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After a local and international outcry, an online meeting to begin seeking new bids for the demolition was cancelled. Kahn, one of the most important American architects in history, is best known for masterworks like the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California, and the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, as well as the Philips Exeter Academy Library in Exeter, New Hampshire, and the First Unitarian Church of Rochester, New York. (He also famously had three families, talked to bricks and died on the men’s room floor in Penn Station.) The exposed redbrick student dormitories in Ahmedabad are integral to the institute’s holistic campus design and are considered among the architect’s finest works — with repetition, geometry and the manipulation of light and shadow. They exemplify Kahn’s ability to design buildings in “response to the cultures, climates and traditions of their respective places,” said historian William J.R. Curtis, who has written op-eds for Architectural Record and The Architectural Review in support of the dorms’ preservation. In a statement, the World Monuments Fund called on the institute’s administration to reconsider, citing the project’s influence on the “modern development of Indian higher education,” and the environmentally sensitive design that continues to be an example of how to build for a local climate. “Conceived as an ensemble, the Kahn campus must be preserved in its entirety to protect the aesthetic, functional and symbolic values imbued within,” the statement said. Supporters of the dorms include the Council of Architecture, India, as well as architects and academics including Pritzker Architecture Prize laureates Rafael Moneo, Alejandro Aravena and Balkrishna Doshi (the architect who brought Kahn to India in the early 1960s), who have posted an open letter. A Change.org petition had over 12,000 signatures on Thursday afternoon. The management institute’s director, Errol D’Souza, defended the demolition plans in a letter to alumni, calling the structures “unlivable” because of issues including “concrete and slabs falling from the roofs”; brick deterioration causing cracking and water seepage; and structural issues resulting from a 2001 earthquake. The school had previously commissioned an extensive restoration project for the buildings, but reversed course with a plan to build anew. © 2020 New York Times News Service

TOYAKO, Japan, Wed Jul 9, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Group of Eight leaders patched together a deal to fight climate change at a summit that wound up on Wednesday, but failed to convince big emerging economies that rich countries were doing enough. Climate change was the most contentious topic at this year's G8 summit in Japan, which also tackled geopolitical problems from the crisis in Zimbabwe to worsening security in Afghanistan as well as soaring food and oil prices and poverty in Africa. "There's been no huge breakthrough at this particular meeting, it is one step along the road," said Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who attended a climate change meeting on Wednesday where the G8 leaders were joined with eight more big polluters. "Of course, there's a long, long way to go." The 16-member Major Economies Meeting group agreed that "deep cuts" in greenhouse gas emissions were needed to combat the global warming that is closely linked to rising food and fuel prices, already hitting vulnerable economies hard. But bickering between rich and poorer countries kept most emerging economies from signing on to a goal of at least halving global emissions by 2050. Nor did the Major Economies Meeting come up with specific numbers for the interim targets they agreed advanced countries should set. The leaders of Japan, Britain, Canada, Germany, France, Italy, Russia and the United States had embraced the 2050 goal a day earlier, but stressed their countries could not do it alone. PAPERING OVER GAPS The rich countries had to paper over deep gaps just to get their own climate change deal, with Europe and Japan urging bolder action while the United States opposed promising firm targets without assurances big emerging economies will act too. U.S. President George W. Bush said "significant progress" was made on climate change at the summit, while Japan and the European Union also lauded the outcome. Environmentalists, though, saw nothing to cheer. "It's the stalemate we've had for a while," Kim Carstensen, director of the WWF's global climate initiative, told Reuters. "Given the lack of willingness to move forward, particularly by the U.S., it hasn't been possible to break that." Expectations for this week's summit talks on climate were always low. Many are sceptical that any significant advance on steps to combat global warming can be made until a new U.S. president comes to office in January 2009, including South Africa, one of five big emerging economies collectively called the G5. "Until there's a change in the position of the United States, South Africa's feeling is that it will be very difficult for the G5 to move forward because they will always be forced to work on that level of the lowest common denominator," said South African Environment Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk. Developing countries, along with the European Union and green groups, say rich countries must take the lead and specify interim targets for how to reach the mid-century goal, which scientists say is the minimum needed to prevent dangerous global warming. AFGHANISTAN, AFRICA India told the major economies meeting that developed countries had not done enough. "This must change and you (the G8) must all show the leadership that you have always promised by taking and then delivering truly significant GHG (greenhouse gas) reductions," Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told the meeting. The stance of emerging nations is important. The G8 nations emit about 40 percent of mankind's greenhouse gas emissions. China and India together emit about 25 percent of the total, a proportion that is rising as their coal-fueled economies boom. Leaders of the G8 countries agreed at the summit to impose sanctions against Zimbabwe's leaders because of violence during the widely condemned re-election of President Robert Mugabe. "There should be no safe haven and no hiding place for the criminal cabal that now make up the Mugabe regime," British Prime Minister Gordon Brown told a news conference after the summit. The G8 also urged Afghanistan's government to take more responsibility for its own security and reconstruction, and pledged to increase assistance to that country's army and police. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who led the discussion on the topic, said all members agreed with "unprecedented unanimity" about the need to do much more. "I think every one of the G8 countries understands the question is critical, understands that success in Afghanistan is critical," said Harper. About 900 soldiers in a U.S.-led coalition force have died in Afghanistan since 2001, among them 90 Canadians. The G8 countries also reassured sceptics on Tuesday that they were "firmly committed" to an aid target for Africa that was pledged at the Gleneagles summit in 2005. Aid workers and NGOs have expressed concern that donor countries would fail to meet a G8 pledge to raise annual aid levels by $50 billion by 2010, half of which was to go to Africa. The G8 leaders also acknowledged the economic threat from surging oil and food prices, which could drive millions more into poverty but came up with no fresh initiatives to tackle what they said were complex problems requiring long-term solutions.

New Australian opposition leader Kevin Rudd, well ahead in polls in an election year, delivered his first major address on Tuesday, pledging to restore the nation's cherished values of equality and a "fair go". In a bid to present his centre-left Labour opposition as ideas-driven, Rudd said if elected later in 2007 he would undo the damage done by a decade of conservative government under Prime Minister John Howard. "This election will be about the future versus the past. We, on our side, are ready for the future," Rudd told the National Press Club in Parliament's Great Hall. "Our core proposition to the people is that Australia needs a change of government because Mr Howard is increasingly locked in the past at a time when the nation must face challenges that we have never faced before," Rudd said. Rudd, 49, a bookish and boyish-faced former diplomat, has presented the veteran Howard with a major challenge ahead of elections due later this year. A Newspoll on Tuesday gave Labour a lead of 59 points to 41 over the ruling coalition after preferences were given to the major parties. Rudd led Howard 48 points to 36 as preferred prime minister. Rudd said Australia faced security challenges with troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the "great challenge" of climate change after years of drought amid Howard's refusal to sign the Kyoto Protocol. Rudd has promised to bring Australia's 1,400 troops in and around Iraq home, with polls showing 67 per cent of voters either want them returned or for Howard to set an exit date. Labor has also pledged to sign up to Kyoto. Rudd directly targeted Howard over his economic record, which won him re-election three years ago. Many Australian voters see the economy as Labor's weak point. Australians are increasingly jittery about borrowing costs. The central bank raised interest rates three times last year to a six-year high of 6.25 percent and there is speculation of more hikes to come. Rudd said Australia should use the current global commodity boom to invest in the future. Labour has promised to use proceeds from privatisation sales to build a A$4 billion ($3.33 billion) high-speed broadband network and improve education. "This is all about making our own luck, rather than just hoping that we continue to be "the lucky country" blessed with abundant mineral wealth and burgeoning global demand," Rudd said. Rudd also pledged to scrap Howard's new labour laws which sees workers directly negotiating with employees. To deflect accusations he was too close to unions, however, he said he would demand secret worker ballots before strikes. The laws are shaping as a major election battleground. To counter a planned union advertising campaign rumoured to top A$100 million, Howard has been asking business to fund a A$20 million election ad campaign in support of them. Rudd has been hit by claims he and his senior staff tried to bully major newspapers to withdraw critical stories, casting a shadow over his stellar debut since winning the Labour leadership in December.

Germany's corporate chiefs are under fire after a police raid on one of the country's most respected bosses on Thursday added to the list of scandals that is shaking the public's faith in its cherished corporate system. The swoop on the home and offices of Klaus Zumwinkel, chief executive of Deutsche Post and a pillar of the establishment, in a probe into suspected tax dodging was the latest shock for Germans already seething over fat-cat pay and golden handshakes. On top of a series of scandals in the last few years which have engulfed Europe's biggest carmaker Volkswagen and Siemens, Germany's biggest corporate employer, commentators warn of political consequences and said the far-left Left party could gain. Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck said the potential damage of the Zumwinkel case, which involves individuals rather than the company as a whole, was "considerable". "If the public has something like this as a role model, they'll start having doubts about the economic and social system," said Steinbrueck, a Social Democrat (SPD) in conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel's left-right coalition. The case took on even bigger proportions on Friday when a newspaper reported the investigation could stretch to hundreds of rich and prominent Germans with offshore bank accounts. Germany's post-war identity is founded on its economic and corporate prowess, epitomised by the country's status as the world's biggest exporter and by the number of companies which are world leaders in their sector. Although managers' salaries are still below U.S. and British levels, discontent is growing among Germans who feel they are not reaping the rewards of growth in Europe's biggest economy. Disposable income for lower earners has fallen and the media have launched a campaign over excessive manager pay. Targets have included Juergen Schrempp, the former chief executive of carmaker Daimler who walked off with millions in a pay off and stock options as his merger with U.S. automaker Chrysler unravelled and shareholders lost out. "(Zumwinkel's) case is one which feeds the general suspicion many people have: 'The top people lie and cheat everyone else'," wrote the Sueddeutsche Zeitung in an editorial on Friday. PUSH TO THE LEFT? Although politicians from across the spectrum, including Merkel, have criticised excessive corporate pay, commentators say public anger over what the media calls morally degenerate bosses could lead to more left-wing policies. The growing appeal of the Left party, a group of former communists and disaffected former centre-left SPD supporters, has already pulled the main political parties to the left by forcing the ruling coalition to soften its stance on welfare reforms. "The picture of a number of greedy managers is catastrophic as it spawns a sense of social injustice which can only help the Left party," Klaus Schneider, head of the SdK shareholders' association told Reuters. Former German finance minister Oskar Lafontaine, a co-leader of the Left, wants to increase public spending on pensions, welfare benefits and education. Corruption watchdog Transparency International says there is no objective data to show corruption is increasing in Germany. "But you can say that in the last 10 to 15 years the subject has become far more important in peoples' minds ... there has been a change in the climate," Peter von Blomberg, deputy head of Transparency International Germany, told Reuters. Von Blomberg said Scandinavian countries were something of a model, thanks to open communication channels between citizens and authorities. German firms need to introduce and enforce compliance guidelines and protect whistleblowers, he said. "In Germany there is still quite a distaste for denouncing people -- there are historical reasons for this but I think we may see a discussion about a possible legal framework to protect whistleblowers here," he said.

The Warsaw meeting, which had been due to end on Friday, was meant to lay the groundwork for creating the first climate accord to be applicable to all nations by 2015, which would come into force after 2020.However the only concrete measure to have emerged was an agreement on new rules to protect tropical forests, which soak up carbon dioxide as they grow.Nearly 200 countries assembled at the UN conference have stumbled over three major issues over the past two weeks: the level of emissions cuts, climate finance and a "mechanism" to help poor countries deal with loss and damage from global warming."Climate change talks are still on knife edge after a long night. A few countries (are) insisting on looking backwards. Could be a long day," British Energy and Climate Change Minister Edward Davey said on Twitter.Developed nations, which promised in 2009 to raise climate aid to $100 billion a year after 2020 from $10 billion a year in the period 2010-12, were resisting calls by the developing world to set targets for 2013-19.A draft text merely urged developed nations, which have been more focused on spurring economic growth than on fixing climate change, to set "increasing levels" of aid.It also suggested they report every two years on their approaches to stepping up finance levels to $100 billion.A group of developing countries and China were in favour of an amendment to the text that "at least $70 billion" a year of climate finance is committed from 2016.OVERTIMEThe talks have also proposed a new "Warsaw Mechanism" which would provide expertise, and possibly aid, to help developing nations cope with loss and damage from extreme events such as heat waves, droughts and floods, and creeping threats such as rising sea levels and desertification.Developing nations have insisted on a "mechanism" - to show it was separate from existing structures - even though rich countries say that it will not get new funds beyond the planned $100 billion a year from 2020.Many delegates also said they wanted a clearer understanding of when nations will publish their plans for long-term cuts in greenhouse gases in the run-up to a summit in Paris in 2015.A text on Saturday said that all nations should "initiate or intensify" their domestic preparations for "intended nationally determined commitments" and have them ready by the end of the first quarter of 2015, if they could.The United States is among those advocating pledges be made by the end of the first quarter of 2015. The European Union is among countries which want pledges in 2014."It's not everything we wanted, but we know there are some issues we cannot solve here," Pete Betts, lead negotiator for the European Union, told delegates.Meanwhile, many developing nations want to see more urgency. Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, which has killed over 5,000 people, has put the spotlight on extreme weather.In September, a UN panel of scientists raised the probability that most climate change since 1950 is man-made to at least 95 percent, from 90 in a previous assessment in 2007.It also said that "sustained and substantial" cuts in greenhouse gases were needed to achieve a UN goal of limiting warming to manageable levels."We have compromised on many issues, but there is a limit for compromise by the most vulnerable countries of this planet," said Nepal's Prakash Mathema, chair of the group of least developed countries.

President Barack Obama said on Thursday the world economy had been pulled back from the brink of depression in the wake of the global financial crisis. Addressing the United Nations General Assembly, Obama also said the United States would support a process on climate change in which all major economies met their responsibilities to protect the planet.

ZANESVILLE, Ohio, Mon Oct 27, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Republican presidential nominee John McCain on Sunday fought to distance himself from unpopular President George W. Bush and Democrat Barack Obama attempted to attach them at the hip on a day of fierce campaigning. "Do we share a common philosophy of the Republican Party? Of course. But I've stood up against my party, not just President Bush but others, and I've got the scars to prove it," McCain told NBC's "Meet the Press" on a day he held events in both Iowa and Ohio. Obama quickly seized on McCain's comment in a speech in Denver, saying McCain was "finally giving us a little straight talk, and owning up to the fact that he and George Bush actually have a whole lot in common." "We're not going to let George Bush pass the torch to John McCain," Obama told a crowd of more than 100,000 supporters who jammed a downtown Denver park and sprawled up the steps of the Colorado state capitol building. McCain, in his "Meet the Press" interview and at his campaign events, shrugged off opinion polls showing him far behind Obama in the campaign, saying he senses the race is tightening just over a week ahead of the Nov. 4 election. It was the 41st anniversary of the day Navy flyer McCain was shot down over Vietnam, starting a 5-1/2 year stint as a prisoner of war. "A long time ago, today, I had a bad experience and I spent some time in what many of you know as the Hanoi Hilton," McCain said. "I've fought for you most of my life in places where defeat meant more than returning to the Senate. I will fight for you, my friends." Obama and his campaign have attempted to tie McCain to Bush at every opportunity, citing the Arizona senator's record of voting with the president 90 percent of the time. Flush with campaign cash, the Obama campaign released a television advertisement that shows footage of McCain with Bush as the announcer says, "He's out of ideas, out of touch, and out of time." McCain said that while he respects Bush, he has disagreed with him on a number of important issues, by opposing increased government spending, challenging Bush on his Iraq strategy and demanding tougher action to address climate change. "For eight years, we've seen the Bush-McCain philosophy put our country on the wrong track, and we cannot have another four years that look just like the last eight. It's time for change in Washington, and that's why I'm running for president of the United States," Obama said. OBAMA LEADS IN IOWA Obama leads McCain in national opinion polls and in polls in many battleground states, including Iowa, which Bush won in 2004. A new Courier-Lee Enterprises poll gave Obama a 54 percent to 39 percent edge in Iowa. A Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll released on Sunday, however, suggested a tightening race overall. It said Obama leads McCain by 49 percent to 44 percent among likely U.S. voters in the daily tracking poll. In this poll the Illinois senator's lead has dropped over the last three days after hitting a high of 12 points on Thursday. Some Republicans have complained that McCain's campaign has seemed to lurch from issue to issue and has put in jeopardy not only Republican attempts to hang on to the White House but also many seats in the U.S. Congress. "We're doing fine. We have closed in the last week," McCain said, adding that if the trend were to continue, "We'll be up very, very late Election Night." "I see intensity out there and I see passion, so we're very competitive here and I'm very happy of where we are and I'm proud of the campaign I've run," he said. McCain gave a strong vote of confidence to his vice presidential running mate Sarah Palin, the Alaska governor who has energized the Republican base but has come under withering criticism on a variety of issues. Many Americans do not consider her ready to be president. McCain's choice of Palin as his running mate was at first welcomed as a boon to his campaign but the scrutiny of her has been tough and some conservatives have said they do not believe she is sufficiently experienced to be a heartbeat away from the presidency. "I don't defend her. I praise her. She needs no defense," McCain said of Palin. He dismissed questions about the Republican National Committee's purchase of $150,000 in clothes for her and her large family for wearing if they needed it while campaigning, saying a third of the clothes had been returned and the rest would be donated to charity. McCain said Palin lives a "frugal life." "I'm so proud of the way she ignites the crowds. The way she has conducted herself in my view is incredibly admirable," McCain said.

A State Department spokeswoman confirmed Rank's departure, but said she was unable to verify Twitter posts that said he resigned as he felt unable to deliver a formal notification to China of the US decision last week to quit the agreement. "He has retired from the foreign service," said Anna Richey-Allen, a spokeswoman for the department's East Asia Bureau. "Mr Rank has made a personal decision. We appreciate his years of dedicated service to the State Department." Iowa Governor Terry Branstad, President Donald Trump's pick as the next US ambassador to Beijing, is expected to take up the post later this month. A tweet from China expert John Pomfret quoted unnamed sources as saying that Rank had resigned as he could not support Trump's decision last week to withdraw from the Paris agreement. Another tweet from Pomfret said Rank called a town hall meeting to announce his decision to embassy staff and explained that he could not deliver a diplomatic note informing the Chinese government of the US decision. A senior US official confirmed the account given in the tweets but added that after Rank announced his intention to retire on Monday in Beijing, he was told by the State Department to leave his post immediately. The official spoke on condition of anonymity. On Jun 1, the US State Department accepted the resignation of its top personnel officer, who had been among its few remaining senior Obama administration political appointees, another US official said. Arnold Chacon had served as the director general of the foreign service and director of human resources. The official said Chacon had tendered his resignation when Trump was inaugurated on Jan. 20, along with all presidential appointees, who serve at the pleasure of the president and secretary of state. The acceptance of Chacon's resignation was first reported by the DiploPundit website. It was not immediately clear whether he would be offered another post at the department. Other than Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, his deputy John Sullivan and Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Tom Shannon, the third-ranking US diplomat, most of the State Department's senior posts are currently vacant or filled by acting officials. Chacon and Rank, a career foreign service officer who took over the post of deputy chief of mission in Beijing in January 2016, could not immediately be reached for comment. Jonathan Fritz, the embassy's economics councillor, would serve as chargé in his place, Richey-Allen said. Rank had been with the department for 27 years and served as the political councillor at the US Embassy in Afghanistan from 2011 to 2012. Trump's announcement on Thursday that he would withdraw the United States from the Paris climate accord, saying the agreement would undermine the US economy and cost jobs, drew anger and condemnation from world leaders and heads of industry.

The European Union and United States will agree at a summit on Monday that climate change is a central challenge that requires "urgent, sustained global action," according to a draft statement seen by Reuters. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, on her first trip to Washington since assuming the presidency of the EU, is seeking to convince the Bush administration take concrete steps to curb the greenhouse gases blamed for climate change. Merkel hopes the joint statement will lay the groundwork for a broader deal on combating global warming at a June G8 summit she will host in the Baltic resort of Heiligendamm. "I think on climate and energy efficiency, we've taken a step forward," she told reporters in Washington before her meeting with US President George W. Bush. "We want to use this as a foundation for a broader agreement at the summit between the G8 countries, and perhaps also India and China. The statement on energy security, efficiency and climate change will be presented alongside a broader "Transatlantic Economic Partnership" designed to cut costly non-tariff barriers to trade between the EU and United States. Under that agreement, the partners will agree to harmonize regulatory standards and cooperate in areas like intellectual property, trade security, investment and financial markets. A council led by EU Industry Commissioner Guenter Verheugen and White House economic adviser Allan Hubbard will be set up to monitor progress in aligning regulations and present annual reports to EU and US leaders. In addition to the fixed agenda, Merkel and Bush will hold talks on an array of international issues from Iran's nuclear program to Middle East peace. Russian relations have also been thrust to the forefront after a hawkish speech by President Vladimir Putin last week in which he denounced US plans to put a missile shield in central Europe and froze Moscow's commitments under a key arms treaty. Washington says the shield would counter threats from "rogue states" like Iran and North Korea, but Moscow sees it as a threat and encroachment on its former sphere of influence. "I will reiterate the need to talk with Russia about this and the NATO-Russia council is a good forum," Merkel said, denying that it would be the focus of her talks with Bush. German officials have painted the joint declaration on climate change as a rhetorical leap forward for the Bush administration, but the statement does not contain any concrete pledges to take action. The draft says the EU and US are committed to stabilizing greenhouse gases and acknowledges work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, which released a report this month that said rising temperatures were changing the globe and could lead to more hunger, water shortages and extinctions. The draft urges the development and commercialization of advanced technologies to "slow, stabilize and significantly cut" global emissions and promises a joint effort to deliver results at Heiligendamm and work constructively in the run-up to a key U.N. meeting on climate change in Bali, Indonesia in December. On her fourth visit to Washington, Merkel has developed a close relationship with Bush, repairing ties which became badly strained when her predecessor Gerhard Schroeder clashed with the US president over the Iraq war. But with less than six weeks to go until Heiligendamm, she faces a daunting task in persuading Bush to agree to broader, binding international steps to fight climate change. German officials have also expressed concern the escalating Cold War-type showdown between Washington and Moscow over the missile shield and another looming battle over Kosovo independence could overshadow the June 6-8 summit.

A blitz of wildfires across Oregon, California and Washington has destroyed thousands of homes and a half dozen small towns this summer, scorching a landscape the size of New Jersey and killing more than two dozen people since early August. After four days of brutally hot, windy weather, the weekend brought calmer winds blowing inland from the Pacific Ocean, and cooler, moister conditions that helped crews make headway against blazes that had burned unchecked earlier in the week. Still, emergency officials worried that the shifting weather might not bring much relief to southern Oregon, where an apocalyptic scene of charred residential subdivisions and trailer parks stretched for miles along Highway 99 south of Medford through the neighbouring communities of Phoenix and Talent. "We're concerned that the incoming front is not going to provide a lot of rain here in the Medford region and it's going to bring increased winds," Bureau of Land Management spokesman Kyle Sullivan told Reuters in a telephone interview on Sunday. Oregon Governor Kate Brown called the perilous blazes a "once-in-a-generation event," and the director of Oregon's office of emergency management, Andrew Phelps, said authorities were bracing for the possibility of "mass fatality" incidents. At least ten people have been killed in Oregon, according to the office of emergency management. Brown has said that dozens of people remained missing across three counties. "There are going to be a number of fatalities, folks that just couldn't get warning in time and couldn't evacuate their homes and get to safety," Phelps told MSNBC on Friday. There were 38 actives fires burning in Oregon as of Sunday morning, according to the state's office of emergency management website. A haze from wildfire smoke lingers over the gutted Medford Estates neighbourhood in the aftermath of the Almeda fire in Medford, Oregon, US, September 10, 2020. Picture taken with a drone. REUTERS/Adrees Latif TRUMP TO VISIT CALIFORNIA A haze from wildfire smoke lingers over the gutted Medford Estates neighbourhood in the aftermath of the Almeda fire in Medford, Oregon, US, September 10, 2020. Picture taken with a drone. REUTERS/Adrees Latif In California, tens of thousands of firefighters were battling 28 major wildfires as of Saturday afternoon, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. Improving weather conditions had helped them gain a measure of containment over most of the blazes. The White House said Trump, a Republican, will meet with federal and California officials on Monday. The president has said that western governors bear some of the blame for intense fire seasons in recent years, accusing them of poor forest management. Trump's Democratic opponent in the November election, Joe Biden, on Saturday linked the conflagrations to climate change, echoing comments made a day earlier by California Governor Gavin Newsom. More than 4,000 homes and other structures have been incinerated in California alone over the past three weeks. Three million acres of land have been burned in the state, according to the state's Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. Thick smoke and ash from the fires has darkened the sky over the Pacific Northwest since Labor Day, creating some of the world's worst air-quality levels and driving residents indoors. In Portland, where more than 100 days of political protests have turned increasingly tense in recent weeks, the Multnomah County Sheriff chastised residents for setting up their own checkpoints to stop cars after conspiracy theories spread on social media that members of Black Lives Matter or Antifa were lighting fires. Local officials have called those assertions groundless. Facebook said on Saturday it was now removing false claims that the wildfires in Oregon were started by certain groups. "This is based on confirmation from law enforcement that these rumours are forcing local fire and police agencies to divert resources from fighting the fires and protecting the public," a Facebook spokesman said.

A Western frontier state with an affinity for the open road and Subaru Outbacks, Colorado’s traditional answer to traffic congestion could be summed up in two words: more asphalt. But widening highways and paving new roads often just spurs people to drive more, research shows. And as concerns grow about how tailpipe emissions are heating the planet, Colorado is among a handful of car-dominated states that are rethinking road-building. In December, Colorado adopted a first-of-its-kind climate change regulation that will push transportation planners to redirect funding away from highway expansions and toward projects that cut vehicle pollution, such as buses and bike lanes. It is a big change for Colorado, which is reeling from devastating wildfires and droughts fuelled by global warming and where Denver and the Front Range often exceed federal ozone pollution standards, partly from vehicle exhaust. Under Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, the state aims to cut transportation emissions 40 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. The rule marks a new front in the battle against climate change. Increasingly, experts warn that if states want to slash planet-warming emissions from cars and trucks, it will not be enough to sell more electric vehicles. They will also have to encourage people to drive less. In a nation built around the automobile, that is not easy. “It’s a tough shift for us,” said Shoshana Lew, executive director of Colorado’s Department of Transportation. “Colorado is very different from a place like New York City that already has lots of transit. But if we want to clean up our transportation system as quickly as possible, we need to try everything we can.” More Roads, More Emissions Over the coming decade, the decisions that Colorado and other states make about how many new roads to build could have major consequences for America’s ability to tackle climate change. Transportation is the nation’s largest source of greenhouse gases, producing 29 percent of emissions, and has been stubbornly difficult to clean up. The new $1 trillion infrastructure law invests billions in climate-friendly programmes like electric car chargers and public transit. But it also gives states $273 billion for highways over five years, with few strings attached. One analysis from the Georgetown Climate Centre found that this money could significantly increase emissions if states keep adding highway lanes. Already, there are signs that even states with ambitious climate goals like Washington, Illinois and Nevada hope to use federal funds to expand roadways, such as adding lanes to a congested section of the Eisenhower Freeway near Chicago. In 2019, states spent one-third of their highway dollars on new road capacity, roughly $19.3 billion, with the rest spent on repairs. “This is a major blind spot for politicians who say they care about climate change,” said Kevin DeGood, director of infrastructure policy at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank. “Everyone gets that oil pipelines are carbon infrastructure. But new highways are carbon infrastructure, too. Both lock in place 40 to 50 years of emissions.” The core problem, environmentalists say, is a phenomenon known as “induced traffic demand.” When states build new roads or add lanes to congested highways instead of reducing traffic, more cars show up to fill the available space. Induced demand explains why, when Texas widened the Katy Freeway in Houston to more than 20 lanes in 2011, at a cost of $2.8 billion, congestion returned to previous levels within a few years. “It’s not always intuitive to people, but the economic logic is pretty simple: If you make driving easier, people will do more of it,” said Susan Handy, a transportation expert at the University of California, Davis, who helped develop a calculator showing how highway expansions can increase emissions in different cities. ‘A Monumental Undertaking’ Some Colorado communities are wary of any shift away from traditional road-building. North of Denver sits Weld County, a largely rural region dotted with cattle ranches and oil wells where homebuilding has exploded in recent years, along with traffic. Local officials want new roads, including a $300 million proposal to add two lanes to a busy stretch of Interstate 25 linking Weld County’s swelling exurbs with Denver. “We need more road capacity,” said Scott James, a Weld County commissioner. “And my fear is, this rule will either hobble funding for new roads or force us to spend millions on a bunch of buses or transit that just won’t work for us in rural Colorado. People move here from Denver or Boulder because they’re looking for a certain type of lifestyle. Are we going to punish them for that?” Under the new rule, part of a $5.4 billion transportation package passed by the state Legislature, local governments will have to estimate the greenhouse gas emissions expected from future road projects, factoring in induced traffic. Those plans will have to adhere to an overall emissions budget: If localities want to expand highways, they need to offset the extra emissions with cleaner projects, such as public transit, bicycle trails, electric-vehicle chargers, carpooling or land-use changes that help limit suburban sprawl. Enforcement is strict: If local governments exceed their emissions budgets, the state can withhold funding for roads. Colorado officials estimate the rule could shift $6.7 billion away from highways by 2050 and reduce driving miles by 7% to 12%, compared with business as usual. Environmental groups hope the rule will force drastic revisions to long-planned highway expansions, like a proposal to widen a congested section of I-25 near low-income neighborhoods in downtown Denver. “There’s a real opportunity to step back and rethink what we’re doing,” said Danny Katz, executive director of the environmental advocacy group CoPIRG. “If we need to make safety improvements to existing highways, we absolutely should. But let’s resist the temptation to keep widening roads and lock in a car-only approach.” But business groups say Colorado has underinvested in highways for years, while adding 800,000 residents since 2010, and roads designed for an earlier era need to grow. “We do think it’s likely that emissions will come down naturally as vehicle technology gets cleaner,” said Mike Kopp, president of Colorado Concern, a business coalition. “But in the meantime, people are stuck in traffic, it’s a truly immiserating experience, and we need to alleviate that.” State officials are trying to thread the needle. Lew, who heads the Transportation Department, said in the short term she expected several key highway expansion projects to go forward, albeit with modifications. For instance, a $700 million plan to ease a bottleneck on Interstate 70 near Floyd Hill, where mountain-bound skiers jam the roads on weekends, will include a new “micro-transit” shuttle service offering an alternative to cars. “There’s not a world where refusing to build another lane there would stop people from trying to go skiing,” Lew said. “But if we can put in a system of small buses that give people more choices, we can mitigate the impacts.” The state faces major challenges: While Denver’s transit agency has added several new light-rail lines and express bus routes in recent years, ridership was declining even before the coronavirus pandemic scared people off buses and trains. And the regional organizations that propose transportation projects have limited control over local zoning rules that determine how densely cities develop and whether homes are built near jobs and transit stops. Those decisions can profoundly influence driving habits. “We’ve been building communities oriented around cars and single-family homes pretty much since World War II,” said Andrew Gunning, executive director of the Pikes Peak Area Council of Governments, which oversees the rapidly growing region around Colorado Springs. “Trying to retrofit and change how we build those communities is going to be a monumental undertaking.” A Growing Fight While few states have copied Colorado’s approach, the pushback against highway expansions is slowly growing. In Oregon, youth activists are protesting a $1.2 billion plan to widen I-5 through Portland, warning that the expansion will undercut the state’s climate goals. In Wisconsin, officials agreed to review a proposal to add two lanes to I-94 bordering a mostly Black neighborhood in Milwaukee after criticism from civil rights and environmental groups. In Virginia, transportation planners had long agonized over traffic jams on I-95 between Fredericksburg and Washington. But after extensive study, they found that adding two extra lanes would cost $12.5 billion and do little to solve congestion. So last year, Ralph Northam, a Democrat who was governor at the time, announced a $3.7 billion deal to expand commuter rail service instead. California has begun revamping its highway policies in an effort to curb car travel. Despite leading the nation in electric vehicle sales, the state is struggling to cut emissions because Californians keep driving more miles. The state will now measure induced traffic during environmental reviews of new highways and plans to prioritize funding toward fixing existing roads rather than building new ones. Last year, officials halted a plan to widen the 710 freeway, which carries truck traffic from the port of Long Beach, over concerns that it would displace residents in low-income neighborhoods and worsen air pollution. “The rhetoric we sometimes hear is that we’re trying to take away people’s cars or restrict their mobility,” said Darwin Moosavi, deputy secretary for environmental policy at the California State Transportation Agency. “But what we’re really talking about is giving people better and more convenient options so that they don’t necessarily have to drive everywhere.” The Biden administration is also weighing in. In December, the Federal Highway Administration issued a memo urging states “to repair and maintain existing transportation infrastructure before making new investments in highway expansions.” Yet the administration has limited authority to enforce this guidance, and state transportation officials have pushed back against restrictions on highway spending. “Each individual state has unique challenges they need to address, and there’s not going to be a one-size-fits-all solution,” said Jim Tymon, executive director of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials. An early version of the infrastructure bill written by House Democrats would have curtailed states’ ability to fund highway expansions. But those provisions were removed in the Senate. The law does include $90 billion for public transportation and $66 billion for rail. It also gives the federal Department of Transportation $114 billion in discretionary grants that could influence state plans. But ultimately, states have the final say. “There’s lots of money for transit, but if new transit lines are surrounded by hundreds of newly expanded highways, how do we think that will work out for the climate?” said Beth Osborne, director of Transportation for America, a transit advocacy group. “The status quo is going to win unless everything aligns to change it.” © 2022 The New York Times Company

- Iran said it was in touch with big powers to reopen talks soon on its nuclear programme, but Washington and the European Union denied this and urged Tehran to show it was ready to engage. A year after the last talks fell apart, confrontation is brewing over Tehran's nuclear work, which the United States and other countries say is focused on developing atomic weapons. Iran dismisses the accusation. Manage your wealth in the current financial climate Learn how to get the most out of your ISA & avoid common mistakes The EU is preparing to intensify sanctions against Iran with an embargo on its economically vital oil exports. EU diplomats said on Wednesday member governments had also agreed in principle to freeze the assets of Iran's central bank, but had yet to agree how to protect non-oil trade from sanctions. Iran has threatened to block the Strait of Hormuz, used for a third of the world's seaborne oil trade, if it cannot sell its own crude, fanning fears of a descent into war in the Gulf that could inflame the Middle East. Iranian politicians said U.S. President Barack Obama had expressed readiness to negotiate in a letter to Tehran, a step that might relieve tensions behind recent oil price spikes. "Negotiations are going on about venue and date. We would like to have these negotiations," Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi told reporters during a visit to Turkey. "Most probably, I am not sure yet, the venue will be Istanbul. The day is not yet settled, but it will be soon." Washington denied there were any new discussions underway about resuming talks, but declined to comment on whether Obama had sent a letter to Tehran. "There are no current talks about talks," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said on Wednesday. "What we are doing, as we have said, is making clear to the Iranians that if they are serious about coming back to a conversation, where they talk openly about their nuclear programme, and if they are prepared to come clean with the international community, that we are open to that," Nuland said at a media briefing. White House spokesman Jay Carney declined to comment on the reports about a letter, telling journalists: "We don't discuss specific ... diplomatic communications." The United States is pushing countries to reduce the volume of Iranian oil they buy in line with a new sanctions law Obama signed on December 31 that targets Tehran's ability to sell crude oil. The State Department denial was echoed by a spokesman for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, representing the six world powers trying to engage with Iran. "There are no negotiations under way on new talks," he said in Brussels. "We are still waiting for Iran to respond to the substantive proposals the High Representative (Ashton) made in her letter from October." SERIOUS NEGOTIATIONS British Foreign Secretary William Hague said Iran had to be ready for serious negotiations. "It is significant that when we are discussing additional sanctions in the European Union an offer of negotiations emerges from Iran," he said. "We will not be deterred from imposing additional sanctions simply by the suggestion there may be negotiations. We want to see actual negotiations," he told a news conference in Brazil. "In the absence of such meaningful negotiations, of course, the pressure for greater peaceful but legitimate pressure will continue," he said, referring to a meeting on Monday of EU ministers that will discuss an oil embargo on Iran. Tehran denies wanting nuclear bombs, saying its enrichment work is for power generation and medical applications. Defence Secretary Leon Panetta said on Wednesday only that the U.S. military was fully prepared to deal with any threats by Iran to close the Strait of Hormuz. Ashton wrote to Iranian negotiator Saeed Jalili to stress that the West still wanted to resume talks but Iran must be ready to engage "seriously in meaningful discussions" about ways to ensure its nuclear work would be wholly peaceful in nature. The Islamic Republic has insisted in sporadic meetings over the past five years that talks focus on broader international security issues, not its nuclear programme. PROTRACTED IMPASSE The last talks between Iran and the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council - the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China - along with Germany stalled in Istanbul a year ago, with the parties unable to agree even on an agenda. Since then, a U.N. nuclear watchdog report has lent weight to concern that Iran has worked on designing a nuclear weapon. EU foreign ministers are expected to approve a phased ban on imports of Iranian oil at the meeting on January 23 - three weeks after the United States passed a law that would freeze out any institution dealing with Iran's central bank, effectively making it impossible for most countries to buy Iranian oil. "On the central bank, things have been moving in the right direction in the last hours," one EU diplomat said on Wednesday. "There is now a wide agreement on the principle. Discussions continue on the details." Iran has said it is ready to talk but has also started shifting uranium enrichment to a deep bunker where it would be less vulnerable to the air strikes Israel says it could launch if diplomacy fails to curb Tehran's nuclear drive. Western diplomats say Tehran must show willingness to change its course in any new talks. Crucially, Tehran says other countries must respect its right to enrich uranium, the nuclear fuel which can provide material for atomic bombs if enriched to much higher levels than that suitable for power plants. Russia, a member of the six power group that has criticised the new EU and U.S. sanctions, said the last-ditch military option mooted by the United States and Israel would ignite a disastrous, widespread Middle East war. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, speaking during a visit to the Netherlands on Wednesday, repeated his view that "Iran must not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons, period." Earlier in the day, his Defence Minister Ehud Barak said any decision about an Israeli attack on Iran was "very far off". THREATS, FRIENDSHIP China, which shares Russia's dislike of the new Western moves to stop Iran exporting oil, said U.S. sanctions that Obama signed into law on December 31 had no basis in international law. Iranian politicians said Obama had written to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei responding to Tehran's threat to close the Strait of Hormuz if sanctions prevent it selling oil. Several members of Iran's parliament who discussed the matter on Wednesday said it included the offer of talks. "In this letter it was said that closing the Strait of Hormuz is our (U.S.) 'red line' and also asked for direct negotiations," the semi-official Fars news agency quoted lawmaker Ali Mottahari as saying.

LONDON, Feb 03 (bdnews24.com/Reuters)- British Energy Secretary Chris Huhne resigned on Friday after being told he would be charged with perverting the course of justice over a 2003 speeding offence, in a huge blow to his Liberal Democrat party. There was no immediate word on who would replace Huhne, the second prominent Liberal Democrat to quit the coalition government led by the larger Conservative party. His replacement will be another Lib Dem to maintain the coalition balance. "To avoid any distraction to either my official duties or my trial defence, I am standing down and resigning as energy and climate change secretary," Huhne said in a short statement less than an hour after the decision to charge him was made public. His troubles stem from an allegation that after committing a speeding offence in 2003 in Essex, east of London, he asked his then wife Vicky Pryce to take the blame so that he would not lose his driving licence. "We have concluded that there is sufficient evidence to bring criminal charges against Mr Huhne and Ms Pryce for perverting the course of justice," Director of Public Prosecutions Keir Starmer said in a televised statement. Starmer said the pair would appear for a preliminary hearing at Westminster Magistrates Court in central London on February 16. Huhne says he is innocent and in his resignation letter to Prime Minister David Cameron he pledged to mount a "robust defence". Lib Dem insiders have said Employment Minister Ed Davey would be a likely choice to replace Huhne. In his response to Huhne's letter, Cameron thanked him for his role in negotiating the coalition agreement and said he could be "justly proud" of his record in government. "You played a key role in securing the progress made at the Cancun and Durban summits (on climate change), and I pay tribute to the leadership you showed at both," Cameron wrote. MORE MISERY FOR LIB DEMS Cameron's warm words will be of little comfort to Huhne as his political career implodes with maximum embarrassment for his party. The centre-left Liberal Democrats have had a bumpy ride since they formed the coalition with the right-wing Conservatives in May 2010. Their popularity has plummeted on a widespread perception that they abandoned several key campaign pledges. Huhne's resignation follows that of David Laws, one of the party's leading lights, who quit over an expenses scandal in 2010 after just 17 days as Chief Secretary to the Treasury. He was replaced by Danny Alexander, another Lib Dem. The Lib Dems are assured of just five senior cabinet posts under the coalition agreement. Huhne is a wealthy former journalist who was a member of the European Parliament from 1999 to 2005. Elected to the British parliament in 2005, he stood for his party leadership the following year but lost to Nick Clegg, now deputy prime minister. At last December's United Nations climate change talks in Durban, Huhne was credited with helping hammer out an international agreement on the cutting of greenhouse gas emissions.

It appears that both political and manoeuvring guidance started to play a key role at the ongoing Cancún climate talks. Conference president Patricia Espinosa hopes to find a broad guideline for a compromise that, as the UN climate chief puts it, "makes everybody equally comfortable or equally uncomfortable". Espinosa, who is also the foreign minister Mexico, asked her co-chairs for a shared vision for mitigation of the fall-out of climate change through MRV (measurement, reporting and verification). She also called for technology transfer and capacity building to conduct consultations. Brazilian environment minister Izabella Teixeira said the informal groups were only tasked to hold dialogues. "We are not expected to produce anything in writing." Previously, such texts produced by 'facilitators' and 'chairs' generated such strong controversy that the entire talks had come to the verge of a breakdown. But it appears that the hosts are not ready to take that direction in order to claim 'successes' at this global summit involving 192 countries. With the ministers playing their part, negotiations are going on for the much needed political direction, which the Mexican presidency hopes to provide by this weekend in Cancún. While there is little hope of achieving anything significant at this 16th session of the UN climate convention, parties hope to go home with a formal mechanism for disbursing funds, measurement of emission reduction and adaptation. Bangladesh's environment state minister Hasan Mahmud said fund disbursement through the US$ 30 billion fast start finance needed to start "not tomorrow, but today". At the regular press briefing, United States chief negotiator Todd Stern reiterated his preference for a balanced package. Although key players suggest they are on board with the US regarding this, some developing countries including the Philippines, oil-rich Gulf States led by Saudi Arabia and some South American countries are opposed to that. Such opposition may pose a stumbling block to quick disbursement of funds. About finance negotiations, a delegate member said, "Some developed countries, particularly the US, may stall finalisation of a financing mechanism because they are not happy with the MRV/ICA (measurement, reporting and verification)," Ban Ki-Moon, the UN secretary general, at his press briefing on Tuesday evening also stressed on the future of Kyoto Protocol, which shows much potential of becoming the final deal breaker for a Cancún outcome. "[It] happens to be the only legally binding instrument," he said, hoping that there was some progress on this front when asked about the general mood of the talks. One Bangladeshi delegate from the environment ministry said an outcome was very much possible by the weekend when the conference draws to a close. "There is a good possibility of having a COP decision." He suggested that although there may not be substantial progress, the conference was well poised to come to a consensus on certain issues to take them forward to Durban, where the next summit will take place next year. Patrice Lumumba Di-Aping, the Sudanese ambassador, speaking just before a meeting of African Delegations, said it was disappointing that even the leaders are leaving everything to South Africa next year. "I will say it is not good for the developing countries." The former spokesman for G77 & China, a grouping of over 130 developing countries, who had set the Copenhagen climate talks on fire with his fiery speeches, said he too hoped that there would be something concrete about the second phase of Kyoto Protocol and emission reduction. When asked whether the African Group might decide to take a hardline and insist on more precise outcome before leaving, Di-Aping gave a smile full of mischief before vanishing behind the closed doors holding up two twisted fingers. "Fingers crossed," he said over his shoulder.

The worst of the heat had passed by Wednesday, but the state of Oregon reported 63 deaths linked to the heatwave. Multnomah County, which includes Portland, reported 45 of those deaths since Friday, with the county Medical Examiner citing hyperthermia as the preliminary cause. By comparison all of Oregon had only 12 deaths from hyperthermia from 2017 to 2019, the statement said. Across the state, hospitals reported a surge of hundreds of visits in recent days due to heat-related illness, the Oregon Health Authority said. In British Columbia, at least 486 sudden deaths were reported over five days, nearly three times the usual number that would occur in the province over that period, the B C Coroners Service said Wednesday. "This was a true health crisis that has underscored how deadly an extreme heat wave can be," Multnomah County Health Officer Dr Jennifer Vines said in the statement. "As our summers continue to get warmer, I suspect we will face this kind of event again." The heat dome, a weather phenomenon trapping heat and blocking other weather systems from moving in, weakened as it moved east, but was still intense enough to set records from Alberta to Manitoba, said David Phillips, senior climatologist at Environment and Climate Change Canada, a government agency. "In some of these places, their (temperature) records are being annihilated," Phillips said. "It really is spectacular, unprecedented for us." It was unclear what triggered the dome, but climate change looks to be a contributor, given the heatwave's duration and extremes, Phillips said. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau paused to remember the dead during remarks in Ottawa on Wednesday and expressed concern over the fire threat. "We've been seeing more and more of this type of extreme weather event in the past years," Trudeau said. "So realistically, we know that this heatwave won't be the last." In Washington, US President Joe Biden said climate change was driving "a dangerous confluence of extreme heat and prolonged drought," warning that the United States was behind in preparing for what could be a record number of forest fires this year. SMASHING RECORDS Lytton, a town in central British Columbia, this week broke Canada's all-time hottest temperature record three times. It stands at 49.6 degrees Celsius (121.28 degrees Fahrenheit) as of Tuesday. The previous high in Canada, known for brutally cold winters, was 45C, set in Saskatchewan in 1937. In the US Northwest, temperatures in Washington and Oregon soared well above 100F (38C) over the weekend. Portland set all-time highs several days in a row including 116F (47C) on Sunday. In Washington state, where media also reported a surge in heat-related hospitalisations, Chelan County east of Seattle topped out at 119F (48C) on Tuesday. Oregon Governor Kate Brown declared a state of emergency due to "imminent threat of wildfires" while the U1 National Weather Service in Portland issued a red-flag warning for parts of the state, saying wind conditions could spread fire quickly. The Portland Fire Department banned use of fireworks for the Fourth of July weekend, when Americans celebrate Independence Day. FIRE AND MELTING ICE POSE RISKS Most of Alberta and large parts of British Columbia and Saskatchewan are at extreme risk of wildfires, according to Natural Resources Canada's fire weather map. "All the ingredients are there. It's a powder keg just looking for a spark," said Mike Flannigan, professor of wildland fire at University of Alberta. But the Chilcotin region, roughly 600 km  north of Vancouver, was on flood warning due to the "unprecedented" amount of snow melting at "extraordinary" rates, according to a government release. "These are the types of issues that are going to be confronted more and more over the next few years," said Adam Rysanek, assistant professor of environmental systems at the University of British Columbia.

Prime Minister John Howard said on Friday nuclear energy was an inevitable option for Australia after the release of a report which found that 25 nuclear reactors could significantly cut greenhouse gases. Howard said the government would respond officially to the report's recommendations early in 2007, but added that the final decision on nuclear power would be made on a commercial basis. "Given our uranium reserves and given our energy needs are to double by 2050, we would be crazy in the extreme if we didn't allow for the development of nuclear power," Howard told reporters in Sydney. The government-commissioned report said Australia, with about 40 percent of the world's uranium, could have 25 nuclear reactors producing about one-third of the nation's electricity by 2050. Nuclear power could reduce Australia's greenhouse gas emissions by between 8 to 17 percent, the 287-page report said. Howard, a close ally of US President George W. Bush, has refused to ratify the Kyoto protocol on climate change, which aims at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Australia is one of the world's biggest exporters of coal, used widely in power generation, and Howard has strongly supported coal companies despite calls for more renewable energy. Howard only recently conceded that global warming was a reality and his critics say he is now pushing nuclear energy in a bid to bolster his environmental credentials ahead of a national election due by the end of 2007. "The government is now scrambling to create a perception that it is doing something, knowing full well that nuclear power is too slow, too expensive and too dangerous to provide any answer to global warming," Greens Senator Christine Milne said in a statement. Environmental group Greenpeace said Howard's nuclear push was "charging down an expensive, irresponsible pathway". "If the government is really serious about reducing Australia's greenhouse emissions, they should get out of coal, support energy efficiency and renewable energy...which could cut Australia's emissions by 30 percent by 2020," said Stephen Campbell, head of campaigns at Greenpeace Australia. Australia's demand for electricity was expected to more than double before 2050, said the nuclear report, and over two-thirds of existing power generation facilities would need to be upgraded or replaced and new capacity added. The nuclear report put the cost of each nuclear plant at between A$2 billion ($1.58 billion) to A$3 billion and said that the cost of nuclear power would be between 20 percent and 50 percent higher than coal- or gas-fired power at current prices. The report said nuclear power would only be competitive with coal-fired power if pollution and carbon emissions were taxed, while enrichment could add A$1.8 billion ($1.4 billion) to the value of uranium exports. Howard has consistently ruled out a carbon tax or carbon emissions trading, saying it would adversely affect the coal industry, which is a major employer. For Australia to embrace a nuclear power industry it would need bipartisan political support, which is currently lacking. The centre-left Labor opposition opposes nuclear power and while Howard's conservative coalition is the national government, the country's six states are ruled by Labor.

“She got the invitation of the G7 who are the movers and shakers of the world. So it’s a matter of pride for us,” he said while speaking at an Iftar programme for journalists who cover foreign affairs in Bangladesh. The ruling Awami League’s central sub-committee on international affairs hosted the Iftar on Saturday with the party’s General Secretary Obaidul Quader as chief guest. Sub-Committee Chairman Ambassador Mohammad Zamir, International Affairs Secretary Shammi Ahmed, members of the sub-committee Barrister Shah Ali Farhad and Nadia Choudhury were also present, among others. The prime minister is in Canada now to attend the G7 outreach session at the invitation  of her Canadian counterpart Justin Trudeau. This is the third time Hasina being a leader of a developing country has been invited by this elite club which Foreign Minister Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali had termed “unprecedented”. Hasina attended the meeting in 2016 in Japan and in 2001 in Italy. “This is the recognition of the prime minister’s strong role in world peace and development,” Ali said before she left Dhaka on Thursday. It is also the recognition of her “thoughts, philosophy, and steps” in addressing climate change, women and children affairs and the blue economy, the foreign minister said. France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the US are the other members of the grouping. The prime minister will speak on ‘strengthening resilience through integrated adaptation planning, emergency preparedness and recovery’. She will have a bilateral meeting with Trudeau on Sunday before returning to Dhaka on Tuesday. The Awami League’s sub-committee on international affairs introduced themselves with the journalists during the Iftar as the committee has been formed recently. Shammi Ahmed urged the journalists to be constructive while criticising the government activists.

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

But as electric cars and trucks go mainstream, they have faced a persistent question: Are they really as green as advertised? While experts broadly agree that plug-in vehicles are a more climate-friendly option than traditional vehicles, they can still have their own environmental impacts, depending on how they are charged up and manufactured. Here is a guide to some of the biggest worries — and how they might be addressed. It Matters How the Electricity Is Made Broadly speaking, most electric cars sold today tend to produce significantly fewer planet-warming emissions than most cars fueled with gasoline. But a lot depends on how much coal is being burned to charge up those plug-in vehicles. And electric grids still need to get much, much cleaner before electric vehicles are truly emissions free. One way to compare the climate impacts of different vehicle models is with an interactive online tool (www.carboncounter.com/#!/explore) by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who tried to incorporate all the relevant factors: what it takes to manufacture the cars, how much gasoline conventional cars burn and where the electricity to charge electric vehicles comes from. If you assume electric vehicles are drawing their power from the average grid in the United States, which typically includes a mix of fossil fuel and renewable power plants, then they are almost always much greener than conventional cars. Even though electric vehicles are more emissions-intensive to make because of their batteries, their electric motors are more efficient than traditional internal combustion engines that burn fossil fuels. An all-electric Chevrolet Bolt, for instance, can be expected to produce 189 grams of carbon dioxide for every mile driven over its lifetime, on average. By contrast, a new gasoline-fueled Toyota Camry is estimated to produce 385 grams of carbon dioxide per mile. A new Ford F-150 pickup truck, which is even less fuel-efficient, produces 636 grams of carbon dioxide per mile. But that’s just an average. On the other hand, if the Bolt is charged up on a coal-heavy grid, such as those currently found in the Midwest, it can actually be a bit worse for the climate than a modern hybrid car like the Toyota Prius, which runs on gasoline but uses a battery to bolster its mileage. (The coal-powered Bolt would still beat the Camry and the F-150, however.) “Coal tends to be the critical factor,” said Jeremy Michalek, a professor of engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. “If you’ve got electric cars in Pittsburgh that are being plugged in at night and leading nearby coal plants to burn more coal to charge them, then the climate benefits won’t be as great, and you can even get more air pollution.” The good news for electric vehicles is that most countries are now pushing to clean up their electric grids. In the United States, utilities have retired hundreds of coal plants over the past decade and shifted to a mix of lower-emissions natural gas, wind and solar power. As a result, researchers have found, electric vehicles have generally gotten cleaner, too. And they are likely to get cleaner still. “The reason electric vehicles look like an appealing climate solution is that if we can make our grids zero-carbon, then vehicle emissions drop way, way down,” said Jessika Trancik, an associate professor of energy studies at MIT. “Whereas even the best hybrids that burn gasoline will always have a baseline of emissions they can’t go below.” Raw Materials Can Be Problematic Like many other batteries, the lithium-ion cells that power most electric vehicles rely on raw materials — like cobalt, lithium and rare earth elements — that have been linked to grave environmental and human rights concerns. Cobalt has been especially problematic. Mining cobalt produces hazardous tailings and slags that can leach into the environment, and studies have found high exposure in nearby communities, especially among children, to cobalt and other metals. Extracting the metals from their ores also requires a process called smelting, which can emit sulfur oxide and other harmful air pollution. And as much as 70% of the world’s cobalt supply is mined in the Congo, a substantial proportion in unregulated “artisanal” mines where workers — including many children — dig the metal from the earth using only hand tools at great risk to their health and safety, human rights groups warn. The world’s lithium is either mined in Australia or from salt flats in the Andean regions of Argentina, Bolivia and Chile, operations that use large amounts of groundwater to pump out the brines, drawing down the water available to Indigenous farmers and herders. The water required for producing batteries has meant that manufacturing electric vehicles is about 50% more water intensive than traditional internal combustion engines. Deposits of rare earths, concentrated in China, often contain radioactive substances that can emit radioactive water and dust. Focusing first on cobalt, automakers and other manufacturers have committed to eliminating “artisanal” cobalt from their supply chains, and have also said they will develop batteries that decrease, or do away with, cobalt altogether. But that technology is still in development, and the prevalence of these mines means these commitments “aren’t realistic,” said Mickaël Daudin of Pact, a nonprofit organization that works with mining communities in Africa. Instead, Daudin said, manufacturers need to work with these mines to lessen their environmental footprint and make sure miners are working in safe conditions. If companies acted responsibly, the rise of electric vehicles would be a great opportunity for countries like Congo, he said. But if they don’t, “they will put the environment, and many, many miners’ lives at risk.” Recycling Could Be Better As earlier generations of electric vehicles start to reach the end of their lives, preventing a pileup of spent batteries looms as a challenge. Most of today’s electric vehicles use lithium-ion batteries, which can store more energy in the same space than older, more commonly-used lead-acid battery technology. But while 99% of lead-acid batteries are recycled in the United States, estimated recycling rates for lithium-ion batteries are about 5%. Experts point out that spent batteries contain valuable metals and other materials that can be recovered and reused. Depending on the process used, battery recycling can also use large amounts of water, or emit air pollutants. “The percentage of lithium batteries being recycled is very low, but with time and innovation, that’s going to increase,” said Radenka Maric, a professor at the University of Connecticut’s Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. A different, promising approach to tackling used electric vehicle batteries is finding them a second life in storage and other applications. “For cars, when the battery goes below say 80% of its capacity, the range is reduced,” said Amol Phadke, a senior scientist at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley. “But that’s not a constraint for stationary storage.” Various automakers, including Nissan and BMW, have piloted the use of old electric vehicle batteries for grid storage. General Motors has said it designed its battery packs with second-life use in mind. But there challenges: Reusing lithium-ion batteries requires extensive testing and upgrades to make sure they perform reliably. If done properly, though, used car batteries could continue to be used for a decade or more as backup storage for solar power, researchers at MIT found in a study last year. © 2021 The New York Times Company

US Senator John Kerry ratchets up the fight to pass his well-telegraphed bill to combat global warming on Wednesday, unveiling legislation just as the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster complicates the measure's already slim chances of passage. Kerry, a Democrat, and Senator Joseph Lieberman, an independent, are to unveil the bill at 1:30 p.m. EDT (1730 GMT). Most of the details of the bill, which aims to cut planet-warming emissions in the United States by 17 percent in the next decade, already have been leaked. Crucially, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who helped write the bill but withdrew from talks over the immigration reform debate, will not attend the ceremony. The bill still has provisions to encourage offshore drilling but would allow US states to prohibit offshore oil activity within 75 miles of their coasts. But analysts said that may not be enough to win drilling opponents from coastal states as concerns mounts over the growing the gushing oil well in the Gulf of Mexico. Backers of the bill had hoped to bring in wavering Democratic lawmakers, and Graham had been expected to help bring in other Republicans to reach the 60 votes needed to pass the bill. The White House on Wednesday promised to work to pass the bill into law. President Barack Obama's top energy and climate advisor, Carol Browner, told reporters in a conference call that the administration would review details of the bill. But it is unclear if Obama is willing put the same kind of political capital behind the climate bill as he did for healthcare legislation earlier this year, as some advocates have been seeking. Without a big White House push, the bill faces slim chances this year with the already clogged Congressional schedule, such as dealing with financial industry reform and a Supreme court nomination. Mid-term elections later this year also will distract many lawmakers from focusing on legislation that could boost prices for gasoline and electricity in coming years as the country struggles out of recession. "Everyone knows this is Congress's last, best chance to pass comprehensive climate and energy legislation," Kerry said late Tuesday. If it fails, he added, "Congress will be rendered incapable of solving this issue." POLITICAL TOXIN The bill includes provisions for boosting nuclear power and offshore drilling in order to help win votes from states where the economies depend on energy production. Earlier versions of the legislation relied more on boosting alternative energy such as wind and solar. Analysts said measures for drilling may hurt the chances of the bill. "The Gulf of Mexico spill has turned offshore drilling -- an issue that once greased the wheels of the grand bargain -- into a political toxin," said Kevin Book, analyst at ClearView Energy Partners, who until a month ago had been optimistic about the bill's chances. Still, environmentalists said the bill must be passed this year to give businesses confidence to move forward with clean energy sources. Many utilities with big investments in low-carbon nuclear power, natural gas or wind and solar power hope to benefit from a crackdown on greenhouse gases. Utilities such as FPL Group, Duke Energy and Exelon have lobbied alongside environmental groups for the climate bill as has General Electric, a manufacturer of clean coal and natural gas systems for power plants and wind turbines. "Enacting a strong federal clean energy and climate program will give business the certainty it needs to unleash significant investments that will create jobs and grow our economy," said Eileen Claussen, the president of the Pew Centre on Global Climate Change.

A supermarket tycoon with a multimillion-dollar fortune is the favorite to win Panama's presidential election on Sunday as voters look for assurances their economy can weather the global economic crisis. Pro-business conservative Ricardo Martinelli, 57, has a double-digit lead in opinion polls over ruling party leftist Balbina Herrera, who has an anti-US past and old ties to a former military strongman that rankles with some voters. President Martin Torrijos' Revolutionary Democratic Party, or PRD, has strong support among lower-income voters but its popularity has sagged as prices of staples like milk and bread have soared in recent months and crime has spiked. "We're tired of promises," said teacher Jose Cedeno, 52, who spends a chunk of his $900-a-month salary on increasingly expensive food. "Prices haven't stabilized." Fueled by luxury apartment construction, US-Asia trade through the country's famous canal and a robust banking sector, Panama's dollar economy has led Latin America with near or above double-digit growth for the last two years. Analysts expect growth to fall to 3 percent or less this year as credit dries up, canal traffic drops and activity in Panama's Caribbean free-trade zone slows, another concern for voters fed up with high inflation and widespread crime. Martinelli had a 14-point lead over Herrera in an April 23 poll and just needs to get more votes than his rival to win even if he falls short of 50 percent. A Martinelli victory would contrast with a shift to the left in much of Latin America in recent elections. A US-educated and self-made businessman who owns Panama's largest supermarket chain and is a former minister of Panama Canal affairs, Martinelli has promised massive infrastructure spending to create jobs if he wins. Martinelli said on Friday he wanted to impose a flat tax of between 10 or 20 percent, raising tax rates on the banking and insurance sectors but lowering them for small-business owners. His self-financed campaign budget dwarfed Herrera's and images of the white-haired magnate helping at a banana plantation and tossing bags of garbage into a truck on an urban collection route highlighted his attempt to win support from poorer voters usually faithful to the PRD. A charity he runs that funds education also helped. "He has a lot, he's not going to steal. He's rich, but he's one of the rich who gives to the poor," said Ercilia Ramos, a poor 60-year-old cattle farmer. BUSINESS FRIENDLY The PRD's Herrera clashed with Washington when she led protests against former U.S. President George H.W. Bush when he visited Panama after a 1989 US invasion ousted military dictator Gen. Manuel Noriega. Herrera, 54, has had trouble distancing herself from old links to Noriega, who is in a Florida prison serving a sentence for drug trafficking and money laundering. He has said he hid in Herrera's home from US soldiers during the 1989 invasion. She says now she would maintain close US relations and her campaign proposals are similar to Martinelli's. Both candidates say they will tackle crime and inflation while helping the poor with education and infrastructure, although neither is expected to run up a big budget deficit. Foreign investors say they doubt either would upset Panama's economy or investment climate. "Panama is a very good place to do business. It is a very easy place to come and go, governments usually don't interfere," said Roger Khafif, the developer of the $450 million Trump Ocean Club in Panama City. "We don't really think ... whoever wins will be a detriment to our business." An agricultural engineer turned politician with stints as a mayor, a lawmaker and as housing minister, Herrera was one of six siblings raised in a rough Panama City neighborhood by a single mother who cleaned houses for a living. Her past appeals to voters like Maria Zuniga, who gives pedicures on the street and sees Herrera as hard on crime. "Things will surely change because she's a tough woman." A third candidate, former President Guillermo Endara, 72, trails far behind in polls with about 5 percent support. Panamanians will also elect a new legislature on Sunday.

DiCaprio, who is known as Leo, was received by Pope Francis, the Vatican said, without giving details. But the one-line announcement was enough to send photographers and television crews scrambling to stake out the Vatican's gates to try to catch him coming out. Footage issued later from Vatican television showed that the audience was connected to their mutual concern about the environment and climate change. DiCaprio, speaking Italian, thanked the pope for receiving him and then, switching to English, gave him a book of paintings by 16th century Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch. Pointing to one painting, DiCaprio told the pope it had hung over his bed as a boy and said "through my child's eyes it represented our planet". "It represents to me the promise of the future and enlightenment and it is representational of your view here as well," he said. He later gave the pope a check for an undisclosed sum which appeared to be a donation for papal charities. Last week, the 41-year-old Oscar nominee was honoured at the 22nd Annual Crystal Awards held at the World Economic Forum in Davos for his foundation's support of conservation and sustainability projects. The pope wrote a major Catholic Church document known as an encyclical last year in defence of the environment and has often said that time was running out for mankind to save the planet from the potentially devastating effects of global warming. The pope gave DiCaprio a copy of his encyclical and asked the actor to pray for him.

The death toll in Jakarta and surrounding areas rose to 43 as of Friday, the country’s disaster mitigation agency said, while tens of thousands of people have been displaced. The toll increased from 30 on Thursday night. The floods followed torrential rains on Dec. 31 and into the early hours of New Year’s day that inundated swathes of Jakarta and nearby towns, home to about 30 million people. The deluge at the start of 2020 was “one of the most extreme rainfall” events since records began in 1866, the country’s Meteorological, Climatological and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) said in a statement on Friday. The agency said climate change has increased risk of extreme weather. With more rain forecast, two small planes have been readied to break up potential rain clouds in the skies above the Sunda Strait, while a bigger plane will be on standby, Indonesia’s technology agency BPPT said in a statement. “All clouds moving toward the Greater Jakarta area, which are estimated to lead to precipitation there, will be shot with NaCl (sodium chloride) material,” the agency said. “Hopefully they will break before they reach the Greater Jakarta area.” Cloud seeding, or shooting salt flares into clouds in an attempt to trigger rainfall, is often used in Indonesia to put out forest fires during the dry season. The BMKG has warned that “extreme weather” may continue until Jan. 7, while heavy rainfall could last through to mid February. Television footage on Friday showed flood waters still inundating some areas of Southeast Asia’s largest city. Authorities on Thursday used hundreds of pumps to suck water out of residential areas and public infrastructure, like railways. President Joko Widodo blamed delays in flood control infrastructure projects for the disaster, including the construction of a canal that has been delayed since 2017 due to land acquisition problems. Widodo last year announced he will move Indonesia’s capital to East Kalimantan province on Borneo island, to reduce the burden on Jakarta, which is overpopulated and sinking. More than 50 people died in one of the capital’s deadliest floods in 2007 and five years ago much of the center of the city was inundated after canals overflowed.

The world should cut greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by 2050 from 1990 levels with the bulk of the reduction coming from rich countries, according to a draft proposal by Denmark, host of Dec 7-18 UN climate talks. The draft, a copy of which was seen by Reuters, said rich countries should account for 80 percent of the global emission cuts by 2050. The draft, which could become the basis of a political agreement at the end of the climate talks in Copenhagen, suggested the world adopt 2020 as the year when global emissions will peak. It did not specify any mid-term emission target for developed countries, a key demand from poorer countries. The draft also suggested efforts be made to keep the rise in global average temperatures to within two degrees Celsius. "Parties should work together constructively to strengthen the world's ability to combat climate change," the draft says. The UN talks have run out of time to settle a legally binding deal after arguments between rich and poor nations about who should cut emissions, by how much and who should pay. But hopes are growing that a substantive political pact can be agreed at the December meeting instead. Developing countries led by China and India are also expected to table a text that they would like to be turned into the basis for negotiations. Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen says he wants a 5-8 page "politically binding" agreement, with annexes outlining each country's obligations such as cuts in emissions by 2020 by developed nations. He also wants also a deadline in 2010 by when the deal has to be translated into a legal treaty text.

Global warming is starting to have a significant impact on Australian marine life, driving fish and seabirds south and threatening coral reefs, Australia's premier science organisation said on Wednesday. But much more severe impacts could occur in coming decades, affecting sea life, fishing communities and tourism. In particular, warmer oceans, changes in currents, disruption of reproductive cycles and mass migration of species would affect Australia's marine life, particularly in the southeast. Already, nesting sea turtles, yellow-fin tuna, dugongs and stinging jellyfish are examples of marine life moving south as seas warm, said the report by the government-backed Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation. "It's not a disaster for the ones that can move south. It is for the ones that can't move south," lead author of the report, Dr Alistair Hobday, told Reuters. "If you're at the tip of Tasmania, you've got nowhere else to go," he said, referring to Australia's southern island state, the last major part of Australia before the Antarctic. Atlantic salmon, which are farmed in Tasmania, face a bleak future. Salmon farming businesses would become largely unviable as the ocean warmed the predicted one to two degrees over the next 30 years, Hobday said. Fisheries and aquaculture are worth more than A$2.5 billion a year the report, "Impacts of Climate Change on Australian Marine Life", says. It is the first major study in the Australian region to combine the research of climate modellers, ecologists and fisheries and aquaculture scientists. Coral in the Great Barrier Reef off Australia's northeast may be hit by more frequent bleaching events, every two or three years compared with five or six years at present. "You would basically get hit with a hammer every couple of years. Nobody responds well to that," Hobday said. Worse, oceans are becoming more acidic as carbon dioxide levels continue to rise in the atmosphere. This will adversely affect many organisms that use calcium carbonate for their skeletons and shells, including corals and molluscs. Turtles are especially vulnerable to warming, with warm weather causing increased female hatchlings, the report said. Changing ocean food production because of warming could also affect other species already battling low numbers by restricting their food supply, the CSIRO report, which was prepared for the Australian government, said. Its release comes two days before the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change adopts a major report on the impacts of global warming. Australia's southeast will be hit hardest, with the Tasman Sea suffering the greatest ocean warming in the southern hemisphere, the CSIRO report, citing the UN climate panel, said. The result is likely to be a decline in fish along Australia's eastern seaboard. "These species have become adapted to a particular set of conditions and the speed at which the ocean is changing is faster than they have experienced," Hobday said. One result would be that Australian fishing industries would have to move south. Tourism was also likely to be hard hit, the report said, highlighting the multi-billion dollar economic value of the nation's reefs. An expected increase in human migration to the Australian coast over the next 10-20 years because of warming temperatures would also add to pressure on the oceans, Hobday said. This would be accompanied by rising sea-levels that would likely lead to greater coastal erosion. "You'll have cliff-side mansions crashing into the ocean," he said, adding that Australia needed to reduce its greenhouse gases and pollution and to better protect coastal areas.

The United States accused China on Tuesday of adopting a more aggressive military stance in the South China Sea as a naval confrontation caused anger in Beijing and raised tension before a US visit by China's foreign minister. The incident involving five Chinese ships and a US Navy survey vessel threatened to further complicate ties between the two powers as they wrestle with a joint response to the global economic crisis and prepare for a G20 summit in London next month. National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair told the US Congress the Chinese have become more assertive in staking claims to international waters around economic zones and were "more military, aggressive, forward-looking than we saw a couple years before" in Southeast Asia and the South China Sea. Blair said it was unclear whether Beijing would use its growing military power "for good or pushing people around." The United States accused China of harassing the US ship, the USNS Impeccable, in international waters off China's Hainan island, site of a major submarine base and other naval installations. The US Embassy in Beijing filed a protest with China. China countered that the United States had distorted the truth and violated international and Chinese laws. "The US claims are gravely in contravention of the facts and confuse black and white and they are totally unacceptable to China," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu said in Beijing. The exchange came as Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi arrived in Washington to lay the groundwork for a meeting between Chinese President Hu Jintao and U.S. President Barack Obama at the G20 summit. Yang has meetings planned on Wednesday with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who visited China last month, and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner as the two countries seek a cooperative path on the global economic crisis and climate change. Analysts played down the long-term significance of the incident given the heavy agenda facing the two countries, but it added one more item of contention to an already difficult relationship. TIBETAN ANNIVERSARY The charges over the naval confrontation also coincided with US demonstrations to mark the 50th anniversary of the Chinese occupation of Tibet and the Dalai Lama's exile. Clinton was accused by rights groups of soft-pedaling human rights concerns during her visit to China last month. State Department spokesman Robert Wood said he would be "surprised" if the issue of Tibet was not raised during Yang's meeting with Clinton. He said the United States wants to see a substantive dialogue between the Chinese government and representatives of the Dalai Lama. "We're going to continue to raise this issue with the Chinese and do what we can to improve the situation on the ground," he said. Wood also issued a statement saying the United States was deeply concerned by the the human rights situation in Tibet. "We urge China to reconsider its policies in Tibet that have created tensions due to their harmful impact on Tibetan religion, culture, and livelihoods," the statement said. Blair called the incident in the South China Sea the most serious since a Chinese military plane collided with a US electronic surveillance plane off Hainan in April 2001, early in President George W Bush's administration. A Chinese pilot was killed, and the US plane made an emergency landing on the island. The American crew was released 10 days later, and the plane was returned. The United States said the Chinese actions appeared deliberate, and some analysts said China might be sending a message early in the Obama administration about its right to keep foreign navies from operating in its economic zones. A senior US defense official said the United States would continue to operate in international waters, but he stopped short of saying any US ocean surveillance vessels would return to the area where Sunday's incident occurred. The director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Lieutenant General Michael Maples, told Congress that China was strengthening its ability to conduct military operations along its periphery and acquiring sophisticated air defenses from Russia. "It is building and fielding sophisticated weapon systems and testing new doctrines that it believes will allow it to prevail in regional conflicts and also counter traditional US military advantages," he said.

Although many questions remain about enforcement and implementation, the announcement throws the political weight of the world's two biggest economies behind a new global climate pact to be negotiated in Paris next year. It also represents the first time China has set a date for peak CO2 emissions. President Barack Obama and President Xi Jinping said China would aim for peak CO2 emissions by "around 2030" but strive to get there sooner, while the United States will slash emissions by 26 to 28 percent from its 2005 level. US officials said the commitments, the result of months of dialogue between the two countries, would spur other nations to make pledges and deliver "a shot of momentum" into negotiations for a new agreement set to take effect in 2020. "Today's announcement is the political breakthrough we've been waiting for," said Timothy E. Wirth, former US Undersecretary of State for Global Affairs and the vice chairman of the United Nations Foundation. "If the two biggest players on climate are able to get together, from two very different perspectives, the rest of the world can see that it's possible to make real progress," he said in a statement. However, beyond their political significance, the targets still did not go far enough to tackle the problem of climate change, environmental experts said. "It is a very good sign for both countries and injects strong momentum (into negotiations), but the targets are not ambitious enough," said Tao Wang, climate scholar at the Tsinghua-Carnegie Center for Global Policy in Beijing. China's targets should serve as "the floor and not the ceiling", said Li Shuo, a campaigner of environmental group Greenpeace in Beijing. China also pledged to boost the share of non-fossil fuels in its energy mix to around 20 percent by 2030, from less than 10 percent in 2013, a move that could require 1,000 gigawatts of new nuclear and renewable capacity, but Wang said the figure took China little further than "business as usual". In the United States, midterm elections have given the Republican Party control over Congress, casting doubt on the Obama administration's ability to deliver on tough climate pledges. In a statement after the announcement, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell branded the emission cuts as part of Obama's "ideological war on coal", adding that his priority in the new Congress was "easing the burden" of environmental regulations.

SINGAPORE, Nov 15,(bdnews24.com/Reuters) - US President Barack Obama said on Sunday the world economy was on a path to recovery but warned that failure to re-balance the global economic system would lead to further crises. Obama was addressing Asia Pacific leaders in Singapore, where officials removed any reference to market-oriented exchange rates in a communique after disagreement between Washington and Beijing over the most sensitive topic between the two giants. The statement from the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum endorsed stimulus measures to keep the global economy from sliding back into recession and urged a successful conclusion to the Doha Round of trade talks in 2010. An earlier draft pledged APEC's 21 members to maintain "market-oriented exchange rates that reflect underlying economic fundamentals". That statement had been agreed at a meeting of APEC finance ministers on Thursday, including China, although it made no reference to the Chinese yuan currency. An APEC delegation official who declined to be identified said debate between China and the United States over exchange rates had held up the statement at the end of two days of talks. That underscored strains likely to feature when Obama flies to China later on Sunday after Washington for the first time slapped duties on Chinese-made tyres. Beijing fears that could set a precedent for more duties on Chinese goods that are gaining market share in the United States. Obama told APEC leaders the world could not return to the same cycles of boom and bust that sparked the global recession. "We cannot follow the same policies that led to such imbalanced growth. If we do, we will continue to drift from crisis to crisis, a failed path that has already had devastating consequences for our citizens, our businesses, and our governments," Obama said. "We have reached one of those rare inflection points in history where we have the opportunity to take a different path -- to pursue a new strategy for jobs and growth. Growth that is balanced. Growth that is sustainable." Obama's strategy calls for America to save more, spend less, reform its financial system and cut its deficits and borrowing. Washington also wants key exporters such as China to boost domestic demand. YUAN ON THE AGENDA Chinese President Hu Jintao has been under pressure to let the yuan appreciate, but in several speeches at APEC he ignored the issue and focused instead on what he called "unreasonable" trade restrictions on developing countries. One of the key themes when Obama visits China for three days will be the yuan, which has effectively been pegged against the dollar since mid-2008 to cushion its economy from the downturn. Washington says an undervalued yuan is contributing to imbalances between the United States and the world's third-biggest economy. China is pushing for US recognition as a market economy and concessions on trade cases that would make it harder for Washington to take action against Chinese products. China's central bank said last week it will consider major currencies in guiding the yuan , suggesting a departure from the peg. Obama arrived in Singapore late on Saturday, missing most of that day's formal talks and speeches where several leaders suggested the world's largest economy was hampering free trade through policies such as "Buy America" campaigns. APEC is the last major gathering of global decision-makers before a UN climate summit in Copenhagen in three weeks meant to ramp up efforts to fight climate change. Those negotiations have largely stalled, but a US official said Obama had backed a two-step plan by the Danish prime minister to aim for an operational agreement and to leave legally binding details until later. The APEC statement dropped all references to emissions reductions that had been in earlier drafts.

The Arab League chief warned the region's leaders on Wednesday to heed economic and political problems that sparked Tunisia's upheaval because Arab citizens' anger had reached an unprecedented level. Widespread public protests in Tunisia -- prompted by high prices, a lack of jobs and political repression -- toppled the country's president of 23 years, Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali. Arab populations across the Middle East and North Africa complain about the same issues that beset Tunisia and have been mesmerised by TV images of an autocrat being flung from office by street action -- events not seen in the region for decades. "What is happening in Tunisia in terms of the revolution is not an issue far from the issues of this summit which is economic and social development," the League's Amr Moussa told an Arab economic summit in Egypt's Sharm el-Sheikh resort. "The Arab citizen has entered a stage of anger that is unprecedented. I am certain that achieving full development that is tangible to the Arab citizens will relieve our societies of these challenges," he said. Arab officials have played down the prospects that events in Tunisia could spread. Egypt's president did not directly mention Tunisia in his speech although he broadly called for economic development. Kuwait's emir called for national unity in Tunisia. NOT AN ISOLATED CASE Moussa, who has a habit of making blunt assertions in a region better known for discreet diplomacy, said shortly before the summit that Tunisia should not be seen as an isolated case and a lesson should be learned. "It is on everyone's mind that the Arab self is broken by poverty, unemployment and a general slide in indicators," he said in Wednesday's speech, referring to Tunisian events as an example of "big social shocks" facing many Arab societies. "This is in addition to political problems that have not been resolved," he said, adding that poor management of such issues was further complicating the situation. Analysts say events in Tunisia have unsettled the world of entrenched Arab rulers and their image of governments with military backing that are immune to discontent. They also say the Tunisian protests, which were not driven by Islamic slogans, throws into question the argument propounded by authoritarian Arab rulers that they are the bulwark against Islamist radicals sweeping to power. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak noted problems of rising prices, job creation and other economic issues in the region in his opening address, but made no direct reference to Tunisia. He largely blamed such problems on global issues. "We are not isolated from the world with its problems, challenges and crises," Mubarak, who has been in power for three decades, told leaders as he took the summit chair from Kuwait. "Employment and creating employment opportunities will remain one of the most important challenges we face ... We have priorities to achieve food security and combat climate change impacts," Mubarak added. Kuwaiti Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah called for national unity in Tunisia to overcome its problems, as well as listing economic problems across the region. "We look forward to efforts towards solidarity in Tunisia to overcome this particular stage and achieve stability and security," he said.

August 29 (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - The European Union thinks China has made only limited progress in allowing its yuan currency to move more rapidly, and swifter action would help safeguard a fragile economic recovery, according to a draft G20 document obtained by Reuters on Saturday. The document outlines EU positions ahead of a Group of 20 deputy finance leaders meeting in Gwangju, South Korea, September 4-5. South Korea will host a G20 leaders summit in November. The 13-page document addresses issues including the economic outlook, governance of the International Monetary Fund, financial regulatory reform, and climate change. The draft was undated, and it was not clear whether EU officials had approved it. The EU sounded somewhat upbeat on Europe's economic prospects, but raised concerns about growing risks in the United States and Japan, the document shows. The draft also reflects some frustration with China's slow progress in allowing its currency to appreciate. China announced in June that it would loosen its grip on the tightly managed yuan, which the United States and Europe say Beijing keeps artificially low to support exports. "A vigorous implementation of this policy is now necessary," the draft statement said. "Unfortunately, so far, only limited progress has been made." It said a stronger yuan would be in Beijing's best interest because it would help prevent the Chinese economy from overheating and creating asset price bubbles. UNCERTAINTY GROWS The EU draft said the global economic recovery remained fragile and uneven across countries and "downside risks have increased in the US and Japan." Since the last G20 summit in Toronto in June, the US economy has shown signs of faltering while Europe's growth has been stronger than expected. Global stock markets stumbled in August in part because of worries that the US economy could slip back into recession, although Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke insisted on Friday that modest growth would continue through this year and the pace would likely pick up next year. In Japan, the yen's leap to a 15-year high has raised concerns that its export-led recovery might fade. Japanese Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda said on Saturday he was ready to employ "all possible measures" to shackle the yen, which tends to strengthen in times of global economic uncertainty. The EU draft said Europe's economy was "performing somewhat better than expected" and praised recent stress tests of Europe's largest banks for raising investor confidence in the health of the financial system. Reprising a theme from the Toronto G20 summit, the document said the EU was following a "growth-friendly" path toward repairing debt-bloated government finances, and prodded the United States and Japan to pare their own deficits and debt once economic recovery is assured. That was a source of transatlantic friction earlier this year when the White House chided Germany in particular for pulling back its fiscal support too swiftly. The United States warned that switching to austerity too soon might jeopardize the economic recovery. On IMF governance, another area of disagreement between the United States and Europe, the draft gives no indication that the EU is willing to give up seats on the IMF's executive board in order to give greater voice to fast-growing emerging economies such as China. The draft showed the EU supports shifting slightly more than 5 percent of IMF quota shares to "underrepresented" emerging and developing economies, but wants to keep the size of the executive board unchanged.

Biden joined leaders from over 100 countries in Glasgow for the start of the COP26 climate conference, which kicked off on the heels of the G20 summit in Rome that concluded with a statement that urged "meaningful and effective" action on climate change but left huge work for negotiators to ensure an ambitious outcome. Biden, who succeeded former president Donald Trump in January, pledged earlier this year that the United States would cut its greenhouse gas emissions 50-52% by 2030 compared with 2005 levels. The White House has expressed confidence it can achieve that, even as a bill that would help further those goals languishes in Congress, with a key senator on Monday withholding his support, for now. read more Biden wanted to show to the world that Washington could be trusted to fight global warming despite changes in policies between Republican and Democratic administrations that have undermined its pledges in the past. "We'll demonstrate to the world the United States is not only back at the table but hopefully leading by the power of our example," he said. "I know it hasn’t been the case, and that's why my administration is working overtime to show that our climate commitment is action, not words." Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris climate accord, dealing a blow to international efforts on the subject while he was in office. Biden rejoined when he became president. "I guess I shouldn't apologize, but I do apologise for the fact the United States, in the last administration, pulled out of the Paris accords," Biden said at a separate COP26 event. As Biden was meeting with world leaders in Scotland, moderate Democratic Senator Joe Manchin announced he would not yet support a $1.75 trillion legislative framework that is central to achieving the president's emissions reduction goals. National Climate Adviser Gina McCarthy said ahead of Biden's arrival in Glasgow that the bill would unleash $555 billion in climate spending, the largest investment to combat global warming in US history, and allow the country to reduce emissions well over a gigaton or a billion metric tons by 2030. Biden announced a long-term strategy laying out how the United States would achieve a longer-term goal of net-zero emissions by 2050. In his COP26 speech, Biden said the world needed to help developing nations in the climate fight. "Right now we're still falling short," he said. Biden plans to work with the US Congress to launch a $3 billion programme in 2024 aimed at helping developing countries adapt to and manage the impacts of climate change through locally led measures. In a conference call with reporters, McCarthy also addressed concerns around a Supreme Court announcement late on Friday that it would review the Environmental Protection Agency's authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, potentially undermining US climate goals. "We're confident that the Supreme Court will confirm what those have before them, which is EPA has not just the right but the authority and responsibility to keep our families and communities safe from pollution," McCarthy said.

The Trient glacier looming ahead of me on a trek through the Alps this summer looked very different to the frosty heights that once provided ice for pastis drinkers in France. Now the bare, eroded rock is testament to the ice's retreat under the warming effects of climate change. In the 19th century up to a metre of ice was dug each day out of the glacier in southwest Switzerland, close to the border with France, and taken to Paris and Marseille for mixing in the anise-flavoured liqueur adored by the French. The ice grew back overnight. These days, Parisian cafe owners get their ice elsewhere. "Nowadays of course the ice is way, way, way up. It's amazing how much has changed there," said Kev Reynolds, author of a guide to a Chamonix-to-Zermatt walking route, who has made several trips through the valley since the 1980s. "Vegetation will soon be setting in down there, where a few years ago there was ice." Switzerland has been particularly hard hit by a warming climate, with ski resorts often short of snow cover and potential water supply problems as sources melt away. The Trient glacier starts at a height of about 3,300 metres and the end, in the Trient valley, is now at some 1,900 metres. It used to run down almost as far as a refreshment hut at about 1,600 metres. It is just one of the many signs of the havoc climate change is wreaking on the mountains. I walked over, around or across many of them this summer, including the Chamonix-Zermatt trek from Mont Blanc to the Matterhorn. Most hikers take about two weeks to complete the trail, which forces a way through some of the highest mountains in Western Europe across ridges and deep valleys, climbing more than 12,000 metres in altitude over the course of the journey. It skirts glaciers where not long ago technical equipment could have been used to cross the ice. Some sections have been wiped out by rockfall, forcing walkers to take long and often uncomfortable detours over boulder fields. EVER MORE DANGEROUS One of the starker examples is a jumbled mass of debris and boulders where the Grand Desert glacier used to stretch below the peak of Rosablanche. Only a few years ago, the route used to cross the glacier itself at a safe point, with no dangerous crevasses. Now there is no real path but red stripes painted on the rubble carried down by the glacier and left behind in this barren wilderness. Further on, falling rock has forced a change of route around the dammed Lac de Dix high above the Rhone valley. The glacier below this path, curving down from the pyramidal Mont Blanc de Cheilon, is two pitifully thin trails of white easily crossed without ropes or specialist equipment, even after a relatively cool summer. At several parts along the final stretch into Zermatt, signs warn hikers to hurry over exposed sections, now fitted with protective fixed ropes, lest they be hit by falling rock. Further along, an easy crossing of a glacial torrent has been washed away and replaced with a nerve-racking, 50-metre-long cable bridge dangling over the depths. Reynolds recently tried to research an alternative route to Zermatt on the other side of the valley, avoiding these rockfall areas, but was forced back. "It promised to be a terrific thing, but by golly it got so dangerous because it's just falling apart," he said. "It's impossible now, I wouldn't recommend it to anybody." After two weeks of hard travel, my first full view of the Matterhorn's iconic needle caused a shock, even from far away down the valley. What used to be a classic north face, sheathed in ice and shadow, is now predominantly rock. "The whole of the Valais region, the Pennine Alps region, is losing its ice at a terrible rate," said Reynolds.

Oil could gush into the Gulf of Mexico from the BP rig until August and the U.S. government is "preparing for the worst," Carol Browner, President Barack Obama's top adviser on energy and climate change, said on Sunday. Speaking on the CBS TV show "Face The Nation," Browner said: "There could be oil coming up till August when the relief wells are done." She said BP's latest effort to try to capture and contain oil would not provide a permanent solution or prevent some oil escaping into the sea even if the maneuver succeeded. "We are prepared for the worst. We have been prepared from the beginning," she added.

The United States and Google Inc separately said they would move against Chinese Internet censorship, possibly signaling the start of a harder line toward China by US President Barack Obama and the end of Google's business in the country. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton plans to help citizens in other countries, including China, get uncensored access to the Internet, and last week she met top executives from companies including Google, Microsoft Corp, Twitter and Cisco Systems Inc, an aide said on Tuesday. Google, the world's top search engine, separately said it might pull out of China, closing down its Chinese-language google.cn website and shutting its offices, because of censorship and after a series of sophisticated China-based cyber attacks on human rights activists using its Gmail service around the world. Relationships between the world's two biggest economies have been strained recently over climate change, trade and other matters. China is the largest lender to the United States, holding around $800 billion in Treasury bills. "It is setting us up for a clash, and it's interesting to see who backs down. It's the U.S. versus China, but the companies will be lobbying. The technology sectors are intimately intertwined," said Chris McNally, a China analyst at East-West Center in Hawaii. Companies moving into China, which has the largest number of Internet users in the world, have been criticized frequently for ignoring human rights, while Beijing recently has accused Google of being a funnel for pornography. "This is a clash of behemoths. This is a big country and this is a big company. The problem for Google, of course, is that if they say, 'We are going to pull out of China,' China could very well turn around and say, 'Good, we have a billion people who want to take your place,'" said former US Department of Justice computer crimes chief Mark Rasch. China's policy of filtering and restricting access to websites has been a frequent source of tension with the United States and tech companies like Google and Yahoo Inc. Shares of Google dipped 1.3 percent although an executive described China as "immaterial" to its finances. It was not clear if the US search company and the U.S. government coordinated their moves. "Google was in contact with us prior to the announcement. Every nation has an obligation, regardless of the origin of malicious cyber activities, to keep its part of the network secure. That includes China," said US State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley. Obama, during a visit to China in November, told an online town hall that he was "a big supporter of non-censorship". "I can tell you that in the United States, the fact that we have free Internet -- or unrestricted Internet access -- is a source of strength, and I think should be encouraged," he said. Eurasia Group said U..S-China relations were the top risk of 2010. "We'll see significant deterioration in U.S.-Chinese relations in the coming year," it said, citing economic, security and cyber-security pressures. GOOGLE ATTACKED Analyst and China Internet expert Rebecca MacKinnon of the George Soros' Open Society Institute said that Google was saying "enough is enough". "If anybody is in the lead, it's Google and not the State Department, in terms of knowing what they're doing and having something to say," she said. China would get the message, she added: "How exactly they are going to react to this, I cannot anticipate, but it's likely that it will not be pretty," she said. Some 20 other companies also were attacked by unknown assailants based in China, said Google. "These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered -- combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the Web -- have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China," Google Chief Legal Officer David Drummond said in a statement posted on the company's blog. A Google spokesperson said the company was still investigating the attack and would not say whether Google believed Chinese authorities were involved. "This is a complete 180 turnaround (for Google)," said RBC Capital Markets analyst Stephen Ju. "Just about every earnings call recently has been that they are focused on the long-term growth opportunities for China and that they are committed." US MOVES FOR 'INTERNET FREEDOM' Clinton will unveil a tech policy initiative on "Internet freedom" on Jan. 21, aide Alec Ross said in an interview with Reuters. "If you think about Internet freedom from the Caucasus to China to Iran to Cuba and elsewhere, people do not have universal access to an uncensored Internet," Ross said. "Our policies on Internet freedom in part are a response to the fact there are countries around the world that systematically stifle their citizens' access to information." Google said it was working with the U.S. government over the security breaches. Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt was a major campaign backer of President Barack Obama, and Schmidt was one of the executives meeting with Clinton. China recently accused Google of allowing the spread of pornography on its search engine, which is second to local search provider Baidu Inc in that market.

National Park Service From Acadia to Zion, at long last there’s a single official park service app for America’s more than 400 national parks. Created by National Park Service staff, the app puts practical information — such as fees, hours, directions, webcams, where to find food and restrooms, park news and events (walking tours, talks, volunteer opportunities) — at your fingertips. Search for parks near you, or search for them by name, state, activity (like horse trekking, caving, dog sledding) or topic (African American heritage, climate change, volcanoes). According to the app, a visit to Alaska is in order if you want to go dog sledding through national parks and preserves, although if horse trekking is more your speed, there are dozens of national sites from which to choose. Download park details for offline use on mountain trails and other spots where you don’t have cell service, and keep a running list of the parks you’ve visited. Cost: free. HearHere — Road Trip Companion When contemplating a road trip, any number of images might come to mind — and Kevin Costner probably isn’t one of them. That may be about to change. The actor and director is a co-founder of HearHere, an app that uses your location and interests to play audio snippets (some narrated by Costner) about the history, culture and natural wonders of the places you’re driving through. There are morsels about the things you see (like landmarks) and the things you don’t, like the people who walked the land before you. The app, which rolled out in 2020, more recently announced an expansion, blossoming from road trip stories set on the West Coast to more than 8,700 stories across the United States, including details about the early history of Portland, Maine; the burning of Washington by British troops in 1814; and the first racially integrated housing in Philadelphia. Available only on iOS. Cost: free for the first five stories; after that, $29.99 for 30-day unlimited access; $35.99 for a one-year unlimited subscription; $69.99 for three years. Bublup Bublup is a cloud storage service where you can save and organize all sorts of content (photos, videos, documents, links, PDFs) in eye-pleasing folders and, if you like, share them with others. For example, say you’re planning a trip to Vermont. With a few taps, you can create a vacation folder and choose from the app’s templates to add a packing checklist and a note about things you want to do. You can easily forward flight or car rental confirmation emails, import inspirational photos and videos, and add links to travel articles and potential bed-and-breakfasts. One of the things that makes the app (and desktop version) delightful for visual planners is that you can choose the colours of your folders or even use your own photos on the front of them and as background images inside. Each type of content you add to a folder (be it a link or photo) appears in its own tidy box, which makes scrolling through information less like work and more like, well, vacation. To get started, try Bublup’s “vacation planning” template, which has handy folders for flight information, food and beverages, location, lodging options and must-see sights, which you can then customise. Tap “invite” to enable fellow travelers to view or collaborate on your trip planning by adding and editing content. For more ways to use the app for vacation planning, check out Bublup’s blog. Cost: free for three gigabytes of storage; more storage and features from $2.99 to $9.99 a month or, if paid yearly, from $27.60 to $94.80. Pricing details: Bublup.com/premium-features. The Points Guy The Points Guy website, known for demystifying the ever-changing world of loyalty points and airline miles, has an eponymous app to help you earn, use and keep an eye on your hard-won travel awards. A points wallet allows you to enter your airline and hotel loyalty program information, receive notifications about using your miles and points before they expire, and see just how close you are to scoring a trip. There’s also a place to enter your credit card information and track bonus offers, as well as see how you might spend to earn more points. Tap the “award explorer” icon to learn about redeeming points and miles, and search for estimated award trip prices. A news feed puts the latest travel developments about airlines and airports, deals, destinations and COVID-19 requirements in your pocket. Available only on iOS. Cost: free. Una Travel: Smart Trip Planner Currently in public beta, this app asks about your travel style — like the sorts of places you prefer to stay (Beach hotels? Green hotels?) and the cuisines that make your mouth water (Mexican? Italian?) — before offering itineraries and recommendations of things to do. The app’s creators have emphasised responsible travel by including plenty of outdoor activities like hiking, cycling, camping, visits to parks and landmarks, and meals at restaurants with al fresco seating. And you can plan and collaborate on that camping or cycling trip with friends and family, too. Cost: free. Welcome: A Smart City Guide Founded by creators of Cameo, a mobile video app that was acquired by Vimeo in 2014, Welcome has come out of beta and is aiming to help users swiftly discover places to go and things to do. Follow travel publications, travel experts and friends. The app will provide recommendations based not only on your preferences but also on real-time considerations such as the time of day, weather and holidays. (Note: You have to enter your phone number to sign in to Welcome.) Available only on iOS. Cost: free. Elude App Some nascent travel apps don’t have many reviews on Apple’s App Store and Google Play, but since they are free to download, you can give them a try before deciding whether they deserve a place on your smartphone. For instance, if you’re itching to go somewhere and want a bit of direction, Elude App suggests destinations based on your responses to questions like “Crave or hard pass?” (with accompanying photos of food such as a charcuterie plate, sushi rolls and dragonfruit) and “Try it or skip?” (with photos and descriptions of activities like “learning to cook like a boss,” “attempting to salsa like a local” and “shhh…visiting a quiet architectural spot”). You can then search for itineraries by entering your total trip budget and the city from which you’re departing. Available for iOS only. Cost: free. And others … Of course, nowadays there’s so much evolving travel information, it’s not easy to keep up with the latest rules about where you can go and when. Wandry: Travel Planner aims to help by gathering details from different government portals and putting them in one place. Find out where you are and aren’t allowed to roam, and see requirements for COVID-19 tests, vaccinations and quarantines. Cost: free. You may also want to revisit familiar apps like Hopper, Skyscanner, TripIt, and Tripadvisor, which have updates, including COVID-19-related requirements and health information. App in the Air, where users book and keep track of their trips and loyalty programs, introduced a digital “health passport,” which was recently updated so you can add both a PCR test and a vaccination certificate before traveling. Cost: free; memberships with additional features like flight status updates are available from $9.99 a year to $49.99 for a lifetime membership. Meanwhile, on the ground, an update to the free Google Maps app may be useful for getting around outdoors. Its bike and scooter share information has been expanded to more than 300 cities worldwide. Consult the app to find stations around you and, in places like New York and Barcelona, see how many bikes are currently available. If you’re among the many people these days exploring closer to home, an update to Trivago, which helps travelers score deals on accommodations, may be of interest. The free app introduced Trivago Weekend, a new way to discover nearby experiences and trips. Just set your current city or town and then tap the “weekend” icon to peruse places to stay and getaway ideas for 2022 that don’t necessarily require a boarding pass. © 2022 The New York Times Company

Britain's Prince Charles has offered to team up with Norway in projects to save forests around the world, Norwegian officials said on Thursday. The Prince of Wales's offer to Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg followed Norway's announcement earlier this month that it aimed to provide about 3 billion crowns ($541.2 million) per year to prevent deforestation in developing countries. Charles, who has said saving the world's rainforests is key to combating global warming, sent a letter to Stoltenberg suggesting that his Rainforests Project send representatives to Norway to discuss ways to cooperate, a spokesman at the prime minister's office said. Stoltenberg said Norway would be glad to receive them and is willing to work with all who want to put systems and regulations in place to halt deforestation. Norway has said that fighting deforestation is a quick and low-cost way to achieve cuts in greenhouse gas emissions blamed by scientists for global warming, in addition to maintaining biodiversity and securing people's livelihoods. The Labor-led government has said that deforestation in developing countries is releasing carbon dioxide corresponding to about a fifth of total global greenhouse gas emissions. Norway has said that commitments to reduce emissions from deforestation in developing nations should be included in a global climate change regime from 2012 and that it will work to develop funding and certification systems to promote the effort. In April, Stoltenberg announced a goal to make Norway carbon neutral by 2050 by reducing emissions at home and by offsetting Norwegian greenhouse gas emissions by investing in environmental projects in the developing world.

A former political prisoner who defeated Asia's longest-serving ruler in the first multiparty election in the Maldives was due to be sworn in as president of the Indian Ocean archipelago on Tuesday. Mohamed Nasheed, 41, is due to take office from Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, the man who had repeatedly jailed him on what rights groups say were trumped-up charges, at a morning ceremony. Nasheed, who was just 11 when Gayoom took power in 1978, defeated his former adversary in a runoff poll on Oct. 28 with 54.2 percent of the votes. Gayoom, 71, had been accused by critics of running the islands like his personal sultanate. But he made good on his pledge to hand over power peacefully, conceding his loss swiftly and promising to become an opposition figure. The election was the culmination of years of agitation for democratic reforms on the string of 1,192 mostly uninhabited coral atolls 800 km off the tip of India, peopled by 300,000 Sunni Muslims. Nasheed's victory caps a remarkable journey for an activist whose criticism of Gayoom and crusading for democracy resulted in him being charged 27 times and jailed or banished to remote atolls for a total of six years. 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, favoured by Hollywood stars and other wealthy travellers. But Nasheed argued that only a small clique around Gayoom grew rich amid corruption in his government, which Gayoom denies. Nasheed will take over an economy that earns 28 percent of its GDP directly from tourism but which is under IMF pressure to cut debts and trim a huge government payroll. Tourism is also expected to suffer from the global financial crisis. The archipelago also faces high child malnutrition, growing Islamist militancy, a major heroin problem, and rising sea levels that could leave much of its land mass underwater by 2100 if a UN climate change panel's predictions are right. Nasheed has pledged a host of reforms, including privatising state enterprises and turning the islands into a model of renewable energy through widespread use of solar power.

Parents of severely overweight children could be sent letters warning them of the health dangers involved, the government said on Monday. Letters could be sent after children are routinely weighed at primary school at the ages of five and 10. But while ministers say more action is needed to reduce obesity, critics fear the letters would stigmatise children. Health Secretary Alan Johnson said last week that obesity in Britain could lead to a "potential crisis on the scale of climate change". A government study this month predicted that half the population could be obese within 25 years. The warning letters are one of several proposals being considered by ministers, although no final decision has been taken, according to the Department of Health. "We have been clear that we need to work harder to cut the rising levels of obesity in children," it said. "Tackling child obesity is a government priority and the weighing and measuring programme is an important element of this. Tam Fry, of the National Obesity Forum, a health charity, said the letters would help the many parents who are unaware that their children are overweight. "There's a lot of literature now which says that parents do not recognise the fatness or the weight of their children," he told BBC radio. But childhood obesity expert Dr Terry Dovey, of Staffordshire University, said that singling out individual children would not help. "If you highlight the issue in a negative way, all you are doing is stigmatising the child," he told the Today programme. The number of obese boys aged between two and 15 rose to 19 percent in 2005, compared to just under 11 percent in 1995. During the same period, the figure for girls rose to 18.1 percent from 12 percent, according to government statistics. Obesity causes 9,000 premature deaths each year in England and costs the National Health Service about one billion pounds. Obese people are more likely to develop diabetes, heart disease and certain cancers and cuts life expectancy by an average of nine years, the government says. In a speech last week, Johnson said rising obesity was "a consequence of abundance, convenience and underlying biology". He said people were getting fatter because modern lifestyles are more sedentary, calorie-rich foods are widely available and people are walking less.

The European Union and Southeast Asian states agreed on Thursday to boost political and economic cooperation, but military-ruled Myanmar remained an obstacle to a full-blown free trade pact. Foreign ministers meeting in the German city of Nuremberg adopted a declaration on Enhanced Partnership in which they agreed to cooperate more closely in security, energy, environmental and development issues. It included a pledge to promote cooperation against terrorism, money laundering, cyber crime and drug trafficking as well as to work more closely on tackling climate change. EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said he was impressed by the way relations between the two sides had developed, not only on economic and trade issues, but also in politics. "I was very, very happy that a group of countries which are not China or India, but are an important group of countries, do have such a communality of thinking with the European Union," he told reporters. Analysts say ASEAN (the Association of South East Asian Nations) regards better ties with Europe as a way to balance China's growing might and it also wants to emulate the European Union's success by establishing its own single market by 2015. The EU is looking to tap the potential of a 10-nation region with a population of 500 million via a free trade pact, but this has been held up by ASEAN's insistence on including Myanmar in any deal. The European Union has maintained sanctions on Myanmar since its military rulers ignored a 1990 election victory for the main pro-democracy party. EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Walder said the EU wanted to see ASEAN countries press for improvement of human rights in Myanmar, including the release of opposition leader and Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. "We want to see Burma/Myanmar change," she said. Pending a full EU-ASEAN trade deal the EU is pursuing bilateral cooperation pacts with Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and eventually Vietnam. "We have clearly said that we would like to go for a free trade agreement between the two blocs (but) we will have to start working with the different countries," Ferrero-Waldner said. While the agreement with Indonesia could be finalised within a month, issues remain to be resolved with Singapore and the military takeover in Thailand has imposed a block there. The EU aims for a similar pact with Vietnam, where it highlights human rights problems as well as trade frictions. EU officials stress though they have a rights dialogue with Hanoi that does not exist with Myanmar.

The partnership will be formally launched later on Tuesday. Methane is the main greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide. It has a higher heat-trapping potential than CO2 but breaks down in the atmosphere faster - meaning that cutting methane emissions can have a rapid impact on reining in global warming. The Global Methane Pledge, which was first announced in September, now includes half of the top 30 methane emitters accounting for two-thirds of the global economy, according to the Biden administration official. Among the new signatories that will be announced on Tuesday is Brazil - one of the world's five biggest emitters of methane. China, Russia and India, also top-five methane emitters, have not signed on to the pledge. Those countries were all included on a list identified as targets to join the pledge, previously reported. Since it was first announced in September with a handful of signatories, the United States and European Union have worked to get the world's biggest methane emitters to join the partnership. There were roughly 60 countries signed up only last week, after a final diplomatic push from the United States and EU ahead of the COP26 summit. While it is not part of the formal UN negotiations, the methane pledge could rank among the most significant outcomes from the COP26 conference, given its potential impact in holding off disastrous climate change. A UN report in May said steep cuts in methane emissions this decade could avoid nearly 0.3 degree Celsius of global warming by the 2040s. Failing to tackle methane, however, would push out of reach the Paris Agreement's aim to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 C above preindustrial levels and avoid the worst impacts of climate change. The 30 percent methane cut would be jointly achieved by the signatories, and cover all sectors. Key sources of methane emissions include leaky oil and gas infrastructure, old coal mines, agriculture and landfill sites. If fulfilled, the pledge is likely to have the biggest impact on the energy sector, since analysts say fixing leaky oil and gas infrastructure is the fastest and cheapest way to curb methane emissions. The United States is the world's biggest oil and gas producer, while the EU is the biggest importer of gas. The United States is due to release oil and gas methane regulations this week. The EU and Canada both plan to unveil methane legislation addressing the energy sector later this year.

A 190-nation climate meeting in Bali took small steps towards a new global deal to fight global warming by 2009 on Tuesday amid disputes about how far China and India should curb rising greenhouse gas emissions. Yvo de Boer, the U.N.'s top climate official, praised the December 3-14 meeting of 10,000 participants for progress towards a goal of launching formal talks on a long-term climate pact to succeed the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol. "But in this process, as in so many, the devil's in the detail," he cautioned in an interview with Reuters at a beach-side conference centre on the Indonesian island. Governments set up a "special group" to examine options for the planned negotiations meant to bind the United States and developing nations led by China and India more firmly into fighting climate change beyond Kyoto. The meeting also agreed to study ways to do more to transfer clean technologies, such as solar panels or wind turbines, to developing nations. Such a move is key to greater involvement by developing nations in tackling their climate-warming emissions. The Kyoto Protocol now binds 36 rich nations to curb emissions of greenhouse gases, mainly from burning fossil fuels, by an average of 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12 in a step to curb droughts, floods, heatwaves and rising seas. But there was skirmishing about how to share out the burden beyond Kyoto and environmentalists accused Kyoto nations Japan and Canada of expecting China and India to do too much. Canada said in a submission to the talks that "to be effective, a new international framework must include emission reduction obligations for all the largest emitting economies". It did not mention deeper cuts for rich nations beyond 2012. And Japan on Monday called on all parties to effectively participate and contribute substantially. A Japanese official said it was "essential" that China and India were involved. "Canada and Japan are saying nothing about legally binding emission reductions for themselves after 2012," said Steven Guilbeault of environmental group Equiterre. "They are trying to shift the burden to China and India." NO FORMAL PROPOSALS Green groups gave Japan a mock award as "Fossil of the Day" -- made daily to the nation accused of holding up the talks. De Boer played down the environmentalists' objections, saying that all nations were merely laying out ideas. "A marriage contract is not something to discuss on a first date," he said. "No proposals have formally been made." China and India say that rich nations must take on far deeper cuts in emissions and that they cannot take on caps yet because they need to burn more fossil fuels to end poverty. The Bali talks are seeking a mandate to widen Kyoto to all nations beyond 2012. Of the world's top-five emitters, only Russia and Japan are part of Kyoto. The United States is outside the pact, while China and India are exempt from curbs. And de Boer also said the talks should not focus solely on the plan to launch new negotiations. "There's a bit of a risk that countries that are very keen to see negotiations being launched go over the top and focus only on that," he said. Developing nations were worried that more immediate issues -- such aid to help them cope with droughts, floods and rising seas -- could "be forgotten in all the excitement about the future", he said. Outside the Bali conference centre on Tuesday, a group of environmentalists gave a mock swimming lesson to delegates, saying that rising seas could swamp low-lying tropical islands such as Bali unless they acted. "Sea level rise is threatening hundreds of millions of people," they said. "Sink or swim!"

I was too stunned by the sight before me to realise that Koh, an island host, was talking about my face mask. Instead, I lifted up my sunglasses, and nearly got blinded by the glint of the sun off the water. You cannot prepare your senses for the Maldives — or Maldives, as many locals and visitors call it, eliminating the superfluous article. The blue smacks you right in the face: so many shades, from aqua just this side of translucent to the deepest indigo in the depths of the sea and the night sky as the last wisps of light take their leave. It doesn’t seem possible that a nation like this — 1,200 islands spread across 115 square miles of the Indian Ocean, 430 miles southwest of mainland Asia — can exist, let alone proffer such modern amenities as Wi-Fi, soaking tubs, overwater bungalows and artisanal gin and tonics. And yet, as much of the West emerges haltingly from the pandemic, the Maldives is positioning itself as the place to go to rediscover the beauty of travel, to change your background IRL, not merely on Zoom. The island nation is waging this campaign even after a recent uptick in COVID-19 cases laid bare the limitations of its health care system — strapped, overworked and under-resourced. But this is the paradox of the Maldives. Tourism accounts for one-quarter of the South Asian nation’s gross domestic product according to the World Bank, and fuels the Maldives’ other economic drivers, such as construction (there is always a resort being built) and fisheries (the catch of the day, forever on the menu). To generate the kind of revenue that would help bolster its infrastructure, the Maldives needs foreign investment. “We are determined to stay a leading destination,” Abdulla Mausoom, the Maldives’ minister of tourism, said in an interview recently. “We are determined to diversify tourism so that we have something for everyone in the Maldives, not only for the super rich.” Mausoom has come up with a variety of methods to lure tourists back, including offering free COVID-19 vaccines to travellers who have not yet received them. But he said that the plan, announced in April, will not go into effect until all Maldivian residents are fully vaccinated: maybe “late third quarter, or early fourth.” For anyone who can get vaccinated closer to home, the offer is little more than a publicity stunt, though on a May trip to the Maldives, I met fellow travellers who had crossed borders to get inoculated. Many others, like me and my husband, were fully vaccinated, eager to get out into the world and bent on seeing a bucket list place that, given rising sea levels, may not be around for much longer. (More than 80% of the islands that make up the Maldives are less than 1 metre above sea level; it has the lowest terrain of any country in the world.) We came expecting white sand beaches and crystal clear water. We got that — as well as three days of torrential rain and 25-mph winds (which, when you’re on a strip of land maybe 12 feet wide, feel powerful enough to blow you away). But beyond the natural beauty, what stood out was the culture: the local culture, the YOLO culture, the staff who let you in on their inside jokes and the vacation friends who give you their numbers and make you promise to look them up when you touch down in their part of the world. Maybe you can find this kind of exuberance wherever masks are coming off and people are gathering again. But to paraphrase the kids: In the Maldives, it hits different. WHAT INSTAGRAM DREAMS ARE MADE OF Our trip to the Maldives was supposed to follow a visit to New Delhi to celebrate the 100th birthday of my husband’s grandfather. Male, the capital city of the Maldives and the site of its largest airport, is a four-hour flight from New Delhi; our week in the island nation would coincide with our wedding anniversary. This spring, as we watched the number of COVID-19 cases in India rise, it became clear that the country would not lift its ban on tourist travel anytime soon (it remains in place). We debated cancelling. My husband had put in for the time off from work. The hotels were booked. Rerouting our flight would cost us not moneywise — we booked using miles — but in the time spent researching and talking to the airlines. My question: Would it be worth it? Why not save a trip to the Maldives for when we were in that part of the world again? His: Would a week in paradise be “worth it?” And who knew when we might be in the vicinity again? YOLO reasoning won out. The flights were changed, the PCR tests scheduled (a negative test result procured within 96 hours is required to enter the Maldives). After a 17-hour flight from Los Angeles to Singapore; two, bleary-eyed hours in a holding pen for transiting travellers at Changi International — a pandemic-era safety precaution — and another four-hour flight; we arrived at Male International, and to a wistful sign: “Maldives, World’s Leading Destination 2020,” a designation granted by the World Travel Awards organisation, for a year in which world travel was all but impossible. “It was our first win in that category, so we are very proud,” said Mausoom. “Winning the lead is tough, but I think staying the lead is tougher.” Working to the Maldives’ advantage: The dock outside the airport looks like a five-star resort thanks to the turquoise water lapping at its pilings. (After a day on a plane, it was all I could do to not jump in.) An hourlong speedboat ride led us to Lux North Male, which occupies the island of Olhahali, uninhabited before the resort’s 2019 opening. Once my eyes adjusted to the light and I picked up my jaw, it became clear that the pandemic hasn’t been all that bad for business. More than half of Lux North Male’s 67 villas — all done in an aesthetic that’s like Miami’s South Beach meets Mykonos, Greece — were occupied. “From December through April, we were almost full,” said Tatiana Kozlova, the resort’s director of sales and marketing. “One family came for Christmas and stayed until February. They kept extending and extending. They didn’t want to go back to the UK.” May marked the start of rainy season, and a slight downturn in bookings. The three days we spent at Lux came with sunny skies and plenty of room to sprawl and socially distance — except, after many months of pod life, some people were eager to do the opposite. In the pool by Beach Rouge, Lux’s all day dining restaurant, we met Mauricio Pessoa, a labour lawyer from Brazil. He and two friends had flown to Dubai to get vaccinated and decided to hop down to the Maldives (a four-hour flight south of Dubai) before heading home. “It’s so nice to be abroad after so long,” Pessoa said, white wine in hand. “All of our friends back home are jealous.” CONSERVATION AND CAMARADERIE Indeed, posting pictures of crystalline water and sky-on-fire sunsets on Instagram is a surefire way to engender comments like “must be nice.” But there’s more to the Maldives than stunning photo ops: take the lesser-known ways Maldivian resorts are preserving paradise in the face of climate change. Lux spent the past year installing 46 star-shaped planters in the floor of the ocean around the island to attract fish and promote the growth of coral. Single-use plastic is virtually banned. Even in the gym, water comes out of a glass dispenser, into a reusable tumbler, which makes for an extremely ungraceful mid-run swig, but it’s a small price to pay. Conservation is also paramount at Joali, a 3-year-old resort north of Lux, on the island of Muravandhoo. Upon arrival, each guest receives a rose-gold-coloured reusable water bottle. To cut down on the ingredients it must import, Joali has an on-site farm to grow herbs and vegetables. Behind the farm is a filtration plant that turns ocean water into drinking water and collects rain to hydrate plants during dry spells. Like Lux, Joali is restoring the reef surrounding it by growing corals in a nursery — “we call them fragments of hope,” said a staff member — and planting them in the reef when they’re large enough to stick. We had hoped to snorkel near that reef; the weather had other plans. The day after we arrived at Joali, the wind kicked up and rain blew in, ushering in the sort of storm that eschews rules. “The classical, typical monsoon is no longer the case,” said Mausoom. “The rainy season is rather unpredictable because of global environmental changes.” A bummer, but Joali prepared for this: sumptuous interiors, redolent in rose gold and emerald green, a bed that begot naps, a spa that offered a timely “inner strength and resilience” massage, which felt like being rolled out like a sheet of cookie dough. There was no shortage of gustatory delights: sushi and pasta conceived by Michelin star chefs, biryani as good as its brethren on the subcontinent, a Turkish breakfast buffet with an olive bar that rivalled Whole Foods. But I kept coming back to a simple curry of reef fish, creamy and piquant, that I ordered three days in a row before asking for the recipe. Then there were the classes. Yoga and HIIT, yes, but also: gin tasting, wine tasting, sake tasting. We signed up for the last three and in the process, befriended the resort’s head sommelier, Gandip Khadka, and his associate, Tushar Patil, who invited us to the most exclusive hangout on the property: the staff bar, hidden behind a grove of palm trees. As at Lux and the majority of resorts in the Maldives, staff members live on the island along with guests, and it was on our final night, sipping gin and tonics while Bruno Mars played from the speakers, that we got to engage in the kind of conviviality that travel offers, and that the pandemic prevented. We shared Netflix recommendations with a bartender from Costa Rica, discussed Dogecoin with a server from the Philippines. “Pfizer or Moderna?” “AstraZeneca or Johnson & Johnson?” Everyone had an opinion, a story about side effects, bewilderment about vaccine holdouts. We met a couple from Germany, fellow travellers who were on their fourth trip to the Maldives and had been island-hopping for weeks. “Like maybe everybody, after the last year, I wanted total relaxation, a way to clear my mind from all the negative news,” said Teresa Wendrich, who works in the marketing department of the Munich International Airport. “Maldives is the place where I feel the most alive, where I can say thank you to my soul and body.” Toward the end of our stay, a friend messaged me asking if the Maldives was “worth the million hour flight” “even though it’s basically just a beach.” You can’t blame the uninitiated for having that impression (I certainly did). Not even our departure from Joali — which, because of the weather, meant taking a speedboat to a barge that wobbled like a set piece on “American Ninja Warriors” and attempting to stay upright while walking across it to board a seaplane — could dim my enthusiasm for the Maldives. In the air, once the clouds cleared, the islands below gleamed like geodes, a final dose of sensory overload. ©2021 The New York Times Company

Four years of drought, the worst in decades, along with deforestation caused by people burning or cutting down trees to make charcoal or to open up land for farming, have transformed the area into a dust bowl. "There's nothing to harvest. That's why we have nothing to eat and we're starving," said mother-of-seven Tarira, standing at a remote World Food Programme (WFP) post near Anjeky Beanatara, where children are checked for signs of malnutrition and given food. More than a million people in southern Madagascar currently need food handouts from the WFP, a United Nations agency. Tarira had brought her four-year-old son Avoraza, who has been struggling to put on weight, to collect sachets of a peanut-based product known as Plumpy, used to treat malnourished children. "There are seven, so there wasn't enough food. The Plumpy wasn't enough for him," she said, holding Avoraza by his thin arm. Like many others in the region, Tarira and her family have sometimes been reduced to eating a type of cactus known locally as raketa, which grows wild but provides little nutritional value and gives stomach pains, she said. The world's fourth largest island and one of its most diverse ecosystems, with thousands of endemic species of plants and animals such as lemurs, Madagascar projects the image of a lush natural paradise. But in parts of it, such as its far southern regions, the reality on the ground has changed. "We used to call Madagascar the green island, but sadly now it is more of a red island," said Soja Lahimaro Tsimandilatse, governor of the southern Androy region. PRAYING FOR RAIN The food crisis in the south built up over a period of years and has interconnected causes including drought, deforestation, environmental damage, poverty, COVID-19 and population growth, according to local authorities and aid organisations. With a population of 30 million, Madagascar has always known extreme weather events, but scientists say these will likely increase in frequency and severity as human-induced climate change pushes temperatures higher. The United Nations' IPCC climate change panel says increased aridity is already being observed in Madagascar and forecasts that droughts will increase. At the height of the food crisis in the south, the WFP warned the island was at risk of seeing "the world's first climate change famine". A study by international research collective World Weather Attribution said models indicated a small shift toward more droughts caused by climate change in southern Madagascar, but said natural variability was the main cause for the second one-in-135-year dry event since 1992. Theodore Mbainaissem, who runs WFP operations in the worst-hit areas in southern Madagascar, said once-regular weather patterns had changed beyond recognition in recent years and elders in the villages could no longer figure out the best time to plant or harvest. Mbainaissem said that after months of intervention by the WFP, other aid organisations and the local authorities, the worst of the food crisis was over. He said rates of severe malnutrition among children had dropped from about 30 percent a few months ago to about 5 percent now. "When you look in the villages, you see children running left and right. That wasn't the case before," he said. Communities and aid groups are already trying to move past the emergency phase and focus on forward-looking projects, such as a large-scale effort in the coastal town of Faux Cap to stabilise sand dunes by planting. But in rural areas where people live in dire poverty, some of the trends that contributed to the crisis are still present. For recently married Felix Fitiavantsoa, 20, who was burning down a wooded area to start cultivating it, the long-term consequences of deforestation were a secondary concern. His urgent need was to grow food to feed his young wife, and his main worry was whether it would finally rain so he could get started. "If there's no rain, I don't know what we'll do. We'll pray to God," he said.

A Nigerian court freed on bail former militia leader Mujahid Dokubo-Asari on Thursday, meeting a demand by armed groups who have disrupted oil production and kidnapped expatriate workers in the Niger Delta. The release of Asari, who is on trial for treason, comes after rebel groups in the delta freed hostages, declared a truce and said they were willing to try a dialogue with the government of newly inaugurated President Umaru Yar'Adua. Their peace moves remain tentative, however, and the effect of the killings of eight suspected militants by troops during an attempted attack on an oil well in Bayelsa state in the delta on Tuesday was not yet clear. Asari's lawyer applied for bail on health grounds and prosecutors did not oppose the application. "I'm convinced the accused is not playing to the gallery. The accused is ordered to be released on health grounds," said Justice Peter Olayiwola. The judge added that Asari should not hold any political rally or engage in any political activities and his movements should be reported to the security services. The Supreme Court had denied Asari bail last Friday after a 20-month legal process, arguing he represented a threat to national security. Prosecutors had steadfastly opposed his release until now. Activists close to nascent peace negotiations between the government and the delta rebels said Thursday's court decision was the result of a political deal. Asari has been in detention since September 2005 and his trial has dragged on from one adjournment to the next. There were several unsuccessful attempts by elders from his Ijaw ethnic group to broker a deal to get him out. The climate changed after the swearing-in of Yar'Adua, who used his inaugural speech on May 29 to call for a ceasefire in the delta. Since then, powerful state governors from the region have publicly called for Asari's release. Ijaw activists said Thursday's ruling would boost efforts to pacify armed rebels demanding local control over oil revenues and compensation for oil spills in the impoverished delta. "This was part of what we've been demanding. The action is in the right direction," said Ifeanyi Jonjon, head of the Ijaw Youth Council. The Ijaw are the most populous ethnic group in the delta. "Asari can be used to reach out to the freedom fighters and redirect them away from carrying guns and towards peace," he said. Asari, who has lost a lot of weight in detention and has complained of ill treatment by the State Security Services, was not present in court but his supporters were jubilant. "This is good news for anyone with a business in the Niger Delta. It will pour cold water on the situation. Asari is key to bringing peace to the delta," said Emmanuel Diffa, an Ijaw elder who has been campaigning for Asari's release.

Global inflation pressures intensified at the start of this year, combining with slower growth to put central bankers in a bind about how to keep prices in check without tipping their economies into recession. In the United States, where the Federal Reserve has slashed interest rates since a global credit crunch gripped the economy last August, data on Friday showed the Fed's favoured gauge of underlying US inflation rose by 0.3 percent in January after a 0.2 percent gain in December, while the overall annual rate rose to 3.7 percent from 3.5 percent. In the euro zone, where the European Central Bank has so far declined to follow the Fed's rate-cutting lead, preliminary data for several countries in February showed inflation holding well above the ECB's 2 percent target ceiling in major economies. February inflation was running at an annual rate of 2.9 percent in Germany, at 3.1 percent in Italy, and at a record 4.4 percent in Spain. In Belgium, inflation jumped to 3.64 percent -- the highest rate since July 1991. In Japan, annual inflation held at a decade-high 0.8 percent in January, but with other data pointing to an economic slowdown, the Bank of Japan was still seen potentially cutting rates from an already very low 0.5 percent this year. Ken Wattret, chief euro zone market economist at BNP Paribas, said the euro zone was likely to see uncomfortably high levels of headline inflation in the coming months. "The ECB is caught in a very awkward position, which is that the economic growth outlook is deteriorating, and deteriorating fast in my opinion, but inflation is not getting better quickly enough," he said. European Central Bank Governing Council member Axel Weber said on Wednesday market expectations that the ECB will cut interest rates from the current 4 percent fail to consider the dangers of higher inflation. NO US "STAGFLATION" Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said on Thursday the United States was not headed toward 1970s-style "stagflation" but acknowledged inflation could complicate efforts to spur the economy. Friday's US core personal consumption expenditure price index, or PCE, underlined the conflicting pressures on central banks to support growth as the banking sector reels from writedowns on high-risk debt, while seeking to hold inflation in check. The Fed, which has already cut rates by 2.25 percentage points to 3 percent since last September, is widely expected to keep cutting. "Data shows that inflation pressures are beginning to uptick, but this is not going to change the view the next move by the Fed will be an interest rate cut," said Matthew Strauss, currency strategist at RBC Capital in Toronto. In updated economic forecasts released last week, the US central bank lowered its outlook for 2008 growth by a half point to between 1.3 percent and 2 percent, citing the prolonged housing slump and bottlenecks in credit markets. In Japan, much stronger-than-expected housing construction and household spending data released on Friday eased some concern that Japan may follow the United States into recession. The Japanese central bank has been looking for inflation to return after years of battling deflation. "The price trend will be similar in all developed countries. Inflation is high at the moment, but it will ease in the future," said Yoshimasa Maruyama, an economist at BNP Paribas in Tokyo. In Europe, the ECB's task has been made harder by a series of above-inflation pay demands from trade unions in Germany, the region's largest economy, which the central bank fears could shift up inflation expectations and feed further wage demands. However, the ECB is also wrestling with a weakened euro zone growth outlook. A business climate indicator for the euro zone, based on a survey of corporate managers, fell more than expected in February to its lowest level in two years. CORE EURO ZONE INFLATION EASES A breakdown of euro zone January price data showed core inflation, which excludes volatile energy and food costs, eased to 1.7 percent in January from 1.9 percent in December. The preliminary euro zone figure for February is due on March 3 and was being forecast at an unchanged 3.2 percent. "The fact that core inflation remains muted should give the ECB some leverage to start easing rates very soon," said David Brown, chief European economist at Bear Stearns. The headline euro zone inflation rate accelerated to 3.2 percent in January from 3.1 percent in December. Wattret at BNP Paribas thought the ECB would soon look beyond the headline inflation rate and focus on the risks to growth in the euro zone, where a rise in the euro to a record high versus the dollar is making life hard for exporters. Most economists in the latest Reuters poll expect the ECB to cut rates twice this year, but think any imminent move looks less likely as inflation stays high.

Pakistan completed a clean sweep of Zimbabwe in all three formats of the game, with a victory in the second Twenty20 in an exciting, last-ball finish in Harare. Zimbabwe's chase - thanks to controlled bowling from Pakistan - did not have any momentum until the final over, when Tatenda Taibu attacked. With 20 runs required off six balls, Taibu smacked the first delivery for a six over long-on to set the tone for a fighting finish. His feisty running ensured two runs off each of the next four deliveries and left him with six to get off the last ball, reports ESPNcricinfo. Sohail Khan held his nerve and bowled a low, full toss wide outside off stump. Taibu had backed away to the leg side and was not even able to play a shot. It brought an anti-climatic end to a chase that Zimbabwe allowed to get too big for them, when it should not have. Vusi Sibanda and Chamu Chibhabha began with the right intent, Sibanda opening the innings with a gorgeously straight drive for four. They scored a boundary off each of the first four overs but did not rotate the strike enough, and the required run-rate rose. Chibhabha tried to break the shackles when Saeed Ajmal came on, looking to loft over long on, but was caught by a backpedalling Yasir Shah outside the circle. Ajmal's opening wicket maiden put the brakes on Zimbabwe's chase and they stayed on until the final over. Sibanda frustration grew and he was dismissed by a good Hafeez catch at point while attempting a big hit. Hafeez's Midas touch with both bat and ball was evident and he bowled Cephas Zhuwao with a straight delivery. He also claimed the wickets of Hamilton Maskadza, who gifted him a catch in his follow through, and Brendan Taylor, who was caught by Misbah-ul-Haq at midwicket. With Zimbabwe's chase unravelling, big-hitting Charles Coventry flung his bat at the first three Junaid Khan deliveries he faced. Two of them went for four and the third he bottom-edged onto his stumps. Elton Chigumbura was able to play a few forceful shots, driving down the ground and pulling with relative ease, but was bogged down by bowling that was too good for him to smash out of the ground. Pakistan's bowlers did not panic, even when it went down to the last over. Taibu had to marshal both Prosper Utseya and himself but in the end, Sohail had the final say. Zimbabwe, however, had put on an improved display in the field, bowled better lengths and took all the catches they were offered to keep Pakistan to under 150. Taylor was innovative with his bowling changes and, after opening with a spinner, introduced Chibhabha in the third over. Chibhabha struck when Asad Shafiq tried to launch a length ball for six but was caught by Chigumbura at long-on. Two balls later, Rameez Raja was caught at short fine leg. Kyle Jarvis, who bowled better lengths than he did in the previous couple of matches, banged in a short ball and Raja, late on the pull, and gifted Ray Price a simple catch. The hosts inflicted a third early wound on Pakistan when Shoaib Malik was caught behind off Chigumbura, after slashing at wide delivery. Hafeez rode the tide and played another important innings, targeting the spinners in particular. While Hafeez was at the crease, Umar Akmal could afford to be watchful, especially against Chigumbura, who bowled a controlled spell dotted with slower balls. Price eventually got Hafeez, who lofted towards long-on but just did not have enough on it to clear the boundary. Hafeez's departure resulted in the runs, and more importantly, the boundaries drying up and Pakistan only scored 36 runs in the last five overs. Akmal was run out returning for a second, caught well short of his crease by a Chigumbura throw, and big-hitting Tanvir was bowled by Jarvis. Jarvis was solid at the death and made good use of yorkers, a delivery he is close to perfecting.

The International Monetary Fund will spell out the economic implications of climate change in research and discussions set for early 2008, a senior IMF official said on Wednesday, as governments gather in Bali for post-Kyoto negotiations. In the IMF's first news conference to discuss the economic effects of climate change, Takatoshi Kato, the IMF's deputy managing director, said these global changes posed "many and complex" challenges as shifting and unreliable weather patterns force governments to adapt and climate-proof their economies. "This research will analyze in greater depth the macroeconomic implications of climate change and policy responses to it, both in terms of mitigation and adaptation," Kato said. "The IMF executive board will discuss possibly early next year the fiscal implication of climate change," he added. The IMF was considering new tax mechanisms and other fiscal measures for countries affected by climate change, he said. According to the IMF, economic challenges from climate change will include direct negative impacts on output and productivity; weaker traditional tax bases and increased spending; balance of payments problems due to reduced exports of goods and services such as agricultural products, fish and tourism; and private economic costs from higher energy prices. While fiscal positions could deteriorate, there were also opportunities to boost revenue from efficient carbon-pricing schemes, he added. Kato will join world leaders in Bali next week for UN climate change negotiations to shape a global agreement for when the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012. Kyoto created a carbon market as a way to reduce carbon emissions by encouraging governments and the private sector to offset their climate footprint by purchasing carbon credits. The carbon trade has attracted speculators including investment banks and specialized carbon project developers. Developing countries stand to earn billions of dollars through carbon trading by reducing deforestation and preserving tropical forests, which store huge amount of carbon. Charles Collyns, deputy director for research at the IMF, said potential flows from payments for carbon credits could have implications for balance of payments and exchange rates. "One thing to be cautious about is that these revenues are well used, well directed in efficient local spending," he said. "But it is quite possible that the best use of these funds is to save them to avoid a Dutch Disease-type of problem if you ramp up spending too quickly." "Dutch Disease" was a name given to the Netherlands' economic problems following the discovery of North Sea oil in the 1970s, which resulted in currency disruptions, increased imports, decreased exports and a fall in productivity. Collyns said governments were more aware of the need to prepare for climate change but the response so far was "relatively muted," mainly due to the lack of an efficient carbon pricing system. "Until investors are faced by a set of prices that prices in the true cost of carbon emissions, there won't be a full response," he said, "which is why it is important to move ahead with a successor to the Kyoto Protocol in order to establish carbon prices not just in the near term but also in the longer term."

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

Tackling climate change will help, not hinder, governments' efforts to overcome the global financial crisis, the EU's environment chief said on Tuesday. The 27-nation European Union has set ambitious goals to curb carbon dioxide emissions by a fifth by 2020, compared to 1990 levels, partly by making power generators and heavy industry pay for permits to pollute in its emissions trading scheme. Critics say the financial crisis makes it very difficult for industry to make the necessary big investments in clean energy. "We think this (climate) package is consistent with solving the financial crisis... At the moment, people are focused on the economic crisis, but our package is part of the solution," Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas told reporters in Warsaw. "Fighting climate change means investment in energy efficiency, promoting renewable sources and providing incentives to stimulate the economy and contribute to growth." The EU also argues that moving to a low-carbon economy will create jobs and reduce the bloc's exposure to volatile prices of fossil fuels such as oil and coal which lead to global warming. Poland and other ex-communist EU member states have expressed concern that carbon dioxide (CO2) curbs will stunt their economic growth by sharply increasing energy prices. Asked if the Commission was willing to make amendments to its package, Dimas said: "It is not for the Commission to accept amendments, it's for the European Council (of national governments) and for the European Parliament." "The package is just an instrument to achieve the climate change targets agreed by member states... The Commission can make changes which do not compromise the environmental objectives," he added. EU ACCORD Dimas said he was hopeful that France, the EU's current chairman, could forge agreement among member states on the Commission's climate package by the end of this year. "This package is good for Europe because Europe's economy will become more efficient," he said. Dimas was in Poland, along with representatives of dozens of other countries, for preparatory talks ahead of a planned U.N. conference in the western Polish city of Poznan in December that is meant to pave the way for a new global climate deal. The current Kyoto Protocol, which does not set CO2 emission targets for major emerging economies such as China and India, expires in 2012. The United States has also not joined Kyoto. Referring to this week's talks in Warsaw, Dimas said: "Nobody has said we should cut down our efforts (because of financial crisis). They all said we should continue. We need to send a strong signal from Poznan on fighting climate change."

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's visit to China switches focus to the environment on Saturday as he highlights how Britain and China can cooperate to fight climate change. Action on climate change is a priority for Brown, who spent the first day of his visit on Friday telling Chinese officials that Britain would welcome more trade and investment from China, including from its new $200 billion sovereign wealth fund. China is the second biggest emitter of greenhouse gases after the United States and is poised to overtake it. Brown's government has proposed the world's first climate change law which requires Britain to cut climate-warming carbon dioxide emissions by 60 percent from 1990 levels by 2050. But if other countries do not act to tackle climate change, it will not solve the problem, British officials say. "We very much need other countries, particularly the largest emitters ... to move similarly onto a low carbon path," one official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Britain and British companies are already working with China on clean energy initiatives and agreements signed by China and Britain on Friday aim to increase that cooperation further. Brown visited a gas-fired power station in Beijing that British officials say is nearly twice as efficient as the coal-fuelled power stations China typically builds. It is a combined heat and power plant that uses waste heat to heat water for people's homes. The Taiyang Gong power station was partly financed by Britain through the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism which enables companies from rich countries to invest in clean energy projects in developing nations in return for credits to offset their own emissions. ECO-CITY Brown on Saturday also visited the 91,000-seat Bird's Nest National Stadium, which will hold the opening and closing ceremonies for this year's Beijing Olympics. He arrives in Shanghai later in the day where he will see plans for China's first eco-city. Brown, accompanied by his wife, Sarah, and British double gold-medal winning athlete Kelly Holmes, was given a 20-minute tour of the $400 million stadium complex. "This is going to be one of the greatest Olympic Games ever," Brown told reporters. Holmes, asked if she would be worried about running in Beijing's smoggy conditions, said: "I am sure China will do their upmost to make it as comfortable as they possible can for the athletes involved." The eco-city scheme is to be built at Dongtan, near Shanghai, where all energy will be renewable and no gasoline-fuelled cars will be allowed. Major developing countries such as China have been loath to agree to firm targets for emissions cuts that could hold back their rapid economic growth. But last month UN-led talks in Bali approved a roadmap for negotiations on a successor to the Kyoto Protocol that would widen the treaty to the United States, China and India. Brown said after his talks with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao on Friday that Wen took the problem of climate change seriously. "He's not denying there's a problem. He knows action needs to be taken," he told BBC television. A declaration on climate change signed by Britain and China on Friday commits Britain to provide at least 50 million pounds ($100 million) to support investment in energy efficiency, renewables, clean coal and carbon capture and storage in China. Under a second agreement, Britain and China will collaborate on developing low carbon cities. Britain plans an eco-city of its own in the Thames Gateway, east of London. ($1=.5093 Pound)

Africa is the "forgotten continent" in the fight against climate change and needs help to cope with projected water shortages and declining crop yields, the UN's top climate change official said on Sunday. Yvo de Boer told Reuters that damage projected for Africa by the UN climate panel would justify tougher world action to slow global warming even without considering likely disruptions to other parts of the planet. "Africa has been the forgotten continent," in efforts to combat warming, de Boer, head of the Bonn-based UN Climate Change Secretariat, said by telephone from a meeting of African and Mediterranean nations in Tunis about climate change. He noted that big developing countries, such as China and India, had won far more funds than Africa from rich nations to help cut greenhouse gases, for instance by investing in wind farms, hydropower dams or in cleaning up industrial emissions. Africa has won relatively little aid to help it adapt to ever more drought, desertification, changing ranges for diseases and rising seas. "Africa is not getting a lot out of climate change policy at the moment," he said. "But climate change will affect Africa very severely." The UN climate panel's final 26-page summary report, released in Spain on Saturday, says that Africa, the Arctic, the deltas of major rivers in Asia and small island states are likely to be especially affected by climate change. For Africa, it says that between 75 and 250 million people on the world's poorest continent are projected to face increased water stress by 2020. "That in itself is enough for more world action," de Boer said. AGRICULTURE And in some African countries, it says yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by up to 50 percent by 2020. It also says the costs of adapting to rising seas in Africa could amount to at least 5 to 10 percent of gross domestic product towards the end of this century. It also projects an increase of 5 to 8 percent of arid and semi-arid lands in Africa by 2080. More than 100 of the world's environment ministers will meet in Bali next month and de Boer said there seemed "general agreement" on a need to launch two years of talks on a broad international deal to succeed the UN's Kyoto Protocol. Kyoto binds 36 industrial nations to cut emissions of greenhouse gases, mainly from burning fossil fuels, by at least 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12. But Kyoto only caps a third of global emissions and top emitters led by the United States and China have no firm goals. US President George W. Bush said Kyoto would damage the US economy and wrongly omits 2012 goals for developing nations.

The data are the first of the New Year to confirm many projections that 2016 will exceed 2015 as the warmest since reliable records began in the 19th century, it said in a report on Thursday. The Arctic was the region showing the sharpest rise in temperatures, while many other areas of the globe, including parts of Africa and Asia, also suffered unusual heat, it said. A few parts of South America and Antarctica were cooler than normal. Global surface temperatures in 2016 averaged 14.8 degrees Celsius (58.64°F), or 1.3C (2.3F) higher than estimated before the Industrial Revolution ushered in wide use of fossil fuels, the EU body said. In 2015, almost 200 nations agreed at a summit in Paris to limit global warming to "well below" 2C above pre-industrial times while pursuing efforts to hold the rise to 1.5C as part of a sweeping shift away from fossil fuels towards clean energy. Temperatures last year broke a 2015 record by almost 0.2C (0.36F), Copernicus said, boosted by a build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and by a natural El Nino weather event in the Pacific Ocean, which releases heat to the atmosphere. In February 2016 alone, temperatures were 1.5C above pre-industrial times, the study said. Rising heat is blamed for stoking wildfires, heat waves, droughts, floods and more powerful downpours that disrupt water and food supplies. The UN's World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the main authority on global temperatures, compiles data mainly from two US and one British dataset that will be published in coming weeks. It also uses input from Copernicus. Dick Dee, deputy head of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, said Thursday's data were available quickly because they draw on temperature stations and satellite measurements used to make weather forecasts. "They're pretty much in perfect agreement" with the WMO data in areas where measurements overlap, he told Reuters. The other datasets used by the WMO are collected from sources that can take more time to compile, including ships, buoys and balloons. US President-elect Donald Trump has sometimes called man-made climate change a hoax and threatened to "cancel" the Paris agreement. But he has also said he has an open mind and sees "some connectivity" between human activity and global warming.

- Leaders of the world's major powers gather on Germany's Baltic coast Wednesday for a G8 summit likely to be dominated by US-Russia tensions and wrangling over global warming. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, chairing the annual meeting as president of the Group of Eight (G8), is due to lunch with US President George W Bush and then meet Russia's Vladimir Putin before hosting a reception and dinner for the leaders and their spouses. On the eve of the meeting, Bush criticized Russia on democracy, escalating a war of words with Putin that Merkel fears could overshadow other 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 on a visit to Prague, before flying to Heiligendamm, a seaside resort founded in 1793 as an exclusive summer spa for European nobility. Differences between Washington and Russia centre on U.S. 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 -- Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States -- are expected to discuss other foreign policy issues including Iran's nuclear program, Sudan and the Israel-Palestinian conflict. HOPE FOR CLIMATE PROGRESS On climate, Merkel had hoped to get the G8 to agree to a goal of reducing global greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by 2050. Convincing the United States to back such firm targets now looks impossible, but the summit could end up sending a strong signal about leaders' desire to come up with a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, the global climate deal which runs until 2012. Climate change proposals from Bush last week had sowed fears in Europe that Washington would go outside the well-established United Nations process to curb the emissions that scientists say will swell sea levels and cause droughts and floods. But both U.S. and German officials expressed confidence ahead of the summit that a common approach would be found. "There has been significant movement from the American government and also the Chinese," Merkel's chief of staff Thomas de Maiziere told Reuters in an interview. "For that reason, I believe we will get results that go far beyond what we saw at the G8 summit in 2005 in Britain and which strengthen international agreement under the U.N. umbrella." At a summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, two years ago, British Prime Minister Tony Blair was unable to get Bush to compromise on climate, producing a watered-down statement that fell far short of target. In an interview with Britain's Guardian newspaper on the eve of the summit, Blair said he was convinced that he could persuade Bush to sign up to a "substantial cut" in greenhouse gas emissions, in line with U.N.-backed targets. 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 the global economic balance. 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.

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

The 40-page synthesis, summing up 5,000 pages of work by 800 scientists already published since September 2013, said global warming was now causing more heat extremes, downpours, acidifying the oceans and pushing up sea levels."There is still time, but very little time" to act at manageable costs, Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), told Reuters.He was referring to a UN goal of limiting average surface temperature rises to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6F) above pre-industrial times. Temperatures are already up 0.85 C (1.4F).To get a good chance of staying below 2C, the report says that world emissions would have to fall to "near zero or below in 2100." UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will help present the report in Copenhagen on Sunday.The study, given authority by the approval of officials from more than 120 governments in a week of editing, will be the main handbook for 200 nations which are due to agree a UN deal to combat global warming in Paris in late 2015.RENEWABLES, NUCLEARThe report points to options including energy efficiency, a shift from fossil fuels to wind or solar power, nuclear energy or coal-fired power plants where carbon dioxide is stripped from the exhaust fumes and buried underground.But carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies are little tested. In most scenarios, the report says "fossil fuel power generation without CCS is phased out almost entirely by 2100".China, the United States, the European Union and India are top emitters.Without extra efforts to rein in greenhouse gas emissions, "warming by the end of the 21st century will bring high risks of severe, widespread, and irreversible impacts globally," it said."Irreversible" could mean, for instance, a runaway melt of Greenland's vast ice sheets that could swamp coastal regions and cities or disruptions to monsoons vital for growing food."Fighting climate change is affordable...but we are not on the right pathway," said Ottmar Edenhofer, a German scientist who was a co-chair of an IPCC report in March about tackling climate change.Deep cuts in emissions would reduce global growth in consumption of goods and services, the economic yardsstick used by the IPCC, by just 0.06 percentage point a year below annual projected growth of 1.6 to 3.0 percent, it said."We must act now to reduce dangerous carbon pollution," said California Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer, chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, to avert risks to health, food supplies, water and infrastructure.Environmental groups welcomed the report, including its focus on zero emissions. "This is no longer about dividing up the pie. You need to get to zero. At some stage there is no pie left for anyone," said Kaisa Kosonen of Greenpeace.The report also says that it is at least 95 percent sure that manmade emissions of greenhouse gases, rather than natural variations in the climate, are the main cause of warming since 1950, up from 90 percent in a previous assessment in 2007.The report draws on three studies about climate science, impacts ranging from crop growth in Africa to melting Arctic sea ice, and solutions to warming published since September 2013. It is likely to be the first document that policymakers read.

BEIJING, Mon Jun 8, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Global warming is fast rising in the pile of crises facing China as it pursues the unshakeable goal of economic growth while grappling with international pressure to curb its greenhouse gas output. China, the world's number three economy, is the top greenhouse gas polluter, scientists say, and its emissions of the main greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, are set to keep rising. The United States' climate change policy envoy, Todd Stern, is in Beijing this week, the latest in a succession of officials hoping to nurture agreement with China on containing emissions. But any climate deal with Beijing is not going to be easy, and half a year remains until nations gather in Copenhagen to work out the treaty, which will succeed the current Kyoto Protocol, whose first phase ends in 2012. A senior official in China's National Coordination Committee for Climate Change, Gao Guangsheng, said bridging disputes on basic principles will probably push talks to the wire. "I personally hope Copenhagen will reach an agreement with targets for developed countries and specific actions for developing countries," said Gao in a recent interview. "But at present, to judge from the stances of various countries, it will be difficult to reach an agreement that satisfies everyone." The threat of global warming and pressure for a deal in Copenhagen are, nonetheless, driving Beijing to explore ways to reconcile development and minimising greenhouse gas emissions. Chinese thinktanks have been seeking to map a path to a low-carbon economy, and their ideas are likely to be part of what China might offer as a contribution to fighting global warming. But these blueprints are still on the drawing board and would take years to be implemented, leaving decades before China's emissions begin to level off. Uncertainties about what Beijing will do to control its greenhouse gas volumes, and what it will receive in return from rich countries, will make for fraught negotiations this year and beyond with Washington and other major powers. "Reaching agreement at Copenhagen should be relatively easy, because nobody wants outright failure. But reaching an effective agreement will be more, more difficult," said Zhang Haibin, an expert on environmental diplomacy at Peking University. MOVING TO LOW-CARBON The emissions numbers are daunting, with China's carbon output outpacing that of the United States. Scientists say these mounting greenhouse gases from industry, transport and agriculture are dangerously overheating the atmosphere by retaining more solar radiation, and poorer countries such as China could be especially vulnerable to more intense droughts, floods and storms. But Beijing also says it must not be distracted from growing its economy and, like other developing countries, should not accept a ceiling on greenhouse gas output, which even optimistic Chinese experts expect to keep rising until around 2030. By then, China's annual emissions of carbon dioxide could reach 8 to 10 billion tonnes a year, unless stringent action is taken, said He Jiankun, a professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing who advises the Chinese government on emissions policy. In 2007, China's CO2 emissions from fossil fuels amounted to about 6.6 billion tonnes, according to U.S. estimates. China also wants rich nations to cut emissions by at least 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 -- far deeper than the cuts now on offer -- and to give up to one percent of their annual economic worth to help poor nations fight global warming. "Ultimately, there will have to be compromise in Copenhagen, because these negotiations can't be allowed to collapse," said He, the Tsinghua professor. "If they do fall apart, that will be devastating, and nobody will be spared the repercussions." SETTING THE AGENDA But China is also looking to take some of the initiative in climate change politics by setting its own the path to lower greenhouse gas emissions and eventual outright reductions. The nation's next five-year development plan, starting from 2011, will focus on creating a "low-carbon economy" by reducing coal use and encouraging clean energy, said Wang Yi, an expert on climate change at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. "In the past, China has been reactive in policy-making, responding when the West has put forward its demands," said Wang, chief author of a recent 415-page study laying out a blueprint for a low-carbon economy. "Now instead of others criticising us, we're saying, 'Why don't we take the initiative by proposing our own policy goals?'" These proposals build on China's goals to cut the amount of energy expended for each unit of economic worth by 20 percent between 2006 and the end of 2010, and to steeply lift use of wind, solar, nuclear and hydro power. One idea backed by some experts calls for carbon intensity targets, spelling out goals for cutting the amount of CO2 emitted to create each unit of economic worth. "We must incorporate addressing climate change and reducing the intensity of carbon dioxide emissions into national economic and social development plans," said the summary of a meeting on energy and climate change issues chaired by Premier Wen Jiabao on Friday, according to the central government website (www.gov.cn). China could offer to halve its carbon intensity by 2020 compared to 2005 levels, given the right funding and technology incentives from rich nations, said Wang. But Beijing will remain reluctant to incorporate many of its domestic initiatives into an international treaty, especially any vows on emissions levels, said experts. China stresses that global warming has been caused by the historically high emissions of wealthy nations, and fears signing international commitments it may not be able to meet, said Wang. Here, too, some experts said there was room for compromise if wealthy powers offer more in aid and emissions cuts. "Ultimately what commitments the United States makes will have a big impact on what we offer," said Zhang, the Peking University professor. "If it can be more ambitious and cooperative before Copenhagen, then so can we."

My answer can be summed up in one word: China. And my fears can be summed up in just a few paragraphs: The 40 years from 1979 to 2019 were an epoch in US-China relations. There were many ups and downs, but all in all it was an epoch of steady economic integration between our two countries. The depth of that US-China integration helped to fuel a much deeper globalisation of the world economy and buttress four decades of relative peace between the world’s two great powers. And always remember, it’s great-power conflicts that give us enormously destabilising world wars. That era of US-China globalisation left some US manufacturing workers unemployed, while opening huge new export markets for others. It lifted out of poverty hundreds of millions of people in China, India and East Asia, while making many products much more affordable to more American consumers. In short, the relative peace and prosperity that the world experienced in those 40 years cannot be explained without reference to the US-China bonding. For the past five years, though, the United States and China have been stumbling down a path of de-integration and maybe toward outright confrontation. In my view, it is China’s increasingly bullying leadership style at home and abroad, its heads-we-win-tails-you-lose trade policies and the changing makeup of its economy that are largely responsible for this reversal. That said, if it continues, there is a good chance that both of our countries — not to mention many others — will look back 20 years from now and say that the world became a more dangerous and less prosperous place because of the breakdown in US-China relations in the early 2020s. These two giants went from doing a lot of business on the table and occasionally kicking each other under the table to doing a lot less business on the table and kicking each other a lot harder under the table — so much harder that they are in danger of breaking the table and leaving each other with a limp. That is, with a world much less able to manage climate change, biodiversity loss, cyberspace and the growing zones of disorder. But before we transition from “co-opetition’’ to confrontation with China, we should ask ourselves some hard questions. China needs to do the same. Because we both may really miss this relationship when it’s gone. For starters we need to ask: What aspects of our competition/conflict with China are inevitable between a rising power and a status quo power, and what can be dampened by smart policy? Let’s start with the inevitable. For roughly the first 30 of the 40 years of economic integration, China sold us what I call “shallow goods’’ — shirts we wore on our backs, tennis shoes we wore on our feet and solar panels we affixed to our roofs. America, in contrast, sold China “deep goods" — software and computers that went deep into its system, which it needed and could buy only from us. Well, today, China can now make more and more of those “deep goods” — like Huawei 5G telecom systems — but we don’t have the shared trust between us to install its deep technologies in our homes, bedrooms and businesses, or even to sell our deepest goods to China, like advanced logic chips, anymore. When China sold us “shallow goods,” we didn’t care whether its government was authoritarian, libertarian or vegetarian. But when it comes to our buying China’s “deep goods,” shared values matter and they are not there. Then there is the leadership strategy of President Xi Jinping, which has been to extend the control of the Communist Party into every pore of Chinese society, culture and commerce. This has reversed a trajectory of gradually opening China to the world since 1979. Couple that with Xi’s determination that China must never again be dependent on America for advanced technologies, and Beijing’s willingness to do whatever it takes — buy, steal, copy, invent or intimidate — to guarantee that, and you have a much more aggressive China. But Xi has overplayed his hand. The level of technology theft and penetration of US institutions has become intolerable — not to mention China’s decision to snuff out democracy in Hong Kong, to wipe out Uygur Muslim culture in western China and to use its economic power and wolf warrior diplomats to intimidate neighbors like Australia from even asking for a proper investigation into the origins of the novel coronavirus in Wuhan. Xi is turning the whole Western world against China — we will see just how much when China hosts the 2022 Winter Olympics — and has prompted this US president and his predecessor to identify countering China as America’s No. 1 strategic objective. But have we really thought through the “how" of how we do this? Nader Mousavizadeh, founder and CEO of Macro Advisory Partners, a geopolitical consulting firm, suggests that if we are now going to shift our focus from the Middle East to an irreversible strategy of confronting China, we should start by asking three foundational questions: First, Mousavizadeh says: “Are we sure we understand the dynamics of an immense and changing society like China well enough to decide that its inevitable mission is the global spread of authoritarianism? Especially when this will require a generational adversarial commitment on the part of the United States, engendering in turn a still more nationalistic China." Second, says Mousavizadeh, who was a longtime senior adviser to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan: If we believe that our network of alliances is “a uniquely American asset, have we listened as much as we’ve talked to our Asian and European allies about the reality of their economic and political relationships with China — ensuring that their interests and values are embedded in a common approach to China? Because without that, any coalition will crumble." There is no question that the best way for America to counterbalance China is by doing the one thing China hates most — confronting it with a broad, transnational coalition, based on shared universal values regarding the rule of law, free trade, human rights and basic accounting standards. When we make the confrontation with China the US president versus China’s president, Xi can easily leverage all the Chinese nationalists on his side. When we make it the world versus China on what are the best and most just international norms, we isolate the hard-liners in Beijing and leverage more Chinese reformers on our side. But China will not respond just to high-minded talk of international norms, even if faced with a global coalition. Such talk has to be backed up with economic and military clout. Many US businesses are pushing now to get the Phase 1 Trump tariffs on China repealed — without asking China to repeal the subsidies that led to these tariffs in the first place. Bad idea. When dealing with China, speak softly but always carry a big tariff (and an aircraft carrier). The third question, Mousavizadeh argued, is if we believe that our priority after a 20-year war on terrorism must now be “repair at home — by addressing yawning deficits in infrastructure, education, incomes and racial equity" — is it more useful or more dangerous to emphasize the China threat? It might light a fire under Americans to get serious about national renewal. But it might also light a fire to the whole US-China relationship, affecting everything from supply chains to student exchanges to Chinese purchases of US government bonds. In any event, this would be my starter checklist before we pivot from the war on terrorism to the war on China. Let’s really think this through. Our grandchildren will thank us in 2041. © 2021 The New York Times Company

The year 2010 saw Musa Ibrahim become the first Bangladeshi to fly the red and green flag at the peak of the Mount Everest. Bangladeshi scientists also took the lead to sequence the jute genome. In the contrary, the fall in Dhaka stocks and fund siphoning allegation against Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus took some gloss off what was an eventful year. The ten most discussed news picked by bdnews24.com read like this: MT EVEREST SCALED May 23. This day may not carry much importance to many millions in the world, but for Bangladeshis, it can easily be marked as one of the most joyous days as the country, along with Musa Ibrahim fulfilled a dream by summiting the Mount Everest. North Alpine Club president Musa studied at Dhaka University and BRAC University. He hails from Lalmonirhat. JUTE GENOME SEQUENCED Prime minister Sheikh Hasina on June 16 disclosed in parliament that Bangladeshi researchers, Dhaka University's biochemistry and biotechnology departments, led by Dr Maqsudul Alam, have successfully done genome sequencing of jute which will contribute to improving jute fibre. The discovery is billed to help 'the golden fibre' regain its lost glory because the researchers say the sequencing will let jute grow amid the hostile weather due to the climate change. YUNUS CONTROVERSY Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus was thrown into controversy over allegations that he had diverted millions of dollars from Grameen Bank fund keeping the Norwegian donors in the dark and then trying to hush up the matter. On Nov 30, the Norwegian state television NRK aired the documentary, 'Caught in Micro Debt', made by Danish investigative journalist Tom Heinemann. The documentary made the fund transfer issue public 12 years after the incident. bdnews24.com was the first to break the story in Bangladesh on Dec 1. Yunus invited the media on Sunday to settle the debate over 'channelled fund'. Grameen Bank, however, said that the issue had been set to rest by the Norwegian government and the bank in 1998. Prime minister Sheikh Hasina and some other ruling party leaders slammed the Grameen Bank chief and ordered investigations. HIJACKED SHIP MV Jahan Moni was the latest in the long list of ships hijacked by Somali pirates in the dying days of the year. The Bangladeshi ship was hijacked in the Arabian Sea on Dec 5 off the Indian coast of Kochin. There are 26 Bangladeshis, including 25 crew, on board of the ship that has been taken to the Somali coast. The government has been urged to negotiate with the Somali pirates by paying ransom. Family members of the captured crew demanded immediate government action to rescue them. Foreign minister Dipu Moni, two weeks ago, told journalists that no state could pay ransom in any case. The owner of the ship said talks with Somali pirates are underway. On the other hand, Somali pirates released a German ship after getting a ransom of $ 5.5 million last week. The ship was captured in May. STALKERS ON THE PROWL Sexual harassment of women started to hit the front pages of newspapers since stalkers ran over Mizanur Rahman, a college teacher of Natore, in October. Mizanur died on Oct 22. Hecklers continued their violence by killing Chanpa Rani Bhowmik for her protest against harassment of her daughters in Faridpur on Oct 26. It was not the end as Rupali Rani of Sirajganj committed suicide after being kidnapped by an eve-teaser on Nov 1. The government, very much concerned over the incidents, and asked by the High Court, amended relevant law to try stalkers in mobile courts which started to operate in early November. STOCKS A sudden meltdown of share prices at the end of the year threw the financial market of the country into a spin. Several records of exchange increased general peoples' interest to invest in the capital market. Investors continued to push up the price of shares until general index at the Dhaka Stock Exchange plummeted in the second week of December and lost over 500 points in a single hour, just two days after it reached all time high. Frustrated, angry and agitated investors took to the street at least twice in the last month as the market showed signs of downturn. On December 8 and 19, protesting investors mashed windows, hurled bricks and bottles on the police as market experienced record fall in a single hour and highest fall in a single day. EDUCATION POLICY The country got a fully fledged education policy for the first time in its history. The National Education Policy was passed in the cabinet on May 31 and in parliament on Dec 7. Several Islamic parties protested the policy alleging that the opportunities of religious education have been reduced in it. The government, denying the allegation, is working on the implementation of the policy. Primary education will be extended to class VIII and Secondary School Certificate exam will be eliminated once the new education policy is implemented. Text books and exam systems will be changed and madrasa education will also be modernised by the policy. ANTHRAX Anthrax panicked people in the middle of the year when at least 500 were affected in several districts. At one stage, the government declared red alert. Cattle testing started on a large scale across the country, including border areas through which foreign cattle enter in. Demand of cattle meat slumped suddenly and the government declared the country anthrax-free early in October. Butchers alleged that poultry traders spread the panic to make windfalls. Livestock state minister Abdul Latif Biswas echoed their voice and said the government will investigate the matter. BIMAN TAILSPIN Operations of the national carrier grounded to halt when pilots called strike on Oct 26. The shutdown, enforced by the younger pilots, was eventually withdrawn after a meeting with prime minister Sheikh Hasina on Oct 29 and the Biman Bangladesh Airlines was saved from flying into the sunset. Biman suspended four pilots including the acting president and general secretary of pilots' association BAPA on Oct 25. BAPA decided on an immediate strike protesting the decision. Within that evening, 53 pilots called in sick. On Oct 20 the 116-member strong BAPA gave a 24-hour ultimatum to Biman to meet their 5-point demand, including the cancellation of the Biman order to increase retirement age of pilots from 57 to 62 years. The pilots also threatened not to carry out any duty beyond their contract with Biman if the demands were not met.

Trump, a Republican, has alleged widespread voter fraud in the Nov 3 election without providing evidence. Although he has not acknowledged Biden’s victory since the former vice president clinched the Electoral College more than two weeks ago, Trump’s announcement on Monday was the closest he has come to admitting defeat. The Trump campaign’s legal efforts to overturn the election have almost entirely failed in key battleground states, and a growing number of Republican leaders, business executives and national security experts have urged the president to let the transition begin. Biden won 306 state-by-state electoral votes - well over the 270 needed for victory - to Trump’s 232. Biden also leads by over 6 million in the national popular vote. He has begun naming members of his team without waiting for government funding or a Trump concession. But Democrats have accused the president of undermining US democracy with his refusal to accept the results. On Monday, the General Services Administration, the federal agency that must sign off on presidential transitions, told Biden he could formally begin the hand-over process. GSA Administrator Emily Murphy said in a letter that Biden would get access to resources that had been denied to him because of the legal challenges seeking to overturn his win. That announcement came shortly after Michigan officials certified Biden as the victor in their state, making Trump’s legal efforts to change the election outcome even more unlikely to succeed. ‘BEST INTEREST OF OUR COUNTRY’ Trump and his advisers said he would continue to pursue legal avenues, but his tweet served as a sign that even the White House understood it was getting close to time to move on. “Our case STRONGLY continues, we will keep up the good ... fight, and I believe we will prevail! Nevertheless, in the best interest of our Country, I am recommending that Emily and her team do what needs to be done with regard to initial protocols, and have told my team to do the same,” Trump said in a tweet. A Trump adviser painted the move as similar to both candidates getting briefed during the campaign, and said the president’s tweet was not a concession. A statement by the Biden transition said meetings would begin with federal officials on Washington’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, along with discussions of national security issues. I want to thank Emily Murphy at GSA for her steadfast dedication and loyalty to our Country. She has been harassed, threatened, and abused – and I do not want to see this happen to her, her family, or employees of GSA. Our case STRONGLY continues, we will keep up the good...— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 23, 2020   I want to thank Emily Murphy at GSA for her steadfast dedication and loyalty to our Country. She has been harassed, threatened, and abused – and I do not want to see this happen to her, her family, or employees of GSA. Our case STRONGLY continues, we will keep up the good... “This is probably the closest thing to a concession that President Trump could issue,” said Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer. The move by the GSA means Biden’s team will now have federal funds and an official office to conduct his transition until he takes office on Jan 20. It also paves the way for Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris to receive regular national security briefings that Trump also gets. Two Trump administration officials told Reuters the Biden agency review teams could begin interacting with Trump agency officials as soon as Tuesday. FOREIGN POLICY TEAM TAKES SHAPE Earlier on Monday, Biden named the top members of his foreign policy team, tapping trusted aide Antony Blinken to head the State Department and John Kerry, a former US senator, secretary of state and 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, to serve as his special climate envoy. Biden, who has said he would undo Trump’s “America First” policies, also named Jake Sullivan as his national security adviser and Linda Thomas-Greenfield as US ambassador to the United Nations - both with high-level government experience. The 78-year-old Democrat is assembling an administration from his home in Delaware as he prepares to lead a country facing its greatest public health crisis in living memory. He is also likely to tap former Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen to become the next Treasury secretary, said two Biden allies, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a personnel decision that was not yet public. Biden took a step toward reversing Trump’s hard-line immigration policies by naming Cuban-born lawyer Alejandro Mayorkas to head the Department of Homeland Security.

As soon as Shell left, however, the oil field underwent a change so significant it was detected from space: a surge in the wasteful burning of excess gas in towering columns of smoke and fire known as flaring, which emits planet-warming greenhouse gases, as well as soot, into the atmosphere. Around the world, many of the largest energy companies are expected to sell off more than $100 billion of oil fields and other polluting assets in an effort to cut their emissions and make progress toward their corporate climate goals. However, they frequently sell to buyers that disclose little about their operations, have made few or no pledges to combat climate change, and are committed to ramping up fossil fuel production. New research to be released Tuesday showed that, of 3,000 oil and gas deals made between 2017 and 2021, more than twice as many involved assets moving from operators with net-zero commitments to those that didn’t, than the reverse. That is raising concerns that the assets will continue to pollute, perhaps even at a greater rate, but away from the public eye. “You can move your assets to another company, and move the emissions off your own books, but that doesn’t equal any positive impact on the planet if it’s done without any safeguards in place,” said Andrew Baxter, who heads the energy transition team at the Environmental Defence Fund, which performed the analysis. Transactions like these expose the messy underside of the global energy transition away from fossil fuels, a shift that is imperative to avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change. For the four years before the Umuechem sale in Nigeria, satellites had spotted no routine flaring from the field, which Shell, together with European energy giants Total and Eni, operated in the Niger Delta. But immediately after those companies sold the field to a private-equity backed firm, Trans-Niger Oil & Gas, an operator with no stated net zero goals, levels of flaring quadrupled, according to data from the VIIRS satellite collected by EDF as part of the analysis. Trans-Niger said last year it intends to triple production at the field. According to the EDF research, top buyers in recent years have included state-owned oil and gas corporations such as Indonesia’s Pertamina, Qatar Energy and China’s CNOOC, as well as Diversified Energy, an Alabama-based company that has amassed tens of thousands of aging oil and gas wells across Appalachia. Other top buyers included a handful of less well-known companies. And in a sign of the difficulty of tracking these transactions, the acquirers in numerous other deals weren’t known. Overall, the study showed that the number of transactions that took fossil-fuel assets from public to private ownership comprised the largest share of deals, exceeding the number of private-to-public transfers by 64%. In response to questions Shell said it looked forward to seeing the full EDF report. The Dutch company has said that divestments “are a key part of our efforts to refresh and upgrade our portfolio” as it seeks to reach net zero emissions, which refers to a pledge to not add more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than the amount it takes out. Eni spokesperson Marilia Cioni referred questions to the local operator, and added that it did not consider asset sales as a tool to reduce emissions. Total and Trans-Niger Oil & Gas didn’t respond to requests for comment Monday. This phenomenon, where the production of emissions that drive climate change are transferred from one company to another, is also hindering the cleanup of fossil fuel infrastructure. In July 2021, oil and gas driller Apache, which had been struggling with its operations in Texas’ vast Permian Basin, sold about 2,100 wells to a little-known Louisiana operating company, Slant Energy, according to state and federal filings analysed by ESG Dynamics, a sustainability data firm. Roughly 40% of those wells were inactive. Before Apache sold the lot, the Houston-based company had been plugging an average of 169 wells a year to prevent them from leaking toxic chemicals into groundwater or from emitting methane, a potent greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere. That pace would have meant Apache could finish plugging the backlog of inactive wells in about nine years. Since Slant took over, it has plugged only two wells, according to the filings. At that pace, it would take 120 years to plug all of the current inactive wells. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that each inactive, unplugged well causes greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to between 17,000 and 50,000 miles driven by an average gasoline-powered passenger vehicle. There are already 1.6 million unplugged wells throughout the United States, according to industry tallies, and an increasing number of them are abandoned. Slant spokesperson Sean P Gill said the numbers from EDF “did not appear to be accurate,” without providing further details. Slant had only recently taken over those wells and “continues to evaluate the economic development of the assets in an environmentally responsible way,” he added. Apache said it wasn’t valid to assume that a company purchasing its wells would have the same schedule for plugging them. The concerns raised by emissions that are transferred to different companies also put a renewed focus on global banking corporations that play a critical role in facilitating coal, oil and gas mergers, acquisitions and other transactions. Climate campaigners calling for divestment from fossil fuels have focused on banks’ direct financing of fossil fuel projects. But the recent examples show their mergers-and-acquisitions business can also have significant climate consequences. Shell, a publicly traded company, said that it discloses emissions from both its operations and the oil and gas that it produces, has corporate targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and has committed to zero flaring across its operations. But when it sells an oil or gas field, those targets and commitments can fall away for that field. The new owners of the Umuechem project have said they will focus instead on rapidly ramping up production, which can strain the oil field’s facilities and require significant flaring. As major oil and gas producers sell more fossil fuel assets, experts and campaigners say, companies and their bankers need to enter into contracts that commit the buyers to similar disclosures and emissions-reduction targets. And in the case of oil and gas wells and other assets nearing the end of their lives, they argue, corporations shouldn’t be allowed to hand off cleanup responsibilities to operators that may not have the resources, or intent, to invest in the cleanup work. Kathy Hipple, finance professor at the Bard MBA in Sustainability and senior research analyst at the Ohio River Valley Institute, said one solution would be for auditors or regulators to start scrutinising every sale, and challenge a transaction if environmental or cleanup obligations aren’t accounted for. She pointed to Diversified, an operator listed in London, that has become the largest owner of oil and gas wells in the United States in recent years by buying up aging wells, which Hipple said uses accounting methods that can potentially push cleanup costs far into the future. For example, Diversified has said that its wells will be productive through 2095, allowing it to delay its cleanup costs for decades. Diversified said that its business model “takes often overlooked or neglected assets, optimises production, improves environmental performance and responsibly retires” them. It said it aimed to achieve net-zero emissions in 2040. © 2022 The New York Times Company

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged the world on Wednesday to agree to work out a new climate treaty by 2009 and said detailed greenhouse gas cuts can be worked out after UN talks in Bali. Entering a dispute pitting the United States against the European Union and some developing nations, Ban said the overriding goal of the Dec. 3-14 meeting was to agree to launch negotiations on a pact to succeed the current Kyoto Protocol. Ban told more than 120 environment ministers that climate change was the "moral challenge of our generation" and said there was a "desperate urgency" to act to curb rising seas, floods, droughts, famines and extinctions of wildlife. "The time to act is now," Ban told the ministers, split over the ground rules for agreeing to launch formal negotiations on a new long-term global treaty to limit greenhouse gas emissions, expanding the 37-nation Kyoto pact to all countries. Washington is leading opposition at talks of any mention of scientific evidence of a need for cuts in greenhouse gases of 25 to 40 percent by 2020 below 1990 levels as part of the guidelines for negotiations. "Practically speaking this will have to be negotiated down the road," Ban said, echoing a view given by Washington. "We have two years' time before we can conclude an international deal on this issue." Still, he also said that countries should respect a finding by the U.N. climate panel that a range of 25-40 percent was needed to avert the worst impacts of climate change. ROADMAP "You need to set an agenda -- a roadmap to a more secure climate future, coupled with a tight timeline that produces a deal by 2009," he said. The United Nations wants a new pact adopted at a meeting in Copenhagen in late 2009. The United States, supported by Japan, Canada and Australia, says that even a non-binding mention of a 25-to-40 percent range could prejudge the outcome of negotiations. "We don't want to be pre-determining what will come out of this process," said Paula Dobriansky, US Under Secretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs. But the European Union insisted that rich nations needed to show they were leading by example to convince developing nations, such as China and India, to start braking the rise of their surging emissions from burning fossil fuels. "I don't need a paper from Bali that says we will just meet again next year," German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel said. "If you want to go a long way you need to know the starting point and where you want to go." Ban called on all nations, including the United States, to show flexibility. He also said the threat of global warming had a "silver lining" because creative solutions could create jobs and ease poverty in developing nations from Africa to Asia. Earlier, Australia's new Prime Minister Kevin Rudd handed formal papers to Ban ratifying the Kyoto Protocol, isolating the United States as the only rich nation without binding caps on greenhouse gas emissions under the U.N. deal stretching to 2012. Rudd, whose Labor Party won a landslide election victory last month, said Australia was already suffering from climate change -- ranging from a drying up of rivers to disruptions to corals of the Great Barrier Reef. "What we see today is a portent of things to come," he said. The talks are set to wrap-up by Friday or early Saturday and traditionally annual U.N. climate meetings feature hard-bargaining and all-night sessions. The United Nations wants a deal in place by the end of 2009 to give parliaments three years to ratify and help guide billions of dollars of investments in everything from solar panels and wind turbines to coal-fired power plants. It took eight years for enough countries to ratify Kyoto for it to come into force in 2005, a process that was slowed in 2001 by Washington's decision not to sign up. A failure of Bali to agree to start talks would sour chances of a successor to Kyoto. Apart from Australia, 36 Kyoto nations have promised to cut emissions by an average of 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12. The United States argues Kyoto would hurt its economy and wrongly excludes 2008-12 targets for big developing nations.

President George W Bush said on Tuesday he planned no new action to impose caps on greenhouse gases blamed for global warming despite the Supreme Court ruling that the Environmental Protection Agency must regulate US emissions. Instead, Bush pointed to his proposal to require cars to burn more gasoline made from home-grown sources like ethanol, and repeated his long-held stance that US action is meaningless without changes by China and India. "My attitude is that we have laid out a plan that will affect greenhouse gases that come from automobiles by having a mandatory fuel standard," Bush said. "In other words, there is a remedy available for Congress. And I strongly hope that they pass this remedy quickly." Bush spoke after the highest US court ruled on Monday that the Environmental Protection Agency must reconsider its 2003 refusal to regulate carbon-dioxide emissions from new cars and trucks that contribute to climate change. Bush said the 5-4 decision, with both of the president's conservative nominees voting in opposition, was "the new law of the land." The ruling could have its greatest effect in the US Congress, which is considering legislation that would impose first-ever caps on US carbon dioxide emissions. Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wants to halve US emissions by 2050. The United States is the world's biggest greenhouse gas emitter and cars and trucks comprise about a quarter of the total. Bush said Congress already has a solution to global warming -- his proposal to require a five-fold increase in clean-burning fuel use by 2017, which also would reduce automobiles' carbon dioxide emissions. Bush has adamantly opposed mandatory caps -- warning they would cripple US industry's ability to compete with companies like India and China, which have relied heavily on cheap, dirty coal supplies to power their factories. "Unless there is an accord with China, China will produce greenhouse gases that will offset anything we do in a brief period of time," Bush said. Bush reiterated that global warming is a "serious problem," an admission he made in his annual address to Congress in January. But Bush said for the United States to get a "good deal," it needs to work with developing nations to drive emission-reduction technology.

Rich nations' greenhouse gas emissions rose near to an all-time high in 2005, led by US and Russian gains despite curbs meant to slow global warming, UN data showed. Total emissions by 40 leading industrial nations edged up to 18.2 billion tonnes in 2005 from 18.1 billion in 2004 and were just 2.8 percent below a record 18.7 billion in 1990, according to the UN Climate Change Secretariat in Bonn. The 2005 rise confirmed an upwards trend in recent years despite efforts at cuts by many governments worried that climate change, widely blamed on fossil fuel use, will spur ever more floods, droughts, heatwaves and rising seas. "Since 2000, greenhouse gas emissions...increased by 2.6 percent," the Secretariat said. Emissions by the United States, long the world's top emitter but with China drawing neck and neck, rose to 7.24 billion tonnes in 2005 from 7.19 billion in 2004, according to the first UN compilation of national data for 2005. Washington has since issued a preliminary estimate that emissions of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, fell by 1.3 percent in 2006 from 2005 despite robust economic growth. Revived economic growth in former East bloc nations was a main spur to the overall rise in emissions. Russian emissions rose to 2.l3 billion tonnes in 2005 from 2.09 billion in 2004. Russia's emissions were still far below 3.00 billion in 1990, just before the collapse of the Soviet Union shut smokestack industries across the former communist bloc. Among other major emitters, greenhouse gases fell in the European Union and Canada in 2005 from 2004 but were fractionally higher in Japan. EAST BLOC Overall emissions by former East bloc states rose to 3.6 billion tonnes in 2005, up from 3.4 billion in 2000 but down from 5.6 billion in 1990. Emissions by Western democracies totaled 14.6 billion in 2005, up from 13.1 billion in 1990. Industrial nations -- except the United States and Australia -- have signed up for the UN's Kyoto Protocol which obliges an average emissions' cut of at least 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12. President Bush decided against implementing Kyoto in 2001, saying that it would damage US economic growth and wrongly excluded targets for developing nations such as China and India in a first period lasting to 2012. Bush this year agreed for a need for "substantial cuts" in emissions in the long term. The world's environment ministers will meet in Bali, Indonesia, in December to start trying to work out a broader successor for Kyoto from 2013. Among countries covered by the UN data, Latvia had the largest decrease in emissions from 1990 to 2005, of 59 percent, while Turkey's emissions surged by 74 percent. Overall emissions from the energy sector rose by 0.5 percent from 1990 to 2005 but there were declines in other major areas -- industrial processes, agriculture and waste. Transport had the biggest rise in the energy sector.

China is willing to make its voluntary carbon emissions target part of a binding UN resolution, a concession which may pressure developed countries to extend the Kyoto Protocol, a senior negotiator told Reuters. UN climate talks in Mexico's Cancun beach resort hinge on agreement to cement national emissions targets after 2012 when the current round of Kyoto carbon caps end. China's compromise would depend on the United States agreeing to binding emissions cuts and an extension of Kyoto, which binds the emissions of nearly 40 developed countries, except the United States which didn't ratify it. Developing nations want to continue the protocol while industrialized backers including Japan, Russia and Canada want a separate agreement regulating all nations. China has previously rejected making its domestic emissions goals binding, as they are for industrialized nations now. "We can create a resolution and that resolution can be binding on China," said Huang Huikang, the Chinese Foreign Ministry's envoy for climate change talks. "Under the (UN Climate) Convention, we can even have a legally binding decision. We can discuss the specific form. We can make our efforts a part of international efforts." "Our view is that to address these concerns, there's no need to overturn the Kyoto Protocol and start all over again." The proposal was a "gamechanger," said Jennifer Morgan at the Washington-based World Resources Institute. "This is a very constructive and useful statement by China and points to a way forward for an agreement in Cancun." "The devil is in the details but this is a promising development," said Alden Meyer from the US-based Union of Concerned Scientists. At a briefing later, China's chief negotiator Xie Zhenhua said that China's targets could be brought under the Convention. "Developing countries can voluntarily use their own national resources to make their own voluntary emissions commitments, and these commitments should be under the Convention." "COMPROMISE" Huang said China would not shift from demanding that new emissions targets are contained within an extended Kyoto. Beijing has long insisted that its efforts were binding only domestically and could not be brought into any international deal. "In the past, China may have said that there'd be no linking and we will act voluntarily without attaching any conditions, but now after all this is an international effort and can be fully part of that. This is a kind of compromise," he said. "We're willing to compromise, we're willing to play a positive and constructive role, but on this issue (Kyoto) there's no room for compromise." Developing nations, including the world's top carbon emitter China, agreed at a summit in Copenhagen last year to take voluntary steps to curb the growth of their emissions. China's pledge was to reduce its "carbon intensity" -- the amount of the main greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide (CO2), emitted for each dollar of economic growth. It plans to reduce this by 40-45 percent by 2020 compared to 2005. Huang said that intensity target could be reflected in a resolution.

The report was issued Monday ahead of the annual World Economic Forum meeting in Davos.Oxfam is an international confederation of 17 organisations working in approximately 94 countries world wide to find solutions to poverty and what it considers as injustice around the world. It was founded in 1942 in Britain.The international agency, whose executive director Winnie Byanyima will co-chair the Davos event, warned that the explosion in inequality is holding back the fight against global poverty at a time when one in nine people do not have enough to eat and more than a billion people still live on less than $1.25 a day.Top political and business leaders from around the world take part in the annual Davos summit.Byanyima will call for urgent action to stem this rising tide of inequality, starting with a crackdown on tax dodging by corporations, and to push for progress towards a global deal on climate change.The richest one percent have seen their share of global wealth increase from 44 percent in 2009 to 48 percent in 2014 and this rate will be more than 50 percent in 2016, said the report.Members of this global elite had an average wealth of $2.7 million per adult in 2014.Of the remaining 52 percent of global wealth, almost all (46 percent) is owned by the rest of the richest fifth of the world's population. The other 80 percent share just 5.5 percent and had an average wealth of $3,851 per adult - that's 1/700th of the average wealth of the 1 percent."The scale of global inequality is quite simply staggering and despite the issues shooting up the global agenda, the gap between the richest and the rest is widening fast," said Byanyima."Business as usual for the elite isn't a cost free option - failure to tackle inequality will set the fight against poverty back decades. The poor are hurt twice by rising inequality - they get a smaller share of the economic pie and because extreme inequality hurts growth, there is less pie to be shared around."Oxfam made headlines at Davos last year with the revelation that the 85 richest people on the planet have the same wealth as the poorest 50 percent (3.5 billion people). That figure is now 80 - a dramatic fall from 388 people in 2010. The wealth of the richest 80 doubled in cash terms between 2009-14.

Trump, at a White House news conference, said the WHO had "failed in its basic duty and it must be held accountable." He said the group had promoted China's "disinformation" about the virus that likely led to a wider outbreak of the virus than otherwise would have occurred. The United States is the biggest overall donor to the Geneva-based WHO, contributing more than $400 million in 2019, roughly 15% of its budget. The hold on funding was expected. Trump has been increasingly critical of the organisation as the global health crisis has continued, and he has reacted angrily to criticism of his administration's response. The decision drew immediate condemnation. American Medical Association President Dr Patrice Harris called it "a dangerous step in the wrong direction that will not make defeating COVID-19 easier" and urged Trump to reconsider. Democratic Representative Nita Lowey, who heads the US House of Representatives Committee that sets government spending, said Trump was making a mistake. "The coronavirus cannot just be defeated here in the United States, it has to be defeated in every conceivable location throughout the world," she said in a statement. The Republican president recently accused the WHO of being too lenient with China in the earliest days of the crisis, despite having himself praised China in January for its response and transparency. Trump has made frequent use of scapegoats during his short political career. He often lashes out at the media, Democrats, or other when he feels attacked or under pressure. Trump said the WHO failed to investigate credible reports from sources in China's Wuhan province that conflicted with Beijing's accounts about the coronavirus' spread and "parroted and publicly endorsed" the idea that human to human transmission was not happening. "Had the WHO done its job to get medical experts into China to objectively assess the situation on the ground and to call out China's lack of transparency, the outbreak could have been contained ... with very little death," Trump said. Trump said the US review of the WHO was likely to take 60-90 days. ILLNESS, DEATH AND ECONOMIC CHAOS The US death toll from COVID-19, the highly contagious respiratory illness caused by the virus, topped 25,700 on Tuesday, out of more than 600,000 known US infections, according to a running Reuters tally. Millions of Americans have lost their jobs, and the US economy has been crippled as citizens have stayed home and businesses closed, casting a shadow over Trump's hopes of being re-elected in November. The World Health Organisation is a UN specialised agency - an independent international body that works with the United Nations. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Tuesday it was "not the time" to reduce resources for the World Health Organisation. "Now is the time for unity and for the international community to work together in solidarity to stop this virus and its shattering consequences," he said. Dr Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security, said the WHO does make mistakes and may need reform, but that work needs to take place after the current crisis has passed. "It's not the middle of a pandemic that you do this type of thing," he said. Adalja said the WHO collects information about where the virus is active in every county in the world, which the United States needs to help guide decisions about when to open borders. The WHO has been appealing for more than $1 billion to fund operations against the pandemic. The agency needs more resources than ever as it leads the global response against the disease. Trump said Washington would discuss with global health partners what it will do with the millions of dollars that would normally go to the WHO and said the United States would continue to engage with the organisation. Trump has long questioned the value of the United Nations and scorned the importance of multilateralism as he focuses on an "America First" agenda. Since taking office, Trump has quit the UN Human Rights Council, the UN cultural agency UNESCO, a global accord to tackle climate change and the Iran nuclear deal. Under the WHO's 2018-19 biennium budget, the United States was required to pay $237 million - known as an assessed contribution, which is appropriated by Congress - and also made some $656 million in voluntary contributions that were tied to specific programmes. Voluntary US funding for the WHO has been used to address such health issues as polio eradication, vaccines, combat HIV, hepatitis and tuberculosis and the health of women, newborns and children.

The government said on Thursday it would cut the tax relief on pension savings for around 100,000 higher earners, in a move designed to raise 4 billion pounds a year and help reduce a record budget deficit. The move follows the scrapping of child benefits for higher earners last week and may provide political cover for the coalition government to say its cuts are fair when Chancellor George Osborne presents his spending review on Oct 20. The government also said on Thursday that it would abolish, merge or reform 481 semi-independent agencies, proposals likely to cost thousands of jobs. This follows reports on tackling government waste and charging higher university fees this week, all of which help set the scene for the government to cut most departmental budgets by a quarter or more. In view of the tough economic climate, even the queen is making cutbacks. A spokeswoman said on Thursday that the Queen has cancelled a planned Christmas party at Buckingham Palace given the difficult circumstances facing the country. The Treasury said in a statement on its website that it would cut the annual allowance for tax-privileged pension savings to 50,000 pounds from 255,000 pounds starting in April 2011. It said this would affect 100,000 people, 80 percent of whom earn more than 100,000 pounds. It will also cut the lifetime allowance to 1.5 million pounds from 1.8 million pounds from April 2012, raising in total 4 billion pounds a year. The pensions reforms may well infuriate many higher earners, who make up the traditional support base of Osborne's Conservative Party, the senior partners in the coalition government that took office in May. Many newspapers have already gone to war with the government over its plans to scrap child benefit for anyone earning over 44,000 pounds. Treasury officials insist that the moves are fair and unavoidable, and that this will become apparent when people see what is coming on Oct 20. Osborne is expected to take an axe to the welfare bill. Business groups welcomed the changes to the legislation, saying they could have been much worse. "Today's announcement is not as bad as feared. The government had considered making the annual allowance as low as 30,000 pounds," said John Cridland, CBI Deputy Director-General. But the opposition Labour Party said the moves would hit some families on modest incomes. "Under our plans, no-one earning under 130,000 pounds would lose out," said David Hanson, a Labour treasury spokesman. "Now everyone's at risk because the government is taxing on the basis of people's wish to save for a pension, rather than because they are high earners."

Former British prime minister Tony Blair urged the world's top greenhouse gas emitters on Saturday to launch a revolution to fight climate change and said he'll work to sell a new global framework to slash carbon emissions. Blair told a gathering of G20 nations, ranging from top carbon emitter the United States to Indonesia and South Africa, that the call to action was clear and urgent and believed part of the solution was a renaissance for nuclear power. "We have reached the critical moment of decision on climate change. There are few, if any, genuine doubters left, Blair told G20 energy and environment ministers in Chiba, near Toyko. "If the average person in the United States is say, to emit per capita, one tenth of what they do today and those in Britain or Japan one fifth, we're not talking of adjustment, we're talking about a revolution," he told delegates. The average American emits the equivalent of about 24 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year. In China the figure is about four tonnes. The talks in Chiba are billed as a dialogue, not a negotiation, and ministers are meeting to discuss ways to curb carbon emissions, technology transfer, funding schemes for developing nations to pay for clean energy as well as adaptation. Ministers at the talks were being ferried around in fuel-cell powered cars, and supporting staff were served traditional "bento" lunches with reusable boxes and chopsticks, instead of the more common throw-away versions. Blair, as prime minister, had pushed for climate change to become a central issue at the G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, in 2005. But he met resistance from President George W. Bush as well as China and India on any moves to try to agree emissions reductions targets. At last year's G8 summit in Germany, leaders issued a statement calling for strong and early action and said a global reduction goal must be agreed. But the statement stopped short of supporting a 50 percent reduction in emissions by 2050 that Japan and the EU backed. INITIATIVE Blair said a global deal that brought rich and poor nations together in the fight against climate change was vital. He also said U.N.-led talks launched in Bali last December were the right forum to work on a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol by the end of 2009 that binds all nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions. But he said a new initiative was needed to inform and advise the U.N.-led talks and that he would lead the work politically. He said the Climate Group, a non-profit body backed by industry and government, would assemble a group of experts to try to sketch out what a global deal would look like. "We will publish a report in June before Japan's G8 summit and then carry on the work so that we can feed a final report into the G8 and U.N. negotiations next year," he said. "There are, of course, plenty of solutions out there. But if they don't fly politically, they are of no earthly use," he added. He said the report would focus on the effectiveness of carbon cap-and-trade systems, global sectoral deals in polluting industries, generation of funds for research and development, technology transfer and deforestation, among other issues. "Personally, I see no way of tackling climate change without a renaissance of nuclear power. There will have to be a completely different attitude to the sharing of technology and to the patent framework that allows it," he added.

The payments, which started in July and amounted to hundreds of dollars a month for most families, have helped millions of American families pay for food, rent and child care; kept millions of children out of poverty; and injected billions of dollars into the US economy, according to government data and independent research. Now, the benefit — an expansion of the existing child tax credit — is ending, just as the latest wave of coronavirus cases is keeping people home from work and threatening to set off a new round of furloughs. Economists warn that the one-two punch of expiring aid and rising cases could put a chill on the once red-hot economic recovery and cause severe hardship for millions of families already living close to the poverty line. “It’s going to be hard next month, and just thinking about it, it really makes me want to bite my nails to the quick,” said Anna Lara, a mother of two young children in Huntington, West Virginia. “Honestly, it’s going to be scary. It’s going to be hard going back to not having it.” Lara, 32, lost her job in the pandemic, and with the cost of child care rising, she has not been able to return to work. Her partner kept his job, but the child benefit helped the couple make ends meet at a time of reduced income and rising prices. “Your children watch you, and if you worry, they catch on to that,” she said. “With that extra cushion, we didn’t have to worry all the time.” The end of the extra assistance for parents is the latest in a long line of benefits “cliffs” that Americans have encountered as pandemic aid programs have expired. The Paycheck Protection Program, which supported hundreds of thousands of small businesses, ended in March. Expanded unemployment benefits ended in September and earlier in some states. The federal eviction moratorium expired over the summer. The last round of stimulus payments landed in Americans’ bank accounts in the spring. Relative to those programs, the rollback in the child tax credit is small. The Treasury Department paid out about $80 billion over six months in the form of checks and direct deposits of up to $300 per child each month. That is far less than the more than $240 billion in stimulus payments issued on a single day last March. Unlike most other programs created in response to the pandemic, the child benefit was never intended to be temporary, at least according to many of its backers. Congress approved it for a single year as part of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, but many progressives hoped that the payments, once started, would prove too popular to stop. That didn’t happen. Polls found the public roughly divided over whether the program should be extended, with opinions splitting along partisan and generational lines. And the expanded tax credit failed to win over the individual whose opinion mattered most: Sen Joe Manchin, who cited concerns over the cost and structure of the program in his decision to oppose President Joe Biden’s climate, tax and social policy bill. The bill, known as the Build Back Better Act, cannot proceed in the evenly divided Senate without Manchin’s support. To supporters of the child benefit, the failure to extend it is especially frustrating because, according to most analyses, the program itself has been a remarkable success. Researchers at Columbia University estimate that the payments kept 3.8 million children out of poverty in November, a nearly 30% reduction in the child poverty rate. Other studies have found that the benefit reduced hunger, lowered financial stress among recipients and increased overall consumer spending, especially in rural states that received the most money per capita. Congress in the spring expanded the existing child tax credit in three ways. First, it made the benefit more generous, providing as much as $3,600 per child, up from $2,000. Second, it began paying the credit in monthly installments, usually deposited directly into recipients’ bank accounts, turning the once-yearly windfall into something closer to the children’s allowances common in Europe. Finally, the bill made the full benefit available to millions who had previously been unable to take full advantage of the credit because they earned too little to qualify. Poverty experts say that change, known in tax jargon as “full refundability,” was particularly significant because without it, one-third of children — including half of all Black and Hispanic children, and 70% of children being raised by single mothers — did not receive the full credit. Biden’s plan would have made that provision permanent. “What we’ve seen with the child tax credit is a policy success story that was unfolding, but it’s a success story that we risk stopping in its tracks just as it was getting started,” said Megan Curran, director of policy at Columbia’s Center on Poverty and Social Policy. “The weight of the evidence is clear here in terms of what the policy is doing. It’s reducing child poverty and food insufficiency.” But the expanded tax credit doesn’t just go to the poor. Couples earning as much as $150,000 a year could receive the full $3,600 benefit — $3,000 for children 6 and older — and even wealthier families qualify for the original $2,000 credit. Critics of the policy, including Manchin, have argued that it makes little sense to provide aid to relatively well-off families. Many supporters of the credit say they’d happily limit its availability to wealthier households in return for maintaining it for poorer ones. Manchin has also publicly questioned the wisdom of unconditional cash payments and has privately voiced concerns that recipients could spend the money on opioids, comments that were first reported by The Wall Street Journal and confirmed by a person familiar with the discussion. But a survey conducted by the Census Bureau found that most recipients used the money to buy food, clothing or other necessities, and many saved some of the money or paid down debt. Other surveys have found similar results. For one of Manchin’s constituents, Lara, the first monthly check last year arrived at an opportune moment. Her dishwasher had broken days earlier, and the $550 a month that she and her family received from the federal government meant they could replace it. Lara, who has a 6-year-old daughter and a 3-year-old son and whose partner earns about $40,000 a year, said the family had long lived “right on the edge of need” — not poor but never able to save enough to withstand more than a modest setback. The monthly child benefit, she said, let them step a bit further back from the edge. It allowed her to get new shoes and a new car seat for her daughter, stock up on laundry detergent when she found it on sale and fix the brakes on her car. “None of the dash lights are on, which is amazing,” she said. Some researchers have questioned the policy’s effectiveness, particularly over the long term. Bruce D Meyer, an economist at the University of Chicago who studies poverty, said that whatever the merits of direct cash payments at the height of the pandemic-induced disruptions, a permanent policy of providing unconditional cash to parents could have unintended consequences. He and several co-authors recently published a working paper finding that the child benefit could discourage people from working, in part because it eliminated the work incentives built into the previous version of the tax credit. “Early on, we just wanted to get cash in people’s hands — we were worried about a recession; we were worried about people being able to pay for their groceries,” Meyer said. Now, he said, “we certainly should be more focused on the longer-term effects, which include likely larger effects on labour supply.” Analyses of the data since the new child benefit took effect, however, have found no evidence that it has done much to discourage people from working, and some researchers say it could actually lead more people to work by making it easier for parents of young children to afford child care. “There’s every reason to believe that in the current labour market, the child tax credit is work-enabling, and no evidence to the contrary has been presented,” said Samuel Hammond, director of poverty and welfare policy at the Niskanen Center, a research organisation in Washington. Hammond said the child benefit should also have broader economic benefits. In a report last summer, he estimated that the expansion would increase consumer spending by $27 billion nationally and create the equivalent of 500,000 full-time jobs. The biggest effect, on a percentage basis, would come in rural, mostly Republican-voting states where families are larger and incomes are lower, on average. Some Republican critics of the expanded child tax credit, including Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri, have argued that it has essentially done too much to increase spending — that by giving people more money to spend when the supply chain is already strained, the government is contributing to faster inflation. But many economists are sceptical that the tax credit has played much of a role in causing high inflation, in part because it is small compared with both the economy and the earlier rounds of aid distributed during the pandemic. “That’s a noninflationary programme,” said Joe Brusuelas, chief economist at accounting firm RSM. “That’s dedicated toward necessities, not luxuries.” For those receiving the benefit, inflation is an argument for maintaining it. Lara said she had noticed prices going up for groceries, utilities and especially gas, stretching her budget even thinner. “Right now, both of my vehicles need gas, and I can’t put gas in the car,” she said. “But it’s OK, because I’ve got groceries in the house, and the kids can play outside.” © 2022 The New York Times Company

The killing of Benazir Bhutto sends the United States back to square one in its search for a Pakistan that is a stable, democratic partner in a fight against Islamic extremism, analysts said on Thursday. Possible consequences of the assassination range from widespread street rioting by her followers to the nightmare scenario for Washington of Pakistan eventually becoming a nuclear-armed, unstable Islamic state. Financial investors, who already factor in Pakistan's considerable political risk, said the killing itself was not surprising but that continuing instability would boost the risk. Stephen Cohen of the Brookings Institution called Bhutto's death a "blow to the idea of a liberal, moderate Pakistan" that made him fear for that country. "Its further decay will affect all of its neighbors, Europe, and the United States in unpredictable and unpleasant ways," the South Asia expert wrote in an essay. "It is probably too late for the United States to do much either: we placed all of our bets on (President Pervez) Musharraf, ignoring Benazir's pleas for some contact or recognition until a few months ago," Cohen added. The United States invested great energy and political capital to secure the return of the 54-year-old exiled former prime minister to Pakistan in October. It convinced Musharraf to give up his role as military leader and accept elections and a power-sharing arrangement with her. Now, Washington faces "a disaster on every account," from dimmed hopes of a democratic transition to the risk of more attacks by emboldened radicals, said Frederic Grare, a South Asia expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "The leaders of the mainstream parties are being assassinated. That weakens the parties and does not augur well for any reestablishment of democracy in Pakistan," he said. STREET VIOLENCE, NUCLEAR SAFETY U.S. President George W. Bush urged Pakistanis to honor Bhutto "by continuing with the democratic process for which she so bravely gave her life." Other U.S. officials said Washington hoped Islamabad would stick to plans to hold elections, slated for Jan. 8. Anthony Cordesman, security analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Bhutto's death made a very unstable political situation much worse. "There's no figure that we can work with who has the same immediate ability to try to create political stability and a climate in which you can have legitimate elections, bring back the rule of law and bridge the gap that had developed between Musharraf and the Pakistani people," he said. Analysts warned that in a country prone to conspiracy theories and passionate politics, fingers would point in all directions over the assassination amid grief and anger that could spill into violence. "The number one concern right now is to maintain calm in the streets of Pakistan," said Lisa Curtis of the Heritage Foundation. She said it would be unwise for Musharraf to impose emergency rule to accomplish that aim. Other analysts questioned the wisdom of relying on Musharraf to fight terrorism. "If he can't protect a leading politician in a fairly secure garrison city, how can he tackle the problems in the remote tribal areas, where al-Qaeda and the Taliban are reportedly thriving?" asked Win Thin, senior currency strategist at Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. A perennial question during crises in Pakistan is the security of the country's nuclear arsenal. US officials said there was no change in an assessment offered last month, amid strife over Musharraf's imposition of emergency rule, that the weapons were secure. Cordesman of CSIS said Islamabad had received US help and studied other country's policies to ensure maximum safety for its nuclear facilities. "But is there transparency that allows anybody on the outside to make some kind of categorical statement about the security of Pakistan's nuclear weapons? Anybody who did that may discredit themselves," he said.

Heatwaves and droughts will pose the greatest threat in the next decade, as temperatures continue to rise due to heat-trapping gases, experts said. China (577) and the United States (467) recorded the highest number of disaster events from 2000 to 2019, followed by India (321), the Philippines (304) and Indonesia (278), the UN said in a report issued the day before the International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction. Eight of the top 10 countries are in Asia. Some 7,348 major disaster events were recorded globally, claiming 1.23 million lives, affecting 4.2 billion people and causing $2.97 trillion in economic losses during the two-decade period. Drought, floods, earthquakes, tsunamis, wildfires and extreme temperature events caused major damage. "The good news is that more lives have been saved but the bad news is that more people are being affected by the expanding climate emergency," Mami Mizutori, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Disaster Risk Reduction, told a news briefing. She called for governments to invest in early warning systems and implement disaster risk reduction strategies. Debarati Guha-Sapir of the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters at the University of Louvain, Belgium, which provided data for the report, said: "If this level of growth in extreme weather events continues over the next twenty years, the future of mankind looks very bleak indeed. "Heatwaves are going to be our biggest challenge in the next 10 years, especially in the poor countries," she said. Last month was the world's hottest September on record, with unusually high temperatures recorded off Siberia, in the Middle East, and in parts of South America and Australia, the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service said. Global temperatures will continue to warm over the next five years, and may even temporarily rise to more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said in July. Scientists have set 1.5C (2.7 Fahrenheit) as the ceiling for avoiding catastrophic climate change.

Hundreds of thousands of native Australian animals such as koalas and kangaroos have been killed in bushfires that have burnt across southeast Australia in the past two weeks, wildlife officials said on Monday. The bushfires, which are still burning in three eastern states, have been so big and intense that wildlife officials fear some species may become extinct as the fires destroy large swathes of animal habitats. "The fires are so devastating and moving so quickly that animals just don't have a chance to get out of the way," said Pat O'Brien, president of the Wildlife Protection Association. "Because of the heat and the fireballs that are happening the animals are just bursting into flames and just being killed even before the fire gets to them because its so hot," O'Brien told Reuters on Monday. Koalas and possums, which instinctively climb to the treetops for safety, would have had no chance of escaping the blazes, and kangaroos and bush birds would have been unable to outrun the fast-burning fires, he said. This meant a very real threat of seeing species unique to the burnt-out areas, such as frogs and birds, becoming extinct, O'Brien said. "These fires will directly contribute to the extinction of a number of species and we won't know the full effects for another 10 years," he said. "It takes 100 years for some animals to move back in an area, if there's any available to move back in. In the case of gliders, which are rare and endangered anyway, they may never come back ... they'll just go into extinction." Fires in Victoria, Tasmania and New South Wales states have burnt more than 847,000 hectares (2 million acres). The worst fires are in Victoria where more than 4,000 firefighters are battling four large blazes which have blackened 750,000 hectares. Police say more than 30 homes have so far been razed. Firefighters said on Monday cooler conditions had eased the bushfire threat in the three eastern states but fires were still burning out of control. In Western Australia, a fire which has already destroyed 12,000 hectares is blazing unchecked. Wildlife officials said a major factor in the high animal death toll was the predominance of eucalyptus trees in burning bushland. The oil in the trees explodes into flames. "As soon as they get hot the eucalypt oil catches on fire and then it just goes like a steam train," said Hugh Wirth, president of Victoria's Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA). "If you've got a crown fire, in other words the fire is going through the treetops ... those fires move extremely rapidly and the animals just can't outrun them, not even kangaroos." Wirth said he believed close to 100 percent of the animals in the path of the Victorian blazes had been destroyed, with wildlife rescuers reporting no survivors. "Surviving wildlife usually comes out of hiding within three to four days of a fire going through the area and unfortunately we're not getting any reports of any survivors so far," he said. Wildlife officials fear the animal death toll will rise even further as those animals which survive the fires may now starve to death in the charred landscape. "Even if they do survive the fires there's starvation issues beyond that. It's just another nail in the coffin of the species which may have survived otherwise," said O'Brien. Australia faces extreme fire danger this summer due to a drought. Bushfires are a regular feature of the summer and, over the past 40 years, they have killed more than 250 people. Scientists fear climate change will bring more frequent higher temperatures and less rainfall.

Unhappy Conservatives say Erin O'Toole pulled the right-leaning party too far into the political center during the campaign for the Sept. 20 election, in particular by backing a carbon tax to fight climate change. Others feel he was too slow to show enthusiasm for a truckers' anti-government protest that is snarling Ottawa, say two senior former Conservative officials. O'Toole said the move into the political center was necessary to draw moderate voters away from Trudeau's left-leaning Liberals. The gambit failed, leading to a third consecutive Conservative election loss. "I'm not going anywhere and I'm not turning back. Canada needs us to be united and serious!" O'Toole tweeted late on Monday. "It's time for a reckoning. To settle this in caucus. Right here. Right now." Some 35 legislators have signed a letter calling for an early leadership review and the 119 Conservative members of parliament could vote on O'Toole's fate as early as Wednesday. Jonathan Malloy, a political science professor at Carleton University in Ottawa, said "it looks very bad" for O'Toole, since even if he survived, the result would be close, thereby undermining his authority. "It may not be a quick death, but it does look like a fatal wound," he said by phone. Party officials did not respond to requests for more details of how and when a vote might be held. A simple majority would be enough to immediately oust O'Toole. Dissident Conservative lawmaker Garnett Genuis said it was "very sad to see Erin O'Toole launching more false personal attacks" and called on him to quit. The party is dominated by legislators from western Canada, where conservatism tends to be more populist than elsewhere. The challenge is that most seats in the House of Commons are further east, in more heavily populated Ontario and Quebec. The Ottawa protest since Saturday, ostensibly against COVID-19 vaccine mandates for truck drivers, has turned into a more populist anti-government gathering. If O'Toole loses, a potential replacement is Ontario premier Doug Ford, who told reporters he had no plans to enter the party leadership race. Another likely candidate is Conservative finance spokesman Pierre Poilievre, who was much stronger initially than O'Toole in his support of the truckers. One former senior official said O'Toole's stance "probably pushed people over the edge," adding that discontent had been building up in January. O'Toole, 49, was elected leader in August 2020 with the support of only seven sitting legislators. One of those parliamentarians, Bob Benzen, said "there have been numerous instances of flip-flops and questionable judgments" by O'Toole and called for a vote to avoid what he called irreparable damage. If the ructions become too deep, the party - created in 2003 by a merger of the moderate Progressive Conservatives and the more populist Canadian Alliance - could split in two.

The temperature, recorded Wednesday by the Sicilian Meteorological Information Service for Agriculture, still needs to be verified by the World Meteorological Organization. If confirmed, it would top the previous record of 48 degrees set in Athens in July 1977, experts said. “Sicily is surely experiencing high temperatures,” said Lieutenant Colonel Guido Guidi of Italy’s Aeronautical Meteorological Service. But he cautioned that official records take time to verify. Guidi said that data recorded by stations across the region needed to be analyzed and validated. Even a minor malfunction, he said, can throw off the results. But Sicilians, long accustomed to the summer heat, don’t need an official record to tell them that this hot season has been particularly oppressive. “We are used to torrid summers, but I have no memory of such an unbearable heat,” Francesco Italia, the mayor of Syracuse, said in a phone interview. “It is so humid that you just can’t be outside after a certain hour.” Italia said that residents were experiencing electrical shortages because of the large number of air conditioners working day and night. The local Civil Protection Agency was patrolling the territory to help older residents and was on high alert for blazes that could escalate into the wildfires that ravage the vast, arid region every summer. “As Sicilians, historically troubled by water shortages, we need to rethink many things for the next generation,” he said. Italian firefighters said Thursday that half of the fires active in the country in the previous 12 hours were in Sicily, where a large area of a natural reserve in the northern mountains was burning, killing animals and destroying farms and homes. On Wednesday, a young farmer died in a road accident near Catania, in eastern Sicily, as he was transporting a water tank to extinguish a fire. “In recent years we have observed more frequent and more intense heat waves in Italy,” Antonello Pasini, a climate change physicist at Italy’s National Council for Research, said in a phone interview. “Like one anticyclone from Morocco that caused very high temperatures in Sicily but also in cities like Bari and Rome.” Pasini said that, in the Mediterranean basin, summers used to be dominated by the so-called Azores High, a persistent atmospheric high-pressure center that resulted in mild heat and consistently sunny weather. But in recent years, as global warming pushed up temperatures, the Azores High has given way to a series of anticyclones from Africa that moved north and caused intense heat waves, often followed by heavy rains and hailstorms. In the Sicilian interior, where it hasn’t rained since April, the heat is perceived as even more intense than on the coast, where some seaside breeze eventually starts blowing in the evening. In the town of Floridia, the closest urban center near the monitoring station that recorded the record high temperature Wednesday, people were trying their best to carry on with their daily activities. “We need to keep the pharmacy’s door open for COVID reasons and have five air conditioners working inside to keep the right temperature for drugs,” said Giovanna Catania, a local pharmacist. She said that some customers had returned shortly after buying medicine, because it had melted inside hot cars or during walks home in the heat. “We do our best,” she said. “But as people, we were not born to live in such a heat.” © 2021 The New York Times Company

"It's the environment, stupid!" Just as Bill Clinton used the battle cry "It's the economy, stupid!" to keep his 1992 presidential campaign focused, political leaders worldwide are chanting a new mantra based on growing alarm about global warming. Mainstream parties in Germany, Britain, France, Canada, the United States and Austria believe tackling climate change is a vote winner while established Green parties in Germany and Austria are experiencing a renaissance. Arnold Schwarzenegger won re-election as California governor in a landslide last month after distancing himself from President George W. Bush, a fellow Republican, and championing measures to cut the state's greenhouse gas emissions. In Britain, Tony Blair and his probable successor Gordon Brown have made the fight against climate change a priority and the leader of the pro-business Conservative Party, David Cameron, has won over voters by talking up environmental issues. "Climate change, if presented the right way, is a topic that voters are definitely opening up to," Manfred Guellner, managing director of Germany's Forsa polling institute, told Reuters. "We're seeing you can score points with it. "Blair has done a good job of showing how leadership on climate change can make a difference. Climate change clearly has 'hot button' potential." In France, the need for sustainable policies has been embraced by all parties ahead of a 2007 presidential election. Socialist candidate Segolene Royal and her likely rival Nicolas Sarkozy pepper speeches with references to the environment. In early December, Sarkozy met former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, whose documentary on global warming, "An Inconvenient Truth", has been a surprise box-office winner. Sarkozy said concern about the environment was not the preserve of traditional green parties. "Sustainable development and the defence of the environment is a question so fundamental that it can't be the property of one political party, even if it's green in colour," the front-runner for ruling conservative UMP party told parliament. This month, Canada's opposition Liberals elected former environment minister Stephane Dion as their leader. Dion campaigned on green issues and said he would focus on the need to cut emissions from the booming Alberta oil area. It was the first time a major Canadian party had picked a leader who campaigned primarily on the environment. Greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide (CO2), produced by burning fossil fuels, trap heat in the atmosphere. Scientists say rising temperatures could raise sea levels and cause more droughts, floods and heatwaves. The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts the average global temperature will increase between 1.4 to 5.8 degrees Celsius by 2100, which would lead to rising sea levels as ice caps melt. The publication of a hard-hitting report in October by Nicholas Stern, a former World Bank chief economist, concentrated minds on climate change which he said could lead to an economic upheaval on the scale of the 1930s Depression. Blair made global warming one of the key themes of Britain's Group of Eight presidency last year and German Chancellor Angela Merkel has pledged to continue the campaign when her government takes over the presidencies of the European Union and the G8 in 2007. "Showing a commitment for the environment has once again become fashionable and deemed worthy of public recognition," said Udo Kuckartz, a University of Marburg researcher in a recent study of the public's view for the German government. "We haven't seen that in a long time." Climate change was regarded as important by 93 percent and viewed as the number two issue behind unemployment, up from fourth place in 2000. Germany is home to the Greens party, one of the world's most successful ecology parties which has had seven years in government. Their support has climbed from 8.1 percent in the 2005 election to around 11 percent in opinion polls. "The climate issue is vital to voters of all shades and to business as well," said Ralf Fuecks, head of the Greens' Heinrich Boell Foundation think-thank in Berlin. In Austria, the Greens got their best result in an election in October, winning 21 seats in parliament. Austria derives 20 percent of its energy from renewable sources. Emmerich Talos, professor for political science at Vienna University, said ecology was a key issue in the Alpine republic and no party could afford to ignore it. "There's no way a party could run an election nowadays without having green issues in their programme," he said.

Russia's opposition said on Tuesday they feared Vladimir Putin had decided to use force to smother their protests after riot police detained hundreds of demonstrators challenging his presidential election victory. After three months of peaceful anti-Putin protests, police hauled away more than 500 people, including opposition leaders, who attended unsanctioned protests in Moscow and St Petersburg on Monday or refused to leave after a rally that was permitted. The police intervention sent a clear signal that Putin is losing patience with opponents demanding more democracy, openness and political reforms, and will crack down if they step out of line. "Fear of his own people, the animal fear of losing power, and a reliance on the police baton - this is what we are seeing," Boris Nemtsov, a liberal opposition leader, wrote in a blog. Novelist Boris Akunin, who has helped organise the protests, said he no longer believed the next rally - planned for Saturday - could pass off without trouble. "It is absolutely clear that the period of peaceful rallies and marches is over. I see no need to organise any march on March 10 because it will lead to a clear display of aggression by the authorities," he said. The police said they had acted in accordance with the law and Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, defended the intervention. "The opposition action consisted of two parts, legal and illegal. In both cases, the police acted with the highest professionalism and acted legitimately and effectively, within the competence of the law," he said. After four years as prime minister, Putin returned to the presidency after capturing almost 64 percent of the votes in Sunday's election. He was president from 2000 to 2008. The restraint shown by many officers, even as they bundled protesters into vans, suggested that Putin is determined not to give his critics the chance to depict him as a dictator ready to suppress any challenge to his authority. Witnesses said that although some protesters were hurt, and one said her arm had been broken, police seemed intent on avoiding casualties at the main protest on Moscow's Pushkin Square, often the scene of Soviet-era dissident protests. But reporters said police used tougher tactics against a group who tried to protest at Lubyanka Square, in front of the headquarters of the Federal Security Service, successor to the Soviet-era KGB. Protesters were also dragged roughly away in St Petersburg, Putin's home town. Foreign investors are worried that clashes could break out between police and protesters, undermining the investment climate and denting prospects for reforms which they say are needed to reduce Russia's reliance on energy exports. Russian stocks suffered their biggest daily fall in three months on Tuesday after ratings agency Fitch warned of the dangers of confrontation. Both the main dollar-based and rouble-traded stock indexes fell by more than 3 percent. ALLEGATIONS OF FRAUD The pattern appears clear: Putin will allow a few isolated protests, the place and time of which is agreed with the authorities, as a safety valve for disillusionment among mainly urban demonstrators with his 12-year domination of Russia. He could also offer some conciliatory gestures to appease the opposition. In one such move, the Kremlin has ordered a review of 32 criminal cases including the jailing of former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky and the refusal to register a liberal opposition group which has been barred from elections. But Putin, a former KGB spy, will do his utmost to prevent what he regards as more radical protesters undermining his return to the Kremlin for a third term as president. Dissent will be dealt with forcefully. "We saw fear in the eyes of the dictator. We saw weakness. We saw a man who is unsure of himself," Ilya Yashin, an opposition leader, told the rally at Pushkin Square after Putin shed a tear in his victory speech on Sunday. "Has war begun? Why have they brought troops into the centre of our capital? Why the riot police? Who does he want to wage war with? Who is he protecting himself against?" The US ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, said on Twitter that the arrests were troubling and freedom of assembly and speech were universal values. This earned him a rebuke from Russia's Foreign Ministry in a tweeted reply. It said the Russian police had shown far more restraint than US officers clearing anti-capitalist protesters from sites in the United States. The United States has called for an independent and credible investigation into all allegations of voting irregularities in the election. Several European countries have also signalled their concern over the allegations of cheating but at the same time underlined a desire to keep working with Russia. International monitors said there had been some improvements from a parliamentary poll on December 4 which observers said was marred by irregularities, but the vote was still unfair and heavily skewed to favour Putin. Russia's Foreign Ministry said the observers' report was balanced overall but it took issue with several criticisms, although it did not say what they were. Many Russians have lost hope of elections being fair and Putin introducing change. "I used to love Putin, like any woman who likes a charismatic man. But now I think he is getting senile. Nobody can stay in power forever," Vasilisa Maslova, 35, who works in the fashion trade, said at Pushkin Square.

OSLO, Tue Mar 17,(bdnews24.com/Reuters) - A drastic climate shift such as a thaw of Greenland's ice or death of the Amazon forest is more than 50 percent likely by the year 2200 in cases of strong global warming, according to a survey of experts. The poll of 52 scientists, looking 100 years beyond most forecasts, also revealed worries that long-term warming would trigger radical changes such as the disintegration of the ice sheet in West Antarctica, raising world sea levels. "There's concern about the risks of massive changes in the climate system," said Elmar Kriegler of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, lead author of the study in the US journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Huge changes or "tipping points," which might also include a slowdown of the warm Gulf Stream current that keeps Europe warm, are often dismissed as highly unlikely or scaremongering. The survey issued late on Monday found that leading experts, when asked, reckoned there was a one in six chance of triggering at least one tipping point with a moderate temperature rise of between 2 and 4 Celsius (3.6-7.2 Fahrenheit) by 2200 from 2000. But with a strong rise of between 4 and 8 Celsius by 2200, the chances of surpassing at least one of five tipping points reviewed rose to 56 percent. "The study shows that some of these events are not considered low probability," Kriegler told Reuters of the study, with colleagues in Germany and Britain. He said the poll was relevant to government policymakers because any of the climate shifts examined would have huge economic impacts. "The results of the survey provide further evidence for the need of ambitious climate protection in order to minimize the risks of far-reaching consequences for our entire planet," Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute who was among the authors, said in a statement. GREENLAND Most likely of five tipping points was the onset by 2200 of a longer-term Greenland thaw that would make it largely ice free. Greenland contains enough water to raise world sea levels by 7 meters if it ever all melted. Second most likely was a death of large tracts of the Amazon rainforest because of a drying trend, followed by the start of a disintegration of the West Antarctic ice sheet, which would raise seas by about 5 meters. The other two potential tipping points, a collapse of the system of Atlantic currents including the Gulf Stream and a shift toward a constant El Nino warming of the Pacific Ocean, were considered far less likely. The survey was taken in late 2005 and early 2006, in parallel with much of the writing of the last UN Climate Panel report that said that a build-up of greenhouse gases from human activities was the main cause of warming. That UN report focused only on the coming century and said that "abrupt climate changes...are not considered likely to occur in the 21st century."

BP's 2020 benchmark Energy Outlook underpins Chief Executive Bernard Looney's new strategy to "reinvent" the 111-year old oil and gas company by shifting renewables and power. London-based BP expects global economic activity to only partially recover from the epidemic over the next few years as travel restrictions ease. But some "scarring effects" such as work from home will lead to slower growth in energy consumption. BP this year extended its outlook into 2050 to align it with the company's strategy to slash the carbon emissions from its operations to net zero by the middle of the century. It includes three scenarios that assume different levels of government policies aimed at meeting the 2015 Paris climate agreement to limit global warming to "well below" 2 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels. Under its central scenario, BP forecasts COVID-19 will knock around 3 million barrels per day (bpd) off by 2025 and 2 million bpd by 2050. In its two aggressive scenarios, COVID-19 accelerates the slow down in oil consumption, leading to it peaking last year. In the third scenario, oil demand peaks at around 2030. In the longer term, demand for coal, oil and natural gas is set to slow dramatically. While the share of fuels has shrunk in the past as a percentage of the total energy pie, their consumption has never contracted in absolute terms, BP chief economist Spencer Dale told reporters. "(The energy transition) would be an unprecedented event," Dale said. "Never in modern history has the demand for any traded fuel declined in absolute terms." At the same time, "the share of renewable energy grows more quickly than any fuel ever seen in history." Even with energy demand set to expand on the back of growing population and emerging economies, the sources of energy will shift dramatically to renewable sources such as wind and solar, Dale said. The share of fossil fuels is set to decline from 85% of total primary energy demand in 2018 to between 20% and 65% by 2050 in the three scenarios. At the same time, the share of renewables is set to grow from 5% in 2018 to up to 60% by 2050. In its forecast, BP said the growth in global economic activity slows "considerably" over the next 30 years from its past 20-year average, due in part to lasting effects of the epidemic as well as the worsening impact of climate change on economic activity, particularly in Africa and Latin America. BP starts on Monday a three-day investor event where it will detail its energy transition strategy.

Fires set by people will be the biggest threat to the Amazon rainforest in coming decades linked to a drier climate caused by global warming, researchers said on Monday. They said swathes of the forest were more likely to be killed by blazes raging out of control than by a more gradual shift towards savannah caused by more frequent droughts predicted by the UN Climate Panel in a 2007 report. "Fire associated with human activity and drying is likely to be what eliminates the forest rather than the gradual stress of climate change," Mark Bush of the Florida Institute of Technology and US-based colleagues wrote in a study. Examining the history of fire in Amazonia, they said people were the overwhelming cause of burning in the past 3,000 years with lightning strikes rarely igniting the wet forest. "The Amazon doesn't burn unless people burn it," Bush told Reuters. A drier climate, more human settlements and burning to clear land for farming would bring risks of ever wider fire damage, they wrote in the British journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B devoted to the Amazon. Indigenous people in the Amazon basin before Christopher Columbus sailed the Atlantic in 1492 "burned the forest to clear it for agriculture, and perhaps also to improve hunting," they wrote of charcoal records. "After the time of European contact, fires became much scarcer." The U.N. Climate Panel predicted in a 2007 report that rising temperatures and drier soil would "lead to gradual replacement of tropical forest by savannah in eastern Amazonia" by 2050. It also said there was a risk of a "significant" loss of the diversity of species of animals and plants because climate change could drive many to extinction. Its models did not assess fire risks. "Fire is the greatest climate-linked threat to the Amazon forest," a team led by Jos Barlow of Lancaster University in England wrote in the same journal, adding that the ability of the forest to regrow after fires may have been repeated. "Episodic fires can lead to drastic changes in forest structure and composition," the said. But they said there was some hope because farming practices could be changed to avoid burning. Fire is "one of the few aspects of climate change mitigation over which we retain some direct control," they said. Deforestation -- mainly from burning tropical forests -- is widely considered to contribute about 20 percent of world greenhouse gas emissions. Trees soak up heat-trapping carbon dioxide as they grow and release it when they burn or rot. A study led by the University of Leeds said trees and creepers in intact parts of the Amazon forest grew faster in the 1980s and 1990s -- apparently spurred by climate change -- and so helped to brake the overall warming. They cautioned that "this subsidy from nature is now at risk from drought, biodiversity changes, deforestation and climate change itself." -- For Reuters latest environment blogs click on: http://blogs.reuters.com/environment/

US President Barack Obama met his Indonesian counterpart on Tuesday for talks to boost security and trade ties, in a visit aimed at using the most populous Muslim nation to reach out to the wider Islamic world. The trip to Indonesia, seen by Obama as an important destination for a variety of strategic and personal reasons, has been twice postponed and the White House said this 20-hour stay could be cut short because of atmospheric ash belched by eruptions from Mount Merapi volcano, 600 kms (375 miles) away. Indonesia's importance as a US ally is on the rise, even if the joy over Obama's election has faded since he became president almost two years ago. His talks with Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono are not seen yielding major announcements but are more to warm the stage for investment links and cooperation. Southeast Asia's biggest economy and a G20 member, Indonesia proved resilient to the financial crisis and has become a hot destination for emerging market investors looking to tap strong consumer demand, abundant resources and political stability. "We see in Indonesia the intersection of a lot of key American interests, and we see this as a partnership that is very important to the future of American interests in Asia and the world," said Ben Rhodes, Obama's deputy national security advisor for strategic communications. Obama's return to a country where he spent four years of his childhood comes after two previously scheduled trips were put off -- in March as he fought to pass his healthcare overhaul law and in June as he faced the cleanup of the massive BP oil spill. This visit had been in doubt because of concerns over ash from Merapi, which led to international flight cancellations at the weekend and has killed over 150 people, though a government disaster expert said posed no danger to the skies over Jakarta. The dozens of cars in Obama's convoy splashed quickly through the eerily quiet streets of the usually gridlocked capital, after a tropical downpour that forced his welcome ceremony indoors. Jakarta is the second stop on Obama's 10-day four-nation Asian tour. He spent three days in India, where his emphasis was on developing business links that could lead to U.S. jobs, and later will visit South Korea, where he attends a G20 summit and Yokohama, Japan, for an Asia-Pacific economic meeting. The US's loose monetary policy, which has sent a flood of cash looking for higher returns towards emerging markets such as Indonesia, may be a topic for discussion ahead of the G20 meet. COMPREHENSIVE PARTNERSHIP Obama and Yudhoyono are expected to sign a "Comprehensive Partnership" agreed a year ago, ahead of a state dinner where Obama and wife Michelle will be served favourite dishes from his Indonesia childhood such as nasi goreng and bakso (fried rice and meatball soup). The pact covers security, economic and people-to-people issues, said Jeffrey Bader, Obama's top Asian adviser. Obama could announce hundreds of millions in funding to fight climate change by protecting Indonesia's forests, sources say, although large corporate deals have not been flagged. The United States exports only about $6 billion (£3.7 billion) worth of goods to Indonesia each year, making it America's 37th largest market, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Two-way trade, from U.S. soybeans and Boeing aircraft to Indonesian textiles, is likely to pick up slightly to around $20 billion this year. However, the US has dwindled in importance as a source of foreign direct investment into Indonesia, with just $171.5 million or 1.6 percent of the total last year, reflecting rampant graft, poor infrastructure and concerns on nationalist policies. "Indonesia maintains significant and far-reaching foreign investment restrictions," said the US Trade Representative's 2010 National Trade Estimates Report. "Its investment climate continues to be characterized by legal uncertainty, economic nationalism and disproportionate influence of business interests." While Obama is hoping for US investment in sectors such as clean energy to help spur a sagging economy at home, growing direct investment is now coming more from Asia than the West. Obama will also use his stay to reach out to the Muslim world. On Wednesday he will visit the Istiqlal Mosque, one of the world's largest, and aides said a shortened stay was still likely to include a major outdoor speech that should draw large crowds. Around 15,000 police and military are massing to maintain security, in a city that saw bomb attacks on hotels last year but that has made progress in tackling Islamic militancy. The long US wars in Muslim nations Afghanistan and Iraq have lost Obama support among Muslims since he made a major speech in Cairo in June 2009, and a pro-Palestine group protested on Tuesday against his visit outside the US embassy in Jakarta.

A 13-year-old American boy on Saturday became the youngest ever climber to conquer Mount Everest, the world's highest mountain, a climbing website said. Jordan Romero from Big Bear, California, scaled the 8,850 metre (29,035 feet) summit from the Tibetan side, on the same day a Nepali man broke his own world record for the most number of successful Everest attempts. The ascent has put Romero one step closer to reaching his goal of climbing the highest mountains on all seven continents. "It is just a goal," Romero had told Reuters in the Nepali capital Kathmandu in April. He had already climbed five peaks including Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa, and needs to climb the highest peak in Antarctica. The previous youngest person to summit Everest was 16-year-old Temba Tsheri Sherpa of Nepal. Romero was accompanied by a team including his father Paul, a critical care paramedic, and Sherpa guides. He told Reuters his aim was to pick a small piece of rock from the top of the world as a memento and wear it in a necklace. His next mission is to climb the highest mountains in all 50 states in the United States. More than 4,000 climbers have reached the top of Mount Everest since it was first climbed by New Zealander Sir Edmund Hillary and Nepal's Tenzing Norgay Sherpa in 1953. On the same day as Romero, Nepali mountaineer Apa Sherpa broke his own record and climbed Mount Everest for the 20th time, said Ang Tshering Sherpa, chief of the Asian Trekking Agency. Apa, 50, who lives in the United States, reached the summit on Saturday along the Southeast Ridge route. He carried a banner all the way to the summit to raise awareness of the environmental impact of climate change on the Himalayas. "It is a fantastic achievement by one individual," said Elizabeth Hawley, who chronicles major climbs in the Himalayan mountain range. "Going back year after year after year and succeeding each time is really amazing."

Europe this week laid out a vision of a green future, with a proposed recovery package worth more than $800 billion that would transition away from fossil fuels and put people to work making old buildings energy-efficient. In the United States, the White House is steadily slashing environmental protections and Republicans are using the Green New Deal as a political cudgel against their opponents. China has given a green light to build new coal plants but it also declined to set specific economic growth targets for this year, a move that came as a relief to environmentalists because it reduces the pressure to turn up the country’s industrial machine quickly. What course these giant economies set is crucial if the world is to have a fighting chance to head off the blistering heat, droughts and wildfires that are the hallmarks of a fast-warming planet. Just as their recovery plans are taking shape, though, the political pressure on world leaders switched off: On Thursday, the United Nations announced that the next round of global climate talks, which had been slated for Glasgow, Scotland, in November, would be delayed. That meeting is now scheduled for November 2021, more than a year and a half away. The delay comes at a time when the scientific consensus says the world has very little time left to avert climate catastrophes. The Glasgow talks are the most important climate meeting since the Paris Agreement was adopted in 2015, after 20 years of negotiations. Under the Paris pact, which was largely designed to work through peer pressure among nations at annual meetings, world leaders were expected to announce revised targets this year for reducing emissions. That peer pressure is now suspended for a year. Advocates for climate action urged national leaders to not squander the time. “If the necessary climate action can be embedded in recovery efforts then this year will have been a year when we pivoted for good,” said Rachel Kyte, a former United Nations climate official and now the dean of the Fletcher School at Tufts University. “If we are distracted from climate action and fumble in the recovery, then we will have pivoted to an even darker road.” Not only has the Glasgow meeting been postponed, global protests demanding climate action have come to an abrupt halt and the pandemic has reinforced the impulse of nationalist leaders to reject international cooperation. “It’s now vital that countries make use of this extra time and ensure their economic recovery plans are climate smart and do not prop up fossil fuel companies,” said Mohamed Adow of Power Shift Africa, an advocacy group based in Nairobi. “It would be shameful if rich countries recharge their economies on the backs of the climate vulnerable.” The virus-induced lockdowns around the world have resulted in a sharp drop in greenhouse gas emissions in recent months, but the decline was nowhere near enough to shake loose the thick blanket of gases that already wraps the planet. More important, greenhouse gas emissions are expected to go back up as countries reopen, especially if their recovery packages don’t pivot away from fossil fuels. “It will be a very, very challenging way forward in terms of international climate momentum,” said Li Shuo, a Beijing-based policy adviser for Greenpeace. “COVID-19 should be interpreted as a very negative factor for international climate cooperation.” Governments are under considerable pressure to aim for what is called a green recovery. A survey of central bankers and finance ministers found broad support around the idea that the most effective economic recovery measures would also reduce emissions, including clean energy infrastructure. “The recovery packages can either kill these two birds with one stone — setting the global economy on a pathway toward net-zero emissions — or lock us into a fossil system from which it will be nearly impossible to escape,” the authors wrote. In the United States, a group of corporate executives called on Congress in mid-May to bake in long-term climate solutions in future recovery packages. In a report published earlier this week, consultancy firm McKinsey & Co. concluded that “a low-carbon recovery could not only initiate the significant emissions reductions needed to halt climate change but also create more jobs and economic growth than a high-carbon recovery would.” And hundreds of groups representing health professionals urged the leaders of the world’s 20 largest economies to turn away from fossil fuel subsidies. “A truly healthy recovery will not allow pollution to continue to cloud the air we breathe and the water we drink,” their letter read. “It will not permit unabated climate change and deforestation, potentially unleashing new health threats upon vulnerable populations.” c.2020 The New York Times Company

The reversal of protocol struck Daschle, who was new in the job, as gracious. “I said, ‘Bob, I’m really humbled that you insist on coming to my office; I’m the junior guy, so I should come to your office,’ ” Daschle recalled Sunday after learning that Dole, 98, had died. “And he said, ‘No, when I come to your office, I can always decide when the meeting is over.’ ” The remark was classic Bob Dole — witty and straight to the point. And the story is a reminder of Bob Dole’s Washington. Dole, a Kansas Republican who overcame the poverty of the Great Depression and grievous injuries suffered during World War II, brought his prairie values and no-nonsense manner when he arrived in Washington in 1961. Over the next 35 years — through eight years in the House, 27 in the Senate and three failed attempts to win the presidency — he operated in a city that was conducive to his instincts as a deal maker. It is perhaps trite to reminisce about and romanticise a “bygone era” in Washington, when politicians of opposing parties fought by day and socialised with one another at night. There was plenty of partisanship — some of it every bit as bitter as what exists today — during Dole’s time in the Capitol. But there also is no denying that the climate was different, and the facts speak for themselves: Both as a senator and as the Republican leader, a job he held from 1985 until 1996, Dole reached across the aisle to help push through a string of bipartisan legislation, such as a bill to rescue Social Security, the Americans with Disabilities Act and a measure to overhaul the welfare system. Among his proudest accomplishments was teaming up with George McGovern, the liberal Democrat from South Dakota, to revamp the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly called food stamps. They continued to work together on nutrition issues after they both left the Senate. “People believed in working with each other, and they kept their word,” Sen Patrick J Leahy, who counted Dole as a friend, said Sunday. He recalled the close ties between George J Mitchell Jr, the Maine senator who preceded Daschle as the Democratic leader, and Dole. “When George Mitchell was leader, he’d go down to Dole’s office two and three times a day and vice versa,” Leahy said. “And I recall they both said the same thing about the other: ‘He never surprised me.’ You don’t see that happen today.” Not only that, Mitchell and Dole had dedicated phone lines on their desks that let them communicate directly with the touch of a button, one aide recalled. The button came in handy in November 1994, when Republicans won back the majority. Mitchell, who had not sought reelection, asked that Dole be alerted that he was coming to his office to congratulate him. Dole sent a quick message back that he didn’t want Mitchell to make the humbling trek and that Dole would instead go to his office, a gesture that Mitchell and his team regarded as decent and thoughtful. “He operated in a different era, when the idea of bipartisanship was very much in vogue and politicians understood that in a democracy you simply have to work, not just with your fellow party members, but with people from the opposite side or the other side of the aisle,” said Robert Dallek, the presidential historian. “He was masterful at that.” That is not to say that Dole lacked sharp elbows or conservative ideology. Newt Gingrich, the former Republican speaker of the House who is widely credited with ushering in Washington’s era of partisan warfare, said he worked closely with Dole to push through tax cuts and to defeat President Bill Clinton’s plan for universal health care. In an interview Sunday, Gingrich likened Dole to the current Republican leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, an object of loathing for Democrats. “I think there’s a lot of parallels between Dole and McConnell,” Gingrich said. “They’re both creatures of the Senate; they’re both very, very good tactically. They both understand how to stop things, and they understand how to get things done.” Despite their partnership, Dole could not embrace Gingrich’s bomb-throwing style. When Gingrich and House Republicans refused to pass federal spending bills, forcing the government to shut down in 1995, Dole took to the Senate floor to declare that he had had enough. “We ought to end this,” Dole said at the time. “I mean, it’s gotten to the point where it’s a little ridiculous as far as this senator is concerned.” In Washington, Dole and his wife, Elizabeth Dole — who later became a senator and ran for president herself — were seen as a power couple, the embodiment of the city’s institutions. Robert Dole came to stand for World War II and the Greatest Generation, and an earlier era of dignity and honour. He was the driving force behind the World War II Memorial on the National Mall, and could often be found greeting veterans there. “He was in a sense Mr America,” said Dallek, the historian. “He came from the heartland, and he stood for a kind of shared values.” In 1996, Dole left the Senate — an institution in which he had served for more than a quarter century — to run for president. Washington was changing. Gingrich was at the height of his power. Clinton would later be impeached over his affair with an intern, Monica Lewinsky, exacerbating the growing partisan tensions. But when Dole, who at that point was the Senate’s longest-serving Republican leader, went to the chamber to deliver a speech announcing his departure, the old ways of the Capitol were still intact. “That day he announced he was leaving the Senate, almost every Democratic senator was on the floor,” Leahy said. “Now, he was going to go out to run against Bill Clinton. And when he finished speaking, we all stood and applauded and applauded.” © 2021 The New York Times Company

US President-elect Barack Obama selected Tom Daschle, a heavyweight former senator, to be his health secretary on Wednesday, while former President Bill Clinton took steps to help secure his wife the nation's top diplomatic job. The selection of Daschle, the former Senate Democratic leader and part of Obama's inner circle, signaled an intention by the Democratic president-elect to make an aggressive push to overhaul the healthcare system. Another member of Obama's close-knit inner-circle, David Axelrod, was named senior White House adviser, according to an announcement from the president-elect's transition team. Obama's top choice for secretary of homeland security is Arizona Democratic Gov. Janet Napolitano, CNN reported late on Wednesday, citing multiple Democratic sources close to the transition. CNN, quoting sources, also reported that billionaire Chicago businesswoman Penny Pritzker, was Obama's top choice for commerce secretary. Pritzker, whose family founded the Hyatt hotel chain, was national finance chair of Obama's presidential campaign. Axelrod, who was Obama's strategist during the campaign and has been a political consultant for a long list of prominent Democratic politicians, was seen as a crucial player behind Obama's comfortable win over Republican John McCain in the Nov. 4 presidential race. Obama is likely to rely heavily on Axelrod for advice in pushing an agenda of healthcare reform, middle-class tax breaks and other domestic priorities, as he prepares to inherit a deepening financial crisis and a ballooning budget deficit. Greg Craig, a former special counsel to Clinton who defended him during his impeachment troubles, will become White House counsel when Obama takes office on Jan. 20. Daschle served almost two decades in the Senate and was majority leader from 2001 to 2003 while Democrats controlled the chamber. He has served as a mentor to the president-elect, having encouraged him early on to run for the White House and advised him during the campaign. Two Democratic officials said the South Dakota native had accepted the job. The agency he will lead oversees programs such as Medicare, the federal health insurance plan for people over the age of 65, which is expected to see costs balloon as the U.S. population ages. The department is likely to spearhead Obama's charge to expand healthcare coverage to 47 million uninsured Americans, a key promise of his presidential campaign. HILLARY CLINTON CONSIDERS STATE DEPT. JOB Another Democrat passionate about healthcare reform, New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, was weighing the option of becoming secretary of state or staying in the Senate, where she could help advance domestic policies. Her husband, former President Bill Clinton, offered to allow ethics reviews of future business and charitable activities should she be picked by Obama to take the foreign policy post, Democrats familiar with the issue said. The former president is working to address questions about whether his philanthropic and business work would create the appearance of a conflict of interest in the event his wife got the job. "He is definitely helping. He is not an obstacle at all," a Democrat familiar with the situation said. Obama continued to assemble his White House team from his transition offices in Chicago, where he held private meetings on Wednesday with Vice President-elect Joe Biden and others. He added a handful of former Clinton administration aides to his team, including Daniel Tarullo, Susan Rice and James Steinberg, to advise him on policy matters as he prepares for his move to the White House. Obama, who will succeed President George W. Bush on Jan. 20, released a list of names of people who will head "policy working groups" during the next two months of the presidential transition. Many of the names were people in the running for top jobs in the incoming administration. Tarullo, an expert on the international economy and regulatory matters and a professor at Georgetown University, was named to head up the economic working group. Steinberg, who was deputy national security adviser to Clinton, and Rice, who was assistant secretary of state for African affairs in the Clinton administration, will head the advisory team on national security. Daschle was listed as heading a healthcare working group. Obama's goal of pushing efforts to tackle climate change got a boost after Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman, a crusader against global warming, won a preliminary battle to become chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee. In a secret-ballot vote, Waxman narrowly beat current Democratic chairman Rep. John Dingell, who is considered a defender of the auto industry as a native of Michigan, the home state of the Detroit automakers.

Almost 200 nations sought on Wednesday to break a deadlock between rich and poor on steps to fight global warming and avert a new, damaging setback after they failed to agree a UN treaty last year in Copenhagen. Several environment ministers said that failure at the talks in Mexico could undermine faith in the ability of the United Nations to tackle global problems in the 21st century as power shifts towards emerging nations led by China and India. "I think that what is at stake here is also multilateralism," said European Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard. "It's absolutely crucial that this process, which is the only one we have ... can prove that it can deliver results." The talks in the Caribbean beach resort of Cancun from November 29 to December 10, have more modest ambitions than at Copenhagen last year, but there are still yawning gaps over the future of the Kyoto Protocol for curbing greenhouse gas emissions by rich nations until 2012. Japan, Canada and Russia say they will not extend the pact unless poorer nations also commit to emissions cuts. Developing nations, especially Bolivia, insist the rich world must lead by setting deeper cuts beyond 2013 before they take on curbs. "I believe that an ambitious, broad and balanced package is within reach," Mexican Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa told delegates. "That does not mean that we already have it in our grasp." China also saw signs of hope on Kyoto. Assistant Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin, asked if there was room for a deal, told Reuters: "I think that will be possible. That is still under discussion." Shinsuke Sugiyama, a senior Japanese official, said Tokyo's position was unchanged. But he added: "I don't think anybody would try to make use of any part of the questions at hand to block everything, including us." Negotiators want to set up a new fund to help developing countries combat climate change, work out ways to protect tropical forests, help poor nations adapt to climate change and agree a new mechanism to share clean technologies. CAR CRASH? Failure to achieve even those modest steps would be a blow after US President Barack Obama and other world leaders could only manage a vague, non-binding deal in Copenhagen in 2009, when many had pinned hopes on a treaty. "A car crash of a summit is in no one's interest," said British Climate Change Secretary Chris Huhne. One senior delegate said there was progress on several core issues but other hurdles could arise. Small island states, for instance, want the talks to set an end-2011 deadline for agreeing on a treaty, an idea opposed by Beijing and Washington. Some countries linked deadlock in Cancun to Obama's failure to pass US legislation to curb climate change. All other industrialized nations have already capped their emissions under the Kyoto Protocol. "We cannot afford to be held hostage by the political backwardness of one developed country," said Tuvalu's deputy prime minister, Enele Sosene Sopoaga. "This is life and death, a survival issue for Tuvalu," he said of rising sea levels. Confidence in the UN talks has already been hit by Copenhagen, which agreed only a non-binding deal to limit a rise in average world temperatures to below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 F) above pre-industrial times. Without success in Cancun, faith in the seemingly endless UN talks, which require unanimous support for any accords, could wither away. Among few bright spots in UN environmental negotiations this year was a new UN deal in October to slow a quickening pace of extinctions of animals and plants. Separately, Wal Mart Stores Inc, the world's biggest retailer, said it would step up checks that its palm oil and beef come from sustainable sources. Australia also announced $45 million ($44.03 million) in aid for Indonesia to help slow deforestation.

Respondents in nine of 10 European countries surveyed said they saw IS, also known by the acronyms ISIS and ISIL, as the greatest danger, with 93 percent of Spaniards and 91 percent of French describing the group as a "major threat". Most of the surveys were conducted in April, a month after militants loyal to IS killed 32 people at the Brussels airport and metro. The Pew report was published a day after a gunman who had pledged allegiance to IS killed 49 people at a nightclub in Orlando, the deadliest mass shooting in US history. Greece, struggling to return to growth after nearly seven years of recession, was the only country where respondents did not list IS as the top threat. Instead, 95 percent of Greeks said that global economic instability posed the greatest risk to their country. Strong majorities in all 10 countries listed global climate change as a major threat, but the Pew survey showed stark divisions within Europe over refugees. In Poland, 73 percent of respondents listed the arrival of large numbers of refugees from war-torn countries like Syria and Iraq as a major threat, the same percentage that listed Islamic State as a top danger. By comparison, only 31 percent of Germans and 24 percent of Swedes said they viewed refugees as a major threat, despite the fact that these two countries have accepted among the most refugees per capita in all of Europe. On average, roughly a third of respondents across all 10 countries described tensions with Russia as well as China's emergence as a world power as major threats. Poland was again an outlier, with 71 percent of respondents there listing Russia as a significant danger, more than double the percentages in Italy, France, Germany and Britain.

The two leaders also unveiled a deal to build on a landmark emissions agreement struck last year, outlining new steps they will take to deliver on pledges they made then to slash their greenhouse gas emissions. Speaking after White House talks during Xi's first US state visit, Obama quickly homed in on the thorniest dispute between the world's two biggest economies - growing US complaints about Chinese hacking of government and corporate databases, and the suspicion in Washington that Beijing is sometimes behind it. "It has to stop," Obama told reporters at a joint news conference in the White House Rose Garden, with Xi standing beside him. Obama said he and Xi made "significant progress" on cyber security. But he added warily: "The question now is, are words followed by actions?" There were clear limits to Friday's deal. A White House statement said the two leaders agreed that neither government would knowingly support cyber theft of corporate secrets or business information. But the agreement stopped short of any promise to refrain from traditional government-to-government cyber spying for intelligence purposes. That could include the massive hack of the federal government's personnel office this year that compromised the data of more than 20 million people. US officials have traced that back to China, but have not said whether they believe the government was responsible. Xi reiterated China's denial of any government role in the hacking of US corporate secrets and said the best way to address the problem was through bilateral cooperation and not to "politicise this issue". "Confrontation and friction are not the right choice for both sides," he said. China has routinely insisted that it too is a victim of cyber hacking. The White House said the two leaders agreed to create a senior expert group to further discuss cyber issues, and a high-level group to talk about how to fight cyber crime that will meet by the end of 2015 and twice a year after that. Obama made clear, however, that sanctions remained on the table. "We will apply those and whatever other tools we have in our tool kit to go after cyber criminals," he said. Despite the lingering friction, analysts said the agreement was a significant advance. "Today's joint statement creates a much-needed umbrella under which concrete, practical steps can be taken to reduce conflict in cyberspace," said Bruce McConnell, a former top cyber security officer at the Department of Homeland Security. Pomp and ceremony Even as the White House rolled out the red carpet for Xi, there were tensions not only over cyber security but a litany of other issues, including Beijing's economic policies, territorial disputes with its neighbours and its human rights record. Obama greeted Xi on arrival at the White House on Friday morning for an elaborate ceremony on the South Lawn, including a military honour guard and 21-gun salute. The two men struck a serious, businesslike tone when they appeared later before reporters, showing little sign of close personal rapport. US and Chinese officials sought to cast their talks in a favourable light by showcasing at least one area of cooperation - the global fight against climate change. As part of their agreement, Xi announced that China, the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, will launch a national carbon cap-and-trade system in 2017 to help contain the country's emissions. Such systems put limits on carbon emissions and open up markets for companies to buy and sell the right to produce emissions. For Obama, the deal with China strengthens his hand ahead of a global summit on climate change in Paris in December. But disagreements on other issues still loomed. Obama told Xi at the morning welcoming ceremony that the United States would continue to speak out over its differences with China, but he reiterated that the United States welcomes the rise of a China that is "stable, prosperous and peaceful". Xi, who faces a rising nationalism at home as well as pressure to get China's economic house in order, called for "mutual respect." As the two leaders spoke, dozens of pro- and anti-Xi protesters gathered near the White House grounds, waving flags, beating drums and shouting slogans. In their talks, Obama also pressed Xi to follow through on economic reforms and not discriminate against US companies operating in China. Some analysts believe Obama has more leverage due to China's slowing economic growth, which has destabilised global markets. At the same time, the Obama administration is still at a loss about how to curb China's assertiveness in the South China Sea, where Beijing has continued to reclaim land for potential military use despite conflicting claims with its neighbours. Obama said he had "candid" discussions with Xi on disputes in the Asia-Pacific region. Xi defended his government's "right to uphold our own territorial sovereignty" and denied any plan to use its island-building efforts to create military strongholds. In a reminder of potential flashpoints, the United State and China also finalised a plan aimed at reducing the risk of aerial collisions between warplanes in areas such as the South China Sea through adoption of common rules of behaviour. Calls for Obama to take a harder line with China have echoed from Congress to the 2016 Republican presidential campaign. But his approach was tempered because the US and Chinese economies are so closely bound together. On Friday night, Obama was to host a lavish black-tie state dinner where guests will dine on Maine lobster and Colorado lamb. Despite the ceremonial honours, the Chinese Communist leader, who came to Washington on the heels of Pope Francis, received nothing like the wall-to-wall US news coverage given the popular pontiff, who drew adoring crowds wherever he went.

Biden, speaking at an event in Wilmington, Delaware, said the climate team will be “ready on Day One, which is essential because we literally have no time to waste.” A top lieutenant will be Gina McCarthy, former President Barack Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency administrator who Biden has tapped to head a new White House Office of Climate Policy. The group includes progressives like Rep. Deb Haaland of New Mexico, Biden’s choice to lead the Department of the Interior and a co-sponsor of the Green New Deal, and establishment figures like Jennifer Granholm, the former governor of Michigan, who Biden selected to be energy secretary. Michael Regan, North Carolina’s top environmental regulator, was named to lead the EPA, and Brenda Mallory, a longtime environmental attorney, will chair the Council on Environmental Quality. McCarthy’s deputy will be Ali Zaidi, who currently serves as the deputy secretary for energy and environment for New York state. And last month Biden named former Secretary of State John Kerry as an international presidential envoy on climate change. “Folks, we’re in a crisis,” Biden said Saturday. “Just like we need to be a unified nation to respond to COVID-19, we need a unified national response to climate change.” Kamala Harris, the vice president-elect and California senator, said the state had endured the worst wildfire season on record this year. Calling wildfires “just one symptom of our growing climate crisis” along with historic flooding in the Midwest and a record hurricane season, she said, “Our climate crisis is not a partisan issue and it is not a hoax. It is an existential threat to all of us.” Citing the costs and loss of life from wildfires that raged across the West this year, Biden vowed to restore the regulations that President Donald Trump rolled back and said, “We will set new ambitious standards that our workers are ready to meet today.” When Biden takes office in January he will inherit a government still struggling to contain the coronavirus pandemic and a shattered U.S. economy that has suffered millions of job losses. He also faces a monumental rebuilding effort after four years in which the Trump administration reversed more than 100 environmental regulations, mocked climate science and championed the production of the fossil fuels chiefly responsible for warming the planet. The Lotus Solar Project, a new 67-megawatt solar farm north of Fresno, Calif., on March 27, 2020. President-elect Joe Biden said he has chosen a team that prioritizes making clean energy jobs and environmental protection the cornerstone of his economic plans. (Deanne Fitzmaurice/The New York Times) On Saturday, Biden said he intends to make tackling climate change a cornerstone of his coronavirus recovery action, calling for 500,000 new electric vehicle charging stations, the construction of 1.5 million new energy-efficient homes and public housing units, and the creation of a “civilian climate corps” to carry out climate and conservation projects. The Lotus Solar Project, a new 67-megawatt solar farm north of Fresno, Calif., on March 27, 2020. President-elect Joe Biden said he has chosen a team that prioritizes making clean energy jobs and environmental protection the cornerstone of his economic plans. (Deanne Fitzmaurice/The New York Times) He said he will prioritize environmental justice and restore the regulations that President Donald Trump rolled back. And he delivered a direct appeal to federal scientists and other career staff members saying his administration will “honor the integrity of the office” in which they work. Climate policy is expected to play a critical role in the Biden administration, the president-elect said. He also highlighted the role of Granholm, the former Michigan governor who is credited with getting the state’s first renewable energy portfolio standard through a divided legislature, and working with the auto industry to develop electric vehicles. While curbing carbon emissions is expected to create friction with leaders of fossil fuel-dependent states, members of the team sought to cast fighting climate change as an effort that will create jobs. Over the next decade countries and companies intend to invest trillions of dollars in electric vehicles, grid technology, wind turbines and other clean energy components. The team includes a number of historic firsts. Haaland, Biden’s choice to lead the Interior Department, would be the first Native American cabinet secretary in history and would helm an agency responsible for managing the United States’ relationship with hundreds of recognized tribes. The Interior department manages the nation’s vast natural resources as well as millions of acres of federal lands that include national parks and wildlife refuges. The agency also oversees the listing of endangered and threatened species. Haaland opposed several Trump administration policies related to federal lands, including his efforts to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to oil and gas drilling. “Growing up in my mother’s Pueblo household made me fierce,” Haaland said. She vowed to protect public lands from oil and gas drilling, saying, “I’ll be fierce for all of us.” Regan, who leads North Carolina’s Department of Environmental Quality, would be the first Black man to lead the EPA. Regan said growing up hunting and fishing in North Carolina with his family made him curious about the environment, and experiencing asthma drove him to understand the link between pollution and public health. Biden called Regan “a leader who will respect EPA’s place” as the lead agency charged with protecting the air and water of the United States. Brenda Mallory, a longtime environmental lawyer who spent more than 15 years at the EPA, will be the first Black woman to lead the White House Council on Environmental Quality. All four positions must be confirmed by the Senate. So far, none of Biden’s selections have met with Republican resistance, although some groups that oppose action on climate change have called Haaland a “radical” on energy issues. And North Carolina’s Republican senators did not respond when asked if they intend to support Regan’s nomination. Daniel Keylin, a spokesman for Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said in a statement that the senator “expects the EPA to balance the promotion of clean energy with the unique needs of America’s farmers and small businesses, and not return to the Obama administration’s crushing regulation-first approach.” Details about how Biden intends to coordinate the team around climate change remain unclear. In a letter to the new administration, four Democratic senators led by Ed Markey of Massachusetts asked Biden to create an overarching entity that reports directly to the president, to elevate interagency councils designed to address environmental justice, and to ensure that climate-focused leaders are given authority within key economic agencies like the Treasury and within the office of the U.S. Trade Representative. The lawmakers urged Biden to “adopt the approach of past mobilizations against major national threats, just as the Roosevelt Administration did to coordinate the executive branch during World War II.”   © 2020 The New York Times Company

The worst February cold spell Europe has seen in decades may last until the end of the month, leading meteorologists said, raising the prospect of further deaths and an extended spike in European spot gas prices. "We do have higher confidence in a change by mid-February, but not to milder weather," Leon Brown, a meteorologist at The Weather Channel in Britain, told Reuters. "February will probably remain a cold month right to the end." The cold and heavy snowfall has killed hundreds of people across Europe. The temperature in some eastern countries has plummeted to nearly minus 40 degrees Celsius. More than 130 villages remained without electricity in Bulgaria on Wednesday and the army was delivering food and medicines, the Defence Ministry said. Bulgaria declared Wednesday a day of mourning for eight people who died after melting snow caused a dam to burst, flooding an entire village. Two people are missing. The European Union's crisis response chief Kristalina Georgieva said the worst of the flooding was yet to come. In Bosnia, authorities reported five more deaths from the cold and snow on Wednesday, taking the total to 13. In Serbia, where 13 people have died and 70,000 are cut off by snow, authorities urged people to remove icicles from roofs after a woman in Belgrade was killed by falling ice. An energy official in Serbia said while demand for electricity had soared, ice was hampering production in some hydro-power plants and coal trains were struggling to run. A Croatian radio station said high winds had deposited fish from the Adriatic sea onto the island of Pag. "Instead of going fishing or to the market, people are taking their shopping bags and collecting fish on the shore," Zadar radio reported. NO EARLY THAW Cold polar air from northern Russia flanking an area of high pressure has prevented warmer weather from moving in across the Atlantic over Europe, plunging a wide swathe of the continent into sub-zero temperatures for much of the past 10 days. Officials from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), speaking in Geneva this week, did not rule out the possibility of cold temperatures lasting for the rest of February. Omar Baddour, who coordinates the WMO's climate data monitoring programme, said there was a chance the pressure system might start lifting next week, but said it could remain until the end of the month. A difference in pressure between Europe and the Arctic known as a "negative Arctic oscillation", part of the cause of the freezing weather, is expected to take two or three weeks to return to equilibrium, Baddour said, meaning there may be no early thaw. While the phenomenon of the high-pressure system itself is not unusual, the dramatic turn to below-normal temperatures after weeks of mild weather took experts by surprise. "It's actually quite unique and a bit baffling how this winter has developed," Brown said. "It's unusual for it to develop so suddenly and have it become a persistent block toward the end of January and February." The cold spell is the strongest one to happen in the month of February in 26 years, said Georg Mueller, a forecaster at Point Carbon, a Thomson Reuters company. "It was in 1986 when we had the last similarly severe cold weather (in February)," Mueller said. The sheer size of the current Siberian blocking pattern has made it difficult to predict how it will move, Brown said. "In this instance this big blocking of cold air ... seemed to influence the way the winds behaved rather than the other way around," he said. "We didn't expect the cold block to become so persistent and then move westward." Computer models are having trouble making forecasts for when the system will clear out of Europe, Brown said. The cold snap has driven British gas prices up to their highest levels since 2006, hitting above 100 pence per therm on Tuesday, a surge of more than 15 percent. Russia curtailed gas exports to Europe last week as demand reached all-time highs, forcing countries like Italy to increase imports from Algeria and extract stored gas. Protracted cold temperatures and increased domestic demand could force Russia to cut its exports to Europe again.

Two senior US government officials are arriving in Dhaka on Wednesday to meet government officials, community and civil society leaders working in the field of women's rights. The two officials – Democrat Congresswoman Betty McCollum and ambassador-at-large for global women's issues Melanne Verveer – will also promote US policy on women, health and education during their visit, according to a press release issued by the US embassy on Tuesday. McCollum and Verveer will engage with Bangladesh government officials and non-government organisations on issues such as maternal and child health, improving access to education for girls, child marriage, gender-based violence, human trafficking, and the role of women in fighting climate change. McCollum, a Democrat serving her sixth term in the US Congress, recently introduced legislation that declares child marriage to be a human rights abuse. She advocates elimination of child marriage as a US foreign policy goal, the release says. In addition, the legislation would require the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the State Department to collect and publicise data on the prevalence of child marriage and its impact on key US development goals. In her capacity as director of the Department of State's office on global women's issues, Verveer coordinates foreign policy issues and activities relating to political, economic and social advancement of women across the world. Verveer will leave for Nepal on January 6 while McCollum will stay in Bangladesh till January 10, according to the media release.

Her call came at a High-level Meeting of the Plenary of the UN General Assembly on rehabilitation of refugees and migrants at the UN headquarters in New York on Monday, Press Secretary to the Prime Minister Ihsanul Karim told bdnews24.com. She said that the rights of the refugees and migrants had to be secured in all situations, irrespective of their status, adding that protection and promotion of their rights were equally essential to achieve a harmony across diverse societies in the world. She also commended UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon for convening the first-ever Summit on Refugees and Migrants. Observing that mutual trust and respect, shared responsibility and inclusiveness are critical to address the refugee crisis, the prime minister called on countries for reaching 'a general agreement on these universal principles'. At the opening of the summit, delegations from across the world had also adopted the landmark New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants. It contains bold commitments both to address current issues and to prepare the world for future challenges, including, to start negotiations leading to an international conference and the adoption of a global compact for safe, orderly and regular migration in 2018, as well as, to: # Protect the human rights of all refugees and migrants, regardless of status. This includes the rights of women and girls and promoting their full, equal and meaningful participation in finding solutions; # Ensure that all refugee and migrant children are receiving education within a few months of arrival; # Prevent and respond to sexual and gender-based violence; # Support those countries rescuing, receiving and hosting large numbers of refugees and migrants: # Work towards ending the practice of detaining children for the purposes of determining their migration status; # Find new homes for all refugees identified by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) as needing resettlement; and expand the opportunities for refugees to relocate to other countries through, for example, labour mobility or education schemes; and # Strengthen the global governance of migration by bringing the International Organization for Migration (IOM) into the UN system.​ Sheikh Hasina on Monday also told the plenary session that the world must seize this 'historic opportunity' and deliberate on a robust, ambitious and action-oriented blueprint to deal with large movements of refugees. "This needs to be done within a broader development context." Underlining several aspects of migration governance, the prime minister said migration must be appreciated as a reality and freedom enhancer for greater good. She proposed a Global Compact on Migration to address some of the long-standing gaps in migration governance, and said that this agreement must build on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The proposed compact on migration would capture elements and modalities that are ambitious and enforceable, yet balanced and flexible, she added. She said promotion of tolerance and understanding was crucial for accommodating migrants and refugees. Hasina also mentioned that the compact will have to take into account the protection need of millions displaced by climate change. She said Bangladesh, as the current Chair of the Global Forum on Migration and Development, would be happy to contribute to the development of the agreement. Before joining and addressing the plenary session, the prime minister had held a meeting with State Counsellor and Foreign Minister of Myanmar Aung Saan Suu Kyi. Commonwealth Secretary General Patricia Janet Scotland also called on her at the UN headquarters.​

That’s the main message from the American Heart Association in its latest nutrition guidelines to improve the hearts and health of Americans of all ages and life circumstances. The experts who wrote the guidelines recognize that people don’t eat nutrients or individual ingredients. They eat foods, and most people want to enjoy the foods they eat while staying within their budgets and, the association hopes, without injuring their bodies. This doesn’t mean you need to totally avoid Big Macs, Cokes and French fries, but it does mean you should not regularly indulge in such fare if you want to stay healthy. Dr Robert H Eckel, a former president of the American Heart Association, and an endocrinologist and lipid specialist at the University of Colorado Denver, told me he “occasionally” indulges in foods outside a wholesome dietary pattern. The operative word here, though, is “occasionally.” Dr Neil J Stone, a preventive cardiologist at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University, who praised the thoughtfulness and expertise of the guidelines committee, said in an interview, “There’s no such thing as one diet that fits all, but there are principles to form the basis of diets that fit everyone.” He added: “The goal is to make good nutrition possible for all. The healthier we can keep everybody in this country, the lower our health costs will be.” In the 15 years since the heart association last issued dietary guidelines to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease, almost nothing has changed for the better. The typical American diet has remained highly processed. Americans consume too much-added sugars, artery-clogging fats, refined starches, red meat and salt and don’t eat enough nutrient-rich vegetables, fruits, nuts, beans and whole grains that can help prevent heart disease, diabetes and cancer. But rather than become discouraged, the association decided to try a different approach. For too long, nutrition advice has been overly focused on individual nutrients and ingredients, Alice H. Lichtenstein, the guidelines’ chief author, told me, and it hasn’t been focused enough on overall dietary patterns that can best fit people’s lives and budgets. So instead of a laundry list of “thou shalt not eats,” Dr Lichtenstein said, the association’s committee on nutrition and cardiovascular disease chose to promote heart-healthy dietary patterns that could suit a wide range of tastes and eating habits. In avoiding “no noes” and dietary revolutions, the new guidelines can foster gradual evolutionary changes meant to last a lifetime. The committee recognized that for people to adopt and stick to a wholesome dietary pattern, it should accommodate personal likes and dislikes, ethnic and cultural practices and life circumstances, and it should consider whether most meals are consumed at home or on the go. For example, rather than urging people to skip pasta because it’s a refined carbohydrate, a more effective message might be to tell people to eat it the traditional Italian way, as a small first-course portion. Or, if pasta is your main course, choose a product made from an unrefined carbohydrate like whole wheat, brown rice or lentils. “We’re talking about lifelong changes that incorporate personal preferences, culinary traditions and what’s available where people shop and eat,” said Dr Lichtenstein, a professor of nutrition science and policy at the Friedman School at Tufts University. “The advice is evidence-based and applies to everything people eat regardless of where the food is procured, prepared and consumed.” The guidelines’ first principle is to adjust one’s “energy intake and expenditure” to “achieve and maintain a healthy body weight,” a recommendation that may be easier to follow with the next two principles: Eat plenty of fruits and vegetables, and choose foods made mostly with whole grains rather than refined grains. If cost or availability is an issue, as is the case in many of the country’s food deserts where fresh produce is scarce, Dr Lichtenstein suggested keeping bags of frozen fruits and vegetables on hand to reduce waste, add convenience and save money. Some wholesome protein choices that the committee recommended included fish and seafood (although not breaded and fried), legumes and nuts, and low-fat or fat-free dairy products. If meat is desired, choose lean cuts and refrain from processed meats like sausages, hot dogs and deli meats that are high in salt and saturated fat. The committee’s advice on protein foods, published during the climate talks in Glasgow, was well-timed. Choosing plant-based proteins over animal sources of protein not only has health value for consumers but can help to foster a healthier planet. Experts have long known that animal products like beef, lamb, pork and veal have a disproportionately negative impact on the environment. Raising animals requires more water and land and generates more greenhouse gases than growing protein-rich plants does. “This is a win-win for individuals and our environment,” Dr Lichtenstein said. However, she cautioned, if a plant-based diet is overloaded with refined carbohydrates and sugars, it will raise the risk of Type 2 diabetes and heart disease. And she discouraged relying on popular plant-based meat alternatives that are ultra-processed and often high in sodium, unhealthy fats and calories, and that “may not be ecologically sound to produce.” To protect both the environment and human health, the committee advised shifting one’s diet away from tropical oils — coconut, palm and palm kernel — as well as animal fats (butter and lard) and partially hydrogenated fats (read the nutrition label). Instead, use liquid plant oils like corn, soybean, safflower, sunflower, canola, nut and olive. They have been shown to lower the risk of cardiovascular disease by about 30 percent, an effect comparable to taking a statin drug. As for beverages, the committee endorsed the current national dietary guideline to avoid drinks with added sugars (including honey and concentrated fruit juice). If you don’t currently drink alcohol, the committee advised against starting; for those who do drink, limit consumption to one to two drinks a day. All told, the dietary patterns that the committee outlined can go far beyond reducing the risk of cardiovascular diseases like heart attacks and strokes. They can also protect against Type 2 diabetes and a decline of kidney function, and perhaps even help foster better cognitive abilities and a slower rate of age-related cognitive decline. The earlier in life a wholesome dietary pattern begins, the better, Dr Lichtenstein said. “It should start preconception, not after someone has a heart attack, and reinforced through nutrition education in school, K through 12.” And during annual checkups, Dr Eckel said, primary care doctors should devote three to five minutes of the visit to a lifestyle interview, asking patients how many servings of fruits, vegetables and whole grains they consume and whether they read nutrition labels. ©2021 The New York Times Company

Australian leader John Howard risks becoming the first prime minister to lose his own seat at an election in 78 years, as he battles to save his conservative government from defeat in next month's poll. Electoral boundary changes to his safe Sydney seat of Bennelong have made it marginal, with a swing of around 4 percent -- or about 3,000 votes -- enough to defeat him. An increase in Asian migrants to the area, with Chinese and Koreans now representing 20 percent of voters, is also seen as working against Howard, 68, who is seeking a fifth term in office in the national election on Nov. 24. "When he is in an election he has used the race card and we (do) not need that sort of leadership," said Jason Koh, editor of the local Korean newspaper Hoju Donja. Koh said many Chinese and Korean voters believed Howard had played the "race card" with his tough stance against boatpeople, a tactic that helped him win the last election in 2004. Unlike previous elections, the opposition Labor party has chosen a high-profile candidate, former television and news magazine journalist Maxine McKew, to challenge Howard in the harbourside seat he has held since entering parliament in 1974. McKew, who only moved into the electorate a few months ago, leads Howard in opinion polls and with betting agencies. Aware he is fighting for political survival in his own backyard, Howard has repeatedly reminded his constituency that he does not take Bennelong voters for granted. He has also altered his electioneering tactics and is spending a lot more time in Bennelong, say local residents, pressing the flesh on weekends and attending community events. ROWDY RALLY Last Saturday's Granny Smith Apple Festival, normally a subdued community fair, turned into a rowdy election rally when Howard and McKew turned up. Brandishing placards and balloons, hundreds of supporters of both candidates waged a vocal battle. John Booth, editor of the community newspaper The Weekly Times, said it was the first time in 21 years that Howard had attended the festival. "He is opening things he has not done for years. He realises he is in a real fight," said Booth, who believes Howard will lose his seat. "The people I speak to, people who say they voted for him last time, say it is time for a change." Bennelong is named after one of the most notable Aborigines in Australian history, who was taken to England in 1792, and covers some of Sydney's more affluent, leafy northern suburbs. When Howard first won the seat it was a conservative, middle class electorate, but over the years it has changed in nature, expanding west to incorporate more working class Labor suburbs. The issues resonating in Bennelong are similar to those on the national campaign -- economic management, the Iraq war, climate change and new work place laws. But where Bennelong differs is with its Asian-Australian voters, some 12,000 Chinese and 5,000 Koreans. Immigration and Australia-Asia relations are important issues in the seat, where half the residents were either born overseas or their parents were. Bennelong's Asian voters remember 1988 anti-immigration comments by Howard when he was in opposition and his government's wooing of supporters of anti-immigration politician Pauline Hanson at the 2001 election, said Koh. "Mr Howard has a long history of divide and rule ... and many people are suspicious," he said. In contrast, Booth said Labor has promoted its Asian credentials, wheeling out a former state politician and his Asian wife and leader Kevin Rudd, a Mandarin-speaking former diplomat. Rudd's ability to conduct a fluent discussion with Chinese President Hu Jintao at a recent Asia-Pacific summit in Sydney apparently won him many fans in the city's Asian communities. "The Korean and Chinese vote is big enough to decide who wins, John Howard or Maxine McKew," said Koh.

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

Such shifts have cheered critics concerned about his campaign positions while angering some supporters. But Trump also sometimes modified positions during the campaign, so the Republican president-elect could change stances again before or after he takes office on Jan 20. The following are some of his changing positions: Prosecuting Hillary Clinton To chants from crowds of "Lock her up," Trump said during the campaign that if he won the election, his administration would prosecute his Democratic rival over her use of a private email server while she was secretary of state, and over what he said were abuses of her position with regard to her family's charitable foundation. During the second presidential debate on Oct 9, he said he would appoint a special prosecutor and seek to jail Clinton if he won. Asked during a New York Times interview on Nov 22 about reports that he no longer wanted to prosecute Clinton, Trump said, "I want to move forward, I don’t want to move back. And I don’t want to hurt the Clintons. I really don’t." However, he said "no" when asked if he was definitively taking the idea of investigating Clinton off the table. Climate change Trump has called global warming a hoax and during the campaign he said he wanted to withdraw the United States from the 2015 Paris Agreement among almost 200 nations, which came into effect on Nov 4. Instead, he said he would push ahead and develop cheap coal, shale and oil. On Nov 12, a source on his transition team said Trump's advisers were considering ways to bypass a theoretical four-year procedure for leaving the climate accord. Asked in the Times interview on Nov 22 if he was going to take America out of the world's lead of confronting climate change, Trump said, "I have an open mind to it. We’re going to look very carefully." Asked if he believed human activity causes climate change, he said, "I think there is some connectivity. There is some, something. It depends on how much." Healthcare During the campaign, Trump said he would repeal President Barack Obama's signature Affordable Care Act. He called Obamacare a "disaster" and said he would replace it with a plan that would give states more control over the Medicaid health plan for the poor and allow insurers to sell plans nationally. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal published on Nov 11, Trump said he was considering keeping parts of the law, including provisions letting parents keep adult children up to age 26 on insurance policies and barring insurers from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions. "Either Obamacare will be amended, or repealed and replaced," Trump told the Journal. Immigration On the campaign trail, Trump repeatedly promised to build a wall along the US-Mexican border to curb illegal immigration and that Mexico would pay for it. He also said he would deport millions of illegal immigrants and proposed a temporary ban on Muslims entering the country as a means of countering terrorism. He never retracted this but in the later stages of the campaign, rephrased it as a proposal to temporarily suspend immigration from regions deemed as exporting terrorism and where safe vetting cannot be ensured. In an interview with CBS program "60 Minutes" that aired on Nov 13, Trump said he really planned to build a wall. However, asked if this could be a fence, he said it could be part wall, part fence. "For certain areas I would (have a fence) but certain areas, a wall is more appropriate. I’m very good at this - it’s called construction," he said. Asked about deporting illegal immigrants, he told CBS that the initial focus would be on those immigrants who are "criminal and have criminal records," who he said probably numbered 2 million and possibly even 3 million. Waterboarding During the campaign, Trump said the United States should revive use of waterboarding and "a lot more" when questioning terrorism suspects. Waterboarding, an interrogation tactic that simulates drowning, is widely regarded as torture and was banned under President Barack Obama. In the Nov 22 Times interview, Trump said he had been impressed when he asked Marine General James Mattis, a potential pick for defense secretary, about waterboarding and Mattis replied, "I’ve always found, give me a pack of cigarettes and a couple of beers and I do better with that than I do with torture." While the response had not made him change his mind, Trump said, it had impressed him that the use of waterboarding was "not going to make the kind of a difference that maybe a lot of people think."

Dhaka, Sep 30 (bdnews24.com)— Inflation, especially food prices, and climate change are emerging as the major challenges for Bangladesh to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), according to a study. The 'Social Watch Report 2010' also identified debt servicing, poor revenue collection and the downward flow of foreign direct investment as the other obstacles. Dhaka-based research arm Unnayan Shumunnay launched the report on Thursday. The study says that Bangladesh remained in a dismal 61, as it was ten years ago, in its Basic Capabilities Index (BCI), which takes into account deaths among children under five, maternal child health and education. Among the South Asian nations Pakistan has made significant improvement, moving to 65 from 55 in 2000. Nepal and India have improved their positions while Sri Lanka tops the region with a score of 99. The report states that MDGs are still viewed as political objectives, evident from the fact that the global defence spending is 49 percent higher than what the developing nations received as aid. To achieve the MDGs around the world by 2015, it would require $100-120 billion a year, less than 0.5 percent of the global GDP, says the Social Watch study. Quoting a study of Jubilee Netherlands, the study states that Bangladesh would need annual assistance of $ 7.5 billion— five times what it gets at present to achieve the MDGs. Touching on climate change, it said that despite being a "minuscule polluter", Bangladesh is an enormous victim of climate change. "The country's contribution to greenhouse gas emission is less than one-fifth of 1 percent of the world total," reads the report. According to Social Watch, climate change will relentlessly challenge the country's ability to achieve higher economic growth and cut poverty at expected pace.

NEW DELHI, Oct 19, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Environment minister Jairam Ramesh has urged the prime minister to take on carbon emission reductions under a new global deal without insisting on finance and technology from rich nations, a report said on Monday. The Times of India said Ramesh wrote to Manmohan Singh last week outlining a shift in India's traditional position in global climate negotiations. India has said developing countries should not be asked to commit to emissions reductions without finance and technology from rich nations since they are largely to blame for most of mankind's greenhouse gas pollution to date. The letter said India needed to break away from championing the Group of 77 developing nations at negotiations and be "embedded" with the richer G20 camp for a greater global role. If accepted, this could break the unity among the developing countries and bring on board the world's fourth largest emitter in a global deal to fight climate change. The United Nations has set a December deadline for a deal to be agreed during a major climate meeting in the Danish capital Copenhagen. "The position we take on international mitigation commitments only if supported by finance and technology needs to be nuanced simply because we need to mitigate in self-interest," the newspaper quoted Ramesh as writing to Singh. Mitigation is U.N.-speak for actions that lead to a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. India, China and other big developing nations fear they will be hit hardest by climate change because of their large populations and say it's in their national interest to try to limit the impacts of more extreme droughts, floods, rising seas and melting glaciers that feed major river systems. India, Asia's third-largest economy, has been busy rolling out a series of voluntary emissions reduction actions. "We should be pragmatic and constructive, not argumentative and polemical," the minister was quoted as saying in the letter. The daily said Ramesh wrote that "India must listen more and speak less in negotiations". Calls to Ramesh's office by Reuters to confirm the letter's contents were not returned. HUGE GAP Many countries are unwilling to commit to cuts before knowing the position of the United States where legislators are unlikely to pass laws governing a national emissions cap-and-trade system until next year. A huge gap also exists between rich countries reluctant to pay the fiscal and lifestyle costs of deep cuts in their emissions, and developing states who say they must be allowed to increase emissions so their economies can catch up. Ramesh told Reuters on Friday a deal might miss the December deadline by several months. Negotiations have stumbled on a lack of clarity on the amount, sources and management of any climate funds. Though India has so far resisted talk of outside monitoring of compliance with emissions pledges, the newspaper said Ramesh had suggested overturning that stand. Experts say uncompensated climate action could impact India's economic growth, prompting price rises, lower production and lead to higher unemployment. But others point to the need for industries to become more efficient to ensure they can compete globally.

President Barack Obama will promise greater US engagement in Asia and push for deeper trade ties with the region in a major speech in the Japanese capital on Saturday, administration officials said. Tokyo is the first stop in Obama's nine-day Asian tour, which also takes him to Singapore for an Asia-Pacific economic summit, to China for talks likely to feature climate change and trade imbalances, and to South Korea, where North Korea's nuclear ambitions will be in focus. "This is obviously the fastest growing economic region in the world. For own economy, it supports millions of jobs, a huge amount of our trade," Ben Rhodes, deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, said at a briefing where he previewed the speech for reporters. "There is potential there for more commerce between us, including the potential to create more American jobs through exports," he said. Obama is scheduled to deliver his speech at 10 a.m. local time (0100 GMT) on Saturday to an audience of about 1,500 people at Tokyo's Suntory Hall. He will also discuss US ties in the region on security concerns, which Rhodes listed as "climate change, nuclear proliferation, extremism" and its plans for increased engagement in regional groupings, such as APEC. And, although Obama will talk about China more during his visit to Shanghai and Beijing from Sunday to Wednesday, the speech will address U.S.-Chinese relations. "You'll hear him speak to our partnership with China on a range of global issues, such as the global economic recovery, climate change and nuclear proliferation," Rhodes said. Fresh government figures on the U.S. trade deficit could add urgency to Obama's efforts to seek greater export opportunities in China and other Asian countries. America's trade gap ballooned in September by 18.2 percent to $36.5 billion, according to US Commerce Department figures released in Washington on Friday. It was the largest monthly increase in more than 10 years and was driven both by higher oil prices and a surge in imports from China. The import growth may reinforce US concerns that China's currency is undervalued against the dollar, which US manufacturers say gives Chinese companies an unfair trade advantage. Obama will also underscore the strength of Washington's alliance with Tokyo in the speech. On Friday, he and Japan's new Prime Minister, Yukio Hatoyama, pledged to revitalise their strained security alliance as they adapt to a rising China, set to overtake Japan as the world's No. 2 economy. But they left unresolved a feud over a US military base on Japan's southern Okinawa island that has frayed Washington's ties with Hatoyama's government, which has pledged to steer a diplomatic course less dependent on its ally and forge closer relations with Asia.

Millions more people will be at risk from illnesses such as malaria and diarrhoea in a warming world beset by heatwaves and water shortages, the World Health Organisation said on Thursday. Climate experts say rising temperatures and heatwaves will increase the number of heat-related deaths, while higher ozone levels from pollution will mean more people suffering from cardio-respiratory disease. A warming world would also mean the spread of vector-borne and pathogenic diseases such as malaria, dengue fever and cholera. "Some of the major killers are climate sensitive," Maria Neira, the World Health Organisation's director for public health and the environment, said at climate talks in Bali. "We are concerned about malnutrition related to lack of agricultural production, we are concerned about diarrhoea due to water scarcity and sanitation, and about seeing an increase in dengue and malaria and their appearance in areas where it was not present," she said. "The health costs of inaction will be the incidence of injuries and death by natural disasters and heat waves or displacement of people." Neira told the climate talks on the Indonesian resort island of Bali a 1 degree Celsius increase in temperature would lead to an 8 percent increase in the incidence of diarrhoea. Climate change was also expected to increase the proportion of the global population exposed to dengue, a disease carried by mosquitoes, by between 50 and 60 percent. The 190-nation UN climate meeting in Bali from Dec 3-14 is seeking to launch two years of formal negotiations meant to end with agreement on a broad new UN pact to fight global warming, which is linked with rising sea levels, floods and melting glaciers. In the past, experts have said South Asia is particularly at risk. The region's flood-prone, low-lying countries such as Bangladesh, melting Himalayan glaciers, desert areas and large coastal cities mean disease could spread quickly and exacerbate malnutrition. "The health system will be totally overwhelmed and not able to respond and maybe undermine the health benefits until now," said Neira.

Center-left world leaders including Britain's Gordon Brown and Brazil's Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Saturday called for global financial reforms at next week's G20 summit, but the U.S. warned against over-regulation. Meeting in the Chilean coastal resort of Vina del Mar in a pre-G20 warm-up, Brown, Lula, host Chilean President Michelle Bachelet and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said deep financial reforms were vital to avert a another financial meltdown. "The whole world is paying the price for the collapse of a reckless venture of those that have turned the world economy into a gigantic casino," Lula told fellow leaders in a roundtable discussion. "We are rejecting blind faith in the markets." Brown said the G20 summit in London had to focus on concrete ways to revive growth and create jobs while protecting the environment and the world's poor. "We have got to be very clear that banking cannot be unsupervised any more; there's got to be cross border supervision," he said, calling for an overhaul of the system of international finance and coordinated policies to help underpin sustainable growth. U.S. President Barack Obama has called on fellow G20 leaders to agree on immediate action to help boost the struggling global economy, while Brown wants the group to back a $100 billion expansion of trade financing and agree upon a long-delayed global trade pact. U.S. Vice President Joe Biden told the meeting overlooking Chile's Pacific coast the United States was eager to coordinate international policy to reduce systemic risk to global markets, but warned over-regulation could hurt healthy markets. "We should not over-react. It is not a choice of markets or governments," Biden said. "A free market still needs to be able to function." Thousands of people marched in Britain, France, Germany and Italy on Saturday to protest the economic crisis and urge world leaders to act to reduce poverty, create jobs and avert climate change at the G20 summit. "We have to democratize the economy, globalization and the financial system. How to do this? We already know: with information, transparency and responsibility," Zapatero said.