in Africa could face greater stress on water supplies by 2020 and that yields from rain-fed agriculture could fall by up to 50 percent by 2020 in some African nations.

Plants are flowering faster than scientists predicted in response to climate change, research in the United States showed on Wednesday, which could have devastating knock-on effects for food chains and ecosystems. Global warming is having a significant impact on hundreds of plant and animal species around the world, changing some breeding, migration and feeding patterns, scientists say. Increased carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels can affect how plants produce oxygen, while higher temperatures and variable rainfall patterns can change their behavior. "Predicting species' response to climate change is a major challenge in ecology," said researchers at the University of California San Diego and several other US institutions. They said plants had been the focus of study because their response to climate change could affect food chains and ecosystem services such as pollination, nutrient cycles and water supply. The study, published on the Nature website, draws on evidence from plant life cycle studies and experiments across four continents and 1,634 species. It found that some experiments had underestimated the speed of flowering by 8.5 times and growing leaves by 4 times. "Across all species, the experiments under-predicted the magnitude of the advance - for both leafing and flowering - that results from temperature increases," the study said. The design of future experiments may need to be improved to better predict how plants will react to climate change, it said. Plants are essential to life on Earth. They are the base of the food chain, using photosynthesis to produce sugar from carbon dioxide and water. They expel oxygen which is needed by nearly every organism which inhabits the planet. Scientists estimate the world's average temperature has risen by about 0.8 degrees Celsius since 1900, and nearly 0.2 degrees per decade since 1979. So far, efforts to cut emissions of planet-warming greenhouse gases are not seen as sufficient to prevent the Earth heating up beyond 2 degrees C this century - a threshold scientists say risks an unstable climate in which weather extremes are common, leading to drought, floods, crop failures and rising sea levels.

Challenging the might of the "infidel" United States, Osama bin Laden masterminded the deadliest militant attacks in history and then built a global network of allies to wage a "holy war" intended to outlive him. The man behind the suicide hijack attacks of September 11, 2001, and who US officials said late on Sunday was dead, was the nemesis of former President George W. Bush, who pledged to take him "dead or alive" and whose two terms were dominated by a "war on terror" against his al Qaeda network. Bin Laden also assailed Bush's successor, Barack Obama, dismissing a new beginning with Muslims he offered in a 2009 speech as sowing "seeds for hatred and revenge against America." Widely assumed to be hiding in Pakistan -- whether in a mountain cave or a bustling city -- bin Laden was believed to be largely bereft of operational control, under threat from US drone strikes and struggling with disenchantment among former supporters alienated by suicide attacks in Iraq in 2004-06. But even as political and security pressures grew on him in 2009-2101, the Saudi-born militant appeared to hit upon a strategy of smaller, more easily-organized attacks, carried out by globally-scattered hubs of sympathizers and affiliate groups. Al Qaeda sprouted new offshoots in Yemen, Iraq and North Africa and directed or inspired attacks from Bali to Britain to the United States, where a Nigerian Islamist made a botched attempt to down an airliner over Detroit on Dec 25, 2009. While remaining the potent figurehead of al Qaeda, bin Laden turned its core leadership from an organisation that executed complex team-based attacks into a propaganda hub that cultivated affiliated groups to organise and strike on their own. With his long grey beard and wistful expression, bin Laden became one of the most instantly recognizable people on the planet, his gaunt face staring out from propaganda videos and framed on a US website offering a $25 million (15 million pounds) bounty. Officials say US authorities have recovered bin Laden's body, ending the largest manhunt in history involving thousands of US troops in Afghanistan and tens of thousands of Pakistani soldiers in the rugged mountains along the border. Whether reviled as a terrorist and mass murderer or hailed as the champion of oppressed Muslims fighting injustice and humiliation, bin Laden changed the course of history. ASYMMETRIC WARFARE The United States and its allies rewrote their security doctrines, struggling to adjust from Cold War-style confrontation between states to a new brand of transnational "asymmetric warfare" against small cells of Islamist militants. Al Qaeda's weapons were not tanks, submarines and aircraft carriers but the everyday tools of globalization and 21st century technology -- among them the Internet, which it eagerly exploited for propaganda, training and recruitment. But, by his own account, not even bin Laden anticipated the full impact of using 19 suicide hijackers to turn passenger aircraft into guided missiles and slam them into buildings that symbolized US financial and military power. Nearly 3,000 people died when two planes struck New York's World Trade Centre, a third hit the Pentagon in Washington and a fourth crashed in a field in rural Pennsylvania after passengers rushed the hijackers. "Here is America struck by God Almighty in one of its vital organs," bin Laden said in a statement a month after the September 11 attacks, urging Muslims to rise up and join a global battle between "the camp of the faithful and the camp of the infidels." In video and audio messages over the next seven years, the al Qaeda leader goaded Washington and its allies. His diatribes lurched across a range of topics, from the war in Iraq to US politics, the subprime mortgage crisis and even climate change. A gap of nearly three years in his output of video messages revived speculation he might be gravely ill with a kidney problem or even have died, but bin Laden was back on screen in September 2007, telling Americans their country was vulnerable despite its economic and military power. MILLIONAIRE FATHER Born in Saudi Arabia in 1957, one of more than 50 children of millionaire businessman Mohamed bin Laden, he lost his father while still a boy -- killed in a plane crash, apparently due to an error by his American pilot. Osama's first marriage, to a Syrian cousin, came at the age of 17, and he is reported to have at least 23 children from at least five wives. Part of a family that made its fortune in the oil-funded Saudi construction boom, bin Laden was a shy boy and an average student, who took a degree in civil engineering. He went to Pakistan soon after the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and raised funds at home before making his way to the Afghan front lines and developing militant training camps. According to some accounts, he helped form al Qaeda ("The Base") in the dying days of the Soviet occupation. A book by US writer Steve Coll, "The Bin Ladens," suggested the death in 1988 of his extrovert half-brother Salem -- again in a plane crash -- was an important factor in Osama's radicalization. Bin Laden condemned the presence in Saudi Arabia of US troops sent to eject Iraqi forces from Kuwait after the 1990 invasion, and remained convinced that the Muslim world was the victim of international terrorism engineered by America. He called for a jihad against the United States, which had spent billions of dollars bankrolling the Afghan resistance in which he had fought. TRAIL OF ATTACKS Al Qaeda embarked on a trail of attacks, beginning with the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing that killed six and first raised the spectre of Islamist extremism spreading to the United States. Bin Laden was the prime suspect in bombings of US servicemen in Saudi Arabia in 1995 and 1996 as well as attacks on US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 that killed 224. In October 2000, suicide bombers rammed into the USS Cole warship in Yemen, killing 17 sailors, and al Qaeda was blamed. Disowned by his family and stripped of Saudi citizenship, bin Laden had moved first to Sudan in 1991 and later resurfaced in Afghanistan before the Taliban seized Kabul in 1996. With his wealth, largesse and shared radical Muslim ideology, bin Laden soon eased his way into inner Taliban circles as they imposed their rigid interpretation of Islam. From Afghanistan, bin Laden issued religious decrees against US soldiers and ran training camps where militants were groomed for a global campaign of violence. Recruits were drawn from Central, South and Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Africa and even Europe by their common hatred of the United States, Israel and moderate Muslim governments, as well as a desire for a more fundamentalist brand of Islam. After the 1998 attacks on two of its African embassies, the United States fired dozens of cruise missiles at Afghanistan, targeting al Qaeda training camps. Bin Laden escaped unscathed. The Taliban paid a heavy price for sheltering bin Laden and his fighters, suffering a humiliating defeat after a US-led invasion in the weeks after the September 11 attacks. ESCAPE FROM TORA BORA Al Qaeda was badly weakened, with many fighters killed or captured. Bin Laden vanished -- some reports say U.S. bombs narrowly missed him in late 2001 as he and his forces slipped out of Afghanistan's Tora Bora mountains and into Pakistan. But the start of the Iraq war in 2003 produced a fresh surge of recruits for al Qaeda due to opposition to the US invasion within Muslim communities around the world, analysts say. Apparently protected by the Afghan Taliban in their northwest Pakistani strongholds, bin Laden also built ties to an array of south Asian militant groups and backed a bloody revolt by the Pakistani Taliban against the Islamabad government. Amid a reinvigorated al Qaeda propaganda push, operatives or sympathizers were blamed for attacks from Indonesia and Pakistan to Iraq, Turkey, Egypt, Kenya, Morocco, Algeria, Mauritania, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Spain, Britain and Somalia. Tougher security in the West and killings of middle-rank Qaeda men helped weaken the group, and some followers noted critically that the last successful al Qaeda-linked strike in a Western country was the 2005 London bombings that killed 52. But Western worries about radicalization grew following a string of incidents involving US-based radicals in 2009-10 including an attempt to bomb New York's Times Square. In a 2006 audio message, bin Laden alluded to the US hunt for him and stated his determination to avoid capture: "I swear not to die but a free man."

Delta Air Lines said on Tuesday it has added a $3 surcharge each way on fares purchased in the United States for flights between the United States and Europe, a move that would help offset the cost of the EU's new Emissions Trading Scheme. Delta is the first major US airline to raise the price of US-to-Europe flights since the European Union's carbon law kicked in on Sunday. Europe's highest court last month backed the controversial EU law to charge airlines for carbon emissions on flights to and from Europe. A spokesman for Delta, the second-largest US carrier, said the surcharge was added on January 2, but he declined to say whether its purpose was to shift the burden of the EU requirements to its customers. It remains to be seen whether other carriers will match the Delta surcharge. Unmatched surcharges and fare increases can fail if rivals do not launch similar price increases. "When airlines raise prices they're testing two things: the appetite of their competition and the appetite of consumers," said Rick Seaney, chief executive of Farecompare.com, which tracks air fares. "If either one of these two balk, they typically have to roll back those increases." Airline experts have said US carriers must add the cost to ticket prices or risk eroding their margins on trans-Atlantic flights. Some industry watchers predict airfares between the United States and Europe could rise $50 to $90 as airlines attempt to pass along the expense. Seaney said he was not aware of other carriers that have matched the Delta surcharge. Antitrust laws prevent US airlines from publicly discussing their future pricing. Germany's Lufthansa, however, told passengers on Monday to brace for higher ticket prices because of the EU scheme to tackle climate change. Under the EU plans, airlines touching down or taking off in the 27-nation European Union and three neighboring nations must account for their CO2 emissions. The United States, China, India and others have attacked the scheme, saying it infringes their sovereignty. They argue that the EU should not act alone. Some have warned of counter-measures. Airlines for America, the US airline industry group that challenged the EU law, said it was reviewing its legal options. The group has estimated that the emission law could cost the U.S. airline industry $3.1 billion from 2012 through 2020. Other industry experts say it will be difficult to gauge the overall impact of the scheme. "There's not a question that our airlines are doing things to prepare for the obligation," said Nancy Young, vice president of environmental affairs for Airlines For America, in an interview on Friday. "Our airlines have shown by their actions that they are respecting the rule of law," Young said. She said carriers have invested money in measuring their carbon emissions on flights to and from Europe. Young declined to speculate on whether carriers were likely to pass the new cost along to passengers immediately. She said some global airlines are considering whether it is feasible to avoid landing in Europe during some of their connecting flights to dodge the EU charge. "You're seeing airlines are looking into that," she said. The US airline industry is struggling to maintain its financial footing after a years-long downturn that has been exacerbated by volatile oil prices. Airline capacity cuts in recent years have enabled them to charge more for tickets, but at least five recent attempts to raise fares have failed since October, according to data from Farecompare.

The United States together with its allies and a Syrian opposition group all urged the UN Security Council on Monday to end its "neglect" of the violence raging in Syria and rapidly endorse an Arab League plan for a political transition there. "We have seen the consequences of neglect and inaction by this council over the course of the last 10 months, not because the majority of the council isn't eager to act - it has been," said Washington's UN Ambassador Susan Rice. "But there have been a couple of very powerful members who have not been willing to see that action take place," she told reporters. "That may yet still be the case." Western officials were discussing the issue on the eve of a meeting by the 15-nation Security Council to consider the Arab plan in the face of reluctance by Russia, an ally of the Syrian government and a veto-holder on the council, which has demanded changes to the proposed resolution. Arab League Secretary-General Nabil Elaraby and Qatar's prime minister are due to plead with the council on Tuesday to back the plan for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to transfer powers to his deputy to prepare for elections. Western countries are deploying their big guns to try to overcome Russian objections, with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, British Foreign Secretary William Hague and French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe due to attend the session. Rice's complaint about some countries reluctance to act referred to Russia and China, which vetoed a Security Council resolution in October that would have condemned Syria for its bloody crackdown on anti-government protests and threatened it with possible sanctions. Rice added that there was no need for "an extended negotiation" on the new European-Arab draft resolution endorsing the Arab plan aimed at ending the crisis, which has led to thousands of civilian deaths. Clinton also urged the council to act swiftly. "The Security Council must act and make clear to the Syrian regime that the world community views its actions as a threat to peace and security," she said in a statement. "The violence must end, so that a new period of democratic transition can begin." In Paris, a French diplomatic source said what Juppe wanted "is that this visit at least speeds up negotiations." LAVROV NOT ANSWERING PHONE The head of the opposition Syrian National Council, Burhan Ghalioun, said he had met with Russian officials in New York and would meet with Rice later on Monday. Germany's U.N. mission said Ghalioun also met with Ambassador Peter Wittig in New York. "Clearly the Russians are not happy with our position asking for Assad to step down before any negotiation, but our position is based on the will of the Syrian people," he said. Ghalioun also urged the council to support the European-Arab draft, saying it was high time for it to act. "The inaction of the international community has only encouraged the Assad regime to continue killing innocent protesters," he said. Russia's U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said last week that he was willing to engage on the European-Arab draft, which Morocco submitted to the council. But while he did not explicitly threaten to use his veto, he said the text was unacceptable in its current form. Diplomats said Elaraby would be meeting with Churkin in New York to explain to him that vetoing the draft resolution would be tantamount to vetoing the Arab world. A vote on the draft resolution is unlikely before Thursday or Friday, Western diplomats said on condition of anonymity. Russia sought on Monday to avert a swift council vote, saying it wanted to study recommendations from Arab observers in Syria before discussing the league's plan. Russia also said Damascus had agreed to take part in talks in Moscow, but a senior figure in the Syrian opposition said it would not attend. U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Clinton had been trying unsuccessfully to connect with Lavrov. "The secretary, frankly, has been trying to get Foreign Minister Lavrov on the phone for about 24 hours," she said in Washington. "That's proven difficult." As street battles rage in Syria, Nuland said the suspension of an Arab League monitoring mission over the weekend due to the worsening security climate may have negative consequences. "We are gravely concerned that as these Arab League monitors have pulled out, the Syrian regime has taken this as an excuse to just let loose in horrific ways against innocents," she said. Rice said the resolution was "quite straightforward" and made no reference to the use or threat of force. Russia has said NATO countries distorted a March 2011 council resolution on Libya to help rebels topple the government of Muammar Gaddafi. While few expect Russia to support the Syria resolution, Western officials said they were hopeful Moscow might be persuaded to abstain, allowing it to pass. The question was what changes would be needed in the text to secure that outcome.

The UN climate agency called on Wednesday for a special summit to spur a fight against climate change but said high-level ministerial talks could fit the bill if world leaders resist. Yvo de Boer, head of the UN Climate Change Secretariat in Bonn, said that UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon agreed at talks in New York on Tuesday to send envoys to probe government willingness for a high-level meeting about global warming. "The Secretary-General is exploring ways and means ... to facilitate global efforts for dealing with climate change," de Boer told Reuters by telephone after flying back to Europe. Ban's envoys would "explore the possibility of a high-level meeting ... possibly on the margins of the UN General Assembly" in New York in September, de Boer said. "It doesn't necessarily have to be heads of state," he added. "It could be a different level, such as foreign affairs or energy ministers." On March 1, Ban said global warming posed a threat as great as war and urged the United States to play a leading role in combating climate change. But Ban's spokeswoman said at the time that there were no plans to arrange a summit despite pleas from UN environment agencies. "I don't think it's a change of heart. What's being explored is ... a high-level meeting to engage a broader constituency -- foreign affairs, energy, trade, economy, transport," de Boer said. "It needs a broader push and broader support," irrespective of whether leaders meet, he said. World talks on expanding a fight against global warming, widely blamed on burning fossil fuels, are stalled. UN scientific reports this year say that mankind's emissions of greenhouse gas are "very likely" to be causing global warming that could bring more hunger, droughts, floods, heatwaves, melt glaciers and raise sea levels. De Boer says the world needs to speed up talks on widening the UN Kyoto Protocol, which sets cuts on emissions by 35 industrialised nations until 2012. The United States and Australia pulled out in 2001, reckoning Kyoto too costly. Kyoto nations make up only about a third of world emissions of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas. Only Russia is bound to a Kyoto target of the top four emitters -- the United States, China, Russia and India. De Boer said that a new meeting could build on, rather than duplicate, a Group of Eight summit in June at which German Chancellor Angela Merkel wants to focus on climate change. The G8 summit will be joined by heads of China, India, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa. Together the G8 and the five make up the bulk of world emissions of carbon dioxide. De Boer said that the G8 summit omits groups such as small island states, threatened by rising seas, the poorest nations such as in sub-Saharan Africa, and Australia. Environment ministers will meet for a next round of formal UN climate negotiations in Bali, Indonesia, in December.

Biofuels are likely to speed up global warming as they are encouraging farmers to burn tropical forests that have absorbed a large portion of greenhouse gases, climate scientists warned. The specialists, who gathered for an international conference in Hong Kong, rang the alarm bell as Malaysian palm oil futures prices hit all-time highs this week, helped by new demand for the vegetable oil from the biodiesel sector. "Some of these alternative energy schemes, such as biofuels, are truly dangerous," said James Lovelock, an independent scientist known for the Gaia theory. "If exploited on a large scale, they will hasten our downfall," he said in a video message delivered from Oxford. Preserving tropical forests is seen as key to mitigating global warming caused by greenhouse gases, as they capture a large volume of carbon dioxide emissions. In Asia, home to the world's top oil palm producers such as Malaysia and Indonesia, there has been an investment boom in biodiesel plants, which convert palm oil into biodiesel for cars. This has helped to push up prices for palm oil -- the cheapest vegetable oil -- by 25 percent so far this year. Prices had risen by 40 percent in 2006. Chinese investors are also looking into building palm-based biodiesel plants in Indonesia or Papua New Guinea as Beijing promotes biofuels to cut the country's dependence on imported oil, although it already has a big deficit in vegetable oils. "The big issue, particularly in Southeast Asia, is oil palm plantations. It is expanding rapidly for biofuels," said Simon Lewis from School of Geography, Earth & Biosphere Institute at University of Leeds. "The likelihood is it will increase deforestation," he said. "It is said this can be regulated. But most tropical forest is essentially unregulated." Lewis also said forest fires often caused by farmers were an additional danger for global warming, to which the international community had not paid enough attention. "With the climate change, with periodic droughts, more of tropical forests is possible to burn," he said. "People will set fire to forests if they can because they want to clear the forest for oil palm plantations." The scientist said a record 2 billion tonnes of carbon went up into the atmosphere from fires in Indonesia alone during the El Nino in 1997/1998, in addition to usual emissions of 1 billion to 2 billion tonnes worldwide. "The El Nino year of 1997/98 with massive burning across the tropics, record-breaking temperatures, carbon dioxide concentration may become a dangerously common feature in the coming decades," he said.

More than a third of mammal species considered extinct or missing have been rediscovered, a study says, and a lot of effort is wasted in trying to find species that have no chance of being found again. Species face an accelerated rate of extinction because of pollution, climate change, habitat loss and hunting and that this rate of loss is putting ecosystems and economies at ever greater risk, according to the United Nations. Researchers at the University of Queensland in Australia said a greater understanding of patterns of extinction could channel more resources to finding and protecting species listed as missing before it's too late. "In the past people have been very happy to see individual species found again but they haven't looked at the bigger picture and realized that it's not random," university research fellow Diana Fisher, lead author of the study, told Reuters. Fisher and her colleague Simon Blomberg studied data on rediscovery rates of missing mammals to see if extinction from different causes is equally detectable. They also wanted to see which factors affected the probability of rediscovery. They found that species affected by habitat loss were much more likely to be misclassified as extinct or to remain missing than those affected by introduced predators and diseases. "It is most likely that the highest rates of rediscovery will come from searching for species that have gone missing during the twentieth century and have relatively large ranges threatened by habitat loss," they say in the report in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B journal. The United Nations hosts a major meeting in Japan next month at which countries are expected to agree on a series of 2020 targets to combat the extinctions of plants and animals key to providing clean air and water, medicines and crops. "Conservation resources are wasted searching for species that have no chance of rediscovery, while most missing species receive no attention," the authors say, pointing to efforts to try to find the Tasmanian tiger. The last known living Tasmanian tiger, marsupial hunter the size of a dog, died in 1936 in a zoo. Fisher told Reuters efforts to find missing species have led to success stories of animals and plants being rediscovered and the creation of protection programmes. But the rediscoveries barely make a dent in the rate of species loss overall, Fisher said by telephone. "The number of additions every year outweighs the number of that have been rediscovered. There's still an accelerating rate of extinctions every year of mammals."

No US law curbing climate-warming emissions is likely until President George W Bush leaves office in 2009, Sen. Jeff Bingaman, Democratic chairman of the powerful energy committee, said on Tuesday. Major climate change legislation "is less likely than not" with Bush as president "given the position that he's taken in opposition to any mandatory limits on greenhouse gases," Bingaman told the Reuters Environment Summit in Washington. The fact that 2008 is a presidential election year reduces the chance that a US bill to fight global warming will become law, he said. Bingaman, a New Mexico senator who has sponsored a measure to limit emissions of greenhouse gases that warm the planet, said Bush's stance is hurting US standing in the international community. Calling last week's White House-sponsored meeting of the world's biggest greenhouse polluters a non-event, Bingaman said he heard complaints privately from delegates who called it a waste of time. "For the United States to have a leadership role in this whole discussion, we're going to have to do something ourselves to demonstrate our own commitment to dealing with the problem," Bingaman said. "Until that happens, until we can adopt a cap and trade system economy-wide or take some significant step to start controlling greenhouse gas emissions, we're not going to be deferred to in any serious way by the international community on this subject." The White House supports voluntary curbs on emissions and standards set by each country, rather than a global agreement for mandatory limits, which most other countries want. Bingaman said the notion of voluntary limits is "not a credible argument" and is similar to voluntary speed limits for drivers. "If you want something to work, you have to put in mandatory limits," he said. The issue of global warming is growing in the U.S. public view, he said, but has not been debated much in the early days of the presidential campaign, at least partly because most Democratic candidates agree on the topic and Republicans are largely keeping quiet about it. "If the president were to change his position and embrace the idea of mandatory limits ... on greenhouse gases, I think you'd see several Republicans immediately follow that policy who are now holding back," Bingaman said. As to various state measures geared to limiting global warming, he said these were helpful at this stage. "When there's a failure of leadership by the central government, the states sometimes step in and fill that void," he said. At some point, Bingaman said, the federal government will need "to come up with a system that works well."

The Maldives' 30-year incumbent president on Wednesday lost to a former political activist he repeatedly threw in jail during years of crusading for democracy on the tropical Indian Ocean archipelago. With all 179,343 votes counted, Mohamed "Anni" Nasheed had 54.2 percent against 45.8 percent for Asia's longest-serving leader, President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, Election Commissioner Mohamed Ibrahim said, citing provisional figures. "I'd like to extend congratulations to Mohamed Nasheed on behalf of the electoral commission. Mohamed Nasheed is the winner of the second round," Ibrahim told reporters. A formal announcement is due within seven days. Nasheed's victory in the nation's first multiparty elections caps a remarkable journey for an activist whose criticism of Gayoom and crusading for democracy saw him charged 27 times and jailed or banished to remote atolls for a total of six years. The vote is the culmination of years of agitation for democratic reforms on the string of 1,192 mostly uninhabited coral atolls 800 km (500 miles) off the tip of India, peopled by 300,000 Sunni Muslims. Better known as a diving hotspot and a luxury hideaway for Hollywood stars and others who can afford nightly stays that can reach thousands of dollars a night, Gayoom had been criticised for ruling it like a personal sultanate. Neither Nasheed nor Gayoom could be reached for comment. Gayoom has promised to hand power over peacefully. As earlier returns showed Nasheed, 41, ahead, many of his supporters lined the seawall in the capital Male to celebrate in the early-morning sun. Nasheed, 41, was at the fore of the campaign for democracy, including during 2004 protests that prompted a brutal crackdown by security forces and drew rare international criticism -- and attention -- to the hideaway islands. Gayoom, 71, won the Oct. 9-10 first-round election, but did not get the 50 percent needed to avoid a runoff. Nasheed was second, but this time had the backing of the four contenders who placed behind him and Gayoom. It is the first time Gayoom faced opposition at the polls since first being elected in 1978. In each of his six previous votes, he stood alone for a yes-no nod from voters and said he was re-elected by more than 90 percent each time. This time, 86 percent of the Maldives' more than 209,000 registered voters cast their ballots. Although there were complaints about registration and fraud like the first round, poll observers praised the exercise. "There were still glitches with voter registration, but the feedback we are getting is very positive. It is nothing like the last time," a Western diplomat said on condition of anonymity. Gayoom is widely credited with overseeing the Maldives' transformation from a fishing-based economy to a tourism powerhouse with South Asia's highest per-capita income. But Nasheed argued that only a small clique around Gayoom grew rich amid corruption in his government, which Gayoom denies. He now faces a charge from the newly independent electoral commission accusing him of illegal campaigning. He denies the charges but faces up to two years in jail if convicted. If he wins, it is unclear what would happen. Whoever wins will take over an economy that gets 28 percent of its GDP directly from tourism but which is under IMF pressure to ease debts and trim a huge government payroll. Tourism is expected to suffer from the global financial crisis. It also faces high child malnutrition, growing Islamic extremism, a major heroin problem, and rising sea levels that could see much of its land mass underwater by 2100, if a UN climate change panel's predictions are right.